So much for that ideal gig for Anglophone expat German trainee hacks:

The BBC is cutting the number of correspondents in Germany, Europe’s biggest country by population, just as the nation gears up to host the 2006 World Cup and hold a crucial general election.

As part of director general Mark Thompson‘s swingeing £355m cost-cutting plans, the TV correspondent’s job in the BBC’s Berlin bureau is to be lost – one of 420 posts that will be axed across the news division.

It is understood that Tristana Moore, who has been Berlin correspondent for BBC TV news for the past three years, will be redeployed to another post within the division.

And Frankfurt correspondent Jonathan Charles has already returned to the UK for personal reasons and will not be replaced, according to BBC sources.

This will leave only Ray Furlong manning the Berlin bureau and covering the whole of Germany for TV and radio bulletins, News 24, BBC World, the World Service and online.

Wow. Blanket coverage.

The Washington and Jerusalem bureaux will also lose a correspondent each. I guess nothing particularly important tends to happen in those places anyway.