World News from the BBC.
A district court in the United States has blocked plans by the Obama administration to increase funding for research into embryonic stem cells.
The judge who
grant
ed the
injunction
, Judge Royce Lamberth, said in his ruling that a lawsuit
brought against
new stem cell guidelines was valid and could now go ahead.
A new compensation fund for people affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has begun operating. Although paid for by the oil company BP, the $20-billion fund will be administered independently by Kenneth Feinberg, who ran a compensation fund for 9/11 victims. But some of the rules he plans to set have already been
criticise
d, as our economics correspondent Andrew Walker explains.
After six months, claims to the fund will have to
renounce
any right to sue BP in the courts. Others are concerned by reports that the fund will look at the last few years of profits in judging the level of compensation. Many fishing businesses, for example, have been rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and one told the BBC he hadn’t been making normal profits before this year. He feared his compensation could be lower as a result. Mr Feinberg will certainly have a difficult task. He’ll need to make judgments about whether business problems really are the result of the spill, and there’s a risk of
fraudulent