BBC在线收听下载:脸书拟推自己的加密数字货币

Hello, this is David Austin with the BBC news.

Facebook has announced plans to launch a new global crypto currency called the Libra. The company says it will be accessible on data receiving devices from 2020. Andrew Walker reports. Facebook says moving money around globally should be as easy and cost-effective as and more secure than sending a text message or sharing a photo. The company's response is to create the Libra which will employ the blockchain technology used by existing crypto currencies such as Bitcoin. Facebook is putting some emphasis on the opportunities to provide services to the 1.7 billion people without access to a traditional bank. The plan has the support of a number of large companies including Paypal, Visa and Master Card.

Anti-corruption police in France have detained the former UEFA President and French football captain Michel Platini in connection with Qatar being awarded the 2022 World Cup. Mr. Platini is said to be in custody in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris. The sixty-three-year-old was head of European football's governing body until 2015, when he was banned for ethics violations.

The United Nations says more than three hundred thousand people have been displaced by recent ethnic violence in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. More than a hundred and sixty people have died in fighting between Hema herders and Lendu farmers over access to land and water and in revenge attacks. Most of the victims are believed to be Hema.

The high court in Bangladesh has ordered the government to remove and destroy all out-of-date drugs from pharmacies across the country within a month. Anbrathan Antirajon has this report. During a six-month investigation, the authorities in Bangladesh found out-of-date medicines in more than ninety percent of pharmacies in the capital Dhaka. The Bangladesh Association of Pharmaceutical Industry said that if locally produced medicines past that expiry dates, pharmacies could always ask for replacement or a refund. It has urged pharmacies to conduct periodic inspection to remove out-of-date drugs from their shelves.

Female applicants to a medical school in Japan have outperformed their male counterparts in the first entrance exam since the school admitted that passed test had been rigged in favor of men. The Juntendo Medical School said the just over eight percent of female applicants had passed the exam, compared to just over seven percent of men. Eighty-one medical schools in Japan were being investigated for giving unfair advantages to men, often in the belief that women might be unable to complete emergency shifts if they had children.

BBC news.