BBC news 2010-06-17 加文本

2010-06-17 BBC

BBC News with Gaenor Howells.

President Obama says the British oil giant BP has agreed to create a 20-billion-dollar fund to compensate all those affected by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Speaking after a meeting with top BP officials, Mr Obama said the final sum could be even bigger.

"It's also important to emphasize this is not a cap. Another important element is that this 20-billion-dollar fund will not be controlled by either BP or by the government. It will be put in an escrow account administered by an impartial, independent third party."

The Chairman of BP Carl-Henric Svanberg said his company's directors had decided not to pay any further dividends to shareholders this year.

"I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to the American people on behalf of all the employees in BP. Through our actions, we hope that we will regain the trust that you have in us."

The former head of a now bankrupt American mortgage lender has been charged with what US officials have called uNPRecedented fraud. The man, Lee Farkas, is accused of trying to misappropriate almost two billion dollars. Here is Mark Gregory.

Prosecutors claim Lee Farkas, the former boss of a now bankrupt company that provided home loans, orchestrated a massive fraud over a period of eight years with unnamed co-conspirators. It's allegedly included a failed attempt to steal 550 million dollars of government money earmarked for bailing out banks. Like the Bernie Madoff affair, this may be a case of a long-running fraud that was exposed by the near meltdown of the world's financial markets.

The International Committee of the Red Cross says the need for humanitarian assistance in southern Kyrgyzstan is immense. Tens of thousands of people have fled the city of Osh since violence broke out last week between Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities. Imogen Foulkes reports.

International Committee of the Red Cross workers have been trying to move outside the southern Kyrgyz town of Osh for several days. Today - during what they described as an uneasy low they managed - in remote rural areas, they found groups of displaced people ranging from several hundred to several thousand, all short of food, water, shelter and medicine. Especially worrying were the stories many of the displaced told of rape and severe beatings.

The Spanish government has approved a draft law to make the hiring and firing of workers easier. The measure, which still has to be approved by parliament, is part of the Socialist government's drive to restore confidence in the economy. Spain's labour market is seen as one of the most rigid in the developed world.

You are listening to the World News from the BBC.

The new British government has announced it's making sweeping changes to the country's financial system to try to prevent future crisis. The Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne says the Bank of England, the central bank, will be given new powers. The BBC economics correspondent says the main aim is to restrain the growth of credit if there is a risk to financial stability. He says there'll also be a new tax on banks.

The state of Nayarit in western Mexico has closed schools three weeks early to protect children from drug-related violence. James Read has the details.

The Governor of Nayarit Ney Fernandez said he had brought forward the start of summer holidays to keep children off the streets while the army and federal police mounted a major operation against drugs gangs. He said it was also reacting to false rumours spread on Internet social networking sites that gunmen planned to attack schools to target the children of rival gangs. It's the latest sign of the fear that Mexico's escalating drugs war is causing.

Meanwhile, five police officers have been abducted and murdered in the northeastern Mexican city of Monterrey. Their bodies were found in a plot of wasteland hours after they were taken from their homes. All had been tortured. Messages from a local drugs gang were attached to the bodies with ice picks. The killings come a week after an alleged leader of the powerful Zetas drugs cartel was arrested in Monterrey.

In the most surprising result of the Football World Cup so far, one of the big favourites to win the trophy, Spain have crashed to defeat against Switzerland. The Spanish, the European football champions, lost one-nil in their first match of the tournament. The Swiss striker bundled in the winning goal in the second half. For the host nation, South Africa, it's been a miserable night. They lost three-nil to Uruguay and had their goalkeeper sent off. Earlier in the day, Chile beat Honduras one-nil.

BBC News.