BBC news 2007-09-04 加文本

BBC 2007-09-04


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It's nothing more but the words were designed to cut the rug from under the White House's opponents. President Bush flanked on all sides by troops himself raised the possibility of some of them going home. "If the kind of success we are now seeing continues, it would be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces." In other words, there is light at the end of the tunnel, though President Bush said the decision would not be made by nervous politicians in Washington, it would be a troop reduction made from a position of strength after what the President called "calm assessment". The point the White House wants to stress is that progress is being made and it would be madness to throw it away now.

An ambitious project has been launched to expand the Panama Canal, making it accessible to larger ships. Panama's President Martin Torrijos hosted two other Central American leaders and the former American President Jimmy Carter at a ceremony in Panama City. New locks and extra shipping lanes will be built under a five-billion-dollar scheme.


The Colombian army says that it's killed a leading member of the country's largest left-wing guerilla group FARC during an assault on Sunday against rebel troops. The Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos described the death of Tomas Medina Caracas as the biggest blow ever to the group's operations. Jeremy McDermott reports from Bogota.
The importance of the killing of Tomas Medina, alias "El Negro Acacio" , was evident from the amount of top brass from the security forces that accompanied Columbian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos when he described the operation that killed the FARC's top drugs trafficker. Medina was the head of the FARC's 16th Front and had turned this unit of the guerillas into a money-making machine, gathering cocaine from all eastern parts of Colombia under FARC control, and either selling it or exchanging it for weapons and ammunition.

Human rights campaigners in Russia say 38 people have been killed in racist attacks this year. A report from the SOVA Organization says there've been more than 350 incidents with skinheads usually to blame. SOVA estimates that there're more than 60,000 skinheads in Russia. A BBC correspondent says the term "skinhead" in Russia also covers ultra-right activists, who carry out attacks with impunity because the authorities have traditionally used nationalism as a political weapon.

Previously secret archive papers released on Tuesday in Britain reveal that the writer George Orwell was long suspected by the authorities of being a communist agitator. The papers say that the security services MI5 and MI6 described him as a man of advanced communist views but Orwell went on to write two novels "Animal Farm" and "1984".

World News from the BBC.

The polls have closed in what's expected to be a close-run general election in Jamaica. The island's first female Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller is being challenged by the opposition leader Bruce Golding. The voting was mostly trouble-free, although there was at least one shooting incident. Arring Gordon reports from Kingston.
People in southeast Saint Catherine, a poor area in Kingston that's seen a lot of armed clashes, got an unwelcome reminder of that violence as they stood in line to vote. Shots were fired at a polling station from a car. Police have arrested several men and seized the car they were driving. No one was injured but frightened staff had to be persuaded to continue their work. Overall the election operation ran as smoothly as it could be expected with no major problems reported. The electoral office is promising a swift count. The result, they say, will be declared within four hours of the close of voting.

United Nations has warned that many livestock breeds in poor countries, particularly in Africa, face extinction because of over-reliance on a few imported breeds. The UN says traditional breed is disappearing at an alarming rate as farmers replace them with higher yielding animals from North America and Europe. Carol Sally is with the International Livestock Research Institute.
This is the first time we understand really the magnitude of (the) issue. The numbers indicated about 1/3 of the identified breeds are at risk, what it doesn't mean that they are extinct but they are at risk, so it is definitely a call of attention to the world.

United Nations refugee agency has voiced new concern over the plight of thousands of civilians forced to flee their homes amid worsening fighting in North Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The fighting has involved government forces and troops loyal to the dissident General Laurent Nkunda. The refugee agency says that in one district some 2,000 people had sought shelter around a school building.

BBC World News.