World News from the BBC
A week after taking office, the new Democrat Governor of California, Jerry Brown, has announced deep spending cuts. Mr Brown inherited a $28bn budget deficit. The budget proposal must be agreed by the state legislature. Peter Bowes reports from Los Angeles.
Jerry Brown says he plans to
slash
spending by more than $12bn. The cuts will include an 8%-10% reduction in take-home pay for most state workers. The governor acknowledged that the cuts would be painful, but he said they had no choice. "For 10 years," he said, "we've had budget gimmicks and tricks that have pushed the state deep into debt." Governor Brown added that he'd planned a
radical
restructuring of state government. He said it was time to return California to fiscal responsibility.
The trial has begun in the United States of the
veteran
Cuban opposition militant and former CIA agent, Luis Posada Carriles. He is accused of lying to US immigration officials. Mr Posada Carriles is wanted in Venezuela and Cuba over several deadly bomb attacks and plots to kill the former Cuban President Fidel Castro. Cuba and Venezuela have repeatedly accused Washington of harbouring a convicted terrorist.
The Spanish government has rejected the latest ceasefire declaration made by the Basque separatist organisation Eta. The Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said the offer didn't go far enough, and that only Eta's complete