(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.