BBC在线收听下载:美韩宣布停止大规模联合军演

Hello, I'm Rosemary Crick with the BBC News.

South Korea has confirmed that large-scale annual military exercises with the United States are to end. The war games which have always infuriated North Korea will be replaced with smaller-scale drills. Steve Jackson reports. For decades, the United States and South Korea have held joint military exercises, which have always triggered an irate response from the North. At one time, the biggest of these drills, known as Foal Eagle, involved almost a quarter of a million soldiers. Pyongyang accused its enemies of planning for an invasion. After President Trump's first summit with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un last year, some exercises were suspended. But now in spite of the failure of their second summit last week, the biggest of the military drills are to end. Future maneuvers will be on a small scale to avoid inflaming tensions with North Korea.

A month after the deadly collapse of a dam in Brazil, the head of the mining company responsible has resigned. Fabio Schvartsmant had little choice after federal prosecutors recommended that he and several other senior executives of the mining giant Vale be removed. More than three hundred people died when the dam burst and a vast area was engulfed in toxic mud. Employees arrested as part of an official investigation said the company knew that the structure of the dam was compromised.

The Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido who is in Ecuador has called for new protests against the government of Nicolas Maduro on Monday and Tuesday. Mr. Guaido, the self-declared interim president of Venezuela said he would return home to take part although he faces the prospect of arrest. He defied a Supreme Court travel ban by crossing into Colombia a week ago to help coordinate foreign aid deliveries which Mr. Maduro rejected as part of a US-led plot to affect regime change.

Police in Mexico say gunmen have killed four people and injured ten others at a birthday party in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas. Witnesses described five or six people with rifles who arrived in a van and opened fire at the party in a function room.

Australia has criticized foreign companies involved in an oil spill that threatens the world's largest raised coral atoll in the Solomon Islands. It said there was a lack of action to limit the damage. From Sydney, Phil Mercer reports. At least seventy five tons of heavy fuel oil have spilled from the Solomon trader, a freighter registered in Hong Kong. It was driven into a reef in the Solomon Islands by a tropical cyclone in early February. Australia says the companies involved, including an Indonesian mining firm aren't doing enough to stop about six hundred tons of oil still on board the stricken ship from leaking. Rennell island is home to many species that are found nowhere else.