BBC在线收听下载:科学家发现古人在指南针发明前的导航之谜

BBC news 2013-03-07

BBC News with Sue Montgomery

The coffin of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is inching its way through a huge crowd of his supporters in the streets of the capital Caracas. The vice president, Nicolas Maduro, who was chosen by Mr Chavez as his successor, is heading the procession in a tracksuit in the colours of the Venezuelan flag. The president’s body will lie in state at a military academy before his funeral on Friday. Will Grant reports.

For his most devoted supporters, it was a chance to bid their leader, their commandant, goodbye. For many the death of Hugo Chavez has been a moment of visceral raw grief as though they’d lost a family member.

“Chavez lives. Chavez lives because I am Chavez and because most of us are Chavez. Long live Chavez!”

“Chavez hasn’t died. The revolution goes on.”

Hero or authoritarian, champion of the poor or autocrat, Chavez represented many things to many people.

Armed rebel fighters in Syria have seized about 20 United Nations peacekeepers in the Golan Heights. Reports say all the captives are from the Philippines. The UN Security Council has demanded their release. Here’s James Reynolds.

A video posted online shows a group of Syrian rebels standing on a road next to three white UN vehicles. The cars’ engines are still running. The pictures briefly show two men wearing the UN observer uniform of blue flak jacket and helmet sitting in their trunk at the back of the small convoy. In a statement, the UN confirms that around 20 of its peacekeepers have been detained. It says that the observers were stopped on a regular supply mission near a post that had recently been abandoned because of heavy fighting in the area.

A row has broken out in Kenya over whether spoiled ballots should be included in the presidential vote. The coalition led by Uhuru Kenyatta says rejected ballots should not be included in the final tally, something which would help his chances of winning the presidency. Correspondents say Kenyans are becoming anxious about the delay in finalising the results.

The UN has agreed to lift temporarily the embargo on light weapons in Somalia, the world’s oldest weapons blockade. The new government had been lobbying to have the sanctions lifted. Barbara Plett reports.

The resolution eases a UN arms embargo imposed in 1992 as warlords battling for control of Somalia began a long civil war. Now Somalia is trying to establish its first functioning government after two decades of chaos and says that security forces need more weapons to consolidate gains in the fight against Islamist militants. So the Security Council has partially lifted the arms embargo for one year, allowing the authorities to buy light weapons. But recognising that the country is still very fragile, it kept a ban on heavy weapons and added new measures to monitor arms purchases.

BBC News

The US House of Representatives has passed a stop-gap bill that will keep the government operating as the White House grapples with spending cuts due to come into force automatically at the end of the month. The bill approved by the Republican-controlled House is designed to ease deep cuts across the defence department that came into effect last week. But Democrats hope to expand it to cover other departments when the bill goes to the Senate.

The Supreme Administrative Court in Ukraine has ordered that the lawyer defending the former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko should be stripped of the seat he has in parliament. It means Serhiy Vlasenko loses his parliamentary immunity and can himself be prosecuted. Mr Vlasenko leads the legal team representing Ms Tymoshenko who is in prison for exceeding her authority while in office and is facing further charges of tax evasion and a contract murder. She said her lawyer had highlighted the absurdity of her judicial harassment.

French scientists believe they have come a step closer to understanding how the Vikings were able to navigate across the sea well before the invention of the magnetic compass. A crystal found in the wreckage of a British ship in the English Channel is believed to be what was referred as a “sunstone” in ancient Norse literature. It’s thought the crystal was used to pinpoint the sun’s position. Here’s Hugh Schofield.

An oblong crystal the size of a cigarette packet was found on a ship next to a pair of dividers, suggesting that it was part of the navigational equipment. It’s now been shown that the crystal is of Iceland spar, a form of calcite, which is known for its property of diffracting light into two separate rays. Testing a similar crystal, the team of scientists from Rennes University in France shows that by rotating it you can find the point where the two beams converge and that indicates the direction of the sun. It works on cloudy days and when the sun has set.

BBC News