BBC news 2009-09-21 加文本

BBC 2009-09-21

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BBC News with David Austin.

A multinational commodity trading company, Trafigura, has agreed to pay compensation to tens of thousands of people who say they were made ill by chemicals dumped in Ivory Coast three years ago. Each one will receive some 1,500 dollars. The company said it did not accept liability, but regretted any distress caused to the local population by the waste dumping. Rebecca White reports.

Thousands of residents in Ivory Coast's main city, Abidjan, reported a range of health problems after chemical waste was dumped there in 2006, now 31,000 of them have been offered compensation by Trafigura in a multimillion dollar settlement. The company accepted that a firm they'd hired dumped chemical waste there illegally three years ago, but they denied the waste was toxic and say the settlement completely indicates them. Two years ago, Trafigura gave nearly 200 million dollars to the Ivorian government, part of which was used to compensate the families of 16 people who, it was claimed, died because of the waste.

The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, says the United States knows it's wrongly accusing his country of try to develop nuclear weapons. In a speech at Tehran University to mark the end of Ramadan, Ayatollah Khamenei said that despite his friendly words, President Barack Obama was pursuing what he called for same policy of Iran-phobia as his predecessors.

The western countries falsely accuse the Islamic republic’s establishment of producing nuclear weapons. We fundamentally reject nuclear weapons and prohibit the use and production of them.

It's Iran's first official comment since America's decision to scrap a European missile intercept system aimed at threats from Iran.

President Obama has rejected an appeal from seven former directors of the CIA to abandon an investigation into allegations of prisoner abuses under the Bush administration. The former chiefs had argued that the inquiry risked discouraging CIA officers from undertaking the kind of aggressive intelligence work needed to fight terrorism. President Obama said it was important to examine the allegations.

I appreciate the former CIA directors wanting to look out for an institution that they helped to build, but I continue to believe that nobody's above the law and I wanna make sure that as President of the United States that I am not asserting in some way that my decisions overrule the decisions of prosecutors who are there to uphold the law.

Community leaders in Kenya have warned that the country's worst drought for years is causing increasing violence between rival tribes. More than 30 people have died in clashes. Elders told a BBC correspondent that old feuds were surfacing again because of a lack of arable land and water.

World News from the BBC.

Reports from Gaza say two Palestinians, one of them a militant have been killed by Israeli tank fire in northern Gaza. Palestinian medical sources say they were hit by an Israeli shell. The incident came several hours after Israeli state radio said two rockets were fired overnight into Israel from inside Gaza without causing injuries or damage.

A doctor in Berlin is being held by police after he admitted giving drugs to a therapy group leaving two patients dead and another in a coma. Media reports suggested the drugs included heroin and ecstasy, but the police would not confirm this. From Berlin, here is Gesdonal More.

When police arrived at the house in a quiet suburb of Berlin, they found the body of a 59-year-old man. He'd been taking part in a mysterious group therapy session which ended in tragedy. In all 12 people have signed up for the therapy and they were given a lethal cocktail of drugs as part of their treatment. A 28-year-old man died later in hospital, and other members of the group suffered severe poisoning.

Hundreds of thousands of people have packed into Revolution Square in the Cuban capital Havana for an international concert aimed at promoting reconciliation between the communist island and its opponents. The concert called Peace Without Borders was organized by the Miami-based Colombian rock singer Juanes who says he's received death threats from some anti-communist Cuban exiles in the United States. He's backed up by 14 other groups from Latin America, Spain and Cuba itself who was expected to be the largest concert ever held on the island.

A group of Italian Muslims have defied a ban by the authorities and celebrated the Eid festival marking the end of Ramadan in public prayer gatherings in Rome. An Islamic group had requested permission to offer prayers in the center of the city. However, the Roman authorities said that all celebrations should be conducted in the city's only mosque.

And those are the latest stories from BBC News.