BBC news 2007-06-13 加文本

BBC 2007-06-13


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BBC World News with Mary Small

The rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas have been fighting each other throughout a day of intense violence. More than thirty people are reported to have been killed in the past two days. Fatah has threatened to pull out of the unity government coalition with Hamas until a ceasefire is agreed. In the meantime, it says it will boycott any cabinet meetings. C. A. reports from Romala.
Ordinary Palestinians shrug their shoulders. They say their three-month old unity government was never that effective. Fatah and Hamas gunmen ignored repeated calls for calm and now the fighting has intensified as never before. Street corners, rooftops, even hospitals have become battlegrounds. Most gazans are too scared to leave their homes. The fear in the West Bank is that the tensions will spread here.

Reports from Israel meanwhile say the contest for the Labor Party leadership has been won by the former Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The final result is yet to be announced, but party officials say Mr. Barak has won a slim margin over the other remaining candidate in the second round of the election, Ami Ayalon. With more here is S. N.
It looks like Ehud Barak has made a remarkable comeback. He’s been in the political wilderness for the past six years since losing the 2001 general election after nineteen tempestuous months as Prime Minister during which he tried but failed to achieve a comprehensive peace deal with the Palestinians. He will take over from the currently the party leader Amir Peretz, whose reputation was severely damaged by his involvement as Defense Minister in last year’s war against Hezbollah.

Elsewhere in the region, there’s been further heavy fighting between the Lebanese army and Islamic militant besieged in the Palestinian refugee camp. The army said it had intensified its shelling on the Nahr el-Bared camp in response to attacks on its position by militants. More than 130 people have been killed since the fighting broke out.

President Bush has met Republican Party leaders to try to revive a comprehensive immigration bill rejected in the Senate last week. President Bush urged his fellow Republicans to support the immigration bill which among other measures wound grant legal status to the estimated twelve million illegal immigrants in the country. Speaking after a lunch with the Republican Senators, Mr. Bush acknowledged that illegal immigration was a divisive and emotional problem, but he said it was a vitally important one to solve. “It's gonna take a lot of hard work, a lot of effort. We're gonna convincing American people that this bill is the best way to enforce our border. I believe without the bill, it’s gonna be harder to enforce the border. The status...was unacceptable.”

The United States is threatened to penalize international oil companies which do business with Iran under a law already in existence but rarely used， Washington has the power to impose fines and other penalties in such circumstances.

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After months of opposition, the Sudanese government has accepted proposals by the United Nations and the Africa Union to deploy a joint peacekeeping force in the region of Darfur. The agreement was reached after talks in the Ethiopia capital Addis Ababa. The structure of the force of about 20,000 troops was agreed by the UN and the AU last week after a lengthy process prompted by the Sudanese government's refusal to accept a solely UN peacekeeping operation.

Police in Jamaica say Pakistan’s former cricket coach Bob Woolmer died of natural causes, and was not murdered as they said originally. Mr. Woolmer's death just after his team was knocked out of the World Cup in March prompted a major investigation that included the questioning of Pakistan team members and led to speculation about match fixing. Andy Gallagher reports from Jamaica.
Three separate and independent reports have all come to the same conclusion: Mr. Woolmer wasn’t strangled and the bone in his neck that was reportedly broken was in fact intact. At press conference, the deputy commissioner Mark Shield defended his investigation amidst calls for his resignation. The former Scotland Yard officer told the BBC that it was forced to launch a murder investigation based on the report presented to him by the Kingston pathologist Dr. A. Bob Woolmer’s widow has now released a statement saying that her family are greatly relieved and praising the work of the Jamaican police and in particular the deputy commissioner.

The global conservation group, the WWF, has described one of the foremost measures against the global warming-- the European Union’s carbon emission trading scheme --as fundamentally flawed. The program aims to reduce emissions by forcing European companies that can’t keep within their limit to buy credits from businesses that will reduce their dependency on fossil fuels. The WWF says that the scheme has been weakened by a decision to allow companies to buy cheap credits from outside the EU there by circumventing the need to reduce emissions.