BBC在线收听下载:美国研究人员实验室成功“培育”出肾脏

BBC news 2013-04-15

BBC News with Jerry Smit

Militants belonging to the Islamist group al-Shabab have carried out the most serious assault in the Somali capital Mogadishu since they were forced out the city in August 2011. Nine militants blasted and shot their way into the city's busy main court complex, killing numerous people. Running battles ensured with security forces, and the government minister later said all the gunmen have been killed. Elsewhere in the city, there was a suicide bomb attack on a Turkish aid agency convey, in which five people were killed. Correspondents say the attacks demonstrated that al-Shabab, though territorially weaker, can still mount well-planned and audacious assaults. The BBC's Mohammed Moalimuu in Mogadishu says the city feels less secure.

Recently, the situation of Mogadishu was improving and many people were coming back from outside Somalia, some were coming back from Europe, some were coming back from the United States and elsewhere. So there has been rehabilitation and rebuilding of Mogadishu, and people were so happy and just were feeling some sort of relative calm, but these attacks are causing some worries to the people who have been trying to build Somalia after two decades of civil wars.

Voting is underway in Venezuela to choose a successor to the late President Hugo Chavez. Security has been stepped up significantly as people choose between the acting president, Nicolas Maduro, who has promised to continue the policies of Mr Chavez, and the opposition candidate Henrique Capriles. Irene Caselli is our reporter in Caracas.

The Voting has been going very smoothly so far as the government has said that over 11 million Venezuelans already voted, although 19 million who are registered. A little while ago, I went to a polling station where the queues were rather short, and the atmosphere very calm. Several people said there were much smaller crowed out to vote compared to the last presidential election in October. There have been no major incidents reported, and the international observers have also been seen there. It's all being calm.

The US Secretary of State John Kerry who's been holding talks in the Japanese capital Tokyo, has said America stands firmly behind Japan in the face of North Korea's threats. There is growing speculation that Pyongyang may carry out a missile test on Monday. Mr Kerry said the US will do what was necessary to bring peace to the region.

We are committed to take action together. We, Japan, the United States and other countries that I have met with in the last two days, are committed to make that goal of denuclearization a reality.

Mr Kerry also called on Pyongyang to return to negotiations, but the North Korean parliamentary leader Kim Jong Un said his country needed to increase its nuclear force.

News from the BBC

Activists say that at least 25 people, including 12 children, have been killed today by two separate government air strikes in Syria. The London base Syrian Observatory for human rights says 16 people were killed in a village in the northeastern province of Hasaka. Another nine people died in a neighbourhood of Damascus.

Researchers in the United States have succeeded in making a working kidney and transplanting it into rats. According to the journal Nature Medicine, this process known as Bioengineering could potentially make organ transplants obsolete in the future. It involves taking a rat kidney and stripping it of its cells, leaving a shell which's then relined with renewed cells from newborn rats and blood vessel running cells from human donors.

China's state news agency says 11 fresh cases of the new strain of bird flu have been reported across the country on Sunday. Two new deaths from the new virus were also reported in Shanghai with new strain named new H7N9 first appeared last month. A total of 13 people have now died. A spokesman for the World Health Organization Michael O'Leary said there was no evidence that the virus was transmitted from human to human. "As far as we know, all the cases are individually infected in a sporadic and not connected way. There have been a couple of family clusters that have been investigated but the cases in general have been sporadically spread around the country, and the source of infections remains under active investigation."

The Bahraini government says it would take what it termed appropriate measures to ensure that anti-government protests don't disrupt the formula 1 Grand Prix on Friday. The opposition has urged a week protest leading up to the start of the race, but the government's spokeswoman said the security situation in Bahrain was very reassuring. The race was cancelled in 2011 when the government crashed pro-democracy rallies with deadly forces.

And that's the BBC News