BBC news 2007-06-27 加文本

BBC 2007-06-27


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BBC World News, I'm Michael Polls.

Iran has introduced petrol rationing in just two hours notice leading to huge traffic jams and fights between motorists trying to beat the deadline of midnight local time. Private motorists are now limited to 100 liters fuel per month, a tiny fraction of many people's needs. Despite its sizable reserves of crude oil, Iran lacks refining capacity, forcing it to buy about 40% of its petrol overseas. More from Frances Harrison in Tehran.

Eyewitnesses have seen at least one petrol station in the outskirts of the west of the city on fire, and there are reports three people died in the blaze. All over the city, there are long queues as motorists have been trying to beat the start of the rationing and fill their tanks. There's anger and frustration that the government didn't give people more notice. Iran imports 40% of its petrol from abroad and it's, now, rationing it to cut down consumption for fear the west could sanction its petrol imports and cripple its economy.

The government of Venezuela has taken full control of the operations of two big petrochemical multinationals in the Orinoco River basin, one of the world's richest oil fields. President Hugo Chaves had announced his determination to nationalize Venezuela's vital energy industry. Four foreign oil companies signed joint venture deals which allowed them to retain a minority share holding in the project. From Caracas, James Engerm reports.

By taking a majority stake in operations in the Orinoco belt, one of world's potentially largest reserves, Venezuela state oil company can now make its own decisions about future development. Four of the multinationals working there have accepted the terms and intend to stay, but two haven't. The US giants Conoco Philips and Exxon Mobil were notable in their absence at a signing ceremony. Venezuela's Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said they'd be expelled if they continue to resist.

The human rights group Amnesty International has called for the immediate deployment of United Nations' troops in the Central African Republic to protect civilians against attacks by armed gangs. A researcher who's just returned from the area says thousands of civilians are fleeing from the north of the country to neighboring Chad, Sudan and Cameroon after being attacked by rebels, bandits and government troops. However, Cyriaque Gonda has dismissed the accusation that troops were attacking civilians.
“This is a ridiculous accusation and this accusation is not founded at all. What the government troops are doing is first of all to protect them when they are being attacked in absolutely to go after the rebellion people as long as they know that they are accessing the population and taking the population under terror.”

The American CIA has made public hundreds of internal documents detailing illegal activities and secret operations it carried out more than thirty years ago. The documents include information on attempts to assassinate foreign leaders including one to kill Fidel Castro.

BBC News.

The United States senate has voted to debate a revised version of President Bush's controversial immigration reform bill after the original drafts stalled earlier this month. The senate decision came after President Bush offered an extra 4.5 billion dollars for border security as part of the bill. The new draft law would also grant legal status under strict conditions to millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States.

A committee of the US House of Representatives has overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling on Japan to make a formal and unambiguous apology for its coercion of about 200,000 foreign women to work in Japanese military brothels across the Far East before and during the Second World War. The resolution will now go to the full House. The chairman of the House foreign relations committee Tom Lantors has said Japan had actively promoted what he termed "historical amnesia" over the sex slave policy. “The facts are plain; There can be no denying that the Japanese imperial military coerced thousands upon thousands of women, primarily Chinese and Koreans, into sexual slavery during the war.”

Pope Benedict has changed on the rules governing the election of his successors, reversing a decision by Pope John Paul in 1996. From now on, two thirds of Roman Catholic Cardinals must vote for their new leader instead of allowing election by just a simple majority to break a lengthy deadlock.

A cyclone with winds up to 130km/h and waves up to three meters high has hit the Pakistani coast line killing at least ten people and displacing tens of thousands. Several coastal villages and towns were flooded. But the cyclone missed the country's biggest city Karachi where about 230 people died during storms on Saturday.

With that story we come to the end of this bulletin of BBC World News.