BBC news 2009-03-27 加文本

BBC News with Cathy Clarkston

The American Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has announced plans to establish a single regulator for the U. S financial system in response to the current economic crisis. The entity would regulate financial institutions, services and markets and for the first time bring hedge funds and derivatives under government supervision. Mr. Geithner said there had to be new rules. James Coomarasamy reports from Washington.

Mr. Geithner said the U. S economic system had failed in basic fundamental ways：let the government to come into the current crisis without the tools to manage it effectively. There couldn't be modest repairs at the margin, he argued, but there had to be new rules of the game and new regulatory framework that would in the future allow the government to step in and reduce the systemic risk to the economy posed by failing non-banking institutions such as the insurance giant AIG.

The head of the World Trade Organization Pascal Lamy says there is a danger of increased restrictions on trade, strangling international commerce. Mr. Lamy said many countries were responding to pressures to protect their own economies against the global downturn by imposing trade barriers. He said there had recently been increases in tariffs and other measures to curtail imports and he warned that more of these could undermine efforts to boost demand and to restore economic growth.

Police in Britain are to investigate allegations by a recently freed Guantanamo Bay detainee that he was tortured while in American custody with the complicity of British agents. Rob Watson has the details.

This is the first police investigation into Britain's security services since the war on terrorism began. Investigation follows the allegations made by the Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohammed who was released from Guantanamo last month. Mr. Mohammed who was first captured in Pakistan in 2002 claims to have been tortured in Morocco and Afghanistan before eventually been transferred to Guantanamo. He alleges that Britain's intelligence services were complicit in his treatment because they carried on supplying information to his interrogators even though they must have known how he was being treated. Britain's security services have always denied facilitating any mistreatment he may have received.

Somali pirates have seized two European-owned ships and a yacht from the seashells off the coast of East Africa. The European Union anti-piracy mission said one of the captured ships was a Norwegian-owned cargo vessel and the other was Greek. James Robbins reports.

There has been a spate of attacks over the past day or so. A European Union naval task force of seven warships reports some success in deterring and preventing other seizures, but a spokesman stressed patrolling more than a million square miles of ocean is a huge undertaking. Some ships are taking successful countermeasures and outrunning the pirates. NATO has announced that five extra warships will join protection efforts in the coming days.

World news from the BBC

Details have emerged of an air attack in eastern Sudan which apparently targeted smugglers moving a consignment of weapons intended for Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. News reports in Israel said the attack was carried out by the Israeli air forces. While not confirming this, the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel hit every place it could to stop terror.

Pieces from a damaged aircraft have fallen from the sky in Brazil, hitting more than 20 houses in the city of Manaus but without causing any deaths or injuries. Jet turbine parts from a US-owned DC-10 cargo plane were scattered over a wide area. A local official said it was a blessing there were no casualties. From St. Paulo, Tim Hersh reports.

Terrified residents of the main city in the Amazon region awoke to what sounded like a series of explosions. Debris from the DC-10 cargo jet had come loose and fallen off shortly after it took off on a flight to the Colombian capital Bogota at one o'clock in the morning. In one home, a piece sheered through the roof and ended up suspended just above a baby's cradle. The debris included what appeared from news photos to be the entire front end of the engine turbine. The operator of the flight, the U. S. firm Arrow Cargo said it would be investigating what happened and wouldn't shirk its responsibilities to help residents whose homes were damaged.

The center-right Prime Minister of the Czech Republic Mirek Topolanek has formally submitted his resignation after losing a vote of confidence earlier in the week. The fall of his administration comes in the middle of the Czech presidency of the European Union. (www.hXen.com)

The English Premier League Football club Chelsea has begun a search for a future star player from youngsters with South Asian backgrounds. Open trials will be held for 600 boys up to the age of 14 and the winners will be offered a chance to join Chelsea's youth team.

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