BBC news 2007-06-28 加文本

BBC 2007-06-28


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BBC World News with Mary Small.

It has been confirmed that Tony Blair who stepped down after ten years as British Prime Minister is to be an international representative in the Middle East. Mr. Blair will act on behalf of the Quartet, made up of the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations. His job will be to mobilize the assistance to the Palestinians and help them develop their institutions and economy. President Bush pressed for Mr. Blair to be given the role. Jonathan Beale reports from Washington.

Unsurprisingly, the White House has welcomed Tony Blair's appointment with enthusiasm. After all, it was President Bush and Condoleezza Rice who have been pushing for him to take on the role of the Quartet's Mideast envoy. But the White House spokesman Tony Snow also wanted to play down expectations. "He is not a super man done every case. He is not designed to be doing that. What he is designed to do is to work as an aggressive facilitator between the Quartet and interested parties to try to look for ways to make progress when the past ways are not in the progress it would like." For Tony Blair, this is a chance to find a legacy other than Iraq, but can he succeed when so many others have failed?

The new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has begun the task of forming his first government after taking over from Tony Blair. Mr. Brown who was Chancellor of the Exchequer or Finance Minister is expected to name his cabinet on Thursday. Neihamy Grimly reports.

We already know some movements the Home Secretary John Weed is stepping down, the Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett is also understood to be leaving her job. And of course, Mr. Brown's own promotion means he must appoint a new Chancellor of the Exchequer. All these will result in a new set of faces at the very top and the Prime Minister will be hoping it will help freshen up the public image of the government. Gordon Brown says he wants a government of all the talents and some observers have suggested that will mean he might appoint people outside of the Labor Party to ministerial positions.

At least eighteen people have been killed by police searching a shanty town in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. More than a thousand officers backed up by armored cars and helicopters entered the neighborhood of Alemao, which is largely controlled by drug gangs. Will Grand reports.

Television pictures of the massive operation in Alemao show lines of police vehicles and hundreds of armed officers entering the shanty town before exchanging gunfire with alleged drug traffickers. Frightened residents among their mothers and young children were seen fleeing the violence which has become a daily part of life in Alemao. Eighteen people were killed in the fighting. The authorities say all of them were suspected members of the drug gangs which control this neighborhood and others like it in Rio de Janeiro.

Police in Iraq say up to fifty people have been killed in a series of attacks across the country on Wednesday. At least ten were killed by a car bomb in a Shiite district of the capital.

World news from the BBC.

The US senate judiciary committee has issued subpoenas to the White House on the office of vice President Dick Cheney. The committee wants to see official documents to help its investigation of President Bush's authorization of the wire tapping of American citizens without warrant. The senate committee and its chairman Patrick Leahy, wants to scrutinize official documents which so far has been blocked from obtaining. James Coomarasamy reports from Washington.

Senator Leahy's ordered vice President Dick Cheney's office amongst others to hand over material relating to what's become known as a practice of warrantless wire tapping. A secretly authorized program in which the phones of terrorist suspects inside the United States have been monitored without prior court approval. The White House has given no indication yet of how they react to the subpoenas, but President Bush may assert his right of executive privilege.

Two leading British universities Cambridge and Oxford have announced the discovery of a new animal stem cell taken from rats and mice which they say shows far more similarities to human stem cells than those used by researchers so far. It's hoped the new stem cell could greatly advance the hunt for cures for a range of human conditions and illnesses. Professor Richard Gardener of University of Oxford is part of the team that made the discovery. "You can get stem cells out of the mouse that are in all attempts and purposes like the human ones. So, they will provide us a more accurate model system for understanding more about precious human stem cells."

The United States government is to remove from its list of the endangered species the American bald eagle, a revered national symbol seen on numerous official seals as well as coins and dollar bills. Officials say the move confirms the remarkable success of efforts to preserve the bird and its habitat. In 1963, the bald eagle had all but disappeared from the United Sates apart from in Alaska.

BBC World News.