BBC在线收听下载:德国柏林墙倒塌30周年

BBC News. Hello, I'm Jerry Smit.

Indian Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a Hindu claim to a bitterly disputed religious site in the northern town of Ayodhya. The unanimous decision clears the way for a Hindu temple to be built at the location where a sixteenth century mosque was torn down by zealots in 1992, an act that triggered deadly riots across India. Anbarasan Ethirajan looks at the impact to the judgment. It's a landmark verdict and it could set the tone for which direction India is taking in the years to come. The decision is also a major victory for the Hindu nationalist party of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which has long campaigned to build a temple for the deity, Lord Ram at the site. The party's rise to political eminence in recent decades was linked to the promise to build a temple in Ayodhya. Muslims are disappointed and are concerned that this would relegate them to second-class citizens and empower Hindu extremists. Hundreds of Sikhs have begun crossing the border between India and Pakistan, using for the first time a visa-free corridor to reach one of their religion's holy sites. They walked through a gate at Kartarpur to make the journey to the temple marking where the founder of Sikhism died.

Ceremony is taking place in Germany to mark thirty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the hated barrier that epitomized the Cold War divide between the Communist East and the Democratic West. Chancellor Angela Merkel is attending a commemoration at remaining section of the wall. Damien McGuinness is in Berlin. The wall really brutally tore Berlin in two. It went up overnight in 1961 and families were suddenly torn apart. So if for example, someone had gone shopping, they suddenly found that they couldn't get back to their homes. This had a big emotional impact on the country. Of course the Berlin Wall was not only a physical barrier is also symbolized the fact that Germany had been torn apart and also that Europe was divided between west and east. So the fall of the Berlin Wall, you can't overstate the significance of that event thirty years ago.

North Korea's harvest is predicted to be worse than usual this year, making conditions even more severe in a country already suffering from food shortages. This report from Celia Hatton. The warning for the North Korean harvest comes from the Swiss-based monitoring organization GEOGLAM. Citing satellite imagery, it said that continual drought has affected grain crops in the part of North Korea long-known as the cereal bowl. Even before this forecast, the UN estimates that four out of ten North Koreans urgently need food aid. Crop production has dropped to its lowest level in five years and food shortages are probably made worse by sanctions.

World news from the BBC.