BBC在线收听下载:阿根廷总统呼吁新教皇介入与英国的纠纷

BBC news 2013-03-19

BBC News with Jonathan Izard

The United States says the Congolese war crime suspect Bosco Ntaganda has handed himself in at the US embassy in Rwanda and asked to be transferred to the International Criminal Court, the ICC, in The Hague. Our East Africa correspondent Gabriel Gatehouse reports.

Bosco Ntaganda walked into the US embassy in Kigali on Monday morning unsolicited according to an official statement from Washington. Neither the United States nor Rwanda is a signatory to the ICC, but a spokeswoman for the state department said the US supported the work of the court and would aim to facilitate his transferal to The Hague. The charges against Gen Ntaganda, who’s nicknamed The Terminator, include rape, murder and the recruitment of child soldiers. They relate not to the current rebellion in the eastern Congo, but to an earlier conflict in the same region.

A legal case has begun in New York that challenges the way the city’s police conduct a policy of detaining and sometimes searching those they consider suspicious. Critics say the operations known as “stop and frisk” disproportionately target black and Hispanic men. But the policy’s supporters say it’s contributed to a sharp drop in violent crime. Here’s our North America correspondent Jonny Dymond.

More than half a million people were stopped on the streets of New York City last year by police. The policy is legal. But now opponents want the way that it’s put into action examined and reformed. More than half of those stopped are black, only a quarter of the city’s residents are. A lawyer for the organisation that started the case, the Center for Constitutional Rights, described the stops as a frightening and degrading experience that were arbitrary, unnecessary and unconstitutional. 

The jailed Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan says he’s to make a historic statement on Thursday, raising hopes that he might call a ceasefire after decades of conflict with the Turkish government. James Reynolds sent this report from Istanbul.

A delegation of Kurdish MPs was allowed to go and see Abdullah Ocalan in prison. The politicians took back with them to Istanbul a statement from the PKK’s leader. Abdullah Ocalan said that he would make a call, or announcement, during traditional Kurdish New Year celebrations on Thursday. This call will feature satisfactory information on the political and military aspects of the solution, he wrote. Most here take this to mean that Mr Ocalan will call a ceasefire and may also announce the withdrawal of armed PKK fighters from Turkey to their main base across the border in northern Iraq.

Finance ministers from the eurozone have asked Cyprus to protect small investors from a proposed levy on savings. Plans for a one-off tax of nearly seven per cent on savings up to 100,000 euros have outraged Cypriots. Banks in Cyprus are to remain closed until Thursday as efforts to revise an international bailout package continue. A parliamentary vote on the package has been repeatedly postponed. It’s now expected on Tuesday. 

World News from the BBC

The British Prime Minister David Cameron has presented the plan to regulate the press in the wake of a series of scandals over phone hacking by journalists. Mr Cameron told parliament that the plan agreed overnight by Britain’s main political parties would set up a watchdog that could impose heavy fines on newspapers and force them to publish corrections. The leader of the opposition Labour party Ed Miliband said the agreement satisfied the demands of protection for victims and freedom of the press.

"I don’t want to live in a country where sections of the press can abuse their power to wreak havoc on the lives of innocent people. And equally I want to live in a country that upholds the right of a fearless, angry, controversial press that holds the powerful to account, including in this House. Today’s agreement protects the victims and upholds a free press.”

The Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has made a direct appeal to Pope Francis to intervene on the dispute between her country and Britain over the Falkland Islands. At an audience with the Pope at the Vatican, the Argentine leader said she wanted him to get involved. She accused Britain of militarising the islands. It’s not known how the Pope, who is from Argentina, responded to the appeal. Argentina claims sovereignty over the islands.

The Supreme Court in Colombia has revoked a presidential decree which allowed abortions in cases of rape, malformation or risk to the mother’s health. The judge said the decree issued in 2006 was illegal because it meddled in areas for which no law had ever been passed. But a separate constitutional court ruling holds that clinics cannot refuse abortions in such cases.

The Bangladesh Cricket Board has banned an international umpire Nadir Shah from the sport for 10 years after finding him guilty of corruption. The board launched an inquiry after a report by an Indian television station alleged that Mr Shah and others were willing to help fix matches in return for bribes. Nadir Shah denies the charges and says he will appeal.

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