BBC在线收听下载:英前外长欲“赖帐”拒付脱欧费用

I'm Rosemary Crick with the BBC news, hello.

Britain's former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson says that if he becomes Prime Minister, he will refuse to pay the country's divorce bill to leave the European Union. Mr. Johnson, the favorate to win the governing Conservative Party's leadership election, told the Sunday Times newspaper that the money roughly fifty billion dollars would be withheld unless the EU improve the terms for Brexit. Chris Mason has this assessment of Mr. Johnson's proposals. He says that it was a mistake to offer the money first and that money is a great lubricant on negotiations. And by holding onto it, you might be able to unlock these negotiations that are deadlocked at the moment. The other thing he wants to do is scrap the backstop. This is the insurance policy to keep the border on the Island of Ireland between Northern Ireland in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, an independent country open under all circumstances. His critics though bounced to say, well, hang on a minute, Theresa May, your predecessor if you get this job, tried all this stuff and the EU wouldn't budge. So why would it budge for you?

The President of Albania has cancelled local elections due at the end of this month following the latest in a series of street protests by opposition supporters. They have accused the socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama of vote rigging and collusion with organized crime. Here is Guide Aloni. We've seen protests in front of the government building in Tirana. We saw a crowd of protesters gathered there and they were throwing firecrackers and smoke bombs at this government building, which is of course where Prime Minister Edi Rama has his office. The police responded with tear gas. The President Ilir Meta now cancelled local elections, which were due at the end of this month and which the opposition said they were going to boycott. So he's canceled those elections in part because he says that conditions don't exist at the moment in Albania for free and fair elections.

A Russian court has placed an investigative journalist under house arrest for two months after he was charged with drug dealing. Ivan Golunov's supporters say he's been framed for writing about corruption. Mr. Golunov works for the Russian news website Medusa. Ivan Kolpakov is Medusa's editor in chief. Well first drugs where they found it in his bag. So we think that it was planted there by the police officers and also they have found some drugs in his apartment. We also think that it was planted there. So he's absolutely not, you know, a drug user. He's not drug addicted person. We know him for years and all his close friends and family confirm that he did not use drugs.

The president of Gabon Ali Bongo has called on his Prime Minister to form a new government in his first televised speech since he returned home after spending several months in Morocco recovering from a stroke. Mr. Bongo said the new administration should be exemplary, honest and ethical.

World news from the BBC.