27/04/2012 World News Today

This is BBC World News Today. He's on the run but he's not afraid to

speak out. After a daring escape from house arrest China's human

rights activist Chen Guangcheng releases a video addressed to the

TRANSLATION: All rumours on the internet, all the accusations of

the violence against me and my family, they are all true. Spain's

unemployment reaches a record high, one in four now without a job. The

South Korean conglomerate Samsung overtakes the Finnish firm Nokia as

the world's leading mobile phone maker. What are they doing right?

Also coming up in the programme... The Indian reservation in South

Dakota where drink is banned yet alcoholism is rife. The tribe is

taking Marise and shops to court for selling them alcohol. There is

no more money to buy beer, that is how we drink. Plans to ban

foreigners from Dutch cannabis Hello and welcome. One of China's

most famous human rights activists who's escaped house arrest has

released a video addressed to Premier Wen Jiabo asking him to

ensure the safety of his family, investigate local officials and

punish corruption. The blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng made an

extraordinary escape from his home in Shandong province on Sunday. His

location is unknown but supporters say he's safe in Beijing. In a

moment I will talk to one Chinese dissident in the US. But first...

The BBC's Damien Grammaticus reports from Beijing. Speaking from

race secret location, Chen Guangcheng, one of China's most

famous human rights campaigners. For almost two years he has been

under a legal detention. Addressing the Communist leaders directly he

called of them to investigate his treatment. He said it was an

example of the unchecked abuses of power happening in China today, all

in the name of the Communist Party. How we escape from his village

confinement is a mystery. A tense like this one to reach him have

been blocked by dozens of hired thugs guarding his home. Activists

who tried were often attacked and beaten. A year ago footage of Chen

Guangcheng and his son under house arrest was smuggled out. Security

men perched on ladders kept his every move under watch. They are

thought to have beaten him savagely after this that it was said, so how

Baloyi has slipped away is not clear. Chen Guangcheng spent four

years in this prison after exposing how of thousands of women underwent

forced abortions and sterilisations. There are now fears for the safety

of his wife and child who he left behind. He had a direct question

for Trina's Premier. He asked Wen Jiabao if the local officials

abusing their power were acting alone, or with the support of the

central government. He said I think you should give people a clear

answer. In recent days China's leaders have struggled to contain

one crisis caused by the sacking of the senior politician Bo Xilai. The

escape of Chen Guangcheng gives them a new problem and focuses yet

more attention on abuses of power here. We are joined from New

Orleans by the founder of China Aid, an organisation that aims to

promote religious freedom in China. He was forced to flee the country

16 years ago. Bob, are you worried about the safety of the Chen

Guangcheng, what can happen next to I am concerned over the long-term

safety for him. But I am assured he is right now 100% safe in the City

of Beijing. But sooner or later he will have to appear, what kind of

strategy with his friends and supporters be urging him to make

now? -- would his friends. He was offered to come a broad for

permanent safety but he was reluctant after he escaped out of

his home. He would like to fight for his freedom and rights in China

until the end according to what he said. So you have information that

since his escape from house arrest at a country has offered him safe

I am not able to tell you that. But so far he is in a safe location and

he would like his voice to be heard by the international community and

the highest authority of the Chinese leaders. This comes at a

How does this fit in with that? We saw the appeal he made to the

premiere to clean up government in China. After all, this is a blind

man, a self-taught legal at the best who advocates nothing but a

rule of law and social justice -- He just wants basic freedom and

human rights protection guaranteed by the Chinese constitution and

Chinese law. So what kind of threat this blind man could pose -- could

this blind man pose? He made his appeal to Wen Jiabao and said what

you say to those corrupt officials who have beaten me? Are they doing

it with your acquiescence? What do you think is the answer? I think it

will echo the same mentality Wen Jiabao said in his press conference

during the National people's Congress in March because even he

is determined to that without dealing with the corruption, even

the existence of the party is at stake. So Chen Guangcheng refers

his own case that by a detaining him and putting hundreds of

thousands of dollars of monitoring equipment around his family and

village and there is corrupted officials took financial advantage

over a case like that. We have to leave it there. Thank you for

joining us. The latest job statistics from Spain are daunting.

Almost a quarter of people are unemployed. The foreign ministers

admitted the country is in crisis of huge proportions. And getting

Spain out of its current predicament is even tougher now

because the credit rating agency Standard and Poor's has downgraded

spade -- Spain's credit worthiness by two points. The queues at the

unemployment centres in Spain get longer as the jobless rate edges

towards one in four. It is the highest in Europe and looking for

work is an increasingly that this task. TRANSLATION: L'Equipe on

looking. I would take anything that comes up but there is not much

around. The crisis includes many people there were casualties of the

boom-and-bust in the construction industry, many of the migrants

arrived in the good times. TRANSLATION: I have taken loads of

courses as an electrician thinking the -- the electrician. I took a

course in massage, that was no good. They do not want to hire me, they

say I am old. Spain has gone back into recession so the rise in

unemployment is to be expected. Austerity measures as the

government seeks to cut borrowing needs might eventually help by

bringing interest rates down but in the short term they just add to the

pain which is felt acutely by young people. The situation is even worse

for youth unemployment where the ratio is something like one in two.

The problem is Spain is in a recession, which is deepening, so

the likelihood is unemployment will continue to rise substantially

further. The problems are mounting for the Prime Minister. There has

been another credit rating downgrade from Standard and Poor's.

The agency expects the recession to drag on into next year and also

thinks it increasingly likely the government will have a hefty bill

to prop up the country's banks. Labour law reforms should help

create jobs but the immediate outlook is for higher unemployment.

Growth in the US economy has slowed. The weakest areas were business

investment and government spending but consumer spending and exports

grew faster than before. At least 27 people had been injured in a

number of explosions in the Ukraine. The blasts were the near and

eastern city, the first was close to a central Tam -- tram stop, a

second device went off near a local cinema. Barcelona are looking for a

new coach after Pep or dealer confirmed rumours he would leave

the Spanish champions at the end of the current season. He said he

intended to take a sabbatical from football but will no doubt be

courted by a host of leading clubs in an effort to make him change his

mind. A bomb has exploded in central Damascus and whilst Syrian

state television is blaming it on a suicide bomber, activist groups say

the government was behind the attack. At least nine people were

killed and up to 30 injured. This after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-

Moon warned the Syrian government that it is "in contravention" of an

internationally agreed peace plan. The BBC's Jim Muir reports from

Beirut. More bad news for Kofi Annan and his peace plan, a suicide

bomber in Damascus. State television carried gruesome

pictures of the aftermath, showing shattered body parts in explicit

detail. It all reinforces the regime's argument it is facing not

a popular uprising but a terrorist onslaught. With government shelling

still going on, like here in do mad, activist accused the regime of

being behind the bomb to distract attention from its continuing use

of heavy weapons in defiance of the Kofi Annan peace plan. Under the

plan, troops and tanks should have gone back to barracks weeks ago.

Activists say the regime has killed more than 460 people since the UN

observers started arriving. The regime it uses what it calls armed

terrorist groups of carrying out a string of assassinations and other

attacks. It says it has documented more than 1300 violations. Rebel

fighters are certainly still active on the ground, like here at Deir

Ezzor in the east. The and and plan calls for them to stand down, too.

And up in the north the rebel Free Syrian army was announcing the

formation of a new unit, that is also in contravention of the Cave

and and plan. Crucially, Russia is backing the regime and blaming the

rebels for provoking the violence. That makes action by the Security

Council at this stage out of the question. So where do we go from

here? Yes today two senior US officials told a congressional

hearing that the US fell to the peace plan was failing and they

said they were considering contingencies. That seems to me to

indicate Washington is moving towards a start favoured by the

Turks and Arab countries, that if the so-called ceasefire falls apart

that you may have some type of humanitarian zone in the north-west

of the country. For the moment, Kofi Annan's plan is the only game

in town, but getting the badly- needed UN observers in is proving

slow and in the meantime events on the ground are threatening to run

Nokia at stall the number one -- Samsung has stolen the number one

spot from Nokia. Even at Apple lost out, it is still the world's third-

biggest mobile phone maker but it lost its crown as the biggest maker

of smart phones to Samsung. I am joined by Rupert good wins, the

editor of a London based on mind Samsung has come a long way since

selling fruit and vegetables. What is it doing now? They have taken

over from a lot of companies. They have a particularly good track

record of having a good idea and are sticking with it for a long

time. They're smart phones especially, if you look at the

history, they have been making them better and better. They have a

long-term approach to this. They have sold 25% more smart phones and

apple but is this a trend that will definitely continue? It is a trend.

Samsung got some advantage by the fact they got them cheaper and can

sell them cheaper and this have the same quality field and are more

functional than the apple stuff. They're also good at turning out

lower-cost feature films which make up the vast majority of phones

still sold in the world. Samsung used to be said to be just a

follower and not an original creator of mobile phones and they

get very upset when you tell them that. What does this tell us about

the new technology? To some extent, that is still quite accurate. Their

phones are good. Phone systems are now quite established. They have

not changed very much since the I phoned him out. The technology is

maturing and that is why the market is changing. Microsoft's from the

software which is what Nokia her using has not really set the world

alight. It is very good but it is lacking in features. When it tried

in the future? I think they will, they are doing very well. Mobile

phones, we're all fascinated with them, I think they will sink down a

little and by that point, Samsung will do very well. Is the

significance in the fact that it is in Western Europe? There is a mood

perhaps back from the Far East. It doesn't really matter where things

are made. They're very simple inside and there isn't much

differentiation you can have. The importance as the software and what

is going to happen is, the focus will be on the applications rather

than the phone itself so that might see things coming back to the West

again. You can tell me after we come off their what phone you have!

In South Dakota, a reservation is home to a tribe that has a huge

alcohol problems. Despite the fact that alcohol is banned from the

reservation area, stories just across the state line in Nebraska

have been selling it to them so now, leaders are taking the shops,

distributors and breweries to court and they are seeking 500 million

damages. This is home to just 12 residents.

For surprisingly busy drugstores. These shops still sell 5 million

bottles of beer a year, more than 13,000 servings a day. And 52 years

old and I have come here because I'm an alcoholic. I get my beers

from here. Most of that beer travels just a short way across the

border into South Dakota. On the other side of the state line lies

the Pine Ridge Indian reservation, the second largest in America. It

is illegal to drink alcohol there but it is estimated that 80% of the

families have one or more member who is suffering from alcoholism.

As Indians, we drink until there is no tomorrow, to there is no more

money to buy beer, that is how we drink. This man is a recovering

alcoholic and a father of 12. elsewhere to buy beer additives are

half-an-hour to walk. Some people use wheelchairs or crutches when we

walk up there. The tribal council is suing the shops, the

distributors and the breweries. The $500 million suit argues that that

the vast amount of beer being sold, companies must know there is being

used illegally. We have tried many avenues to close alcohol sales

there. We're looking at what they have given us and that is the

respect for our culture and people. The beer company has declined to

speak to the BBC. There is little sympathy here for or the lots at.

It is not illegal to buy alcohol at a place where it is legal. It is

the leaders that are doing some of the same, they are coming down here

and buying themselves but then they want to find the lawsuit.

thinks that they owe his community something. They could get a

treatment centre going, something to say, thank you for on your

business. For buying all our alcohol and ruining your lives.

They have yet to do that, all they give us his pain.

One of arms to Iran's most infamous tour has attractions are the City's

coffee shops where you can buy cannabis. Now the industry could be

threatened after cafe owners lost their court battle against a

government plan to ban tourists from entering the cafes. Soft drugs

and the Netherlands are not strictly legal but their use is

tolerated. The ban is due initially to come into force in three

southern provinces in May. The Netherlands is famous for its

liberal approach to soft drugs. While it is not strictly legal to

smoke cannabis here, its use is tolerated. The Dutch government

decriminalised the possession of less than five grams of cannabis in

1976. Cannabis cafes or coffee shops are a major site in most

cities and a major attraction for tourists. Now the government wants

to tighten the restrictions. think it is ridiculous. It is a

shame because I believe the world really admires the Dutch for their

pragmatic and forward-thinking view on how to handle what they consider

salt trucks and it just seems that they are literally going back in

time. The new law is designed to cut the number of drug tourists who,

some residents complained, were creating nuisances like traffic

jams and an increase of hard drug dealers on the streets. It has also

designed to cut cross-border crime coming by people coming to the

Netherlands to buy them and returning home to sell them

illegally. From 1st May, coffee shops in the three southern

provinces will become members-only clubs. Up to 2000 membership cards

will be issued by each coffee-shop to residents over the age the 18th.

The novel come into effect across the country at the end of this year.

There are around 700 cover shops in the Netherlands. Honours fighting

the arms says it discriminates on the basis of where they live. Some

say new rules will cut up to 90% of their business. It is disappointing

for everyone and Holland. Nobody sees that there is a problem, we

don't have problems with tourists who come to smoke a joint and then

go to visit a museum. His got a third of tourists are attracted by

the possibility of smoking cannabis. With the new legislation, there are

fears it could have a huge impact on tourism. The mayor is hoping to

negotiate a deal with the government to insure the tourists

trying to buy cannabis can keep on coming.

We are joined now by a representative of the Dutch

opposition party, a Social Liberal Party will stop this mood is meant

to help tackle the rise in drug- related crimes so wide you have a

problem with that? Everybody in the Netherlands is against drug-related

crime and we have to fight that, of course. But I think that this new

idea of government is not going to support that goal. I think that is

because we are going to in legalise drugs and more than we did, that

there will be a lot of selling of illegal drugs on the streets

instead of coffee shops. But this only applies to foreigners, not to

Dutch residents of the Netherlands? The Netherlands is a very small

country and we have a lot of Borders and especially in the south,

a lot of French people and the Belgian people and German people go

to the coffee shops to buy cannabis but if they are not able to buy it

there, there are a lot of illegal dealers on the street who not only

possess cannabis but other hard drugs who are willing to sell that

to those foreign visitors. So I think that in the end, the crime in

this area can even be bigger than it is now. Cafe owners say they

will appeal and say this is discriminatory, do you think the

chances of getting this overturned are strong or not? I don't know,

the judges will decide of course but the thing is, we have to tackle

this problem in a pragmatic way, instead of going back, we should be

more discussing this internationally and saying to each

other, the real about soft drugs in Germany, in Great Britain and also

America and the whole of Europe. Young people are using cannabis and

under the age of 18, people should not of course use cannabis but if

you are grown up, then that there should be a free choice and you

should regulates that as a government because then problems

will escalate. Loss of revenue for the Dutch government in these

financially perilous times? If you are going to regulate not only the

way of selling but the production of it, you can do things like

regulating the way it is produced but you can also tax it and it has

figured out that to tax cannabis can create 500 million euro for the

budget so it is also interesting weather but it and for the problems

in Europe. A reminder of our main story: The

blind Chinese activist, Chen Guangcheng, has appealed to the

central government at for justice after making a dramatic escape from

has arrest. He released a video appealing to the Prime Minister,

Wen Jiabo, to ensue -- ensure the safety of this family and to tackle

corruption. That's all from us. For many of us, it was another wet

day today. You'll be pleased to hear that tomorrow, things are

looking a little bit drier and brighter. But it is not set to last

for the whole weekend because we have a developing area of low

pressure to the south. For the time being, a decaying weather front

sitting across us and that will keep it cloudy through Saturday.

The south-east is where we look later for rain on Saturday but for

the time being, for much of northern England, a lovely Saturday

afternoon with plenty of sunshine. Drew central areas, it is cloudy

but drier than today. The south- east of England will steadily see

rain creeping in as we head through the late morning and early

afternoon. Some rain over south- western parts of England but not as

torrential as the downpour as we saw today. For Wales, the cloud

will thin and things should brighten up. Across Scotland and

Northern Ireland, plenty of spring sunshine to be enjoyed. A northerly

wind feeding in some cooler air and the risk of some rain. For Saturday