英国新闻听力 97（在线收听）

BBC News with David Austin.

The World Food Program has warned that more than half the population of Zimbabwe, seven million people, may need food aid to survive the coming months. The government has meanwhile announced that it's allowing people to use foreign currencies including the South African rand and US dollar. From our African desk, here’s James Reed.

Zimbabwe’s government has finally recognized what its people have known for years. Soaring hyperinflation has rendered the Zimbabwean dollar worthless. Banknotes printed in ever high denomination lose their value almost as soon as they’re issued, leaving workers unable to feed their families. The World Food Program says well over half Zimbabwe’s population is now dependent on food aid. The finance minister said civil servants would now be paid part of their salaries in foreign currency previously illegal for most people but the only way to buy basic goods.

The Sri Lankan military says it’s continued its advance into the northwestern territory held by the Tamil Tigers, the LTTE, capturing several rebel bases. A BBC correspondent who travelled to the area says many civilians have fled because of the violence, leaving behind abandoned villages and farms. A United Nations spokesman Gordon Weiss said his staff had seen dozens of dead bodies. He said both sides were failing to protect civilians.

The government has played this out in the preceding months of combat by making sure that civilians were being pushed back away from the lines of fighting. Unfortunately, the territory has shrunk to such an extent, but that seems to be no longer possible. So you've got a lot LTTE fighters intermingled with the population. It’s really on the shoulders of the war in parties to sort out their combat operations, so that civilians are not killed, are not wounded which they are being at the moment.

President Barack Obama has reacted angrily to reports that executives at American banks and other financial institutions awarded themselves 18 billion dollars in bonuses last year. Mr. Obama said the bonuses were shameful and highly irresponsible at a time when huge amounts of taxpayers’ money was being spent on supporting the ailing financial service industry.

President Obama has signed his first bill into law. It’s on pay discrimination and abolishes a time-limit on bringing legal actions in such cases. The change was prompted by the 10-year legal battle of a woman who worked for nearly two decades before discovering that her employer was paying her less than her male colleagues. Mr. Obama said it was fitting that the first bill he signed upheld the principle that everyone is created equal.

I sign this bill for my daughters, and all those who will come after us, because I want them to grow up in a nation that values their contributions where there are no limits to their dreams, and they have opportunities their mothers and grandmothers never could have imagined.

The voice of President Obama.

This is the World News from the BBC.

The Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, who’s accused of trying to sell the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama has begged state senators to let him keep his job. He told an impeachment hearing that he was innocent and wanted to bring in witnesses to prove it. The senators are expected to vote today on whether Mr. Blagojevich should be removed from office.

Five left-wing Latin-American presidents have joined thousands of social activists in the Brazilian city of Belem at the World Social Forum, which the organizers described as an alternative to the World Economic Forum in Davos. The Ecuadorian President, Rafael Correa, said the collapse of global capitalism made the moment right for the activists to present alternatives to what he described as the perverse neo-liberal system. He took the crowd by surprise when he began singing a popular song honoring the left-wing revolutionary Che Guevara.

An investigation into the circumstances of the death of General W?adys?aw Sikorski, the exiled Polish wartime leader who died in 1943, has said there is no evidence he was murdered before his plane crashed into the sea. The Polish authorities exhumed General Sikorski’s body two months ago. Dr. Tomasz Konopka said General Sikorski’s injures were typical of transport accidents.

The death of W?adys?aw Sikorski happened because of multiple organ trauma of considerable energy. This was the result of the plane crash. The results of post-mortem examination mean we can reject other causes of the death, such as sudden suffocation.

There’s been an angry exchange between the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Israeli President Shimon Peres at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos. Mr. Erdogan stormed out after an impassioned debate on the crises in Gaza, having accused Israel of barbarism there.

And those are the latest stories from BBC News.