英国新闻听力 37（在线收听）

BBC News with Fiona McDonald.

After days of heavy losses, stock markets in the United States have surged amid reports that President-elect Barack Obama will nominate the President of the New York Federal Reserve, Timothy Geithner, as his new treasury secretary. Caroline Hepker reports from New York.

Share prices in New York looked bleak on Friday until reports emerged that President-elect Barack Obama would likely nominate Timothy Geithner as the new US treasury secretary. The Dow Jones Index of 30 leading companies rocketed higher by six and a half percent to end above the important 8,000 level. The Treasury post is seen as a critical appointment in the current economic climate. Investors seem to welcome the idea that 47-year-old, Mr. Geithner, the current head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, might take over from US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson come January 2009.

Prosecutors in Mexico have accused the country's former top anti-drugs official, Noe Ramirez, of taking almost half a million dollars in bribes from a drugs cartel. Mr. Ramirez, who was head of an Organized Crime Investigation Division, known as SIEDO, was arrested on Thursday. The Attorney-General, Eduardo Medina-Mora, said Mr. Ramirez had been accused of telling drugs traffickers about police operations in return for monthly payments.

After taking the position as head of SIEDO, he met with a member of the Pacific cartel and received from that person a payment of 450,000 dollars, in exchange for providing information about police investigations to combat this criminal organization.

An 88-year-old man, who has been living in the United States since World War II, has returned to Berlin to receive a university degree which was denied to him 65 years ago. From Berlin, Steve Rosenberg reports.

In 1943, a student of Berlin’s Technical University, Dimitri Stein, submitted his doctoral thesis on the stability of electrical circuits. It was rejected not because of the content, but because of the author's ancestry. The university discovered Dimitri's father was Jewish. Denied a doctorate, he hid from the Nazis, fled Germany and escaped to America. But 65 years on, the university has relented. At the age of 88, Dimitri was invited back to Berlin to present his thesis and he's finally been awarded his PhD.

President Bush has arrived in Peru on his last scheduled foreign trip. He is attending an Asia-Pacific summit set to be dominated by the international financial crisis. Mr. Bush is expected to press Asian and American leaders to back measures agreed at another economic summit last weekend to boost the world economy. Later today, he will meet the Chinese President Hu Jintao for talks which will include discussion on North Korea's nuclear program.

World News from the BBC.

The United States Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, has said NATO needs to modify its military strategy in Afghanistan to combat growing Taliban influence. Mr. Gates wants to introduce a single command for the south of the country that could call on troops from any NATO nation to fight.

A teenager in the American state of Florida has committed suicide in front of a live Internet audience. Abraham Biggs, who was 19, killed himself hours after announcing his intention to do so on his blog. Andy Gallagher reports.

When Abraham Biggs posted messages on line, telling people he was going to kill himself, no one took with the teenager seriously. The young man then started streaming live pictures from his home in Florida, where it's reported that some of those who logged on to watch began to encourage him to commit suicide, even when Mr. Biggs took an overdose of prescription drugs and lay down on his bed, it saw some users continue to taunt him. It was only after several hours when the teenager hadn't moved that the authorities were alerted, the last transmission from his webcam is of a police officer bursting into his room, when he discovered the body of Abraham Biggs he places his hand over the camera.

The BBC has uncovered evidence of what appears to be the use of torture by the Russian security forces in the predominantly Muslim Republic of Ingushetia in southern Russia. During a visit to Ingushetia, a BBC team interviewed people who said their relatives had been shot dead for being Muslims. The Russian authorities say they are fighting growing rebellion by militants who want to establish an Islamic state across north Caucasus.

Reports from Somalia say Islamist insurgents have begun searching for the pirates who hijacked a giant Saudi oil tanker last Saturday. A spokesman for the Somali Islamist group, al-Shabab, said hijacking a Muslim-owned ship was a big crime, he said his group would pursue those responsible, the pirates have been negotiating by satellite phone with the tanker's Saudi owners.

BBC News.