解放军文职招聘考试B1009

 B1009
The man likely tipped to become the next British Prime Minister, David Cameron, has set up the aims and believes which he hopes will propel his party to power. In a speech to the last Conservative Party conference before next year’s general election, Mr. Cameron declared that he was ready. Naomi Grimley reports from the conference venue in Manchester.
David Cameron acknowledged these were testing times. He said the government’s massive budget deficit would mean painful measures were needed, such as cutbacks in public spending. While the war in Afghanistan, he argued, urgently required more British troops. He told his audience the Conservatives were ready to take on this kind of challenges after years of opposition. But he said he wouldn’t promise things he couldn't possibly deliver.
The French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand has rejected opposition calls for his resignation over a book in which he wrote about paying boys for sex. Alasdair Sandford reports from Paris.
It was angry and far from apologetic Frederic Mitterrand who appeared on the French news. The culture minister said he absolutely condemned sex tourism and paedophilia which he said he never practised. He said he
committed what he described as an error against human dignity but denied having committed a crime. He said he'd not offer to resign. He described his book not as an autobiography but as a story about a life that resembled his own. When it was published in 2005, there was little comments other than literally praise.
The Czech President Vaclav Klaus has produced a further obstacle to the ratification of the Lisbon treaty, the document aimed at streamlining EU decision-making and which must be approved by all 27 member states. Mr. Klaus said he wanted to make an addition to the treaty before signing it into law. From Brussels, here is Dominic Hughes.
President Klaus, an ardent euro-sceptic, has been holding out on signing the Lisbon treaty for months. The country’s Constitutional Court is currently considering a case that argues the treaty breaches Czech law. But now President Klaus has asked for an additional piece of test known as a footnote to be added to the treaty itself. Details are very sketchy but the Swedish Presidency of the EU says it relates to the chart of fundamental rights. It’s a request that has thrown the EU’s leaders.
Officials in India say at least 17 policemen have been killed in a gun battle with Maoist insurgents in the state of Maharashtra. they said the fighting started after a group of Maoists attacked a police station. It's not clear whether the rebels have suffered any casualties. The Maoists say they are fighting for the rights of the poor.
President Hamad Karzai’s main opponent in Afghanistan’s recent election Abdullah Abdullah has said he expects there is to be a run-off election after the complaints commission has investigated allegations of fraud. In a BBC interview, he said over a million fraudulent votes were cast and that a majority of them had been for Mr. Karzai.
Syria and Saudi Arabia have called for a national unity government to be formed in Lebanon after nearly four months of political stalemate. The announcement was made after King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad held a summit in Damascus aimed at reconciling their two countries. Each has supported rival sides in Lebanon, the Saudi’s backing the pro-western coalition and the Syrians the Hezbollah-led opposition.
Egypt’s leading Islamic cleric has barred female students from wearing a full-face veil at Al-Azhar university, the prestigious centre of learning for Sunni Muslims. Sheikh Mohammad Tantawi said the girls would be banned from wearing the full veil or niqab in all female classes and all female dormitories. Magdi Abdelhadi reports.
Sheikh Tantawi has made good on his pledge  a few days ago to ban the controversial cover. However, the official decision appears to be a watered-down version of his tirade against the full-face veil as a custom that had nothing to do with Islam. His remarks provoked some angry reactions with Islamist members of parliament calling for his resignation. Although the vast majority of Muslim women in Egypt wear the hijab which covers the hair only, an increasing number of them have adopted the niqab, widely seen as a sign of a puritanical even militant form of Islam.
The son of the American philanthropist Brooke Astor has been found guilty of plundering her fortune of almost 200 million dollars. Anthony Marshall, who is 85, faces a mandatory prison sentence of at least a year. During the trial, Mr Marshall’s defence lawyer said Brooke Astor had been lucid before she left him millions of dollars. The millionaires had Alzheimer’s disease when she died two years ago, aged 105.
The Nobel Prize for Literature for 2009 has been awarded to the Armenian-born German writer Herta Mueller. She’s known for her depiction of her life among the German-speaking minority of Armenia under the former communist ruler Nicolae Ceausescu.
B1010
President Obama says he hopes that his Nobel Peace Prize will serve as “a call to action” for America and the rest of the world to face the challenges of the 21st century. He said these included the proliferation of nuclear weapons and climate change. The Nobel Prize Committee praised Mr. Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international cooperation. Paul Adams reports from Washington.
President Obama said he was surprised and deeply humbled, saying he did not feel he deserved to be in the company of past winners. But he said he was accepting the award as “a call to action” and he went on to list elements of his bold foreign policy agenda, including tackling the spread of nuclear weapons, combating global warming and resolving conflicts in the Middle East. A terse statement from the chairman of the Republican Party Michael Steele asks what the President has actually accomplished, saying Mr. Obama won’t win any awards for creating jobs. President Obama has said the Nobel Prize money of about 1.4 million dollars will be given to charity.
Officials in Pakistan have blamed the Taliban for a suicide car bomb attack in which nearly 50 people died. It happened beside a bazaar near government buildings in Peshawar. From Islamabad, Aleem Maqbool has more.
It is the deadliest attack in Pakistan for months. Police say a car bomb went off beside the crowded Khyber Bazaar in the center of Peshawar. School children on their way home are among the dead. A bus filled with passengers was also close to the explosion. Officials are blaming the Taliban. The militant group had been threatening such bombings unless Pakistan’s army operations against it came to an end, but there has been much speculation that far from stopping. The army’s offensive is soon to be intensified.
The French authorities have arrested an engineer working at a physics research laboratory in suspicion of having links with the militant group known as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The man, who has family connections with Algeria, was arrested by French police on Thursday. His brother was also detained, Emma Jane Kirby reports from Paris.
Police arrested the pair after following Internet exchanges between the two men and other people believed to have links to extremist groups. Computers, USB and hard drives were removed from the brothers’ home. It is believed the older man was planning attacks in France. According to the Figaro newspaper, the arrests could represent an important step in the hunt for Al-Qaeda networks.
A former Brazilian television crime show presenter and politician accused of ordering killings to boost the ratings of his show has turned himself into the police after going on the run. Wallace Souza disappeared on Monday after a judge in Amazonas State’s ordered his arrest on murder and drugs trafficking charges. He’s accused of ordering killings to get rid of drug rivals and increase the popularity of his TV programme. Mr. Souza, who denies the charges, has been transferred to a prison.
This is Zoe Diamond with the latest World News from the BBC.
After days of tension, Israeli police have lifted restrictions on Palestinian entry to a sensitive religious site in Jerusalem. The police had barred most Palestinians from entering the site, known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, and to Jews as the Temple Mount, causing protests and a strike by Palestinian businesses. Israeli police said they had security concerns about calls for a mass Palestinian gathering at the mosque compound.
The troubled American carmaker General Motors has signed an agreement to sell its Hummer brand to a Chinese firm, the Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company. It follows months of negotiations. Caroline Hepker reports from New York.
The price tag of 150 million dollars for Hummer is considerably lower than the 500 million dollars GM had hoped for, but it is a deal done, just a week after the plan to sell GM’s Saturn fell through. The agreement will mean the gas-guzzling attention-grabbing lineup will continue to be made in the United States at least until 2011, but the new Chinese owners say they want more fuel-efficient models.
Officials of the American space agency NASA have expressed satisfaction with the deliberate crash of two unmanned spacecraft into the moon to detect evidence of water. Despite the absence of the expected large visible plume of debris, the scientists say enough data is being sent back to earth for evaluation. It may take a number of weeks before they have a definitive answer.
The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has described himself as the most persecuted person in the entire history of the world. Mr. Berlusconi was speaking at a news conference following this week’s decision by Italy’s Highest Court to lift a law granting him immunity while in office. However, during his impassioned statement, Mr. Berlusconi mistakenly said he had spent millions of euros on judges before quickly correcting himself to say lawyers.
B1011
After decades of hostility and a last-minute delay, Armenia and Turkey have taken a huge step towards reconciliation by signing accords at a ceremony in Switzerland attended by the foreign ministers of Russia, France and the United States. It’d been delayed by three hours after objections about the planned wording of the statements. In the end, no statements were made. Turkish-Armenian relations have been bitter since the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman forces during the First World War. Kim Ghattas reports from Zurich.
The Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and his Armenian counterpart Edward Nalbandian signed two protocols to establish diplomatic ties and to reopen the borders. The agreement was mediated by Switzerland but both President Barack Obama and the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been quietly pressing the parties to take this historic step forward. But the agreement must still be ratified by the Turkish and Armenian parliaments amidst continued fierce opposition from nationalist parties in both countries.
Suspected Taliban militants in Pakistan are holding up to 15 army officers hostage after an attack on the military’s main headquarters in Rawalpindi. Four attackers and six soldiers were killed as the militants approached the compound. The army says four or five gunmen managed to get through. Our Islamabad correspondent Aleem Maqbool reports.
To attack one of the most heavily secured places in Pakistan in the middle of a day and then to take hostages shows a new level of audacity on the part of the militants here. The army says the attackers wearing military uniform approached its main headquarters opening fire and throwing hand grenades triggering an hour long battle with security guards. As night fell on Rawalpindi, sporadic gunfire resumed. The military now has the delicate task of trying to rescue its personnel inside its own compound.
The Pakistani government and its military leadership have agreed to present their concerns to Washington over a proposed aid package which requires Pakistan civilian authorities to demonstrate their control over the army. The army has already expressed serious concern over clauses in the multi-billion-dollar aid package which it says could have a negative impact on Pakistani security.
The French military has confirmed that troops on French fishing vessels in the Indian Ocean have for the first time shot at suspected pirates. The French military began operations to protect the country’s fishermen off the coast of Somalia more than three months ago. Marcus Air reports.
A French military spokesman said soldiers on board two French fishing boats opened fire when they were approached by suspected pirates. The spokesman said there were no casualties but he alleged assailants were forced to flee. The incident occurred about 350km north of the Seychelles. Reports say a Seychelles coastguard vessel later captured what is believed to be the pirates’ mother ship and the smaller boat involved in the attempted attack.
World News from the BBC.
A news agency in Iran says three people detained after June’s disputed presidential election have been sentenced to death. One of those sentenced to death was said to be a member of a pro-monarchist group. Sarah Rainsford reports.
Thousands of opposition supporters were arrested and more than a hundred put on trial after the demonstrations this June. They were protesting the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president in a vote they believe was rigged. Iranian analysts and activists do point out that any death sentence in the country has to be confirmed by a higher court before it’s carried out. And they say harsh penalties are often handed down to intimidate detainees and are not necessarily enacted. Amnesty International though calls even the trial of opposition supporters a mockery of justice.
China, Japan and South Korea have declared their commitment to developing an East Asia community and seeking an early resumption of international talks with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program. At a summit in Beijing, the Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said that while his country’s alliance with the United States was important, he wanted to devise more Asia-focused policies.
Around 3,000 people have held a rally in the Russian city of St Petersburg to protest about plans to build a skyscraper there. The proposals for a 77--storey glass tower were given the go-ahead by city officials earlier this month. The protesters say the 400-metre tall structure would spoil the historic skyline in Russia’s former imperial capital.
The Argentine singer-songwriter Luis Aguille, who wrote more than 400 songs in his long career, has died of cancer at the age of 73 in a hospital near the Spanish capital Madrid. Luis Aguille had lived in Spain since 1963. He was best known for his international hits including Juanita Banana and Cuando Sali de Cuba that means when I left Cuba
B1012
The head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan has appeared at a news conference flanked by the American, British and French ambassadors in what’s being seen as an international show of support for him. The envoy Kai Eide has come under fire from his former deputy Peter Galbraith, who accused him of covering up the extent of fraud in August’s presidential election. Mr. Galbraith was sacked after making the allegations. Mr. Eide acknowledged that there was widespread fraud, but he said it was too soon to get precise details.
“It has been claimed that there was around 30% fraud. There is no way to know at this stage what the level of fraud is. I do not know. Nobody else knows. I can only say that there was widespread fraud. Any specific figure at this time would be pure speculation.”
The Interior Minister of Pakistan Rehman Malik has blamed the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda for the attack on the army’s headquarters in Rawalpindi. Commandos stormed the building on Sunday, freeing more than 40 hostages. Mr. Malik said the government was responding with an imminent military offensive against the militants’ stronghold at South Waziristan.
The Rwandan President Paul Kagame has praised China for giving Africa, as he put it, what it really needed. Mr. Kagame said China was improving Africa’s infrastructure, for example, by building new roads. The Rwandan leader said this stood in stark contrast to the West who gave Africans widespread pollution and dependency on foreign aid. Greg Morsbach reports.
Trade between China and Africa has grown rapidly. It now stands at well over 100 billion dollars a year. Some critics say the Chinese have done little to promote human rights and good governance in Africa. But Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame has now launched a robust defense of China’s interests in Africa. He said it was the Chinese not the Europeans and North Americans who were driving the continent forward. He blamed the western companies for dumping their waste in Africa, for taking natural resources and for not treating African firms as equal business partners.
The New York-based group Human Rights Watch has urged Israel, rather, to immediately lift restrictions on the import of school supplies to the Gaza Strip. It said barring such imports was unjustifiable. Bob Trevelyan has the details.
It’s now more than a month into the school year in Gaza, but many Palestinian children remain without textbooks. Human Rights Watch says some books haven’t been printed because Israel wouldn’t allow ink and paper into Gaza. There are also restrictions on the import of notebooks, pens and desks. Some supplies have been smuggled in through tunnels from Egypt, but these items are more expensive and not enough to make up the shortage. Human Rights Watch says Palestinian children are in a fact that's been deprived of their right to an education. Israel maintains its blockade is necessary for security reasons.
This is Zoe Diamond with the latest World News from the BBC.
The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the planned reopening of the border with Armenia must be linked to an Armenian withdrawal from the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh inside Azerbaijan. Turkey and Armenia signed deals on Saturday to end decades of hostility. Jonathan Head reports.
Turkey closed the border with Armenia 16 years ago because of the conflict in Azerbaijan over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. At the time, Armenian forces had occupied large swathes of territory outside the enclave. The agreement signed in Zurich this weekend to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia was made possible only because the current government takes a more pragmatic and less nationalistic approach towards foreign policy than its predecessors. Nevertheless, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly promised not to open the border with Armenia until its troops pull back in Azerbaijan.
Thousands of gay and lesbian activists have marched through Washington in a protest aimed at putting pressure on President Obama and Congress to grant them greater civil rights protections, rather. The activists called on the government to revoke the Defense of Marriage Act which puts strict limits on legal partnerships between same-sex couples.
Scientists have warned of an alarming increase in the extinction of animal species because of the threats to biodiversity and ecosystems posed by pollution, climate change and the spread of cities. The Diversitas Group, rather, of global experts on biodiversity said it’s appeared increasingly likely that reduction targets set by world leaders for 2010 would not be met.
Dozens of environmental protesters are on the roof of the Houses of Parliament in London after climbing up and unfurling banners calling for action to prevent climate change. The spokeswoman for the environmental pressure group Greenpeace said the action was timed to coincide with the return of members of parliament after the summer recess. Greenpeace has said at least 20 people would remain overnight and throughout Monday.