BBC新闻50篇

News Item 1

The Japanese government has played down concern about a possible nuclear meltdown, following

a big explosion at a nuclear power station in the north of the country. The blast occurred a day after the area was hit by a powerful earthquake and tsunami. A top government official, Yukio Edano, said a steel container encasing the nuclear reactor had not been ruptured by the blast.

News Item 2

Fifty thousand Japanese military personnel had been ordered to join the huge rescue and relief

operation following the earthquake and tsunami. More than 1,000 people are feared dead. About 400 bodies were found in the town of Rikuzentakata, and Japanese media reports say 10,000 people are unaccounted for in Minamisanriku. Damian Grammaticas in the port of Sendai says the scenes of devastation there are astonishing.

News Item 3

International disaster relief teams have been sent to Japan. The United Nations said a nine strong UN

team of experts would include several Japanese speakers. Britain said it was sending expert assistance after receiving a request from Japan. Singapore is also deploying an urban search and rescue team. American forces stationed in Japan have already been involved in rescue operations, and more than 50 territories and countries have offered assistance.

News Item 4

As officials in Japan struggle to assess the extent of the damage following the tsunami caused by a

massive earthquake, it’s been announced that some 300 people are known to have been killed and more

than 500 are unaccounted for in the area around the northern coastal city of Sendai. The 8.9-magnitude quake, the biggest ever recorded in Japan, sent a wave of water several meters high sweeping far inland. Its epicenter was about 130km off Japan’s east coast. In the capital Tokyo, several hundred kilometers away, buildings swayed violently during the quake, which was followed by a series of powerful

aftershocks.

News Item 5

Slowly but relentlessly, Colonel Gaddafi’s forces seem to be winning the battle for Ras Lanuf.

Opposition fighters are still in the town, but they are under intense pressure. The bombing from government warplanes continued today, and there’s a big plume of smoke from the oil installation which was hit a couple of days ago. There’s no sign of either the rebel fighters or the local population beginning to flee the area. If Ras Lanuf falls, it brings the frontline closer to the main opposition-held city of Benghazi.

News Item 6

Tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators have marched in cities across Yemen after Friday

prayers, demanding the removal of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. At least six people were wounded when

security forces fired at protesters in the southern port city of Aden. In the capital Sana’a, where supporters of the government also held a rally, police set up roadblocks to keep the two sides apart.

News Item 7

The American State Department spokesman PJ Crowley has described the treatment of the U.S.

soldier suspected of passing material to the Wikileaks website, Private Bradley Manning, as “ridiculous”, “counterproductive” and “stupid”. Private Manning has been charged with offences including aiding the enemy, and he’s being held in solitary confinement in prison. Mr. Crowley said however that it was right that Private Manning was being held in jail.

News Item 8

The abolition of the death penalty was approved by the Illinois state assembly in January and has now

been signed into law by Governor Pat Quinn. Supporters of capital punishment had urged him to veto the change, but in a statement, the governor said he’d concluded that executions had no deterrent effect on crime, and that the death penalty system was inherently flawed. Illinois has a dark history of miscarriages of justice. Since 1977 when capital punishment was reinstated in America, 20 death row inmates in the state have been exonerated. The last execution in Illinois was in 1999.

News Item 9

In London, the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Select Committee has heard evidence about the recently

announced cuts to the budget and output of the BBC World Service. Its director Peter Herrick told the

committee that the value of the organization was highlighted by its comprehensive coverage of the current turmoil in Arab countries. He said that if the cuts had come into effect earlier, that coverage of the events would have been seriously diminished. Mr. Herrick also acknowledged there’d been damage to the World

Service, although he was optimistic about its future.

News Item 10

French police have found 25 million dollars’ worth of stolen jewelry hidden in a drain outside Paris. Detectives found 19 rings and three sets of earrings concealed in a plastic container set into a cement mould at a house outside the French capital. Investigators believe many of the items were stolen from the luxury Harry Winston boutique in Paris in a raid in 2008.

News Item 11

The ruler of Oman, Sultan Qaboos, has announced he is to hand over some of his powers to officials

from outside the royal family. A royal decree said the Legislative Council of Oman would be given

lawmaking powers. Until now, the role of the council has been to advise the Sultan, who has ruled Omanfor four decades.

News Item 12

An agreement by Iceland to pay compensation to Britain and the Netherlands over the collapse of

its banking system has run into problems. President Olafur Grimsson is to put the $5 billion deal to a referendum, even though it’s been approved by parliament. A previous deal with different repayment terms was overwhelmingly rejected by voters in Iceland last year.

News Item 13

President Obama says the U.S. and its Nato allies are still considering a military response to the

situation in Libya where he said the people were facing unacceptable violence. But Russia says it’s opposed to any military intervention. Nato is engaged in what its Secretary General called “prudent planning”. While Britain confirmed it was working to secure a Security Council no-fly zone resolution.

News Item 14

A young Mexican woman who gained worldwide attention last year when she took over as police chief

in a town plagued by drug-related violence has been sacked for abandoning her post. Marisol Valles was hailed as Mexico’s bravest woman in October when she became head of public security in the border town of Praxedis G. Guerrero.

News Item 15

Marisol Valles, a 20-year-old criminology student, became police chief in a town when nobody

else was willing to take the job. Her appointment six months ago made her a sensation worldwide. But

the mayor of Praxedis Guerrero said she hasn’t come back to work since last Wednesday, when she took

personal leave to take care of her baby. Local activists told the BBC that Mrs. Valles and her family had fled to the United States after receiving threats of kidnapping.

News Item 16

The toy manufacturer Mattel has closed its flagship Barbie store in Shanghai just two years after it

opened to much fanfare. The pink-theme, six-floor emporium was launched in a drive to attract Chinese

consumers at a time when the famous doll faced declining sales in the West. But analysts said sales to Chinese consumers were poor.

News Item 17

Reports from Egypt say democracy activists have been attacked by men in plain clothes armed with

knives outside the offices of the interior ministry in Cairo. It’s the first time since the toppling of President Mubarak last month that the protesters appeared to have come under such an attack. Over the weekend,

activists stormed several offices of the secret police.

News Item 18

The newly-appointed U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Marc Grossman, has stressed

the importance of pursuing a diplomatic settlement in Afghanistan alongside military operations. During his first visit to Kabul, he said the United States supported the Afghan government’s move towards talks with the Taliban, but he said it was important that the Taliban end its alliance with al-Qaeda.

News Item 19

Thirteen soldiers in Mexico have been charged with drug trafficking after they were allegedly found in possession of almost a tone of the synthetic drug methamphetamine and 30kg of cocaine. A local military commander said the men had been transporting the drugs from the capital Mexico City to Tijuana, on the U.S. border. President Felipe Calderon has deployed about 50,000 soldiers to help fight the war on drugs. Since he came to power, more than 34,000 people have died in drug-related violence.

News Item 20

The suspect in the shootings in Tucson, Arizona in January when U.S. congresswoman Gabrielle

Giffords was seriously wounded has been indicted on a number of new charges. Jared Loughner now faces

49 counts, including the murder of six people and the attempted assassination of Ms Giffords.

News Item 21

Sixty-one-year-old Alan Gross was driven into the Havana courthouse inside an unmarked van with

blacked-out windows. He’s charged with acts against the integrity and independence of Cuba, and prosecutors have said they are seeking a 20-year sentence. Mr. Gross has already spent 15 months in a Cuban jail, accused of providing satellite communications equipment, which is illegal in Cuba, to groups on the island.

News Item 22

The United Nations food agency says global food prices reached a record high last month. The Food

and Agriculture Organization is warning that costs could spiral even further if unrest in Libya and the Middle East keeps driving up the price of oil. Rising food costs helped spark the recent protests in Egypt and Tunisia.

News Item 23

The commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, has issued a personal apology

for the killing of nine young boys in Kunar province on Tuesday. Local Afghan officials say the boys, aged 12 or younger, had been gathering firewood when helicopter gunship attacked them with rockets. Nato says there was a mistake in relaying information about the position of presumed militants who were firing at a Nato base.

News Item 24

Nations like Lesotho and Kosovo will lose direct funding, but others like Ethiopia and Bangladesh will receive more aid from the Department for International Development, or DEFID.

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