that the united states and arab leaders agree — there must be an immediate and sustained ceasefire in gaza. secretary blinken is making his sixth trip to the middle east since the israel—gaza war began — he's in egypt's capital of cairo to shore up support for a ceasefire. america's top diplomat said israel needs to do more to allow humanitarian aid into gaza, where he said the entire population faces severe levels of food insecurity. the european union also added to calls for a ceasefire on thursday. take a listen to what mr blinken had to say. there's a clear consensus around a number of shared priorities. first, the need for an immediate and sustained ceasefire with the release of hostages. that would create space to surge more humanitarian assistance to relieve the suffering of many people and to build something more enduring. negotiators continue to work,

the gaps are narrowing, and we are continuing to push for an agreement in doha. it is still difficult work to get there, but i continue to believe it's possible. the us submitted a draft resolution to the un security council, for the first time calling for an immediate ceasefire tied to the release of hostages. the security council is expected to vote on the us draft resolution on friday. our us state department correspondent tom bateman is travelling the middle east with secretary blinken, and sent this report from that conference in cairo. this news conference is wrapping up and antony blinken and the egyptian foreign minister. that concludes this part of antony blinken�*s trip before he heads to tel aviv on friday morning. we've heard here is reiterating the language that we now know is in this security council draft resolution that is to be put to the boat by the us. he's talked

about the need for an immediate ceasefire, linked to the release of hostages. this is the key point about what the americans are talking about now is that they want to get that vote through but it endorses the process that has been going on in doha to try and get a ceasefire and the release of hostages that interaction ago session between israel and hamas in qatar, currently no signs of a breakthrough of that. another moment in this news conference from the egyptian foreign minister, he gave antony blinken a tick off, he talked about the double standards of the international community. notably meeting the us in terms of the international rules —based system, he suggested it was undermined and there was a moral imperative to hold to the international rules of conflict everywhere in the world and in this case it was implying clearly it wasn't and this is

something the west was helping to perpetrate. that was quite a significant moment i thought in this news conference. from here, antony blinken heads to tel aviv friday morning and i think it will be a moment of the americans putting pressure on the israeli's on flooding more aid into gaza and the humanitarian crisis and also about their objection to a full—scale ground assault in the city of rafah. relationship often described as ironclad will be seeing a moment with more stress points emerging on friday. meanwhile on the ground in gaza — heavy fighting continues. israeli forces say they've killed 50 palestinian gunmen around al—shifa hospital in gaza city. combat has raged for several days at the complex, which is crowded with patients and displaced people. i've been speaking to professor nick maynard, who worked as a surgeon at multiple hospitals in gaza. thank you for taking time to come into the studio.

you've been travelling to gaza for several years, since 2010. you were recently at al—aqsa hospital in gaza. can you describe for us the conditions they are, what did you see? thank you for asking me on. they were unimaginably appalling. i've been going to gaza for many years, working in hospitals, operating in the hospitals, teaching doctors and students, and i really thought i would be prepared for what i was going to see, and it was inevitably worse than i could possibly have imagined. in what way, what exactly did you see? the first thing i saw was just the unbelievable overcrowding. al—aqsa hospital has a normal net capacity of about 150, so there were nearly 800 patients there, but all the relatives were there as well, and one of the features of the hospitals in gaza during this war has been that local population migrate to the hospital, because they see it as a place of safety,

which of course they are not actually, but they see them as a place of safety. so i saw perhaps 15, 20,000 people in the immediate surrounds of a hospital, and in the grounds of a hospital, so appalling overcrowding, and then even that we forgot about the minute we started to see the casualties coming in. what has been the effect of the conflict, of the overcrowding on the patients themselves who are in the hospital seeking treatment? two major effects. firstly, the number of casualties coming in completely overwhelms the capacity of the hospital. in the emergency department for example, there were maybe 200 patients coming in a day. often only one or two doctors to deal with them. the ability to triage and prioritise had completely collapsed. there are patients not being triaged who will sometimes die of preventable death simply because there is no capacity to treat them.

the types of injuries we saw were just indescribably terrible. i am a surgeon so i spent two weeks operating on major blast injuries to the abdomen, to the chest and we spent some time in the emergency room and saw awful injuries, awful burns, often to little children, traumatic amputation to little children, some burns created images i will never forget. there has been an ongoing military operation at al—shifa hospital for several days now. israel says it has killed dozens of gunmen around the hospital, claims we have not yet been able to verify. as someone who has been in hospitals, what you make of these claims that hamas uses medical facilities as headquarters essentially come as places to shelter, and what you make the end of israel's response and these rates on places where people like surgeons are doing their duty

and the medical work? so i can talk for my own experience, and that of close colleagues who have been on the ground there, and indeed the experience of the gazan and doctors who have known for many years so i trust implicitly. in the nearly 15 years i've been going to gaza, i have never, ever seen any evidence of hamas militants in the hospitals. al—shifa hospital is a great example. i haven't been there since october 7, since because when i was in gaza over christmas and new year, you couldn't get to it and it had been completely disabled. but i've been to al—shifa in many occasions, i was there as recently as may last year, i have been to every inch of the hospital, i have never had any restricted access to anywhere in the hospital, i have never seen any hamas militants. in the two weeks i was in al—aqsa hospital, i was all over the hospital

all the time and never saw it. so my answer is i can only speak about what i've witnessed, and what my close friends and colleagues have, but none of us, and i have never spoken to a single person who has witnessed military, any hamas members of the hospital. and the evidence that the israelis have provided to demonstrate that is not remotely credible. israel does insist hamas does use these hospitals. hamas does deny it. i know you are here in washington, you have been meeting with lawmakers, what have those discussions been like and what have you been telling lawmakers here in the us? we had two days in the new york with the united nations, and then we are in the middle of a three—day series of meetings in dc. we've had some really productive conversations. i'm here with three us doctors as well, so there's four of us who have all spent considerable amount of time in gaza, and really the main aim of what we have wanted to do was to give witness to exactly what we're seeing, and how

impossible it is to provide any form of health care, really, as a result of the way of the israeli defence are prosecuting this war. it is impossible to provide health care, and i have seen, and i've described two people in dc what i believe the incontrovertible evidence of the direct targeting of hospitals, the direct targeting of health care workers, and what i would describe as the systematic dismantling of the whole infrastructure of the health care system in gaza. of course, israel does say they do not directly target medical facilities. professor nick maynard, 0xford surgeon here in the us, thank you for your time. thank you for asking me. professor maynard is here in washington to meet with lawmakers. and israel's prime minister could soon be doing the same. republican us speaker of the house mikejohnson will invite benjamin netanyahu

to capitol hill to address congress. speakerjohnson didn't provide a timeline on when that may be, but said they are trying to work out schedules. police in haiti say they've killed one of the country's top gang leaders. they say ti greg, the head of the delmas 95 gang, was killed near port—au—prince on thursday after escaping prison in a jail break earlier this month. he ran a gang which controlled an area on the outskirts of the capital. meanwhile, the head of the united nations children's agency, unicef, says it is unable to get enough aid into haiti and that "many, many people" are suffering serious hunger and malnutrition. helicopters bringing aid from the dominican republic are beginning to arrive. but with the airport and sea port in port—au—prince still closed, far more is needed each week. 0ur central america and caribbean correspondent will grant is one of the only internationaljournalists on the ground. he gives us his assessment of the potential food crisis from cap—haitien.

to describe some of the living conditions in port—au—prince as precarious is an understatement — for this woman, particularly tough. the 20—year—old student and her family had to flee their home because of gang violence and now live in a temporary camp inside an abandoned theatre. and on some days, she says, they don't eat at all. "i go to school with no food, spend the day hungry, "and then go to bed with still nothing in my stomach," she says. now she sees no choice but to abandon her studies. but daily struggle to find enough food in haiti is nothing new. the difference now is the scale of the emergency and food insecurity. potentially millions of people are in danger of falling into malnutrition and already don't know when or where their next meal is coming from. there are some success stories.

joseph was dangerously malnourished a few weeks ago, but a local ngo, second mile, was able to hospitalise him and he's thankfully putting on weight. over the years, their residential malnutrition centre has pulled hundreds of children back from the brink. mothers typically spend four weeks at the centre receiving urgent care for their malnourished children and instruction on providing high nutrition on a limited budget. the ngo says it's had huge success with just i% of children being readmitted after they leave. with aid still barely making it into haiti, this work is crucial, but the ngo fears mistakes of the 2010 earthquake disaster response could be repeated in this crisis. a lot of these larger ngos fly in and fly out and they're handed all of these supplies and all of these aid, and suddenly all of these funds to now hire all these people. you're actually hiring from all of these local ngos

when you could just help pay their staff members and give them the aid to distribute. tilling the land in haiti is dry, thankless work. climate change has meant crops of maize and beans often yield poor harvests or fail altogether. as haiti unravels, it's clear malnutrition is no longer a temporary or passing crisis here, and aid alone won't solve it. rather, it's becoming the norm — another part of the country's dire new reality. will grant, bbc news, haiti. the us filed a landmark lawsuit against apple, which accuses the tech giant of monopolising the smartphone market and crushing competition. the justice department alleges that apple used its control of the iphone to illegally limit competitors and consumer options. 0ther complaints in the suit allege apple blocks the presence of cloud gaming services on the app third—party

digital wallets by blocking financial institutions the functionality of smartwatches not made by the company. apple denies the claims and is vowing to "vigorously" fight the lawsuit. our business correspondent michelle fleury has the latest from new york. more than a billion of us around the world own an iphone. for many people it's almost unthinkable that they would use any other sort. for me, apple works a little bit better than android. i have had an android before. it didn't do too well with me. it's just what my parents always got me and it'sjust easy to stick with it. the rest of my family also has an iphone so they're - just very compatible. all of which makes it one of the most successful companies. last year sales ofjust iphone made it more than £150 billion in revenues. that much profit, as well as so many customers, tends to attract the attention of government officials. and now the us department ofjustice, along with 16

different states, has filed a lawsuit against apple. as our complaint alleges, apple has maintained a monopoly power in the smartphone market not simply by staying ahead of the competition on the merits, but by violating federal antitrust law. apple denies the accusations, saying in a statement... leaving apple in the us government headed for a lengthy argument in court over whether the tech giant is protecting its customers or making it difficult for them to leave. even very popular companies that make stuff that we care about have to compete for that loyalty that we have, and that apple isn't doing that. and i think this

is the last in four major lawsuits that we're seeing against american tech companies and it is a deliberate attempt to kind of reinvigorate antitrust law enforcement in america. apple argues this case will hurt its ability to create the kind of technology people have come to expect from it. a court will now decide. michelle fleury, bbc news, new york. around the world and across the uk. this is bbc news. let's look at a top story in the uk. millions of women who weren't properly warned about the increase in their state pension age should be compensated. those are the findings of a new report by the parliamentary and health service 0mbudsman. it says the department of work and pensions should apologise to women who expected to be able claim their state pension at the age of 60. the age actually changed to 65 in 2010. 0ur political editor chris mason has more on the political realities of payment.

any government attempted to try to sort this out it is confronted by a big a blunt truth. it will cost a vast amount, back in 2019, webber offered compensation, that if they won the general election that's what they would do. —— labour. they were crushed in the general election and are now much more cautious and so too are conservatives. campaigners say they want a payout of around £10,000 for each woman affected. the government said it would consider the report and respond in due course. you're live with bbc news. the clock is ticking for us lawmakers to avoid a government shutdown. in less than 2a hours members of the house of representatives will vote on a $1.2 trillion bipartisan spending package that was unveiled on thursday. party leaders are urging senators to pass the legislation as congress has already passed four temporary funding bills since the beginning of the fiscal year to avoid

a government shutdown. a short while ago i spoke to chief campaign and election correspondent for cbs, bob costa. great to have you as always. the house of building tomorrow morning on this $1.2 trillion spending bill to keep the government open, the deadline is in a little over 2a hours. what are the odds gets done and congress will avoid this partial government shutdown? in an election year republicans and democrats are trying to avoid a government shutdown because they feel behind—the—scenes they would pay it with a good price but mikejohnson is facing enormous pressure from house conservatives about this deal, they are unhappy about it and they are unhappy about it and they don't like the weird shipments bored with the details of the last 2a hours without going over everything without going over everything with the right flank. this is a constant refrain for speaker johnson. how does it keep the government funded, seeming like his governing responsibly as he tries to help the gop to voters

this fall. but keep the republicans who ousted his predecessor kevin mccarthy from the speakership with him. this bill has a small— the speakership with him. this bill has a small part of it, it would be a one—year ban on direct funding to the un palestinian aid agency, we saw the prime minister benjamin netanyahu addressing republicans are not democrats. we seeing a split right now between the two parties in terms of how to best approach the conflict in does it? there is definite we are split. a public and is built this report relationship of the most part with benjamin netanyahu over the past couple of decades. those real relationships that we many of these veteran republicans on foreign policy fronts with the israeli brightness and are able to him not only into the oven scores for republicans but house conservatives i think even as benjamin netanyahu has all the criticism for how he is handling the war with hamas must republicans on capitol hill refraining from taking him on in any critical way. there

is some concern here and there but it's balk at scattered. democrats meanwhile broadly support israel but increasingly critical of how netanyahu's critical of how neta nyahu's handling critical of how netanyahu's handling the war, his own conduct and has become a divide in the body byjust how to handle israel especially in an election year when many progressives are wary ofjoe biden. the issue in particular is a thorn in the sight ofjoe biden�*s re— election campaign with his own party. we hope those comments from chuck schumer that the top democrat in the senate. i want to talk about the apple lawsuit by the justice department, something you have been paying attention to as well as come to the political side because we even saw in the state of the union address from joe biden he was really against things like shrink flesh and, these hidden junkies. is this also potentially may be a strategy by the white house to say we are on your side when it comes to these consumer issues? if there are two issues behind joe biden�*s real action camp that deserve more attention it would be the labour movement and how

joe biden is really counting on the united auto workers and it is sean penn and other related groups to come out and mobilise for him, the other issue under the radar is anti—trust. it was into the set of the union address, anti—trust enforcement is a key theme because it enables democrats to take on corporate america. knowing republicans like donald trump making overtures to working voters across the country saying anger other party now working people. that republican strategy, you seejoe biden and his allies in the administration like ftc chair, they're issuing a flurry of lawsuits against corporations ably buy out of with anti—trust law, jonathan kanter of the law, jonathan ka nter of the justice law, jonathan kanter of the justice department doing the same. this is something that shows people that this is an activity ministration for some of these progressive causes especially when it comes to the role of the corporation, how it can merge and how big some of these giants are. the ohio

senator is praising the ftc because he himself has concerns about the size and scope and power of technology.- power of technology. donald trum- power of technology. donald trum is power of technology. donald trump is really _ power of technology. donald trump is really looking - power of technology. donald trump is really looking at. trump is really looking at serious money issues, legal bills are partly not only is having trouble finding a bond for a civilfraud case. his being out fund raised politically byjoe biden. is money going to be a crucial part of the next seven months of this campaign? it’s part of the next seven months of this campaign?— of this campaign? it's money across so _ of this campaign? it's money across so many _ of this campaign? it's money across so many fronts. - of this campaign? it's money across so many fronts. any l across so many fronts. any personal front he needs to secure the bond for hundreds of millions of dollars and if he does not, starting next week, the new york attorney general could begin to see some of his prized properties like a0 wall st, trump tower, 70 properties around new york in the suburbs of new york city. they will take potentially a real hit at his own business adapters back to his father. at the same time

joe biden is on the west coast this week in dallas having big fundraisers and raising a lot of money. billionaires who have supported republicans like nikki haley in the past is showing up at biden fundraisers. joe biden raising a lot of money with his campaignjust as trump a lot of money with his campaign just as trump is dealing with legal fees and trying to deal at the same time politically. trying to deal at the same time politically-— politically. always great to have you _ politically. always great to have you here, _ politically. always great to have you here, thank- politically. always great to have you here, thank you. | let's turn to some other news from around the world. 16 states here in the us have filed a lawsuit challenging the biden administration's ban on new applications for the export of liquefied natural gas. the republican—led states argue the federal government lacks the authority to deny those permits. texas�* attorney—general said the ban damaged the us economy, and would limit supplies to european allies who are trying to stop using russian gas. president zelenskyy is renewing calls for more military aid from western nations amidst more russian missile attacks. it comes as eu leaders met for a conference in brussels

on thursday to discuss getting more weapons to ukrainian forces, while also re—arming their own countries in the face of an emboldened vladimir putin in russia. the eu also, approved for the balkan nation, bosnia and herzegovina, to start membership negotiations. an ai tool being tested by the nhs in the uk successfully caught tiny signs of breast cancer in 11 woman that was missed by doctors. that tool is called mia. it analysed the mammograms of over 10,000 women. the signs it caught were tumours that were practically invisible to the human eye, and might not have been caught until the progressed. and before we go, a story of a lucky find against all the odds. richard brock in the uk found this 6a—gram nugget of gold on farmland during an organized dig. it's thought to be the largest such piece of gold ever found on english soil. and it almost never happened. brock was an hour late

to the dig, and his metal detector wasn't working properly. the nugget is being sold with an asking price of up to $50,000. that's all we have from the team here in washington, stay tuned for plenty more coming up on bbc news. hello, there. it's going to be turning colder right across the uk as we head through the rest of the week. sunny spells and showers through the day on thursday. lots of rainbow spotted by our weather watchers towards the north. that theme at least is set to continue, so more blustery showers, a brisk northwesterly wind and just some chillier feeling air with a possibility of some nighttime frosts in the more rural sheltered spots. why? well, because this cold front will be sinking southwards and eastwards as we head through the day on friday, introducing that colder feeling air. already a chilly start to the day from north wales, across northern england, scotland and northern ireland — some showers blowing in here.

a cold front pushes more clouds towards the far southeast of england and some outbreaks of rain. and the hang—back of that rain is still across parts of kent, sussex into perhaps eastern areas of hampshire. as we head through the afternoon on friday, it will eventually clear. temperatures now round about the seasonal average, a few showers, particularly out towards the west, most frequent across northern and western scotland, a brisk westerly wind blowing, and some of those showers are likely to be wintry over the high ground. gales across the northern isles and the far northwest of scotland. now, low pressure continues to push eastwards just to the north of scotland as we head through friday and into saturday. saturday, a particularly cold start to the day. temperatures for many will drop back to low single figures, and in the shelter of that brisk westerly—to—north—westerly wind, we're likely to see a touch of frost, though gardeners beware. also some icy stretches out there as well. saturday, a day of sunshine and showers again, the showers most frequent in the north and the west. some of the showers could be wintry over the tops of the hills just about

anywhere across the uk. there will be some sunny spells in between, but a lot of added wind chill. these temperatures are below the seasonal average. it will actually feel colder than that because of the strength of the wind, too. but there will be some sunshine here and there as well, and it does look like it's going to turn a bit sunny up through the day on sunday. brief ridge of high pressure should keep us largely dry, but clouding over towards the west by the end of the day. low pressure always close by as we head through into the start of next week, so it's going to be feeling colder. we'll see the drop in temperature and it will be quite showery. some longer spells of rain at times too as we head through next week, so unsettled and feeling cooler. bye— bye.

this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines for you at the top of the hour which is straight after this programme. welcome to hardtalk. 0ne straight after this programme. welcome to hardtalk. one way of measuring the scale of haiti's political, economic and security collapse is to compare it with its neighbour, the dominican republic. these two nations share the same caribbean aland, but while haiti is the poorest state in

latin america, the dominican republic boasts the region's fastest growing economy, and that, you might think, would enable the dominican republic to play a role in easing the crisis next door. well, think again. my guest is president of the dominican republic, luis abinader. is his strategy simply adding to haiti's woes? president luis abinader in santo domingo, welcome to hardtalk. santo domingo, welcome to hardtalk—

santo domingo, welcome to hardtalk. ., ~ , ., , . hardtalk. thank you very much for this opportunity _ hardtalk. thank you very much for this opportunity to -