BBC在线收听下载:日本政府残疾员工数量造假

BBC News with Sue Montgomery.

Russia's Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has announced the country's biggest military exercise since Soviet times amid heightened Western concerns about Russian aggression. Mr. Shoigu said the Vostok-2018 war games would involve nearly 300,000 troops, 3,6000 tanks and armored personnel carriers and more than 1000 aircraft. Sarah Rainsford reports from Moscow. President Putin is expected to visit Vostok to inspect the troops in his role as Russia's commander-in-chief. Beyond being a test of military readiness, an exercise on this scale is clearly also intended to impress. The announcement comes as relations between Moscow and the West have slumped to their lowest point since the Cold War, and with concerns about Russian aggression at a new height. At one stage, Vostok-2018 would involve Russian troops in joint exercises with the Chinese and Mongolian militaries.

The French Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot has announced his resignation in a live radio interview without telling President Emmanuel Macron or the Prime Minister Edouard Philippe beforehand. From Paris, here's Hugh Schofield. A veteran environmental campaigner famous for his globe-trotting TV programme and his boyish good looks, Nicolas Hulot was an important catch for President Macron, but fourteen months in government seem to have disabuse him of the usefulness of ministerial office. In a radio interview, Mr. Hulot said that on a range of promises protecting biodiversity, reducing carbon emissions, banning pesticides, no real progress had been made，and that as minister, his work was constantly made subordinate to the overriding interests of the economy and agriculture. He was also clearly upset by gestures offered this week by President Macron to France's powerful hunting lobby.

The Japanese government has admitted that it's been inflating the number of disabled people as employees to make it look as though it had fulfilled legal quotas. More from our Asia Pacific editor Michael Bristow. Ministries and agencies had said they hired nearly seven thousand people with disabilities, but an investigation found that half of those were not disabled. In one case, someone with diabetes was included. One minister with a disabled son said she was shocked to hear the figures have been inflated. The Japanese government has now apologized for not meeting its own target. The law says more than two percent of its employees should be disabled.

BBC news.