BBC news 2009-06-29 加文本

BBC 2009-06-29


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BBC News with Neil Nunes.

The Congress in Honduras has appointed its speaker, Roberto Micheletti, as acting president after soldiers earlier arrested President Manuel Zelaya and sent him into exile. Mr. Micheletti said President Zelaya had been removed constitutionally, and said elections in November would take place as scheduled. He has imposed a nationwide curfew for Sunday and Monday nights. Speaking from Costa Rica, President Zelaya described the moment he was seized to the BBC.

This morning, about 200 to 300 military forced their way into my house. They started shooting. They hit my security guards. They tied them up. Then they got me. Men with rifles who had their faces covered up. They told me I had to surrender and that I had to obey them. If not, they would shoot me. --President Manuel Zelaya.

The ousting of the president has drawn widespread criticism across Latin America and the wider world. The Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he was putting his troops on alert and would respond militarily if his envoy to Honduras was harmed, a threat echoed by the Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. The United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, has meanwhile called for Mr. Zelaya to be reinstated.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has described the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza as trapped in despair. And ICRC reports that the territory’s economy and infrastructure had collapsed since the Israeli military offensive in Gaza six months ago. The ICRC again urged Israel to lift the blockade it imposed after the Islamist Hamas Movement took power in Gaza in 2007. Tim Frank reports from Jerusalem.

The Red Cross says that the people of Gaza are unable to rebuild their lives and sliding ever deeper into despair. There isn’t the cement or steel to reconstruct neighborhoods hit by Israeli strikes. Seriously-ill patients are not receiving the treatment they need. Large numbers of children are malnourished. All this, says the Red Cross, is directly linked to Israel’s tight closure of the crossing point into Gaza after the Islamist Hamas Movement took power there two years ago. An Israeli government spokesman said Hamas was primarily to blame for the hardship.

Michael Jackson’s father, Joe says he still has lots of concerns about the circumstances surrounding his son’s death. Joe Jackson confirmed that the family had ordered a second independent post-mortem on the singer’s body and that more would be known in due course. He also said funeral arrangements for his son who died on Thursday were still being completed. Mr. Jackson was speaking at the annual Black Entertainment Television Awards in Los Angeles, which have been hurriedly reorganized to allow stars to pay tribute to Michael Jackson.

World News from the BBC

Reports from Tehran say police have dispersed several thousand demonstrators who had gathered outside the Qoba mosque in the north of the city. Witnesses said protesters chanted slogans, supporting the main challenger in the disputed Iranian presidential election, Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

Votes are being counted in Albania’s general election. It was a closely fought contest with the Prime Minister Sali Berisha and his socialist opponent Edi Rama, both promising to boost the economy and take Albania into the European Union. Soon after the polls closed, the two leaders held separate news conferences, praising the way the vote was conducted. Here’s Mark Lowen.

The Black Entertainment Television Awards are an annual celebration... Sorry, we will have that report a little later.

The counting of votes is also underway in the West African state of Guinea-Bissau after an election to choose a successor to President Joao Bernardo Vieira, who was assassinated in March. There were 11 candidates, three of them, former presidents. All the contenders have promised to bring stability to Guinea-Bissau, which has become a major transit point for cocaine trafficking to Europe. EU observers said the election had been generally calm.

We go back to the votes in Albania, here’s Mark Lowen.

Neither leading candidate is willing to preempt Monday’s announcement by the electoral commission, for fear of provoking a reaction on the streets overnight. For the first time, the counting process has been filmed to ensure greater transparency and avoid a repeat of the widespread irregularities that have marred previous polls. The large observer mission here would declare Monday whether the vote met international standards, something that is essential if Albania was to move further down the road of European Union accession.

That report from Mark Lowen.

And that’s the latest from BBC News