BBC news 2009-07-31 加文本

BBC 2009-07-31

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BBC News with Michael Poles.

Police in Nigeria say the leader of the Islamist militant group behind days of violence in the north of the country Mohammed Yusuf is dead. His Boko Haram sect has been involved in fierce clashes with the security forces across several northern states in which hundreds of people have been killed. From Lagos, Caroline Duffield reports.

Mohammed Yusuf was captured late on Thursday afternoon by Nigerian police who raided the home of his relatives. He was discovered hiding in a hole. He was arrested and taken to be paraded at local government headquarters. The BBC learned that one TV crew had been asked to go privately with Nigerian officials to see the cleric. We're told he confesses to being guilty of planning a series of attacks on police stations and government buildings that have cost hundreds of lives. He is shown pleading and saying that it was a great mistake, he’s then shot dead. His killing will cause outrage and disgust here in Nigeria.

A report by New York’s Attorney General says that some banks bailed out by the US government last year paid more than 30 billion dollars in bonuses to their executives, regardless of their performance. The report looked at nine Wall Street banks that were bailed out with billions of dollars in the aftermath of a financial crisis last year. Duncan Bartlett reports.

This report from New York’s Attorney General focuses on what he calls a “heads I win, tails you lose” bonus culture among the elite of the American financial system. It highlights that very large number of people who received substantial bonuses even as that their companies were losing money are turning to the US government for emergency funds. The Attorney General says there is a disconnect between compensation and performance and he’s called for greater scrutiny of the banks' behavior.

The Spanish authorities are blaming the Basque separatist group Eta for a car bomb that killed two policemen on the island of Majorca. The device went off outside a police building in the popular resort town of Palmanova. From Madrid, Steve Kingston reports.

The two police officers were killed by a bomb thought to have been planted under their patrol car. Later, a second device was discovered under a vehicle close by. It was defused by a police bomb disposal unit. The Spanish government has blamed the attack on the Basque militant separatist group Eta which have been held responsible for a car bomb on the Spanish mainland just 24 hours earlier, this time without fatalities. After Thursday's attack, Mallorca Airport was closed down for around two hours in an attempt to prevent the bombers from escaping. The services to and from the holiday island are now returning to normal.

A US judge has ordered that one of the youngest detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Mohammed Jawad, be released. He has been held at the prison camp for nearly seven years without being charged. Last year, a military commission ruled his confession that he carried out a grenade attack had been made under torture. The case against him collapsed. The judge had urged the Obama administration not to pursue a criminal investigation.

World News from the BBC.

The Albanian government says it wants to legalize same-sex marriage. The Prime Minister Sali Berisha said a proposal drawn up by non-governmental organizations would come before parliament in the autumn. Mark Gregory reports.

In a predominantly Muslim country with almost no open homosexual community, this announcement by a conservative Prime Minister has taken people by surprise. Sali Berisha acknowledged that the proposed law might provoke debate, but maintained that discrimination in modern Albania had to end.

Albania though has set its sights firmly on the goal of European Union membership and it seems this proposed law is aimed at showing Brussels a progressive new image. If it’s passed in the autumn, it could move the country one step further on its European path.

A woman suffering from multiple sclerosis has won a legal battle to force the British government to clarify the law on assisted suicide.

Debbie Purdy wanted Britain’s Chief Prosecutor to give an assurance that her husband would not be prosecuted if he helped her go to a euthanasia clinic abroad. Britain's highest appeal court, the House of Lords, ruled that the government's failure to clarify the law was an infringement of her rights.

Lawyers from Michael Jackson's family said that attentive agreement has been reached to allow the late pop star's mother Katherine Jackson to have permanent custody of his three children. It follows negotiations with Jackson's former wife Debbie Rowe who is the mother of his two eldest children.

Scientists who three years ago predicted a total collapse of the world's fisheries by the middle of the century, now say it's not too late to save them. The researchers say that after a study of ten marine ecosystems, they are more optimistic the fish and sea food populations can recover if governments act to manage commercial fishing. Their reports say the combination of measures such as catch quotas and no-take zones had helped fish stocks recover in the US, Iceland and New Zealand.

BBC News.

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