BBC在线收听下载:中美进行第三轮谈判以解决贸易纠纷

Hello, I'm Jerry Smit with the BBC news.

The Prime Minister-designate of Italy Carlo Cottarelli has held informal talks with President Sergio Mattarella amid speculation that two populist parties may be making a renewed effort to put together an administration. Here's our Europe regional editor Mike Sanders.

Most Italians have been resigned to something of a pantomime today. Carlo Cottarelli would formally present a government of technocrats for President Mattarella to approve. Now and the populist parties Five Star and the League vow to reject it in parliament, they might just as well off the snap elections as early as July, but now this talk of the two parties making a renewed attempt to form a government with the compromise candidate as Finance Minister and not the hard-line Euro skeptic Paolo Savona who had been vetoed by the President.

China has warned that it's ready to fight back after the United States said it would go ahead with imposing new tariffs on Chinese goods. Senior US officials are due in Beijing this weekend for a third round of talks aimed at resolving a trade dispute between the two countries. Robin Brant reports.

Despite a pledge made by both sides just weeks ago to put on hold any move that could spark a trade war, the US has said it now intends to press ahead with tariffs on fifty billion dollars worth of goods exported from China. This is specifically linked to long-held concerns it has about what it says is the large scale theft of intellectual property from American companies. The US commerce secretary Wilbur Ross is due here in China in just a few days' time for a third round of face-to-face negotiations.

Ukrainian police believe a prominent Russian journalist and outspoken critic of President Putin may have been shot dead at his home in Kiev because of his work. Arkady Babchenko, who was 41, was reportedly shot several times in the back. The Russian Foreign Ministry has demanded an investigation. Here's Steve Rosenberg.

Arkady Babchenko was a war reporter who became one of Russia's most prominent journalists. He was openly critical of Moscow's policies on Ukraine and Syria. Ukraine's Prime Minister seems to suggest that Moscow was behind the murder, but Volodymyr Groysman claimed the Russian totalitarian machine had never forgiven the reporter's honesty and principles, adding that Mr. Babchenko was a true friend of Ukraine who had told the world about Russian aggression.

World news from the BBC.