英国新闻听力 第三季度英国经济继续下滑（在线收听）

More than 200 Roman Catholic bishops from all over Africa have urged corrupt political leaders there to repent or step down. In an unusually blunt message to their flock, issued from the Vatican, the bishops said that Africa needed leaders who would work for the good of the people. David Willey reports.

The bishops accused Catholic leaders in Africa of having fallen woefully short in their performance in office. The synod calls on such people to repent or quit the public arena and stop causing havoc to the people. The bishops named no names, but the Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe and the Angolan President Eduardo Dos Santos, whose country's recent elections have been marred by fraud, are two prominent Catholic leaders accused by their critics of corruption.

The Iranian government has asked for more time before giving its response to the latest international proposals for solving the deadlock over Iran’s nuclear programme. The United Nations nuclear agency had set today as the deadline for accepting or rejecting the proposed deal. Here’s our Tehran correspondent Jon Leyne.

Iran is giving extremely mixed messages over this important deal and has missed the deadline from the UN to give its verdict. Either Tehran is playing for time, or there are genuine differences within the Iranian government. Under the deal, Iran would allow a large part of the uranium it's already enriched to be shipped out of the country. Then it would be further processed and sent back as fuel for a Tehran research reactor. On Wednesday, the Iranian State TV said Tehran could not accept the key part of the agreement, shipping the nuclear material out of the country. Later, Iran told the UN nuclear watchdog that it was considering the plan favourably, but needed more time to respond.

The Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas has decreed presidential and legislative elections to be held in January. His announcement comes after the failure of Egyptian attempts to broker a reconciliation between President Abbas’s Fatah Party and its rival Hamas movement that controls the Gaza Strip. Mr. Abbas said the elections would take place across the Palestinian territories including Gaza. Hamas has said it disapproves of a January election and correspondents say the date may have to be rescheduled.

On the eve of campaign for Afghanistan’s presidential runoff election, the United States special envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, has expressed cautious optimism about the vote.

"It is reasonable to hope that there will be less irregularities this time for several reasons. One, there are only two candidates; two, there is the experience factor; three, the international community including the forces under General McChrystal’s command are going to go all out to help make this a success."

Mr. Holbrooke said his relationship with President Hamid Karzai was fine and if he was reelected in the contest against Abdullah Abdullah, the US looked forward to working with him.

The American State Department says that the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will travel to Pakistan for high-level talks soon, but that the specific date cannot be released for security reasons. The announcement came as at least 24 people were killed and dozens more injured in separate bomb attacks in northern Pakistan on Friday.

New figures have ended expectations that the British economy might be emerging from recession. Instead of showing an improvement as had been predicted, the economy shrank in the three months to the end of September. It makes this the longest recession in Britain since records began more than half a century ago. Lucy Hooker has this report.

Economists had predicted a small rise in Britain’s output for the third quarter of the year. But hopes of an end to the recession were dashed with figures showing the value of goods and services sold fell by a little under a half percent between July and September. By contrast, France, Germany and Japan have all returned to growth already in the second quarter while America's economy shrank only very slightly over the summer. But Britain suffered badly both from the problems in the financial sector and the housing price bubble.

A group of rich Germans has launched a petition, calling for higher taxes for the wealthy. They say the extra revenue, which they estimate at 150 billion dollars, could be used to help Germany weather the current economic crisis. Forty-four wealthy Germans have joined the campaign. They say anyone with more than 750,000 dollars in the bank should pay more tax. Germany’s new coalition government has pledged to cut taxes.

Football’s governing body FIFA says it will be doing random medical scans on players in the Under-17 World Cup in Nigeria, which kicks off this weekend. A BBC correspondent says it follows complaints that some countries have been fielding overage players. This time FIFA will be giving the under-17s MRI, that’s magnetic resonance imaging scans, which can tell a person’s age by measuring the fusion of bones.

来自非洲各地的200多名罗马天主教主教敦促腐败的政治领袖忏悔或辞职。从梵蒂冈发出的非常直接的信息中，神父们表示，非洲需要为了人民的福祉而工作的领袖。David Willey报道。

各位主教指责非洲天主教领袖在职期间的表现非常不好。宗教会议要求这样的领袖忏悔或停止公共职务，不要再对人们进行蹂躏。主教们没有点明是谁，但是津巴布韦领袖罗伯特·穆加贝和安哥拉总统爱德华多·多斯桑托斯是因腐败而受到最多批评的突出的天主教领袖。两国最近的选举都充斥着舞弊现象。

伊朗政府要求更多时间进行考虑，然后再对最新国际社会解决伊朗核项目僵局的提议做出回应。联合国核机构原本设定今天为最后期限，伊朗需要表明接受还是拒绝该解决方案。我们的德黑兰记者Jon Leyne报道。

伊朗在这个重要的协议方面态度极其不明确，并且已经超出了联合国提出的最后期限。可能是由于德黑兰在拖延时间，也可能是伊朗政府内部存在分歧。按照该协议，伊朗必须将已经浓缩的大部分铀运往其他国家。随后，其他国家进行进一步加工，作为燃料运灰德黑兰，进行反应堆研究。周三，伊朗国家电视台表示德黑兰不会接受该协议的最关键部分，不会同意将核材料运出国外。随后，伊朗告诉联合国核监察机构，他们正在认真考虑该计划，但是需要更多时间才能做出回应。

巴勒斯坦总统阿巴斯下令1月份举行总统和立法机构选举。此前，埃及试图在总统阿巴斯的法塔赫和控制加沙地带的对手哈马斯运动之间进行调停，后来阿巴斯宣布了该决定。阿巴斯表示，选举将会在所有巴勒斯坦领土进行，包括加沙地带在内。哈马斯方面表示，他们不赞同1月份进行选举。记者表示，选举日期可能会做出更改。

在阿富汗第二轮总统角逐开始前夕，美国驻该地区特使Richard Holbrooke对投票表达了谨慎的乐观态度。

“我们有理由相信，这次的选举谬误会更少，主要有几个理由：一，只有两位候选人。二，已经有了经验。三，在McChrystal将军领导下的国际军队将全力以赴促成选举获得成功。”

Holbrooke表示，他与总统卡尔扎伊之间关系良好，如果他在与阿卜杜拉的竞选中再次当选，美国将期待与他再次进行合作。

美国国务院表示，国务卿希拉里·克林顿即将赴巴基斯坦进行高端对话，但是出于安全考虑，并没有公布具体的日期。周五，巴基斯坦北部发生独立的爆炸袭击，造成至少24人死亡，几十人受伤。

新的数据打消了人们对英国经济从衰退中复苏的期望。经济并没有像原本预测的那样出现好转，而是在7，8，9三个月进一步缩减，使得这次经济危机成为自半个多世纪前有记录以来历时最长的经济危机。Lucy Hooker报道。

经济学家曾预期英国第三季度产值会出现小幅上涨。但是新的数据表明，7至9月份物品和服务价格下跌大约0.5%。相对来说，法国，德国和日本均已在第二季度恢复增长，而美国经济在夏季只出现轻微缩减。但是英国在金融部门和房产泡沫中均遭遇了惨重打击。

一些德国富豪发出请愿书，要求对富人征收更高税额。他们表示，这样将会出现至少1500亿美元的额外收益，这笔资金可以用于帮助德国应对目前的经济危机。共有44名德国富豪参与了该活动。他们表示，任何银行账户拥有750,000美元以上的人都应该缴纳更多的税款。德国新的联盟政府曾承诺降低税率。

足球管理团体国际足协(FIFA)表示，将对本周末在尼日利亚举行的17岁以下世界杯选手进行随机医疗检测。一名BBC记者表示，他们将对有人投诉的一些国家选用超龄选手的问题进行调查。这次，国际足协将对17岁以下选手进行核磁共振成像检查。该检查可以通过对骨骼进行检查来判断选手年龄。