BBC News with Mike Cooper.
The man at the center of what could be the world's biggest ever financial fraud, the New York financier, Bernard Madoff, has been put under house arrest. He is charged with defrauding investors out of more than 50 billion dollars. Questions are now being asked about how US financial regulators failed to detect the alleged fraud. Greg Wood reports from New York.
Bernard Madoff made a surprised court appearance in Manhattan after he was unable to find enough people to guarantee his 10-million-dollar bail. So far, his brother and his wife have signed for him, but he needs two more people to do the same thing. The judge set new conditions for his bail. He will be confined to his New York apartment daily between the hours of 7PM and 9AM, and he'll have to wear an electronic ankle bracelet. He was also required to sign over homes in Palm Beach Florida and the Hamptons, an exclusive area on Long Island.
An internal American government report has said the State Department should stop using the controversial security firm Blackwater to protect its diplomats in Iraq. From Washington, this report from Sarah Morris.
The Blackwater contract has been under review since an incident in September last year when 17 Iraqi people were killed by guards employed by the company. It's happened in a square in Baghdad. The guards said they were acting in self-defense. Many onlookers said they opened fire without provocation. Afterwards the Iraqi prime minister called for Blackwater's contract to be revoked. Five Blackwater guards have been charged with manslaughter and other charges stemming from that incident. The company itself was not implicated.
The Oil Producing and Exporters' Group, OPEC, says its members have agreed their biggest ever single cut in production in an effort to boost prices. OPEC said it was planning to reduce production by 2.2 million barrels a day, the third cut by the cartel since September. Despite OPEC's move, crude oil prices continued to fall. The President of OPEC, Chakib Khelil, said the move would benefit both those countries which need to buy oil as well as those who export it.
"We hope that the prices, of course, will stabilize, at least in the initial phase, and evolve in due time towards, you know, the target that will be in the interest of producers and consumers which we estimate that between 70 to 80 dollars at least."
The Italian luxury car manufacturer Ferrari says 2008 has been its best ever year for sales and profits in contrast to the difficulties being experienced by most of its rivals because of the economic downturn. The company's chairman, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, said that crisis or no crisis, Ferrari could still find 6,000 people in his words "crazy enough to buy its annual output". The cheapest Ferrari car can be bought for about 250,000 dollars.
I’m Mike Cooper with World News from the BBC.
Palestinian hospital officials say one man has been killed by an Israeli missile strike in the north of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military said the attack was aimed at those who'd fired rockets into southern Israel. Earlier, about 20 rockets were fired from Gaza, injuring at least two people in the Israeli border town of Sderot. A six-month ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas movement which runs the Gaza Strip is due to expire on Friday.
The President-elect of the United States, Barack Obama, says he'd like to see the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay closed within two years. In a wide-ranging interview with Time Magazine, Mr. Obama also said he'd like to put an end to the practice of torture and restore the balance between security concerns and constitutional rights. Time named Mr. Obama its Person of the Year, praising his courage to plan out an ambitious future in a gloomy hour. Mike Eelier is the editor of Time International.
Barack Obama's story, his success in the US presidential election, the way that he's captured the imagination of folks all over the world, made him a pretty compelling choice, frankly, for us, the question really was, was the reason for not choosing Barack Obama, cause we couldn't come up, come up with one.
Latin American and Caribbean leaders have called on the United States to end its 46-year-old embargo of Cuba. In a declaration adopted at a regional summit in Brazil, 33 countries said Washington's economic and commercial embargo violated international law. The Cuban leader, Raul Castro, attended the summit on his first foreign tour since succeeding his brother Fidel. (www.hxen.net)
The Senate in Argentina has given final congressional approval to a government plan to take over the country's biggest airline, Aerolineas Argentinas. The government says re-nationalization of the company is vital to ensure its survival, but its Spanish owners say the price set by the Argentine government is too low and they say they will go to international arbitration.
BBC News.
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