英国新闻听力 英国首相布朗要求女王解散议会（在线收听）

The BBC has learned that the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has decided that the British general election will take place on 6 May. Mr Brown will go to Buckingham Palace tomorrow Tuesday to ask Queen Elizabeth to dissolve parliament, and then make a formal announcement of the election date. That will start the official election campaign, which, a BBC correspondent says, will be dominated by issues of taxation and spending in the wake of the global recession.

Pakistani militants have launched their first attack in five years on a United States facility in the country. The local Taliban say they carried out the assault on the US consulate in Peshawar. Seven people including all four attackers were killed. The White House has strongly condemned the attacks. The Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi rejected suggestions that Pakistan wasn't doing enough to prevent suicide bombings.

"If somebody is determined to kill and get killed in the process, it's very limited what you can do. We have deployed 150,000 troops on the western border. We are doing our utmost, but this is a challenge that Pakistan cannot face alone."

Earlier, at least 43 people were killed and dozens wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a political rally in Lower Dir district in northwestern Pakistan. The event, which was attended by hundreds of people, was organized by the largely secular Awami National Party, which strongly opposes the Taliban and other Islamist militants and has been targeted before.

Forces from the United Nations and the Congolese army have secured an airport in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo after heavy fighting. On Sunday, at least 100 armed men attacked the capital of Equateur province Mbandaka, killing three UN staff. Thomas Fessy reports from Kinshasa.

The airport was retaken on Monday morning after a new joint offensive between Congolese and UN troops. Both sides have now confirmed that operations are underway around the airport and the provincial capital to find the insurgents. A UN spokesman in Kinshasa says that a few fighters have been arrested by the Congolese police, but the number of insurgents detained is still unknown. The Congolese army is expected to send an assessment mission in the coming days to decide whether reinforcement is needed.

The United States government says it intends to impose the maximum penalty available on the Japanese carmaker Toyota over the way it handled the mass recall of its vehicles because of safety faults. The US Transportation Department said it would seek to fine Toyota more than 16 million dollars for failing to inform Washington about problems with the accelerators in a number of models. In some cases, the malfunction caused cars to accelerate uncontrollably.

World News from the BBC

Anti-government protesters have settled in for another night in the center of the Thai capital Bangkok despite a court ruling that the government has the right to evict them. The leaders of the red-shirts, as they are known, have also indicated they may be extending the protest. On Monday, the demonstrators briefly forced their way into the offices of the election commission.

The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has asked parliament to reconsider its rejection of his plans for heavy cuts in food and energy subsidies. The legislature said it was concerned that implementing the proposed 40-billion-dollar cuts in full would lead to a surge in inflation. Instead, parliament approved savings worth just 20 billion dollars.

A South Korean warship is pursuing a supertanker which was hijacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean. The ship was on its way from Iraq to the US and is carrying up to 160 million dollars worth of crude oil. From Seoul, here is our correspondent John Sudworth.

The hijack took place hundreds of kilometers from the coast of Somalia in the middle of the Indian Ocean, an area of sea normally thought to be relatively safe from this kind of attack. The South Korean navy, which already has a warship based in the Gulf of Aden to assist with the international efforts to protect shipping, has ordered it to reach the oil tanker before it reaches the African coast. But any attempt to recapture the ship by force would be risky. The volatile cargo makes a gun battle inconceivable.

The United States has criticized a string of planned defence contracts which could see Venezuela buying billions of dollars of additional weapons from Russia. Earlier, the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin revealed that Moscow had recently signed arms deals estimated to be worth up to five billion dollars. However, a US State Department spokesman said Washington failed to see why President Chavez needed to purchase more arms.

BBC获悉，英国首相戈登·布朗已经决定英国大选在5月6日举行。明天，也就是周二，布朗将前往白金汉宫，要求伊丽莎白女王解散议会，随后正式宣布选举日期。之后官方竞选活动将拉开帷幕，BBC记者称，竞选活动将主要集中在税收和全球金融危机后的支出问题。

巴基斯坦好战分子对美国驻该国设施发动五年来的首次袭击。当地塔利班分子声称，他们对美国驻白沙瓦领事馆发动了袭击。包括7名袭击者在内的7人死亡。白宫对这次袭击事件提出了强烈谴责，称巴基斯坦没有采取足够措施预防自杀是爆炸袭击的发生。巴基斯坦外长库雷希(Shah Mehmood Qureshi)否认了这种说法。

“如果某人执意要在这个过程中谋杀或自杀，你能采取的措施非常有限。我们已经在西部边境部署了150,000军队。我们已经尽了最大努力，但这是一个巨大的挑战，巴基斯坦难以独自面对。”

早些时候，巴基斯坦西北部下迪尔(Lower Dir)区的政治集会上，一名自杀式爆炸者引爆身上的炸弹，造成至少43人死亡，几十人受伤。这次集会由人民民族党(Awami National Party)组织，大约有数百人参加。人民民族党强烈反对塔利班和其他伊斯兰好战分子，此前也曾成为袭击目标。

联合国和刚果军队力量经过激战后夺回了刚果民主共和国西北部的机场。周日，至少100名武装分子袭击了赤道省首府姆班达卡(Mbandaka)，杀害了3名联合国工作人员。Thomas Fessy在金沙萨报道。

周一早上，刚果和联合国军队发动联合袭击之后重新夺回机场。双方均证实正在机场周围和该省首府实施行动，搜捕反叛分子。联合国驻金沙萨一名发言人表示，刚果警方已经逮捕了几名好战分子，但是被拘留反叛分子的人数不详。预期未来几天，刚果军队将向该地区派遣评估团，以决定是否需要增援。

美国政府表示，鉴于日本汽车制造商丰田公司对由于安全故障导致的大规模召回事件的处理方式，将对丰田进行最高额罚款。美国交通部门表示，由于丰田公司未向华盛顿通知几款车型加速器的问题，他们将对丰田进行超过1600万美元的罚款。在几个案例中，该故障导致汽车突然加速。

BBC世界新闻。

泰国反政府抗议者在首都曼谷中心再次度过一个夜晚，尽管法庭裁决政府有权驱逐他们。红衫军领袖也暗示他们可能扩大抗议的规模。周一，示威者强行进入选举委员会办公室。

伊朗总统艾哈迈迪-内贾德计划大幅削减粮食和能源补助遭到议会拒绝，内贾德要求他们重新考虑。该立法机构表示，他们担忧全面实施内贾德提议的削减400亿美元补助会导致通货膨胀的爆发。而议会仅仅同意减少200亿美元。

韩国军舰正在寻求解救在印度洋被索马里海盗劫持的一艘句型油轮。该油轮从伊拉克驶往美国，装载着价值1.6亿美元的原油。首尔，John Sudworth报道。

劫持事件发生在距离索马里海岸几百千米的索马里海岸，正常来说，该地区相对来说比较安全，不会遭遇这种袭击。韩国海军已经派遣一艘军舰驻守亚丁湾，协助联合国力量保护国王船只。现在，韩国韩军下令其军舰在到达非洲海岸之前追上油轮。但是，企图通过武力夺回油轮的任何努力都是危险的。船上的易爆货物使枪战难以进行。

委内瑞拉计划签署几份武器装备合同，将再次从俄罗斯购入价值数十亿美元的武器，美国提出了谴责。此前，俄罗斯总理普京披露，莫斯科最近签署了一系列武器合同，价值高达50亿美元。然而，美国国务院一名发言人表示，华盛顿方面不明白查韦斯总统为何需要购买更多武器。