Words in the News Wednesday 28 August 2002 Vocabulary from the news. Listen to and read the report then find explanations of difficult words below.
Bhopal hearings will go ahead Summary: In 1984 thousands of people died in Bhopal, India, after a gas leak from the Union Carbide plant there. Now the court in Bhopal has rejected the Indian government's attempt to reduce the seriousness of its own charge against a former chairman of Union Carbide. This report from Charles Haviland.
The Indian government had applied to reduce its own eleven year old charge against the former Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson from "culpable homicide not amounting to murder", to the much lesser offence of a "rash andnegligent act". It had said this was to match charges against leaders of the company's former Indian subsidiary, who themselves got their accusation reduced to negligence six years ago after they appealed.
But rejecting the application today, the chief judicial magistrate in Bhopal said there were no grounds for reducing the charge against Warren Anderson because he had not himself delivered any appeal either to the supreme court, or to any other court. The magistrate said steps to extradite Mr Anderson from the United States should now be speeded up, and that India's central bureau of investigation should make a statement on this at the court's next hearings, due to begin on the seventeen of September.
