BBC在线收听下载:尼泊尔地震救灾人员称救援物质不足

BBC news 2015-05-06

BBC News with Marion Marshall.

French lawmakers have approved a bill giving the intelligence services extensive new powers aimed at preventing terrorist attacks. Security officials will be able to order surveillance without the approval of a juage relying instead on a newly created suprvisory body. Civil rights groups and some politicians have criticized the law. Hugh Scotfield reports from Paris.“All speakers in the debate recognized that France faces an exceptional threat from terrorism at this time. For the government backed by the opposition UMP that means that intelligence agencies need to be given a proper legal framework in which to act. But opponents say that precisely because the threat the France is so acute is wrong to legislate in haste and they say what the January attacks in Paris showed was not a lack of surveillance on mass rather than need for a better targeted intelligence of individuals.”

The United States has authorized commercial ferry services to Cuba for the first time in more than 50 years, several companies in Florida said they have been given licenses to operate passenger ferries to Havana, and services could begin within weeks. Will Grant is in Cuba.“Since the decision to reestablish diplomatic ties with Havana was announced by Washington in December. There's been a noticeble surge in the number of Americans visiting Cuba, now they have one more way to get here. The move doesn't necessarily mean that boats will start launching for Cuban shores straight away as there are other bureaucratic hurdles to overcome in both countries. But it is a further indication of Washington's desire to put the policies of isolating Cuba in the past and begin a new era of cooperation.”

Houthi rebels in Yemen have fired shells and rockets into a Saudi Arabian town across the border for the first time since the Saudi's launched an air campaign against them. Yemeni tribal leaders said that two Saudis were killed in the attack on Najran but Saudi officials haven't confirmed this, buildings were demaged schools were closed and flights concelled to the area after the attack, the border area has seen regular exchanges of fires since March when the Saudi-led campaign began.

Dozens of migrants are reported to have drowned in the lastest disaster to strike people trying to reach Europe from Africa by boat. The aid group Save The Children said up to 40 people died when their rubber dinghy deflated in the Mediterranean on Sunday, about 100 survivors were rescued by a container ship and taken to Sicily. Astoy Fall Dia from Senegal was on the dinghy.“It was a little boat, it failed and exploded boom. There was a big ship there and they threw down ropes. Someone grabbed onto the ropes, all the other people started pushing to try to save themselves but then people started falling in the water. An estimated 7,000 migrants have made the crossing in recent days, a surge prompted by good weather and calm seas.”World News from the BBC.

Ten days after the earthquake that devastated Nepal, aid workers say they are still not getting enough supplies to help the population, the Nepalese authorities say they are beginning to get the relieve situation under control. But the BBC's Anu Anand who spent two days in Jatara northeast of the capital Katmandu says people are desperate.“People are swarming around the helicopter fighting for supplies. Someone described it to me today saying tents were as vital as oxygen people do have some stocks of grain, a lot of them grow their own food but what they don't have at the moment is just somewhere to sleep , somewhere to get out the sun,  somewhere to protect children and the elderly from the hot sun, this is high altitude a lot of people are getting dehidrated and very sick. And the thing we keep hearing here is we've got one month the rains are coming. These are steep steep hillsides and it's going to be devastating all over again.”

One of Iran's most prominent human rights activists Narges Mohammadi has been arrested. Her hisband said officers turned up their house in Teheran on Monday and threatened to break down the door before she agreed to go with them. Narges Mohammadi works with a group founded by the Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi.

Thr United Nations says a number of its peacekeeping troops have been killed in an ambush near the city of Beni in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The area has seen heavy fighting between the Congolese army and an Islamist rebel group from Uganda, one of many armed factions active in the eastern Congo.

The United States is investigating a claim by the Islamic State Jihadist group that it was behind a failed attack in Texas on Sunday. Two gunmen were killed when they opened fire outside the contest to draw Cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. It's the first time IS has claimed to have carried out an attack in the US but the White House said it was too early to say if there was any link. BBC World Service News.