BBC news 2009-09-04 加文本

BBC 2009-09-04


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BBC News with Ally Macue.

 The United States has announced new measures against Honduras during talks in Washington between the ousted president Manuel Zelaya and the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It is terminating a broad range of assistance in response to the coup last June. Imtiaz Tyab reports from Washington.

 The US State Department did not put a dollar figure on just how much aid it was cutting from Honduras. The Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had already suspended some assistance and revoked the diplomatic visas of members of the Central American country's interim government in June. This decision to cut aid by Mrs. Clinton reportedly came after Mr. Zelaya’s presidential replacement, Roberto Micheletti, refused to accept the terms of the San Jose Accord which aimed to return Mr. Zelaya to power until elections set for November. Honduras described the American move as not very friendly.

 Fighting has broken out between security forces in Gabon and opposition supporters as Ali Bongo, the son of the late President, Omar Bongo was declared the winner of Sunday’s presidential election. Our Africa editor, Martin Plaut reports.

 Opposition supporters have reacted angrily to the outcome of this bitterly contested election. In the capital Libreville, the security forces attacked demonstrators outside the election commission, using tear gas and batons. Buildings were set alight in the second city of Port Gentil while the protesters attacked the city’s prison and freed its inmates. Crowds of young men were heard chanting "death to whites" as the former colonial power France made plans to evacuate its 10,000 citizens if the situation deteriorates further.

 There is tight security in the Chinese city of Urumqi following demonstrations by thousands of Han Chinese protesters over a recent spate of stabbings by people armed with hypodermic syringes, Michael Bristow reports from Urumqi in the western region of Xinjiang.

 Members of China’s People’s Armed Police were out in force across Urumqi in the western region of Xinjiang. They wait in chokes down side streets and stand guard at roadblock. At night vehicles were stopped from entering the city center. Earlier, up to 2,000 Han Chinese people staged a demonstration. They are angry about how the government has dealt with the aftermath of riot in July. It is clear the situation is still tense in Urumqi. Parents have been told to keep their children at home. And there were few people on the streets of this major city.

 The English Premier League club Chelsea has been banned from signing any new players until January 2011 after a ruling by football’s governing body FIFA. It found Chelsea guilty of inducing a young player from the French club of Racing Lens Gael Kakuta to break his contract and sign for them. Chelsea, who’ve also been fined about a million dollars, say they will mount the strongest possible appeal against the FIFA ban. It means Chelsea will not be allowed to register any new players during the next two transfer windows.

 World News from the BBC.

 The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for rapid progress from world leaders on a treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Mr. Ban told the World Climate Change Conference in Switzerland that the world was accelerating towards an abyss on climate change. Mr. Ban is hoping to stir world leaders into action in the run-up ahead to the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December. Here is our environment correspondent Richard Black.

 Ban Ki-moon has just returned from the Arctic where he traveled to see firsthand how modern-day climate change is altering the region. Now scientists have produced evidence showing dramatically that the current temperature rise there is highly unusual. And the region is now warmer than at any time in the 2,000-year record. The vulnerability of the Arctic is one of the factors Mr. Ban cited when in a speech in Geneva. He described the world as heading into an abyss on climate change unless leaders quickly step up progress towards a new UN treaty.

 The authorities in Mexico have arrested the Secretary for Public Security in a southern state on suspicion that he was cooperating with some of the country’s most violent drug gangs. The governor of Quintana Roo denied that his state was being taken over by drug traffickers following the arrest and earlier detentions of other senior officials. The statement comes amid continuing violence across Mexico as federal forces battled drug gangs and officials who work for them. Hooded gunmen killed at least 17 patients on Wednesday in a drug treatment center in a northern border city of Juarez.

The Dutch government says 13 paintings now held in the national collection that were acquired by Adolf Hitler during the Second World War will be returned to the heirs of their original Jewish owners. But the Culture Ministry says that because in today’s terms Hitler paid the equivalent of 460,000 dollars for the 16th and 17th century paintings, the heirs will have to repay the money before they reclaim the pictures. The collection is worth much more now.

BBC News.