we asked ian mackenzie in washington if he had been able to establish what was really going on. >> theig issue around this is that nobody is clear on exactly what is going on. the media, the public, and the state department themselves do not know the exact content of the documents. it is believed there could be as many as 3 million of them that were taken off the u.s. government computer system and passed on to the web site wikileaks. the state department officials have been working round the clock in an attempt to mitigate what we're told is the imminent release of the details. phone calls have been made to state department counterparts in a number of foreign governments. we're told the united kingdom is among them. israel, turkey, russia have been receiving the phone calls. the calculation has been made within the state department that an embarrassing and awkward telephone conversation now might go some way toward staving off a far worse situation if the officials overseas were to read the documents on the wikileaks web site. >> that was ian mackenzie in washington. russian politicia

ian mackenzie, bbc news, washington. >> for more on waterboarding, you go to the bbc news website. you will find more details about how effective it can be as an interrogation technique. it is very controversial. we received lots of comments from you about this. remember, you can tell us what you think. president broadcast row of cuba has called the first congress -- president raul castro of cuba has called the first congress to solve the economic problems of cuba. it is supposed to take place every five years but it has been -- that has been a fatal mining accident in july, close to where the 33 miners were -- in she l-- chile close to where the 33 miners were arrested last month. a shipment of radioactive waste has finally reached a storage site in germany. it took a record 92 hours for the german waste to be returned from france where it had been reprocessed. david cameron is on his first is it to china as british prime minister, saying he wants to spread the message that britain is open for business with the world's second largest economy, but he is also expected to raise the i