BBC在线收听下载:海地大雨导致发生泥石流

BBC news 2012-03-31

BBC News with Fiona MacDonald

Military and diplomatic pressure is growing on the army mutineers who overthrew the government of Mali last week. Tuareg rebels in the north have seized the town of Kidal after Malian troops abandoned their positions. Thomas Fessy, in neighbouring Senegal, has the details.

If the soldiers behind the coup thought they'd be in a better position once in power to fight northern rebels, they must now be worried. The leader of the coup, Captain Amadou Sanogo, has called for outside help to resist the rebels' advance as they now threaten two other regional capitals, including the fabled Timbuktu. But Captain Sanogo's cry for help is unlikely to be acted on until he cedes power. The regional bloc Ecowas has threatened to impose tough sanctions that would cut off money from its neighbours if power isn't handed back to the civilians on Monday.

The United States is preparing to increase oil sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme. President Obama has issued a statement saying there was enough oil on the world market to allow a significant reduction in purchases from Iran. Paul Adams reports from Washington.

After June, financial institutions that continue to buy oil through Iran's central bank, where almost all such transactions are processed, will face sanctions. White House officials say the president decided to issue his statement after careful consideration of a number of factors, including global economic trends, supply and demand for non-Iranian oil, as well as spare capacity. There are exceptions: the US has already granted waivers to 10 EU countries and Japan because they've taken steps of their own.

The international envoy Kofi Annan says he expects the Syrian government to implement an agreed ceasefire immediately. A spokesman for Mr Annan said he wanted the authorities to halt the use of heavy weaponry in towns and withdraw soldiers to barracks because then the opposition would respond. Correspondents say there's no sign yet that the government is in the mood to make gestures to the opposition. There was more heavy bombardment in Homs and other places during the day.

The Spanish government has announced spending cuts of more than $36bn to try to reduce its deficit and strengthen the economy. The deputy prime minister called the budget proposal severely austere, but essential. Here's Tom Burridge.

The Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had promised to deliver a very austere budget. Public sector workers will have their wages frozen, and they'll work longer hours. The country's purchasing tax, or VAT, will stay the same, but there will be rises in income tax and the corporate tax on large businesses. It's a budget that will increase the cost of living in Spain at a time when many are out of work. Taxes on electricity will go up by 7%, and gas by 5%. There will also be an amnesty for tax dodgers, people who have not been paying what they should to the Spanish state.

Tom Burridge

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Six people have died in Haiti after heavy rains caused a mudslide which destroyed homes in the capital Port-au-Prince. An official with Haiti's civil protection agency said the mudslide occurred in Morne Calvaire - a slum area on a hillside. There have been two weeks of heavy rain in Haiti, triggering repeated flooding and landslides after the rainy season started early.

Football's world governing body Fifa has agreed new anti-corruption reforms after independent experts issued a scathing assessment of its investigations into earlier scandals. They called Fifa's handling of bribery claims "unsatisfactory" and "unconvincing". Fifa's reputation was hit by claims of bribery and vote rigging during Mr Blatter's re-election last year and during the contests to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cup finals.

The Brazilian police have detained 77 people and confiscated an arsenal of weapons in a major operation against drugs traffickers. More than 600 police were involved in the operation. Here's Warren Bull.

Police in Brazil say this is the largest operation they've ever launched in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. In a series of raids in the city of Sao Borja, they seized weapons, money, vehicles and quantities of cocaine and marijuana. The police chief heading the operation said up to 13 different drug gangs had been identified in the city, including one with 40 members. Sao Borja is on the main transit route for drugs and contraband between Brazil and the neighbouring countries - Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.

An Italian physicist who last year challenged one of the foundations of modern physics has resigned. Antonio Ereditato and his team stunned the scientific world last September with claims they'd observed subatomic particles called neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light. The result would have disproved Einstein's special theory of relativity, but later experiments called the results into question.

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