BBC news 2009-12-12 加文本

2009-12-12 BBC

BBC News with David Austin.

The United States House of Representatives has approved what’s described as the biggest overhaul of financial regulation since the great depression of the 1930s. The reforms were proposed by President Obama in July to prevent repeat of last year’s financial crisis. Andrew Walker has more.

For President Obama, reforming financial regulation was always a high priority. Now the House of Representatives has approved the administration’s proposals although with some amendments. If the legislation does come into force, it’ll create a new agency to protect consumers in their dealings with the financial sector. There’ll be more regulation or financial derivatives. There are also new arrangements intended to enable the government to wind down large firms that are critical for the entire financial system if they get into serious difficulty.

The Pope is ordering a major reorganization of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, a month after a government investigation exposed a church cover-up of a sexual abuse of children by priests. The announcement comes after Pope Benedict summoned Irish church leaders to Rome. David Willie reports.

The Vatican announced that the Pope will shortly be writing a pastoral letter to his Catholic flock in Ireland outlining measures he intends to take to insure there is no reputation of the pedophile priests scandal which has being cataloged in a devastating recent report by an Irish government Commission of Inquiry. There has been no word on possible resignations of Irish bishops but the language used by the Vatican and its communique issued after the 90min crisis meeting chaired by the Pope left no doubt that eventually heads are going to roll.

The British government is punishing more than 20 Kenyans for alleged corruption by banning them from visiting Britain. Those barred include top Kenyan civil servants and politicians. The British high commissioner at Kenya said it would be better of the individuals were prosecuted by the Kenyan authorities. But no senior figure had ever been successfully trialed for corruption in a Kenyan court.

Muslim leaders in Senegal have denounced a normal statue being built in the capital Dakar. The structure, which will be taller than the statue of liberty in New York when it’s finished is the brink shine of the president of Senegal Abdoulaye Wade. Here is our West Africa correspondent, Casper Leighton.

The imams are stabbing into a strong vain of discontent with a giant statue. The main controversy has been the cost, a 27 million dollars is a big outlay for a poor country. It’s also one questionable aesthetic ground, depicting a muscular man holding aloft a child and sweeping a woman along behind him is pure socialist realism and not very African. It’s been built by North Korea. Imams agreed a text for Friday sermons quoting “the Koran and the Hadith” which forms a denunciation of the idolatrous nature of the giant structure.   

That was our West Africa correspondent, Casper Leighton.

World News from the BBC.

The South African government says it’s short of thousands of hotel beds for football fans expected in next year’s world cup. Ministry of Tourism has told the BBC that it has 14,000 too few beds in Rustenburg which holds the group including England and the United States. Football fans following matches  had been told that they may have to seek a hotel room in neighboring Zimbabwe.

There had been mixed results on the first day of an auction of the rights to exploit Iraq’s ten largest untapped oil fields. The Majnoon field in Southern Iraq was won by a consortium led by Shell. Rights for the Halfiya oil field went to a consortium led by the Chinese State Oil company. But fields near Baghdad and in the volatile Diyala province atracked no bids. The Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki said his government would insure stability for foreign contractors.

I would like to reassure the companies that security will be stable, so the companies can work with even better protection from the government.

The auction of other five fields including the immense West Qurna Phase 2 continues on Saturday.

Turkey’s highest court has ruled in favor banning the country’s largest pro Kurdish party, the democratic society party or DTP, because of its alleged support for Kurdish separatist rebels. The case has been criticized by the European Union. Jonathan Head had this report from Istanbul.

After sitting on this case for two years, it took the 11 judges of the constitutional court just three days to decide that the only political party representing the Kurdish minority should be abolished. The DTP has 21 MPs in parliament and a large member of city mayors. Many of them now face a five year ban from politics. This verdict is a serious setback for the government as it tries to push through package of reforms aimed at winning over the alienated Kurdish community and persuading Kurdish insurgentes to lay down their weapons.

And that’s the BBC News.