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" The National Union of Journalists has criticised the &amp;quot;brutal attack&amp;quot; on BBC World Service, after the division confirmed plans to cut 650 jobs and shut five foreign services. Today, World Service announced its strategy for achieving savings of around \u00A346m a year by 2014 as it faces up to a 16% cut to its grant-in-aid funding from the UK&amp;#039;s Foreign &amp;amp;amp; Commonwealth Office. The BBC will take over funding for World Service from 2015. Under the cost saving proposals, World Service will shut down the Macedonian, Albanian and Serbian services, along with English for the Caribbean and Portuguese for Africa.  The global broadcaster will also close 480 posts from its more than 2,000-strong work force over the next year. By 2015, the number of job losses is expected to reach 650, although some of the closures may be offset by new posts created during the period. BBC World Service is targeting cost reductions and efficiencies across the board, particularly in support areas where there will be average cuts of 33%. Further savings are expected to come from the move to the refurbished BBC Broadcasting House in 2012. The cuts will also involve an end to all radio programming in the following languages: Azeri, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Spanish for Cuba, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Ukrainian. World Service expects that audiences will fall by more than 30 million from the current weekly level of 180 million as a result of the changes. BBC global news director Peter Horrocks described the cuts as a &amp;quot;painful day&amp;quot; for World Service and the people who rely on its services around the world every week.  &amp;quot;We are making cuts in services that we would rather not be making. But the scale of the cut in BBC World Service&amp;#039;s grant-in-aid funding is such that we couldn&amp;#039;t cope with this by efficiencies alone,&amp;quot; said Horrocks. &amp;quot;What won&amp;#039;t change is the BBC&amp;#039;s aim to continue to be the world&amp;#039;s best-known and most trusted provider of high quality impartial and editorially independent international news. We will continue to bring the BBC&amp;#039;s expertise, perspectives and content to the largest worldwide audience, which will reflect well on Britain and its people.&amp;quot; However, trade union the NUJ described the cuts as a &amp;quot;brutal attack on a valued and vital national service&amp;quot;. Jeremy Dear, the NUJ general secretary, said that journalists and BBC employees are &amp;quot;rightly angered at the destruction being caused to a broadcasting service of which the UK should be proud&amp;quot;. Dear added: &amp;quot;The diversity of staff and their presence in so many key locations around the world contributes to making the BBC World Service the leading voice in international broadcasting. &amp;quot;At its best the World Service can challenge corruption, expose human rights abuses and promote democratic values. By cutting the service the government will cut British influence in the rest of the world, and cuts will also be deeply damaging for objective quality news services around the globe.&amp;quot; The NUJ will stage a demonstration today outside of the World Service headquarters at Bush House in central London to protest against the cuts. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/media/news/a300322/nuj-slams-brutal-world-service-cuts/>