this is bbc news. the headlines: norfolk police has referred itself to the police watchdog for not responding to an emergency call from a house where a man, woman and two young girls were later found dead. police forcibly entered the home near norwich on friday night after a concerned call from a member of the public. iranian state media says five of iran's revolutionary guards have been killed by an air strike in damascus. syrian activists say at least ten people were killed in the blast, which targeted tehran�*s military advisers. iran has blamed israel for the attack. a bbc verify investigation has uncovered a network of nearly 200 fake social media accounts pushing pro—government messages in uganda. the accounts also target critics of the country's president, sometimes with threats. and ariel the cocker spaniel has successfully had her two extra legs removed months after being dumped outside a supermarket in wales.

now on bbc news, newscast. chris, we're going to have a foreign affairs focus in this episode. what was the most memorable foreign trip you've done as a journalist? can i do two? 0k. and they're at opposite ends of the kind of spectrum. so the first one was being in kosovo when it declared its independence, and seeing the power for a people and a nation of that moment. but it was a contested moment because there were countries around the world that didn't recognise kosovo. serbia in particular was pretty angry about it. so that would be my serious one. and then because news is the full spectrum, the world santa claus congress in copenhagen, which involved hundreds of santas cycling around the danish capital for the hell of it. i remember being on newsround

and going to delhi to cover that festival where everyone throws coloured dye each other. but for some reason, we didn't factor in enough time for us to get showered and clean our clothes before the next stage of our trip, which was japan. so we had to get on the plane and arrive injapan just completely covered in coloured dye. anyway, we'll discuss quandaries, dilemmas and trade—offs in this episode of newscast. newscast from the bbc. hello, it's adam in the studio. and it's chris in the studio. and we're going to be talking a lot about what's happening in the rest of the world. so to help us understand that, we've roped in some real experts. we've got christina lamb, who's chief foreign correspondent at the sunday times. hello. and we're alsojoined by simon fraser, who was the chief civil servant at the foreign office. hello. hello, hi. chris, all our minds at westminster have been kind of in rwanda this week, because of the government's legislation getting

through the house of commons. and rishi sunak sort of did a press conference on thursday morning to pat himself on the back about it. he did, really, yeah, because he's had the last couple of days a bit like the couple of days we had before christmas, where lots of his own side were effectively saying, "we don't think your plan is going to work". and he had three really big rebellions, 60ish of his own mps backing proposed changes that didn't clear the house of commons because it was only those rebels who were endorsing them. but that's an assault on the prime minister's authority. then you got to the big vote — does the commons accept the government's idea in its entirety or not? and the rebellion shrivelled to just 11. i think a lot of conservative mps in the end thought inflicting a defeat on the prime minister and shredding the rwanda the plan in its entirety in an election year, not such a good idea was their conclusion. not least because the vast majority of conservatives think that the rwanda idea is a good one. they're just arguing about how to make it functional, how to make it work. and so, yeah, the prime minister

came out today to effectively say, phew, you know, it's still a goer. but the oddity with it as an argument and indeed as a policy is that we're sort of nearly two years in now to this being government policy, and we still can't, and he, the prime minister, still cannot answer, when will it actually happen? because it's got to go to the house of lords next. there's the prospect potentially of legal challenges after that. so it wasn't really a celebration of victory, it was a celebration of the absence of defeat, really from the prime minister's perspective, and a chance for him to actually make an argument in labour's direction rather than looking over his shoulder and hearing all the noise from his backbenches. simon, there was a little civil service kind of side bar to this story yesterday, which was this sort of almost them being given the green light to go ahead and break international law if their political masters tell them to as a result... i don't think it was quite that, - it was politicians giving themselves the right to go ahead _ and potentially break international

law, and in a sense, - exonerating civil servants if that was the case. so it was a bit like, you know, sometimes this happens - with public spending — - if the civil servants don't think it's good value for money, they get something called | a ministerial directive. |and in a way, this is a politicalj version of that, saying the civil servants give the advice, - but they will follow the decision made by the politicians. it's not hugely satisfactory, but i guess it gives the civil servants some cover. christina, as a foreign correspondent, you must go to places that have their own migration stories all the time. is there something in common with all the places you go about how people feel about migration? or do you look at the rwanda discussion here in britain, and thatjust seems totally unique and very british? well, it's interesting, because a story that hasn't had much coverage considering the scale of it — pakistan has been forcibly deporting afghan refugees. it has got more than three million afghan refugees. it will be the world's biggest forcible deportation. when you talk to pakistani officials

and say, "how can you do this, these people have lived there years, some of them have never even lived in afghanistan, they've been born in pakistan?" they say, "well, you're sending people to rwanda". right, 0k. except we're not. well, yeah! simon, does that sort of thing... does that travel, does that affect the uk's reputation? and also, if people get maybe get the wrong end of the stick about it as well? i think the rwanda thing is probably is affecting our reputation _ because people are sort of wondering what's going on, partly. _ it's a competence issue as much as anything. . i mean, you can hear the chaos of not necessarily... well, i think there's a little bit of that. | and of course, the fact is, - as chris said, the policy hasn't actually worked so far, - so that's open to question. but, you know, people look at it, it's not the end of the world, - but it doesn't help. 0k, right, let's think back to sunday when lord cameron, the foreign secretary, was on laura kuenssberg's show and he had this big warning about what might happen this year. it's hard to remember a more unstable and dangerous and uncertain world.

you know, very much the lights from where i sit in the foreign office, the red lights on the global dashboard are very much flashing. i wonder what each of you make of that — that idea that lord cameron was suggesting there of this being a particular moment in terms of, as he put it, the red lights flashing, when we look at the international arena. as a war correspondent, it feels like that. i mean, i've been doing thisjob for more than 35 years. i started in the late '805. and when i started out, the berlin wall was just coming down, lots of dictatorships in latin america had just ended. lots of countries in eastern europe becoming independent. everything seemed to be going in the right direction. the peace dividend, end of history, all of that. i honestly don't remember a year like the last year. i mean, it was bad enough, you know, it's only two and a half years since the taliban took over in afghanistan, and we were all like outraged and shocked. everyone's now forgotten that.

and that was the biggest humiliation to nato that there had ever been. and then we had ukraine. and then i was in ukraine in october when suddenly i start seeing all this breaking news from israel, and now it's the houthis. and you sort of feel like, you know, where next? i really don't remember a time like this. it feels relentlessly grim. simon, was there a naivety io, 20, 30 years ago around that kind of end of history idea, the idea that perhaps the world was on this remorseless path towards liberal democracy everywhere? well, there probably was. but, you know, it was- a particular moment in history. you know, we were, in a sense, - celebrating the end of the cold war, which we won, basically. we may not have handled - the aftermath very well, but, you know, the world did open up to trade and economic growth. . and there was an awful lot of good. things that happened in that period. but it was probably naive | to think that it could last. but i have a slightly. different take on this, i think, from christina, i because if you look back when i was permanent secretary in the foreign office actually, i which was when david cameron -

was prime minister, we had all sorts of stuff kicking off all the time. we had libya, we had syria, - we had iraq, we had, you know, all those crises going on. we had ukraine, of. course, in that time. so i'm not sure how different, how much worse it is. - i think the issue at the moment is that we feel less comfortablej about managing instability because the system, - the international system, is weaker, it's eroded, i american power is weaker. russia is behaving in a different way. j china has become a more assertive i proponent of a different approachl to running the world, _ so i think that's part of the issue. we feel less confident - in our ability to deal with it. yeah, and there's less trust in international institutions. and it does feel like the leadership isn't quite up to what it was in the past. but i do feel as somebody that sort of gets sent off to all these places that i'm being sent off in different directions a lot more. i mean, the things you're talking about seemed to sort of go on for longer, we had more warning that things were going to happen.

is that erosion of trust that you talk about in international institutions, is that a consequence of perhaps wider scepticism that there is in institutions per se, or does it say something about the nature of how those institutions were set up, perhaps in the post—war era, and they're showing their age now? i think it's a combination of those things. i mean, definitely there is generally a lack of trust. we've seen that in the media too, you know, we've realised that you can't take democracy for granted, that all sorts of things can happen and people like trump can get elected in the united states. but, yeah, i do think that alsojust, you know, the international institutions have not handled any of these things very well, too. let's zoom in on one thing that's happening in particular, which is that the strikes on the houthi rebels in northern yemen, because they were attacking

shipping going through the red sea. is that a good tactic that the us and the uk are pursuing? because we were chatting to a shipping expert on a previous episode, and she said actually the amount of shipping going through the shipping lanes has gone down significantly since the military action started. yeah, but the shippingj was going down before the military action as well. and i think the question here you have to ask, . people were very concerned about it, the strikes were happening _ and people were saying, "oh, dear, what's the consequence of this - going to be, it's going to escalate further." l i think it's a bit difficult then to say, well, if the us - and the uk take action, coordinating with other| countries to then say, well, you shouldn't do that, - that's not right. i personally think it was i a reasonable policy choice. i think it's too early to sayl whether it's going to work. and of course, it carries risks, . but it's not an unreasonable thing to do, and i think it's defensible in international law. _ let's talk about donald trump, and a world in which let's imagine he becomes the next president of the united states. through the prism of how he might

approach foreign policy, i'm conscious this is a conversation that there's plenty of mileage in potentially, what would you sort of point to instinctively would be the first thing you'd be looking at, in terms of what might change under a second—term donald trump presidency? we were talking at the beginning about the biggest risks in foreign policy — i mean, that really probably is the single biggest risk. i mean, in the first term, he didn't do as much damage perhaps as people feared, because he had some sensible people around him reining him back. he, you know, had talked about pulling out of nato. there were, you know, a number of trigger happy things that he wished to do. but this time around, you know, he's already said it's going to be about revenge and retribution. and he may well decide... he's already talked about ending the war in ukraine, not supporting ukraine. i know that lots of people

in yourformer office, simon, are busy trying to get things agreed before the us elections because, you know, they've no idea what he might do. is there a counter—argument that says that if he is somehow the electoral personification, were he to win, of that distrust or lack of trust in some international institutions, that if a trump presidency helps sort of remould them, perhaps in a way that some might find very uncomfortable, but helps remould them, to make them, as some might see it, more fit for the 2020s, then that's no bad thing? i don't really see how that| happens because actually, i mean, we were talking - about international institutions. they were built basically- on the basis of american power and sort of american view of the world, which there | was a certain amount of buy—in to. that buy—in no longer exists, and trump himself is one - of the reasons why it no longer exists. - and therefore the idea that you can i remould international institutionsl and get international cooperation with america sitting _ on the sidelines seems to me to be pretty far—fetched. -

i think on trump, i'm not sure, you know, after he's elected, i let's see what he does. but the thing that really worries me for the year ahead is ukraine, - because i think the russians are sort of reasserting - their position on the battlefield. it's clear that ukraine is getting exhausted. j i support for ukraine is in questionl in washington, possibly in europe. we've got elections in europe which could throw up some i different perspectives. and trump is certainly going to put | on the table the question of nato.| so if you look at that. as a western european, you're looking at a pretty difficult cocktail of issues which we need i to really wake up to. and i don't think we've sufficiently woken up. i and putin is kind of banking on that, isn't he? he thinks if he can... play the long game. what's your ultimate fear, simon, as far as ukraine is concerned? well, my fear is that we have - a strategic reverse for our foreign policy for the west, i combined with a sort of disintegration or further sort of erosion of the concept -

of the west with trump i coming in, which actually is a strategic problem for us. it doesn't mean that, . you know, russian tanks will necessarily roll into kyiv. it means, however, that you get- to a point where you have some sort of settlement in ukraine, which is actually not - advantageous, not on our terms. it's a reverse. and then where do you go from there? also, europeans are going to be i faced with some really interesting and difficult questions i about defence spending and how they cooperate. we will do that in nato. of course, we can't do it within the eu any more, j but those questions will face the incoming government, . whatever flavour it is in the uk. right, now we're going to magically go to switzerland because it's the world economic forum in davos at the top of the mountain where lots of ceos and politicians rub shoulders and have, seems to me, lots of lunches. itjust looks like a very lunchy place. and there for the labour party are rachel reeves, the shadow chancellor,

and jonathan reynolds, the shadow business secretary. they've been on something that some people have christened the fondue offensive. and so i gotjonathan reynolds to break away from the fondue to chat to us. shadow business secretary, hello! hello from davos. how cold is it there, by the way? it's not too bad. it gets quite cold on an evening, but in the day it's been ok. i mean, obviously this time of year isn't too warm in stalybridge and hyde, so i'm quite used to wrapping up properly. and i'm guessing you don't have time to do any skiing because you've got so many high level meetings. well, i've never been a skier, so that wouldn't be of interest to me. but it's true, it's been a busy time. i mean, the thing here is the calibre of person you're meeting, it's not too different to what you would get access to in the uk, but you have so many people here and the chance to meet so many people at pace and build those relationships. obviously you want to, in my position, ideally use those if you get to be the actual secretary of state for business and trade, it's very, very good for that. so it's been busy, but it's been a really successful few days. and are people saying, oh, we've got loads of money,

we want to invest in the uk, but we're not doing it and giving reasons. there's a part of that. there is a part of that. i mean, rachel reeves and myself being here is really about flying the flag for the uk. obviously the government, cabinet ministers have had to pull out of a lot of their events because of the shenanigans around rwanda where their own backbenchers, they need to balance out those votes. so we've been the principal uk presence here and that is significant. a lot of people talk about the good things the uk has, whether that's in tech, financial services or our great universities. but there is a sense of things holding those investment decisions back. we think we're the answers to part of that. whether that's fixing the planning system, a closer relationship with the european union, the chance to have more ambition on climate and the transition to things like our green prosperity fund and our national wealth fund that would sit under that. so it's been a great conversation. so people are optimistic about the uk, but there is, i'm afraid, a sense that the uk government, that uk politics has, over the last few years, been holding some of those prospects back and we want to fix that and they want to see those things fixed.

i'm glad you mentioned the planning system because that's obviously one of the big things that you're offering to change. and i won't ask a stupid question like, how are you going to change the planning system, because that's a huge question. butjust give me one concrete example to, if you pardon the pun, of a change to the planning system, that means we will build, i don't know, more renewable energy or more data centres or more laboratory space or whatever. just one thing that you would absolutely change. well, i'd start with housing and have housing targets. that's the concrete thing. we've got them already. that story a few weeks ago that the... well, we haven't got enough houses. we've got, you know, the majority of young adults in the uk now living with their parents as opposed to having their own place. so housing targets is part of that. the specific things on infrastructure are things like the streamlining of the environmental regulations you submit for major infrastructure projects. i know it sounds technical and dry, but at the heart of that is how you speed up the process so you've got a quicker, more transparent system. so when we say we're going to build things in the uk,

you've got some confidence you can do those. i don't know if people know this, but the average length of time for, say, an offshore wind farm is 13 to m years from conception to getting it built. that is extraordinary and it does have to change. you're there with rachel reeves, the shadow chancellor. she was talking to the telegraph and the way they've interpreted her remarks in the paper today is that, actually, when it comes to cutting taxes on working people, that would also include quite wealthy people as well. is that how we should interpret her remarks? well, look at the words that rachel said. so she said the tax burden is at record levels. she's correct in saying that. she said it's at record levels, not because public services are doing well and they're handsomely funded, it's because growth in the economy has been so low. so she said she wants that burden to come down. she made very clear it is working people that is the priority for the labour party. around that, but the point we're trying to get across here is we're in davos, we're at the world economic forum trying to get investment in the uk, trying to sell the benefits a labour government would bring, because if you increase

business investment, you have better productivity and you have better growth and therefore you're able to look to the future and reduce the burden on working people. so that's the message that we're trying to get across. but we really do believe we can make the economy grow faster than it has done under the last ilt years. it's been a really, really poor historical period for the uk in terms of how stagnant the economy has been. but that means the job we've got involves being here at the world economic forum to make that case. you mentioned the green prosperity fund, that's often kind of labelled as the spending £28 billion a year on net—zero projects and renewable energy and infrastructure and things like that. what's the latest kind of version of what that £28 billion is? because it's sort of, it's evolved over time, hasn't it? well, look, it is fair to say we are more ambitious on notjust climate and the transition, but how we get the benefits to the uk of that transition. and we think public investment is essential to bring in a much higher amount, a much stronger degree of private investment. the government themselves

don't disagree with that. i mean, look at the decisions around things like the tata battery factory for electric vehicles in somerset. there's a big amount of public money going in to bring that investment in. but we've always said that's notjust money on top of what the government is spending. you've got to ramp it up over time. i mean, the government themselves are spending about 8 to 10 billion, depending on your definition, in this area. and of course, fundamentally what we want is to explain that policy to the public, not through how much it costs, but what it delivers. and for me, a really important thing is to say, you know, decarbonisation can't mean deindustrialisation, it can't mean outsourcing your steel industry, your ceramics industry to other parts of the world. you're going to need a significant government commitment to do that, but we want it defined by what it will do and what it will deliver for the country and for working people. so we're trying to get that message across, but we're more ambitious on public investment and on the transition than the conservative party, there is no doubt about that. looking back at the history of that pledge, though, do you think it could have been introduced in a different way because it has opened you up to the accusation from the tories

that you would have to borrow an extra 20 billion a year, whatever it ends up being, to fund it. and that is based on kind of how it was initially presented when rachel reeves mentioned it at a conference speech a few years ago. well, look, i think we accept the policy defined by a sum of money you want or otherwise don't want to spend isn't ideal but that speech got across the scale of our ambition. our ambition is to make the transition in the uk something that really delivers betterjobs, a betterfuture, more resilience for the uk. so there's no point looking to the past, but it's how you kind of explain that going into an election which i think is the most important thing. and, as i say, i look across, you know, the things that are directly within my portfolio, particularly in terms of heavy industry, hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, we're going to need a significant government commitment to do that and businesses themselves recognise that and they want to see that ambition, they want a partner on the government side. so, look, we'll always accept we have a job to do in order to get across to the public what a labour government would be about.

but, you know, when i look back over the last few years, i see a labour party that has transformed its prospects by facing up to the challenges that we had in 2019. so i'm pretty optimistic about the job we've done today and about the job we can do in future. reading between the lines of what you said there, i would be doing you a favour as a journalist if i stopped saying £28 billion, wouldn't i? because that's become a bit of an albatross around your neck. well, i want to, as the shadow business secretary, i want to be talking about what would green steel look like. how would that be a better deal for people, whether they work at port talbot or in scunthorpe? i would like to be talking about our ambitions. we've got a great automotive sector in the united kingdom. we're going to need sufficient battery capacity for electric vehicles as that transition takes place. i want to be talking about it in those terms. now look, i understand it's known in this way and i'm very comfortable in saying we've got the ambition to make this work for the uk and that is how we will do it. i'll be honest, on the conservative attacks, i mean, look, the conservative party has essentially caused such a shock to how they managed the economy

in that liz truss and kwasi kwarteng period that every person with a mortgage in the uk is still paying for that. i mean, my mortgage... no, not every person, people who... ..june of this year i will not get the 2%. yeah, it's not everyone, though. it's only people whose fixed—term deals are coming to an end. there's plenty of people on five year fixes, say, who won't be affected, so it's not every mortgage holder. yeah, but i'm on a five—year fixed. i'm on a five—year fixed that will have to be renewed this year and there'll be a cost to that. i don't think i will get the 2% that i am currently paying. so look, for them to lecture us, to try and attack us on debt, on managing the economy when we've had this period, you know, really an unprecedented period of british history for a stagnant, low level of growth, terrible productivity figures, you know, real consequences, real, real world consequences for people's wages and living standards because of that. and just on fujitsu, the it company that's at the heart of the post office scandal, they've said today that they're not going to bid for any other government contracts while the post office scandal

inquiry is under way. would you welcome that or is actually thatjust a bit of a gesture? because actually, you know what? what if fujitsu were going to be the cheapest people for a contract and the government ends up spending more just to sort of, so everyone sort of can feel a bit better? i would welcome that. i think the scale of this, as something we have to learn lessons from as well as put right, in terms of what has happened, is so important. and look, i think this is everything from how the government procures these big contracts to how executive agencies are accountable, what do they tell parliament, what do they tell government, as well as the horrendous circumstances of the issue itself. i very much supported the creation of the sir wyn williams inquiry, so you've got to let that take the evidence, come out with those conclusions. and i've said in parliament the, you know, putting right what has gone wrong for a company like fujitsu, when they answer those questions we need answers to, you know, it's got to be something which addresses the scale of this crisis. i welcome the fact they've

acknowledged that they'll be paying some compensation, they believe, towards this and i think it's notjust about them, it's about how do we procure these contracts in future. but you can't play down the significance of this. it is a really, really bad episode in british government and how the state works and i think we've got to recognise the scale of that in how we go forward. well, thanks for our conversation today and safe travels home. thank you very much. people criticise davos as kind of like some meetings with some skiing attached. but you do get kind of interesting combinations at these things, don't you, simon? you do. i mean, i'm not personally a huge fan of davos, - but i think that those who go there really find it useful. i it's a great networking event. you do get different combinations of people and, you know, - obviously the labour party have | decided it's worth investing in. | you get a real concentration of sort of speed dating, - if you like, at the very highest end of economics. _ lots of brush—bys, as they're called! and that's useful, frankly.

right, you two, thank you both forjoining us for this 30—ish minutes—long one and there'll be another episode along very soon. bye. bye— bye. hello. storm isha looks to be one of the strongest storms of the 23/24 season. it is likely to lead to transport disruption as well as probably damaged power networks. here is the rapidly deepening area of low pressure travelling beneath a powerful atlantic jet stream, and it's this combination that rapidly strengthens this area of low pressure. severe gales will be widespread, and so will a threat of disruption. we'll take a look at that in a bit more detail injust a moment. but first of all, this night, a band of rain pushes eastwards, follows by showers. the south—westerly winds bringing us

relatively mild air. it to 7 degrees celsius, so nowhere near as cold a night as it was for many of the nights that we had last week. a mild start then to sunday, sunshine to start the day in northern and eastern scotland and across most of england and wales. northern ireland sees outbreaks of rain turning heavy quickly and this wet and windy weather will then spread its way northwards and eastwards. the south—southwesterly winds bringing very mild air. the mild air will set off a thaw of the lying snow, which combined with the heavy rain, could bring some concerns with the localised flooding. however, it's the strength of the winds sunday evening, sunday night and into the early hours of monday morning that are cause for concern. storm isha will bring gusts of wind of around 60 to 70 miles an hour quite widely across western areas, maybe 80 miles an hour for northwest wales and perhaps parts of northern ireland. but the strongest winds will be going across scotland, where we could see gusts reaching 85 miles an hour across the north and west, maybe even a little bit stronger than that. now, the amber warning in scotland for storm isha is in the highest

impact column weather—wise. if the likelihood or confidence grows, then we may well see a red weather warning follow. so, in other words, stay in touch with the latest forecasts because there could be updates to the weather warnings as we go through sunday. it then gets very windy for a time sunday night across parts of the coast of southeast england, that will likely disrupt the ferries. and then from monday, we're looking at a very blustery day. the strong winds very slow to ease down. a day of sunshine and heavy thundery showers. some of the showers turning to snow across the high scottish mountains. it will feel a colder kind of day with temperatures ranging between eight and 11 degrees celsius. it then looks like we'll see more rain come our way for tuesday. wednesday, drier and sunnier. in the short term, though, please pay attention to the warnings for storm isha.

live from london. this is bbc news. norfolk police refers itself to the police watchdog for not responding to an emergency call from a house where a man, woman and two young girls were laterfound dead. iran's revolutionary guards now say five of their members were killed in an air strike on damascus, which they're blaming on israel. british communications regulator ofcom is reviewing whether to allow the royal mail postal service to end saturday deliveries. a bbc verify investigation has uncovered a network of nearly 200 fake social media accounts pushing pro—government messages in uganda. and ariel the cocker spaniel has succesfully had her two extra legs removed months after being dumped outside a supermarket in wales. we speak to one of the surgeons.

hello, i'm frankie mccamley.