BBC news 2010-08-10 加文本

BBC news 2010-08-10

(BBC News with Joe Ma)cintosh.

The United States government is announcing big defence cuts aimed at saving billions of dollars. With the details, here is James Reynolds.

The US Department of Defence is expected to spend more than $ 700 billion this year - that's more than any other military service in the world. The man in charge of all this spending, the Secretary of Defence Robert Gates, has announced that he's found plenty of excess costs that can be trimmed. Mr Gates has decided to close Joint Forces Command. That's one of the military's ten major commands. The command trains troops from the different services to work together. It employs nearly 5,000 staff. Mr Gates has also announced that he's cutting by 10% the number of contractors employed by the military, and he will cap the number of generals, admirals and senior civilian officials in the armed forces.

With Moscow shrouded in smoke from nearby wildfires and pollution at a dangerous level, city officials say twice as many people as normal are dying each day. Moscow's health department said that normally some 380 people died daily in the city at this time of the year, but this has risen to 700. Richard Galpin reports.

For five weeks, the people of Moscow have endured record-breaking temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celcius. Then last week, a thick blanket of smog descended on the city as fires, not far to the south and the east, burnt out of control. As the amount of oxygen in the air has gone down, the concentration of carbon oxide and other dangerous gases has shot up. Over the weekend, it was five or six times higher than levels considered safe.

Russia has warned that the grain harvest could drop by a third this year due to wildfires and drought.

Two witnesses at the war crimes trial of the former Liberian President Charles Taylor have contradicted evidence by the model Naomi Campbell about alleged blood diamonds. Ms Campbell had said she didn't know who gave her the diamonds, but her former agent, Carole White, said the model was promised the diamonds by Charles Taylor at a dinner party in 1997. Earlier, the Hollywood actress Mia Farrow said Ms Campbell had told her the day after the party at breakfast about an unusual visit by two men the night before.

"She didn't even sit down before she had said, 'In the middle of the night, these men knocked at my door and they were representatives of Charles Taylor, and he's given me a huge diamond.' That's what I remember. And then she said 'of course, I'm not gonna keep it, I'll give it to Madiba’s children's charity.'"

Linking the former Liberian leader to illegal conflict diamonds is the key to the prosecution's case.

Votes are being counted in the Rwandan presidential election. The incumbent, Paul Kagame, is expected to win by a large majority. The three candidates who stood against him are all allies of his Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front.

You are listening to the World News. It's coming to you from the BBC in London.

A campaign group has warned that a booming dam building project for renewable energy is having a devastating impact on indigenous peoples in many parts of the world. The group, Survival International, says major hydroelectric projects in countries including Brazil, Malaysia and Ethiopia are being carried out without fully consulting indigenous communities. It says many hydroelectric projects threaten indigenous people disproportionately.

The Japanese carmaker Honda is recalling more than 400,000 vehicles in North America to fix a potential problem with the ignition switch on automatic models. In a statement, Honda said that if the switch was warm, the driver could pull out the key after driving without the gear lever in park mode; if the parking brake was off, the car could roll.

The Colombian Vice President Angelino Garzon is having emergency heart surgery after falling ill just two days after he assumed his post. Mr Garzon, who's 63, was said to be conscious and stable when he arrived at hospital, complaining of chest pains. A former trade union leader and regional governor, he was sworn into office by Colombia's new President Juan Manuel Santos on Saturday.

A former British soldier has become the first known person to walk the length of the Amazon, the world's second longest river. Ed Stafford took 859 days to walk from the origin of the Amazon in the mountains of Peru to its mouth on the coast of Brazil, a distance of 6,400 kilometers. During his epic trek, he suffered countless mosquito bites, was wrongly accused of murder and was chased by tribesmen. But in video footage for a documentary, Mr Stafford said the bad times were not nearly as bad as many had predicted.

"Everyone told me I was crazy when I was doing this. I have been told I was gonna be killed so many times, I can't remember how many times. And, but I'm not dead, I’m here now and, yeah, anyone can achieve what they wanna achieve if they work hard enough."

That was Ed Stafford.

And that was the BBC News.