BBC在线收听下载:印度最快列车将开通运营

Hello, this is David Austin with the BBC News.

The two main political parties in Nigeria have condemned the country's electoral commission for postponing the presidential and parliamentary elections hours before polling was due to start. The head of the commission is Mahmoud Yakubu. This will afford the commission the opportunity to address identified challenges in order to maintain the quality of our elections. This was a difficult decision for the commission to take, but necessary for the successful delivery of elections and the consolidation of our democracy. Mr. Yakubu said legistical problems had made it impossible to hold the vote on schedule, but both the governing All Progressives Congress and the opposition People's Democratic Party criticized the commission for not being prepared and then accused each other of trying to manipulate the vote. Both have urged calm.

The Roman Catholic Church has defrocked the former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick over allegations of child abuse. The Vatican said Pope Francis had ruled his expulsion from the clergy as definitive and would not allow any further appeals against the decision. Theodore McCarrick was the former Archbishop of Washington D.C. Martin Bashir reports. Theodore McCarrick was informed of the church's decision to remove him from the priesthood last night. And a terse statement from the Vatican this morning said that he'd been found guilty of sins against minors and adults with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power. Last July, he resigned as a cardinal, the first to do so in more than a hundred years, after credible allegations emerged that he'd sexually assaulted a sixteen-year-old altar boy and then molested another fourteen-year-old.

India's fastest train has broken down a day after it was inaugurated by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi with much fanfare. Anbrathan Antirajon has the story. The state-of-the-art Vande Bharat Express was returning from the Indian city of Varanasi after its first outing when the brakes reportedly jammed in one of the carriages. Soon after that drivers noticed a smoke in the last four coaches, and power was lost in all compartments. Those on board, mostly railway officials and journalists, had to take another train to get back to Delhi. Some reports said the express had hit a stray cow. The train is expected to reduce the travel time between Delhi and Varanasi by six hours. The new train service is expected to start its commercial run from Sunday.

And that's the latest BBC News.