BBC news 2009-06-10 加文本

BBC 2009-06-10


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BBC News with Jonathan Izzard.

A detainee at Guantanamo Bay has been moved to New York where he will become the first Guantanamo prisoner to face justice in a civil court in the United States. The suspect, Ahmed Ghailani, is accused of being involved in bomb attacks on American embassies in East Africa in 1998 which killed more than 200 people. More from Adam Brooks in New York.

Ahmed Ghailani is Tanzanian. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2004, held in a secret CIA prison facility and then transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention camps. President Obama has committed to closing those Guantanamo camps. “Have weighed possible” says the president, “Terrorism cases will from now on be tried in a civilian court on American soil”. So Mr. Ghailani's case becomes an important test of the Obama administration's ability to use the federal courts in terrorism cases and to move away from the detention policies of President Bush.

The US special envoy George Mitchell has started a Middle-East visit aimed at building momentum for the peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians that President Obama is urging on both sides. Mr. Mitchell has called for immediate peace talks and the rapid creation of a viable Palestinian state. In a joint press conference with the US envoy, the Israeli President Shimon Peres agreed that peace was in the interest of all parties.

“I don't see any contradiction between the American leadership and the needs of people in the Middle East and we should try to do sincerely upon you. Together with you, not to miss this call which is unique and that it arrived under circumstances which nobody can guarantee there will be rest forever or they are gonna be repeated in the future.”

A Palestinian official says police have arrested six members of the Islamist movement Hamas in the West Bank, seizing almost one and a half million dollars. The official said those arrested were planning attacks on a Palestinian authority. Hamas confirmed that its members had been arrested and accused the Palestinian authority of colluding with Israel to wipe it out.

The United States government is allowing a number of American banks to repay billions of dollars that they've received at the peak of the financial crisis last October. Treasury officials say ten banks will return nearly 70 billion dollars. Our economics correspondent Andrew Walker reports.

The willingness of the Treasury to allow repayments reflects the fact that some degree of stability seems to have returned to the US financial system. To be eligible to repay, the banks had to be able to issue new shares to private investors and to be able to borrow without government guarantees. If the banks do repay, it will be an important early stage in the unwinding of the government sudden and massive intervention in American finance. The firms have not been named, but it's likely that they include JPMorgan Chase, American Express and Goldman Sachs. For the management, one attraction of repaying is freedom from government restrictions on executive pay.

World News from the BBC.

The Russian energy giant Gazprom has warned the European Union that it must decide if it wants to continue receiving Russian gas or face losing supplies in future. Speaking to the BBC, the deputy chairman of the Gazprom Alexander Medvedev said he expected the EU to increase its consumption of Russian gas by 2020. The EU is trying to reduce its dependency on Russian supplies after a crisis in January when gas pipelines to Western Europe were shut off by Moscow during a dispute with Ukraine.

A new study has found that the AIDS epidemic in South Africa which is the worst in the world has peaked. The research backed by the South African government also indicates that HIV infection among children and teenagers has declined sharply. Rob Walker reports.

South Arica's Human Sciences Research Council says the findings of its study are promising. A big increase in condom usage has helped to bring about a sharp reduction in HIV rates among teenagers. The authors say this seems to be due to the success of AIDS prevention programs. Ninety percent of young people say they've been reached by at least one such program, but overall, the situation remains dire. More than five million South Africans are still living with HIV, more than any other country in the world.

In a landmark judgment, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Turkey denied a woman her right to life by failing to prevent her murder by her son-in-law. It's the first time the court in Strasburg has ruled against a state for failing to protect the citizen from domestic violence. The case was brought by the murdered woman's daughter, who had told police many times that her life and her mother's were in danger.

Police in Italy and other European countries have arrested about 50 people allegedly involved in smuggling Iraqi Kurds into Europe. Police in Venice said migrants have been treated like merchandise; some have been smuggled in containers for watermelons or pieces of steel. Officials said about 2, 500 Kurds have been trafficked by the network.

BBC News.