BBC在线收听下载:奥巴马呼吁对美国最富人群增税

BBC news 2015-05-14

BBC News with Joe Macintosh.

Aid officials in Nepal say they are still trying to establish the full extent of the damage caused by Nepal's second earthquake in less than three weeks. The second quake on Tuesday killed at least 50 people in Nepal and another 17 in northern India. But people are still buried under rubble, and the number of dead is expected to rise. Many people have again been sleeping outside, too scared to stay at home. Jane Cocking of the international charity, Oxfam, says the latest quake will put a huge strain on relief efforts. This is the additional earthquake that we have all been dreading, and this can only make things worse. There are relief supplies in the country. Aid is getting through to people who were affected by the earthquake two weeks ago. But this is going to make it much more thinly spread. So it would only mean that we need to step up our efforts. Rescue operation will resume at dawn.

A Saudi-led coalition says a 5-day humanitarian ceasefire has begun in Yemen, where its planes have been targeting Iranian-backed Houthis rebels and their allies. The hours running up to the implementation of the truce were marked by dozens of coalition airstrikes and by shelling by the rebels. Johannes van der Klaauw is the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen. From a humanitarian point of view, the situation is alarming. Yemen was already characterized by a protracted humanitarian crisis over the last three years. With the escalation of the conflict since the end of March, the situation has worsened to a point that a number of humanitarian activists are calling the situation catastrophic.

The U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, has held face-to-face talks with his Russian counterpart and President Putin for the first time since Russia's annexation of Crimea more than a year ago. The talks held in the Black Sea resort of Sochi ranged from the crisis in eastern Ukraine to the Syrian conflict. From Sochi, Bridget Kendall reports. Mr. Lavrov said it's been a long and useful day and this marathon session of talks had helped improve mutual understanding. Mr. Kerry said there was no substitute for talking directly to the key decision-makers, and thanked President Putin for giving so much of his time to explain Russia's positions. One Kremlin adviser said the Russian President had been guided by a fundamental interest in trying to resume normal relations with the Americans.

The Prime Minister of Macedonia has accepted the resignation of two of his ministers and his head of intelligence in an apparent bid to save the government from a damaging surveillance scandal. Opposition politicians say the intelligence chief and interior minister led attempts by the government control the country's press, judiciary and electoral officials by tapping their phones. This is the world news from the BBC.

Officials in Athens say that Greece has had to use a reserve account at the International Monetary Fund in order to make a bailout loan repayment to the IMF. Here is our economics correspondent, Andrew Walker. Before the repayment of 750 million euros was made, there were some doubts about whether Greece would find the money. It's done so by using reserves held at the IMF. All IMF members have this account, and they can and sometimes do dip into them to make loan repayments. It is, however, a sign of financial stress, and the account acts as a buffer that Greece has depleted. The move reinforces the comment made by the Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, that the country's financial situation is terribly urgent, as he seeks further bailout payments from the rest of the Eurozone.

President Francois Hollande has pledged to repay a moral debt to Haiti on the first official visit by a French head of state since the country's independence more than two hundred years ago. But he stopped short of promising to return the reparations that former slaves had paid their French masters in return for independence.

A former head of Guatemala's police force, Erwin Sperisen, has lost in an appeal in a Swiss court against a life sentence for killing prisoners in his home country nine years ago. Last year, Mr. Sperisen, who has dual Swiss nationality, was convicted of involvement in the execution of seven prisoners in Pavon Jail near Guatemala City in September, 2006. He was also convicted of the murder of three prisoners who'd escaped from another jail.

President Obama has again called for America's richest people to pay higher taxes as a way of reducing poverty in the United States. In unscripted remarks at a poverty summit in Washington, Mr. Obama described top earners, such as hedgefund managers, as lottery winners. He said it was wrong that the top 25 fund managers in the U.S. earn more than all the kindergarten teachers in the country put together. BBC News.