BBC在线收听下载:摩洛哥议会拟讨论大麻合法化

BBC news 2013-12-05

BBC News with Jerry Smit

New research suggests that as many as 30,000 Eritreans have been abducted and tortured in the Sinai desert over the last four years. At least 600 million dollars have been extracted from families in ransom payments. A team of academics and human rights activists found that many hostages were forced to phone their relatives while they were being tortured. The Eritrean ambassador to Britain, Tesfamichael Gerahtu said the abductions were a deliberate conspiracy by those outside Eritrea to destabilize the country. But he said that his government was trying to tackle the problem.

“The Eritrean government has been working with Sudan, Egypt, Libya in this area on how to cooperate on this issue. We have been aggressively trying to control our borders with Sudan, we have been raising awareness, we have been bringing the criminals that caught unarmed on border into justice.”

The European Union has announced plans to tighten patrols of its sea borders and do more to help asylum-seekers. The changes come two months after hundreds of migrants died when their boat capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa. From Brussels here's Matthew Price.

All EU states want to prevent asylum-seekers dying when they try to get to Europe, but they disagree on how to do it. Britain wants to focus on the countries of origin on fighting people smuggling from places like Libya and is among the ideas proposed by the European commission as it’s paying for increased patrols in the Mediterranean. The commission would also like to see more EU countries resettling refugees spreading the burden.

Officials in the American state of Connecticut have released recordings of telephone calls from the Sandy Hook elementary school to the emergency services as a gunman Adam Lanza carried out a shooting spray at the school almost a year ago. He shot dead 26 people before killing himself. The recordings were released following a legal request by the Associated Press. The executive editor of AP, Kathleen Carroll described what could be heard.

“You can hear a number of people calling to report the shootings and several people who are in the school talking to police dispatchers. I think the most remarkable thing in the newest thing about what you hearing is, how calm the dispatchers are when it becomes increasingly apparent that something really terrible happening at the school and how they’re very focus on trying to keep the people who are talking to them safe and trying to also understand what state the children around and they're doing a remarkably calm job in the terrible state of circumstances.”

State prosecutors had opposed the release saying it could cause more anguish to the victims' families.

Police in Nigeria have freed 16 pregnant girls allegedly being forced to have babies for sale. A police spokeswoman said they raided a home in Owerri, the capital of Imo state after a tip-off. The police said the babies might have been sold on for witchcraft rituals.

World News from the BBC

The United Nations nuclear watchdog the IAEA says a truck carrying potentially dangerous radioactive material has been stolen in Mexico City. The truck was transporting a radiotherapy source from a hospital in Tijuana to a radioactive waste storage. The IAEA said that when the truck was stolen two days ago, the radioactive source was properly shielded but if the shielding is removed or damaged the material could be extremely dangerous. Correspondents say it could be used for a so-called dirty bomb.

There has been a high turnout for the funeral of one of the leaders of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Hassan al-Lakkis who was killed outside his home in the outskirts of Beirut. Israel has denied involvement. One Israeli minister suggested Sunni Muslim extremists may have done it. Jim Muir reports from Beirut.

There was a huge turnout despite heavy rain at the funeral staged for Hassan Lakkis at Baalbek in Hezbollah's eastern Lebanese heartland. This despite the fact that until the announcement of his death, very few people indeed outside Hezbollah's shadowy military structure had even heard of him. At least the killers clearly knew who he was but who themselves were working for remains a mystery.

The Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has signed a decree controlling the price of new and second-hand cars. Used cars are overpriced and hard to find in Venezuela, their country staggering with high inflation. Mr. Maduro has accused criminal gangs of creating artificially high prices in the used car market.

The Moroccan parliament has begun informal hearings on possible industrial and medicinal use of cannabis as a first step towards legalization authorizing its production under certain circumstances. According to the UN, Morocco is one of the top producers of hashish in the world supplying 42% of global supply.

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