BBC news 2010-09-14 加文本

BBC news 2010-09-14

BBC News with Kathy Clugston

Cuba has announced plans to lay off huge numbers of state employees in the biggest shift to the private sector since the revolution in 1959. The Cuban labour federation said half a million jobs would go by March, and the total redundancies could exceed a million, one in five of all Cuban workers. James Read reports.

President Raul Castro had already signaled that he wanted to reduce the role of the state to tackle a deep crisis in Cuba's socialist economy, but the scale and speed of the job cuts are much greater than had been expected. A minority of Cubans already work for themselves, and there is a thriving black economy. But the private sector will have to expand hugely to create enough new jobs. In a country famous for its revolution, this is a dramatic change of course.

Reports from Washington say the US administration is expected to announce an arms deal with Saudi Arabia worth $60 billion. The deal, which would be the largest-ever US arms sale, would include advanced fighter jets and military helicopters. Paul Adams reports from Washington.

The United States and Saudi Arabia had been in negotiations for months, and it seems the fruits of those discussions will be announced in the coming days. Off the record, officials say the deal will include 84 new F-15 fighter jets and around 140 Apache and Black Hawk helicopters. The administration is unlikely to encounter much opposition to the sale of weaponry to a traditional ally and will probably argue that it's all part of a strategy to bolster friendly Arab governments in the face of growing strategic threats from Iran.

A day before Middle East peace talks resume in Egypt, a group representing Jewish settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories has threatened to destabilise the Israeli government. The Yesha Council said it would withdraw its support for Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition if it continued to prevent the building of new homes in the territories. Naftali Bennett is a spokesman for settlers in Ra'anana in central Israel.

"If Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government decide to depart and weaken this iron wall that we are building under the mountain range of Judea-Samaria, that means they no longer represent the Israeli public, and therefore it's an illegitimate government."

A partial moratorium on Israeli settlement building is due to expire in under two weeks. The Palestinians say they will walk out of new peace talks if settlement construction resumes.

The software giant Microsoft is changing the way it operates in Russia in response to reports that the Kremlin is using anti-piracy laws as a pretext for police raids on human rights groups and non-governmental organizations. Microsoft's general counsel Brad Smith said the firm would create a new software licence for Russian NGOs in order to prevent what he described as "nefarious actions taken in the guise of anti-piracy enforcement". There has been no response yet from the Russian authorities.

World News from the BBC

A Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a transatlantic flight last December has sacked the defence team at his trial in Detroit. The man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, also asked the judge what the legal procedures would be were he to want to plead guilty to some of the charges. James Reynolds reports from Washington.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab appeared in court in Detroit in front of US District Court Judge Nancy Edmunds. Mr Abdulmutallab asked the judge to let him fire his lawyers. He said they were not representing his interests. The judge told him that this would be unwise, but she allowed him to do so. She also ordered the appointment of a standby lawyer who will be able to advise him but not represent him. The defendant is next expected to appear in court in mid-October.

The Muslim cleric behind plans to build an Islamic cultural centre not far from the site of the 9/11 attacks on New York says he's considering all options in the question of its location. Speaking to the US Council on Foreign Relations, the cleric, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, said the centre would promote religious tolerance and do honour to New York.

At least 33 people are reported to have survived when a Venezuelan airliner on an internal flight crashed near the city of Puerto Ordaz. The local governor said 14 bodies had been found, but four people were still listed as missing. The plane, an ATR-42, belonged to Venezuela's state airline Conviasa.

Engineers in the United States say they've created a cheaper and more versatile form of artificial skin, which is almost as sensitive as the human kind. The teams at Berkeley and Stanford universities say the new skin could give robots and artificial limbs the ability to detect small changes in texture and temperature. The new materials consist of pressure sensors built into or under flexible rubber sheets, which could be easily wrapped around robotic instruments.

BBC News