BBC news 2010-06-01 加文本

2010-06-01 BBC

BBC News with Victoria Meakin.

The UN Security Council has been holding an emergency session to discuss the Israeli attack on ships carrying pro-Palestinian activists, trying to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip. At least nine activists were killed when Israeli commandos stormed the ships in international waters. Turkey, which is home to many of the activists on the ships, is leading international condemnation of Israel's action against the convoy. But Israel says it was acting in self-defence. From the UN in New York, Barbara Plett reports.

Turkey called the commando raid an act of murder by a state and “a grave breach of international law”. Its Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu urged the Council to strongly condemn Israel and demanded an international investigation. Israel's envoy retorted that the soldiers responded in self-defence when activists on board the aid vessels violently attacked with the intention of lynching them. None of the Council members seemed convinced by that argument, demanding at the very least a transparent and credible inquiry. And some European states like France expressed outrage, declaring that nothing justified the level of violence used.

The German President Horst Koehler has resigned following criticism of comments he made about the use of German troops abroad. It's said that Germany's military operations overseas might be necessary to uphold its trade interests. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the resignation was unexpected, as Oana Lungescu now reports from Berlin.

Chancellor Merkel said she was surprised when Mr Koehler phoned her just two hours before stepping down. She tried and failed to make him change his mind. So she paid tribute to a popular president who she said “had won over people's hearts”. A former IMF boss, Mr Koehler was a political outsider. He insisted his remarks were misunderstood, but reopening the debate about Germany's deeply unpopular mission in Afghanistan proved an embarrassment to the centre-right coalition, just as his popularity slumped to a four-year low in the polls.

Pope Benedict has appointed 9 senior clergy from the United States, England and Canada to investigate child abuse in Roman Catholic Institutions in the Irish Republic. The envoys have played leading roles in the investigation of abuse in their own countries and will arrive in Ireland later this year. Duncan Kennedy reports from Rome.

Among those appointed to lead the inquiry are Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the former head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. He was himself subject to criticism over his handling of a pedophile priest case 25 years ago. The Vatican said it wanted to respond adequately to what it called “the tragic cases of abuse perpetrated by priests” and help lead to spiritual and moral renewal.

Gunmen have attacked a Pakistani hospital in Lahore, killing at least 8 people. The hospital chief executive said the attackers just barged in and fired indiscriminately.

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Emergency workers in Central America are still struggling to reach communities cut off in floods and landslides caused by Tropical Storm Agatha. It killed more than 100 people in recent days, most of them in Guatemala. Rescue teams are digging through mud and debris in search of dozens of people still missing after the storm which destroyed several neighborhoods near Guatemala City.

Greece is imposing a blanket ban on smoking in indoors public places because a previous partial ban did not work. The Greek government used World No Tobacco Day to make the announcement. Here is Malcolm Brabant in Athens.

The new law will come into effect at the start of September. It means that bars and restaurants which had declared themselves as smoking establishments for fear of losing customer will now be forced to be tobacco-free. The ban is going to have an intriguing impact on Greece's current economic crisis. 40% of all Greeks smoke and therefore make a sizable contribution to the national treasury. As part of its austerity measures, the government has imposed tax increases on cigarettes. The ban could reduce sales and therefore tax revenues considerably.

Tens of thousands of public sector workers in Romania have gone on strike to protest against government austerity measures. From Tuesday, the centre-right government led by the Prime Minister Emil Boc plans to cut public sector salaries by a quarter and pensions by 15%. The measures are closely tied to a 25-billion-dollar aid package agreed last year with the International Monetary Fund, with the aim of reducing Romania's ballooning budget deficit.

The French-born American sculptor Louise Bourgeois has died in New York at the age of 98. Based in New York since 1938, Bourgeois gained fame only late in her long career and kept working right up to the end of her life. In recent decades, Louise Bourgeois's abstract explorations of themes, such as birth, sexuality and death, made her one of the world's most influential contemporary artists.

BBC News.