with a way to and from the space station should bring down costs. and that's really important for nasa and other space agencies like the european space agency and indeed the uk space agency, because we're spending taxpayers money on these flights to get our astronauts to the space station and we want to get the best value for money. but regular missions to the space station will depend on there being no further serious technical issues. with so much at stake, it it'll be a big week for boeing. it'll be a big week for boeing. pallob ghosh, bbc news. coronation street stalwart helen worth has announced she is to leave the itv soap after starring as gail platt for 50 years. she'll celebrate her golden anniversary on the show and then step down at the end of the year, following a major storyline for the platt family. the actor said this was the perfect time to leave the most wonderfuljob in the world. now it's time for a look

at the weather with louise. hello there. having just had one of the wettest and dullest springs on record, i'm sure if you've got 12 hours of sunshine, you'd take it. that's exactly what we had on wednesday through the isle of man. a chilly day, but a beautiful day in terms of sunshine. slightly different story further north and west, temperatures struggled in parts of scotland to get up into double figures and there was a rash of sharp showers as well. that's because scotland and northern ireland, you're closest to this area of low pressure and a brisk northwesterly wind continues to feed showers in around that low. so we start off on a chilly note first thing on thursday morning. sunny spells and scattered showers through scotland and northern ireland, fairly widespread throughout the day. further south after a cloudy start, the cloud should break up, some sunshine come through. there's always a risk of one or two isolated showers across england and wales, but hopefully there'll be few and far between. and with a little more shelter in the south east, we could see temperatures peaking at 18 degrees.

pressure on those exposed north west coast, only 14 degrees in northern ireland, cooler perhaps on the exposed north coast. and in scotland, we're looking at 10 to 14 degrees with those showers continuing on and off throughout the day. now, as we move out of thursday into friday, we see more of an organized line of rain developing, but that is where that cooler air is going to sit into the far northwest. temperatures just below par for the time of year further south. but there are indications of some warmer weather arriving over the next few days. but to start with, we're looking at single figures first thing on friday morning in rural parts of scotland, low single figures not out of the question once again. and there will be some rain moving its way south and east out of scotland, down into the north of england and north wales. sunny spells and a few scattered showers ahead of it. still a rash of showers, particularly to the northwest of the great glen where here temperatures will sit around ten or 11 degrees. further south, we're going to see highs of 18 celsius once again. so the temperature is pretty

much stuck in a rut. weak weather front bringing some cloud to begin with across the south for the weekend. that low pressure is gradually pulling away. so hopefully high pressure will tend to build, but we keep the risk of showers once again across scotland and northern ireland. somewhat drier and brighter, but not necessarily warmer further south.

time now to digest the day's election campaigning in newscast — with adam fleming and the team. now, obviously, we will do the political fallout from tuesday night's first televised leaders debate amongst the people who could be prime minister because there was a scottish one on monday. but before we do that, give me the planes, trains and automobiles behind the scenes, because you were all in salford. because i was here in my living room. you, were missed? yeah, thanks. it was this kind of, like, slow trickle of, like, people rocking up in different parts of sovereign at different times, all having got various trains to get there. and i think i bumped into chris in salford in the reception of a hotel. oh yeah. very late at night. yes. and there was a sort of boom from alex.

"chris, what on earth are you doing here? " while we know what just didn't really expect passed across. but then the worst bit was the getting back from salford this morning, right chris. it was a bit tricky. so the trains on the i should say the west coast mainline, but it's kind of the line between manchester and london were the spouts i think basically went at least a lot of them were. so but you actually. i think some people took about five hours. it's normally about two hours something i think. yeah. and i happily got on the one train running on time. no delays, just pure luck. whereas we were in and we'd have been in this anyway, or at least a collection of us would in our election van, which we are trundling around the country. the mason mobile. the mason mobile, which doesn't have any windows in the back. does it have a fridge? no, no, it doesn't. so no, it's definitely lo fi and low tech compared with angela rayner�*s bus. and that was the reference reference and yeah. not even any windows in the back. it's quite good actually, because i can just work away without getting distracted. i think that's a lovely view or whatever. so yeah. ok, that's the traffic and travel on with the news that this episode of newscast.

newscast from the bbc. hello. it's adam in the studio. and it's chris on a rare trip to the capital, in the studio. and it's alex also in the studio. so the election debate that happened in salford on tuesday night between rishi sunak and keir starmer, ithought, well, i took my lead from that yougov poll which came out quite soon afterwards saying that amongst the people they'd sampled, 51% of people said that rishi sunak had won, 49% of people said that they thought keir starmer had done best. but then alex, during the day on wednesday, we got some opinion polls from other other companies flipping it around the other way. yeah, and i think, well, two things you can take from that. the first thing is that we frequently say is that you have to treat every opinion poll with a pinch of salt because it's only one and only a pattern really counts. and the second thing i think you can take from that is the broad conclusion that no one really won. i mean, there wasn't a kind of standout winner or a standout loser there wasn't a knockout blow,

you know, and therefore, it leaves. you know, and therefore, it leaves the question is, how much does this really change the direction of the campaign? not to say they weren't important things in it that have then developed. the one thing that intrigued me about the polls and the other two, the savanta poll and the partner's poll that came out this morning, actually, the gap that they suggested between the relative performance of the two of them was wider in keir starmer�*s favour than the very small gap in rishi sunak�*s favour in the yougov poll. the thing ifound myself pondering and i don't really know the answer to this, so bear with me is that if you look at all three of those polls and insert all the caveats that alex does, ifind myself thinking whatever the gap is between them. and let's look at those ones where keir starmer has an apparent lead. that gap seemed narrower than some of the wider opinion polls suggests as the gap in popularity between the conservatives and labour. now we're comparing apples with pears because in party political opinion polls there's a far greater spread of options. and also just because you were watching the telly and concluded man a or man b won doesn't

necessarily mean it was sufficient to alter how you might vote. ijust thought, you know, just to throw that into the mix around it. but yeah, i think you're right, alex, in the round, did anyone. ..? it's always hard, this sort of, who won, isn't it? what is victory? but i think where given where rishi sunak was, as we reflected last night, where rishi sunak was psychologically and with his own party, he came out looking like he had plenty of fight in him. and i think that matters, even if only for morale on his side and nothing else. i think maybe the more relevant question in the debates to come and of course, last night's is maybe not who won in the voter comments, but did anyone really lose? ie, is this sort ofjeopardy and danger of a huge mistake greater than maybe a sort of narrow edge of victory in this campaign? because that actually might end up going on to have much more consequence.

and also just that whole thing of rishi sunak sort of drawing equal orjust going ahead of keir starmer in one poll might feel like a massive victory to some conservatives because in the other polls they're so far behind labour. so actually, a draw is winning even if we're then looking at other polls which are something completely different. anyway, i have learned over the years that my predictive skills are not very good. i have amongst friends in the pub when things have been happening, i've predicted something and inevitably ended up being wrong. i'm happy to admit it, and that's why i don't make predictions any more. apart from last night. i didn't even stick to my script like a leader performed badly. you have a script? my mental script. what's that? touche, touche. chris has a notepad in front of him. if you're not watching this and just listening, as soon as the labour are going to put up your taxes by £2,000, i said, "that is going to become a big deal. " i wasn't sure in which direction the deal was going to go, whether it would be disastrous for labour because people would be

they'd be like, hang on, what they're not telling us or whether it would backfire on the person who's making the claim, rishi sunak. it's kind of gone a bit in both directions. yeah. so rishi sunak made the claim loads and loads of times on the programme. it took, as we were reflecting last time quite a while for keir starmer to knock it down and say it was false. then this morning claire coutinho, who is a cabinet minister, was doing what's known as the morning round, popping up on various media outlets. and she is, i mean, she's a cabinet minister, but she's also a really close ally of rishi sunak. in fact, they worked together at the treasury when he was a minister and she was a special adviser and she made the same point, but without much caveat. said that this number had come about via an independent treasury analysis. now some elements of that number had come about by political appointees, conservative advisers, asking the treasury civil servants to do some number crunching based

on their own political assumptions about elements of labour's spending plan. mid—way through this round that claire coutinho was doing, labour published a letter that they'd got a couple of days ago from the most senior civil servant in the treasury in response to a letter that labour had written to him in which this most senior civil servant said, look, not all of what the conservatives are claiming in this number, this £2,000 additional tax claim number, did come from the numbers that we crunched, and we have made that clear to ministers that they shouldn't be claiming otherwise. claire coutinho explicitly referred to the permanent secretary, as most senior civil servant then called james bowler. yeah, and then appears this letter by him, as i say, published by labour. i mean, he'd sent it a couple of days ago. it appeared in the middle of all of this row, unpicking one element,

and there's a few we can pick away at around the misleading nature, frankly, of that conservative claim. there's so much we could discuss about this. let's break it down into chunks. so let's talk about just actually take apart the £2,000 figure. so, i mean, my first kind of issue with it as somebody who cares about accuracy and statistics is, well, it's a sort of meaningless number on its own terms because it's assuming every household pays the same amount of tax and any changes would be applied equally to every single household. so even just from a basic arithmetic point of view, it is not accurate to the world. also, even if you have no issue with any of the mathematics, it is times by four because it's talking about over a four year period. and i guess most people, to the extent to which we think about tax bills or whatever, are likely to think of them

on an annual basis. then there's the issue. or even monthly. yeah. then there's the issue about the role of the treasury. secondly, sort of making clear the fact that the treasury does the numbers and there's a convention here in previous governments of various colours have done it, that they run the numbers based on the assumptions handed to them, as i say, by the political advisors. there's an element in the document which refers to what's what is labour's green prosperity plan, as they call it. labour say they have a means of funding that. and there's another claim that wasn't part of what the treasury did that the think tank, the institute for government have looked at which they have publicly said today itself it was only one element of all of this, but that that was misleading. so we've had just to sort of be transparent about how the reporting of this. yeah. do the media studies because... it's been so in a situation like this

where you have the conservatives making this claim, you have labour, you have keir starmer this afternoon calling it a lie. so you've got conservatives saying x and labour saying y? those two things are in mutual contradiction, apparently. so journalistically, how do you report that? do you just say x and y and leave it at that? that, i think is unsatisfactory because you're not really helping our audience understand. i mean, it would be a version of impartiality, though, which is... it would arguably be a version of it, but it wouldn't actually help, i don't think. and that's kind of fundamental to what we should be doing in this election, which is trying to help people reach an informed judgment about what the parties are saying. there's also another dilemma, which is that when you report this sort of stuff, the fact that we are talking about it, on newscast is giving it prominence. you know, we recall a brexit crash talking about the 350 million quid on the side of the vote leave. plus that idea that the uk sent that amount of money to brussels every week, which was wrong. because that was the total amount we sent, not taking into account anything that came back. exactly.

it was a gross number, not a net number, but that number was very prominent, not least because there was all of the rows about it. now, as i say, that was wrong. this claim is misleading. i think the label that i think is reasonable to attach to it is different. but the provenance question is the same one. so as a reporter, as a collection of reporters, i mean, you could choose just not to do it. you could say, you know what, we're not going to do it. what use is this figure to an auditor, to our audience, to newscasters and elsewhere? we're not going to do it, but that's an active choice as well. and would it be right for us not to report on the most lively and contentious arguments in politics today? because it would feel a bit like censorship. well, indeed, yeah. so for what it's worth, in myjudgment, we should cover it. we should cover the row. we should explain why we've decided to do what we've done, which is what i'm attempting to do now, and then set out our workings as to why we're giving something, a label, so that a newscaster or a wider listener or reader or viewer can come to a view as to whether or not they think our label is a reasonable

one based on the facts that we have presented. and that was a very clear explanation of presumably what's been going on in your head for for the last 22 hours. yeah. oh, to do it visually, yeah. a meme is born or a gif or a gif, however it's pronounced. and what label have we ended up with? in your kitchen table... no, its, let's not get into this a very online thing. and so the label for this we've ended up with is so i think it is reasonable on the basis of what i've just said to say, it is dubious and to say it is misleading. it is clearly possible for someone hearing that number, particularly if they don't hear the wider context to be misled. i should say, by the way, that labour have also made some contentious claims about the conservatives spending plans and taxing plans, not least around national insurance. well, yeah, i was going to say to alex, just remind us how some

of the other parties have been doing something of this ilk well before something of this ilk. well before the debate, which was quite interesting last night. there is, as i mentioned, this room where all the journalists gather. now, in that room, jonathan ashworth, who is labour's shadow paymaster general, was walking around pre debate with what he called a dossier, so a wad of papers that labour had drawn up and stapled together with what they claimed was outlining all of the conservatives unfunded spending commitments which amounted to billions of pounds. so there is claim and counterclaim on each side. but back to chris' point about why this 2000 figure has got such traction today is because rishi sunak repeated it live on air in a debate in front of millions of people for time and time and time again. and i think when something has been given that prominence by one of the players involved, it's only right that you do an examination of of the kind of, you know, the accuracy of the claim that he was making. but other parties are throwing around this kind of stuff as well. and, of course, this argument around unfunded spending commitments

or spending commitments at all is a hugely key part of this election campaign, which is why you're seeing it from both sides. and the other bit that's chucked round is that parties do point out that other parties have asked civil servants to do costings of their opponents plans in the past. so, you know, it's convoluted, but i think it's important you try and unpick it because you know, what rishi sunak wanted people to be left with was you're going to be two ground worse off under labour because your taxes are going to go up. and, you know, if that is based, as chris has said, on dubious presentation, then it's only right that that's kind of called out. yeah. but then the political strategy you know, from the conservatives. by the way, i should also say on all of this, reckon that at least some of their numbers are a underestimate of what the bill could be or the or the other cost could be. but i think, as i say, when you unpack the whole thing, i think it's reasonable to come to that conclusion.

and there'll be bigger arguments going on in both of the two big westminster parties as to whether or not, back to the prominence point, this very row who this very real serves. very i’ow serves . because it does it somehow drip into the sort of bloodstream for the vast majority of people who pay not a vast amount of attention to politics, that there's this thing going on about labour and higher taxes? even if the number doesn't even cross their cost, even if the number doesn't even cross their path, if you like, versus, i suppose, that kind of sense of does it dents the conservatives believability or credibility if there's a sense that folk are saying, hang on a minute, that doesn't sound right. because, of course, the thing the thing here that the conservatives, as you say, are being pointed to with a question mark over their approach is not because they are making the suggestion that there might be unfunded spending commitments. they're entitled to make that suggestion or have that as an attack line as labour have done to the conservatives. it's the fact they've put a figure on it and attributed that figure to the treasury without the wider context.

and so you wonder if by doing that, as chris said, you know, they've now got people talking about it for 24 hours. and i don't know what that strategy is and i'm not professing to. but you have to have all of that in your mind and it plays into that broader strategy that we've seen from the conservatives in the last fortnight. it is by now by the way, now two weeks. oh, happy anniversary. cheers, everyone. two weeks done and four weeks to go. not that we're counting, but that's kind of where we are. two weeks ago, when i was getting soaked in downing street. i completely lost my train of thought. any particular garment scott particular? any particular garment particular? no, let's not dwell on that again. i'll pick up from what you were saying there, though, chris. i mean, there's still a bit more of this to run because the office of the statistical regulator is looking into it. i've seen this sort of thing happen all the time where people get reported to the watchdogs and then a few weeks later the watchdogs go, "oh, that wasn't quite an accurate use of stats." and it comes at no cost to the person who said the initial stats. it's water under the bridge. i just wonder though, with this level of scrutiny

and the fact that the top board at the treasury has been so explicit, this feels like a different kind of, like a higher def con of that. yeah. and this is the point i was going to make and i'd forgotten, which is that arguably last night then slots into what we've seen on the conservative strategy of the last fortnight, which is to say stuff that generates headlines, basically, grab attention. we've seen it with the various policy announcements they've had far more certainly compared with labour, new eye catching policy announcements since the calling of the election to try and because they need to give and where it appears they are opinion poll wise to change the weather and to get noticed. i mean i don't know if you know the answer to this. they probably said, but this letter was was sent to labour on the third. yes. the debate was on the fourth. yes. it got leaked to our colleague on the morning of the fifth. i mean, part of me thinks if theyjust published it on the third or the fourth, we would be having this conversation or we would have had it two days ago. yeah. and i think part of what.

or maybe rishi sunak wouldn't have said it or he would have said it with more asterisk attached. yeah. i mean, labourjust published this today. let's be clear, you know, and we should say that explicitly so as to not imply that this was published by the civil service. yes, a press release. completely. they were responding to a letter that darrenjones, the shadow chief secretary of the treasury, had written to the permanent secretary at the treasury, asking about, hang on a minute, you know, blah, blah, blah. so, yeah, i keep losing my train of thought. well, we have been working for like 96 hours a day now, two weeks. it's perfectly timed. i mean, i think there's something interesting in that. so labour has had this letter, this response from the treasury for a few days before they chose to publish it. and there was also that question around why during the debate. it took as long as it did for keir starmer to shoot down that claim. they could have published it during the debate. he could have published it during the debate. and actually it was quite a way in before he even alluded to the fact that this was based on not just treasury analysis, but also political... westminsterjournalists would have loved the drama of that dropping...

i mean, i don't have any insight, chris, you might as to how that unfolded within labour. so i think it is not unreasonable to observe that part of what we have seen today has been the equal and opposite of what we didn't see last night. in other words, that there are figures within labour who feel that keir starmer made a mistake last night to not more prominently and frequently demolish that claim as it was made. now, you might argue that would have drawn more attention to it or whatever. but anyway, there is an argument that has said perhaps he should have been more vociferous in saying, you know, it's false, which he did do in the end. and the response, therefore, today has been to, if not overcorrect, then certainly be very vociferous. so you had jonathan ashworth this morning calling it a lie. you had rachel reeves popping up during a video, the shadow chancellor, where she said, i won't put any taxes on working people, on national insurance and income tax and vat. and then you had keir starmer...

i did wonder, sir keir starmer did a little clip in portsmouth connected to because he's been doing the d—day things about all of this and i wonder if he'lljust be a bit softer in his language than, say, jonathan ashworth, because the l word is a big word. a big word. you know, that's very different from saying something might mislead or is dubious. it's you know, it's talking about an active attempt to say an untruth. that's a big accusation. and keir starmer did it. well, two things just to end this bit of the newscast and we'll talk about other stuff. yeah, some of these debates in the past don't have a very long afterlife. and they're sort of, they come the fireworks go off, everyone goes to bed. everyone hopefully gets the train home eventually. this has had a much longer afterlife than most of these events. and second of all, the l word, the liar word, i was quite a long way into my politicaljournalism career when someone explained to me the reason they're called honourable members in parliament is because you're meant to be not capable of lying. so when one politician calls another

politician a liar, 0k, that might not seem that big a deal in normal speech, but it kind of political speech it's a big deal. really, really quickly, you've also just got to wonder as a pull back, as we talk about this, what that claim and counter—claim and accusations and figures and whatever thrown around just does to people watching all of this and looking on and thinking, you know, blimey, we're two weeks into an election campaign, i've got to make a decision about the prime minister of the united kingdom, who that's going to be, and this claim and counter—claim is where we're at. alex, thank you very much. pleasure, as always. and chris, thanks to you, too. thank you. newscast from the bbc.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm steve lai. the headlines... the un chief warns the world is facing a moment of truth — with just five years to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. medical charity msf says 70 people have been killed in a new israeli offensive in central gaza.

ahead of world leaders gathering in france, commemorations take place to mark the 80th anniversary of the d—day landings. we have lift—off! boeing's starliner launches on its third attempt, with two astronauts bound for the international space station. hello and welcome to the programme. �*the godfathers of climate chaos' — that's the scathing description given to coal, oil and gas corporations by the un secretary—general antonio guterres. in a speech to a un climate conference, he said they had distorted the truth and deceived the public for decades. his remarks came as scientists warned the world's climate is warming at the fastest rate ever recorded. here's our climate editor, justin rowlatt.

temperatures in the indian capital, delhi, hitjust shy