2010-04-28 BBC
BBC News with Gaenor Howells
Stock markets in Europe and the United States have fallen sharply in response to further signs that the debt crisis in Greece is intensifying and could spread to other countries. Share prices in New York, London, Frankfurt and Paris fell by more than 2% after a major international credit rating agency, Standard & Poor's, downgraded Greek debt to a level known informally as "junk". Nils Blythe has more.
Standard & Poor's downgraded its assessment of Greek bonds to so-called junk status because of the growing danger that the bond holders will not be paid back in full. Many big investment funds have rules that forbid them from holding junk bonds said the move is likely to trigger a further round of selling. Share markets have taken fright, fearing that if Greece does default on its debts, it will hit many European banks which hold Greek bonds and could trigger a wider financial crisis. Already pressure is mounting on Portugal which has also seen its credit rating downgraded today although it remains above junk status.
The trader at the centre of fraud allegations against the American investment bank Goldman Sachs has told the US Senate committee he did nothing wrong. Senators have accused the bank of profiting from the collapse of the American housing market. Regulators say the trader Fabrice Tourre sold an investment that was designed to make profits for the bank while losing its investors' money. Here is Mark Mardell.
Some of the top players in Wall Street's biggest investment bank Goldman Sachs are lined up in front of the Senate committee facing a barrage of questions, rifling through folders of documents, looking tense and uncomfortable. The senator chairing the subcommittee, Carl Levin, opened by saying that the company had stacked the decks against buyers of financial product that it had sold, that Wall Street had turned bad mortgage loans into economy-wrecking financial instruments. The thread, he said, that joined the strands together was unbridled greed. The senators have accused the Goldman Sachs employees of deliberately eating up time, hunting for documents and then not answering questions. They say this hearing will continue until they get answers.
The Mexican government has warned its citizens about traveling to Arizona after the American state passed a law clamping down on illegal immigration. The government says Mexicans living in or visiting Arizona should act with prudence. Vanessa Buschschluter reports.
The tough new immigration law has not even come into effect yet, but the Mexican government is clearly worried about the adverse political atmosphere it could create for Mexicans in the American border state. The Mexican Foreign Ministry says it feared its citizens could be harassed and questioned under the new law which gives police the power to stop suspected illegal immigrants. It says its consulates in four cities in Arizona will stay open 24 hours a day, seven days a week to offer legal advice to any Mexicans who feel they've been mistreated by US authorities.
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The United Nations has shut its mission in Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan and evacuated many of its foreign staff there. A UN spokeswoman said they saw it as a temporary measure but the security situation meant the staff had to be withdrawn. The leader of the provincial council in Kandahar insisted there wasn't a big threat, saying the security situation had been far worse a few years ago. He suggested that the UN pulling out of the city played into the Taliban's hands.
The United Nations Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution aimed at making it easier to prosecute and imprison pirates caught off the coast of Somalia. Barbara Plett reports.
The resolution calls on the secretary general to explore various options for prosecuting and imprisoning Somali pirates. These include a regional or international tribunal, or the possibility of states creating special domestic chambers with international components. It also appeals to all countries to criminalize piracy under domestic laws. So far, some pirates captured by an international armada patroling the Somali coast have been set free because of questions about who could try them. Others have been handed over to Kenya and the Seychelles for prosecution. But Kenya in particular has complained that its judicial system can't cope and diplomats acknowledge that the system isn't working.
The American Defence Secretary Robert Gates has accused Syria and Iran of supplying increasingly sophisticated rockets and missiles to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Mr Gates said Hezbollah now had more rockets and missiles than most governments and this was destabilizing the whole region. During the war of 2006, Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets into northern Israel.
The German football team Bayern Munich has reached the final of the European Champions League. In the second leg of their semi-final, they beat Olympique Lyonnais of France three nil, giving them a four nil aggregate win. In next month's final, Bayern will face either Barcelona or Inter Milan.
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