In Nairobi people flocked to the bomb site to help dig out survivors

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At least 200 people have been killed and more than 1,000 injured following explosions at United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The bombings took place within minutes of each other at around 1030 local time.

No one has claimed responsibility but US officials suspect the attacks were the work of Osama bin Laden, an Islamic Muslim fundamentalist.

The first blast happened in the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam and the second, just five minutes later, in Nairobi, Kenya's capital city.

The Nairobi explosiondemolisheda five-story office block sending it crashing onto the embassy next door.

The US Ambassador Prudence Bushnell was meeting Kenyan Trade Minister Joseph Kamotho at the nearby Ufundi Cooperative Bank at the time but was only slightly injured.

The blast could be heard 10 miles (16km) away and caused total chaos in the city centre.

Rufus Drabble, from the British High Commission, said there was a cloud of thick smoke over the city and helicoptershoveredoverhead.

The US embassy was extensively damaged and its bomb-proof doors were ripped off. Two passing buses were also wrecked.

Volunteers worked furiously to pull survivors from the rubble and cranes have been brought in to free people who are trapped at the bomb site.

There was also widespread devastation in Dar es Salaam, where a BBC correspondent said the embassy reception area had been destroyed.

Survivor Jim Owens said the blast at the Tanzanian embassy threw him back about five feet (1.5m).

He said: "The cuts I have do not look that bad but they bledprofusely.

"They bled over my glasses so I couldn't see as I was walking around the smoke-filled embassy."

US President Bill Clinton has condemned the attacks as "abhorrent" and said every effort would be made to catch the bombers.

He said that the US was sending counter-terrorism experts and medical teams to the region. A team of US marines is also flying there to bolster security along with FBI agents.

"These acts of terrorist violence areabhorrent, they are inhuman," Mr Clinton said at the White House press conference.

"We will use all the means at our disposal to bring those responsible to justice," he added.

Mr Clinton said flags at all US government buildings would be flown at half-mast as a mark of respect to the victims.

Good news for Arthur Miller and his wife, actress Marilyn Monroe

The award-winning playwright Arthur Miller and his actress wife Marilyn Monroe can breath a collective sigh of relief today.

After a two-year legal battle to clear his name, Washington's Court of Appeals has finally quashed his conviction for contempt of Congress.

In May last year, a judge convicted Mr Miller for refusing to tell the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) the names of alleged Communist writers with whom he attended five or six meetings in New York in 1947.

He had been questioned by the HUAC in 1956 over a supposed Communistconspiracyto misuse American passports and willingly answered all questions about himself.

But he refused to name names on a point of principle saying: "I could not use the name of another person and bring trouble on him."

Today his lawyer, Joseph Rauh, argued that the committee simply wanted to expose the playwright and that "exposure for exposure's sake" was illegal.

Mr Rauh added that the timing of the hearing - just before his marriage to Marilyn Monroe - would ensure maximum publicity and humiliation for the writer.

He also said the questions he would not answer were not relevant to the passports issue.

However the appeal court ignored this argument finding instead that the way the questions were put to Mr Miller by the HUAC made contempt chargesuntenable.

Mr Miller had asked the committee not to ask him to name names and the chairman had agreed to defer the question.

So the court today ruled that at the time Mr Miller was led to believe this line of questioning had been suspended or even abandoned altogether.

demolish: destroy completely（毁坏）

hover: hang in the air（盘旋）

profusely: in an abundant manner（丰富地，大量地）

abhorrent: offensive to the mind（可恶的）

conspiracy: a group of conspirators banded together to achieve some harmful or illegal purpose（共谋）

untenable: (of theories etc) incapable of being defended or justified（站不住脚的）