BBC 2007-04-09 加文本

BBC 2007-04-09



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BBC World News with Jonathan Weekley.

Voting has begun in East Timor where people are choosing a new president. It's the country's first election since gaining independence from Indonesia five years ago. Eight candidates are contesting the election, which is for a successor to President Xanana Gusmao. He is not standing again. Jonathan Head reports from the capital Dili.

People started arriving at polling stations while it was still dark this morning well before they opened. Many East Timorese are disappointed with the leadership of their country in its first five years as an independent nation, but that does not appear to have diminished their desire to vote. None of the eight candidates has the charisma and renown of Xanana Gusmao, the man they are seeking to replace. But his once heroic reputation is not what it was after the violence that tore the capital apart last year.

There has been widespread condemnation here in Britain of the decision to allow the fifteen sailors and marines held by Iran to sell their stories to the media. Families of military personnel killed in Iraq have called it shameful. A former defence minister of the opposition Conservative Party, Nicolas Soames, said the decision was undignified. "I think like many people will be thinking this Easter Sunday of the parents and relatives of the young men and women killed recently in Iraq, or the Royal Marines fighting hand to hand today against the Taliban in Afghanistan. There needs to be an absolutely fundamental rethink." The Defence Ministry in London said a general ban on military personnel selling stories would remain in place, but that the circumstances in this case were exceptional.

The Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has demanded that Iraq help secure the release of five Iranians held since January by American troops in Iraq. An Iranian news agency quoted Mr. Mottaki as saying he'd sent his Iraqi counterpart a letter warning that Tehran could have problems helping Iraq if no action was taken.

Iraq has imposed a total ban on vehicle traffic in Baghdad as the country prepares to mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein. On Sunday, at least eighteen people were killed and more than twenty-eight injured in a huge car bomb explosion in the town of Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad. Jim Muir reports from Baghdad.

More grief and bereavement in Mahmudiya. The streets were shaken in the middle of the morning as a massive blast went off in the town center. Mahmudiya is a mainly Shiite town, but it's in the troubled belt of territory around the southern side of Baghdad where Sunni and Shiite communities are mixed. Further to the south, American helicopters were patrolling the skies over the Shiite city of Diwania. It was the third day of a big operation to raid the city center of Shiite militiamen believed to belong to the Mahdi Army which follows the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. He's called for massive demonstrations to be held on Monday to mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.

World News from the BBC.

The Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has joined the international condemnation of the killing of an Afghan reporter by the Taliban. The man, Ajmal Nashqbandi, has been acting as translator for an Italian journalist when they were seized by the group last month. The Italian was freed after about two weeks when the Afghan government released five Taliban prisoners. Mark Duff reports from Milan.

Three weeks ago, Italy welcomed back Daniele Mastrogiacomo, the Italian journalist, freed after the Afghan government agreed to release five Taliban prisoners. Mr. Mastrogiacomo returned home to describe seeing his driver's decapitation and to urge the Italian government to do what it could to prevent his translator meeting a similar fate. On hearing of his colleague's death, he said he was shattered - a sense that's echoed by the editor-in-staff of his newspaper Republica. 'This shows the world the true face of the Taliban,' Mr. Mastrogiacomo said. 'They are simply killers.' "

A cathedral in the Netherlands has unveiled its new stained glass window which includes an image of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. A bishop blessed the window at a ceremony at the cathedral in Den Bosch. The panel, the pane contained an image, shows a plane crashing into one of the Twin Towers. The artist who made it said it depicted hell on earth.

In a unique ritual, the queen of the holy town of Puri in India has paid what is by tradition the only visit to the famous Jagannath temple she is allowed to make in her lifetime. For the last three decades, the queen, or Maharani, has lived in a palace barely 200 meters away, but only on Sunday was she taken to the Jagannath temple by her husband, who tied a sari around her head, sanctioned her to worship of the shrine. Several thousand people turned out to witness the event. But the Maharani was in purdah and must therefore be kept from public view.

For the moment, that is the latest BBC World News.

Vacabulary
Bereavement: n. state of being bereaved 丧失亲人；丧亲之痛： we all sympathize with you in your bereavement 我们对你的丧亲之痛深感同情。
Purdah: n. (system in Muslim and Hindu societies of) keeping women from public view by means of a veil, curtain, etc 妇女用面纱、幕帘等隔开公众视线的做法；穆斯林社会和印度社会的深闺制度； keep sb/ be/ live in purdah, ie concealed in this way 使某人身处深闺之中
(fig infml， 比喻，口) I’ve got a lot of urgent work to do at home and will have to go into purdah for a couple of weeks. 我有许多紧要的工作须在家里做，因此要有几个星期足不出户。