this is bbc news. the headlines: police in tenerife confirm the search for missing british teenagerjay slater has been called off after nearly two weeks. police on the island told the bbc that "yesterday was the final day of the search". the bbc hears from the main uk parties ahead of this week's general election. the prime minister, rishi sunak, defends the last 1a years of conservative rule and labour are challenged on defence spending and energy bills. voting is under way in the first round of france's parliamentary elections. support for the far—right national rally party has surged since they won the european elections three weeks ago, despite macron pledging to stop its rise. a sky full of stars at coldplay�*s

record—breaking fifth glastonbury headline set, with a few suprise guests. country star shania twain takes to the stage this afternoon, with r&b singer sizza closing the festival tonight. now on bbc news, unspun world withjohn simpson. hello and welcome to this edition of unspun world, here at the bbc�*s international headquarters in central london. if labour wins the upcoming general election here in the uk, could that become a poisoned chalice for them? where we clearly are is political

volatility because it's only four or five years ago that the conservatives got a majority of 80 and they are now potentially heading into a labour landslide territory. is the ultra—violent islamic state movement making a comeback around the world? the group started to gradually pivot towards africa, sub—saharan africa, and they had branches in nigeria, drc, the sahel. and, on a hot and stuffy day here in london, must we all get used to living with torrid heat? i mean, it's thought that there are going to be ten air conditioning units sold every second for the next 20 years, which is this astonishing number. tax hikes in... the british election campaign has been mercifully short, and we'll know the result in just a few days. politics in this country have been pretty chaotic since the day injune 2016 when people voted by a fairly narrow margin to leave the eu.

boris johnson, liz truss and jeremy corbyn — none of these were the kind of political leaders who would probably have emerged in more predictable times. but the british system is essentially pretty stable, and it's gone back to more habitual policies and leaders remarkably quickly. both rishi sunak, the prime minister, and sir keir starmer of labour are very much in the mould of former conservative and labour leaders. the opinion polls say overwhelmingly that starmer will be the next prime minister, but it's going to be a toughjob, with the need to find billions of extra pounds to keep living standards up and pay for better health care, defence and local government spending. could it all be a poisoned chalice? i sought the views of nick watt, the political editor of the bbc�*s newsnight programme.

his principal reason for being in such a commanding place is that the country are completely fed up with the conservative party over 1a years, it would appear, not that they're falling in love with keir starmer. um, the challenge and the problem for keir starmer is that when there's a big appetite for change, there are high expectations of what that change could bring. um, when tony blair became prime minister, the economy was beginning to turn around. he was fiscally initially very cautious, but then he was able to spend. it's a completely different fiscal situation. keir starmer will find it very difficult to spend. he said that he's not going to put up the main tax rates and when you say to him, "well, what are you going to do?" he says growth. if keir starmer wins by a big, massive majority, i mean that is a real poisoned chalice, isn't it? what that might well do is it might well produce a comfortable and stable parliamentary majority for the winning party. the polls would suggest

that's labour — produce stability in parliament. but if you have these other parties getting quite a high percentage in the form of reform uk, but not getting many seats, that could create a grievance — a grievance on the right that the democratic system in this country is not allowing their voices to be heard. so it could be a case of parliamentary stability, but instability in the wider country. do you rate nigel farage�*s chances of taking over the conservative party in the parliament after this one? he believes that the conservative party is bust.y made commitments on immigration that he believes they failed on. and there has been talk about how if he makes it into parliament, that there would be a sort of reverse takeover, he would take over the conservative party. he appears to have far greater ambitions than that. he's talking about replacing the conservative party.

would a labour government be able to stop the little boats coming in? i think the keir starmer view is that he's resisting the sort of dramatic rhetoric you've had from various conservative home secretaries — priti patel, suella braverman — talking about how they'd stop the small boats. the challenge for him is that the small boats are the symptom of a problem across europe, which is there is huge migration that is coming to europe. would a labour government be able to sort out the national health service? well, on the national health service, labour does have plans for increased investment, but it's pretty small. talking about1 billion or 2 billion. that's not much. when it's a budget of 200 billion a year, it's not much. the institute for fiscal studies has said that is a tiny amount of money. what wes streeting would say is, he would say, "look, the health service is a service, "it's not a shrine, and you can't just chuck money at it, you've got to reform it". and indeed that is very much the view in the rachel reeves

shadow chancellor team, the shadow treasury team that you'd have to have reform. british politics have always been fairly stable. i mean, there have been blips here and there, and there's been a major blip, of course, since 2016. but, basically, the ship rights itself, doesn't it? it becomes boring and stable and heads in pretty much the same direction as the predecessors did. is that what's going to happen? well, in a sense, the reason why you would have stability in the british system is because of the first—past—the—post electoral system, which is 656 constituencies, you just get to get a cross against one candidate and whoever gets the most votes, they win. and that does provide stability when fundamentally you have a two—party system. but it looks like in this election, we may well be moving back to where we were before the brexit referendum, which is a multiparty system.

and with reform uk, which is the party headed by nigel farage, it may well be... the polls would suggest that they're getting quite a high percentage, but that vote is evenly distributed around the country. so good on percentage, not good on seats. in the 1980s, um, first—past—the—post benefited margaret thatcher. big majorities, big landslide on about 42 to 43% of the vote. so the left felt sort of disenfranchised by that system in the �*80s. it may well be that we now have a situation where the right feel disenfranchised, and if we do essentially have four parties, then there may be big questions about whether britain's electoral system is providing that sort of stability. a year ago, it seemed perfectly reasonable to say that islamic state, the extremist group, which ten years ago established what it called an islamist

caliphate, based in mosul, was finished. the number of attacks, which it carried out, was negligible. it was hunted and harried everywhere. but this year has been entirely different. is staged massive suicide bombings in iran injanuary, shootings in turkey and attacks in russia, including one just the other day. so why are is doing this now? i sought the help of mina al—lami, the bbc�*sjihadi media specialist. if we were discussing this last year, i would have told you about the setbacks they suffered on the ground, their attacks globally being, you know, going down in decline. but this year, it's been a different story. and also, it's worth noting that this is the 10th anniversary of the group's so—called caliphate declaration. they took over that whole stretch of iran, iraq and so on.

yes. so that's when they captured territory in iraq, linked it up with the areas they had in syria and declared a cross—border state, which they called a caliphate in 2014. so this year, the group actually put out a message, marking that anniversary and, you know, very pompously saying that, this year, on the 10th anniversary, despite the setbacks in previous years, is is growing stronger and expanding. so after they lost their middle east bases in iraq and syria, the group started to gradually pivot towards africa — sub—saharan africa. and they had branches in nigeria, drc, the sahel, which is, you know, namely in mali and burkina faso, in mozambique. they also, of course... the philippines. the philippines, they have a branch in the philippines, and afghanistan. um, and so the idea was that, you know, in the middle east, of course, they were under a lot of pressure from the us—led coalition. so... but they still claim to be a caliphate. so they kind of spread

across the world. but the thing i find it difficult to get my head around is that they loathe hamas, for instance, they loathe the taliban. i mean, how come? you'd think they'd want to get them into one big movement? if you're following jihadist activity, you will know one of the key features is that there's intense rivalry between thejihadist groups. but in is, it's actually very simple. you know, al-qaeda is very pragmatic. it kind of has this, you know, messages of, you know, conciliatory messages towards hamas, even though they also don't like hamas, but they think, "ok, now is the time "to set aside our differences and have a united front against israel, against the west." you know, in terms of their goals, i think whatjihadists mostly want is they want domination. they want to create a state that is ruled by sharia and god's law, as they say. and that won't be kind of restricted. it's not, you know, taliban state in afghanistan, that's all they want. it's an expansionist project.

um, but is is simple kind of in the sense that it says, "well, you're with us or against us. we don't have..." they don't have any allies, they don't have any partners. they don't work... so they hate the taliban, as you said, they hate al-qaeda, and they are engaged in active fighting with al-qaeda, with the taliban, with boko haram. um, and the same with hamas. so, is actually, you know, with the conflict in gaza, they were very clear to message to palestinians and say all of the so—called jihad you've been doing and the resistance along those years, all the past years, it's for nothing. you know, you won't die a martyr. you won't, because you are fighting for a nationalist agenda. fight with us because we are fighting a religious war. you can't fight over borders, over territory, over identity. that's all nationalist. you have to fightjihad for god. is that why they don't like the taliban in afghanistan, too? it's a turf war and these are warlords, especially in the case of is.

they want ultimate domination. they were really embarrassed when, you know, at the same time that they lost their territory, or the caliphate, the taliban managed to come back to rule, so that was a big, big blow for them in terms of the ideology, because there's that rivalry in terms of ideology and methods and tactics, and in that case, the taliban seemed to be winning, at least in terms of, well, now they control a whole country and is just lost that so—called state they had. why haven't there been more attacks in the west? is doesn't have the same credibility in the eyes of its followers that it had years ago. one of the reasons is because it stopped being this powerful caliphate with land and territory. it was defeated. it was defeated and all its claims of being the chosen group and, you know, all the projections, they came to nothing. however, this year, i think the danger we have is with what is calls successful attacks and victories — the iran attack that killed nearly 100 people, the attack in russia, over 145,

the attack in istanbul. all these attacks, is needs them for its messaging. it's three years since the incoming biden administration in the us took the decision to implement a deal which donald trump had done as president with the taliban, a deal whereby the us bartered its support for the elected government of afghanistan in exchange for promises from the taliban that they would guarantee human rights, including the education of women and girls. there were appalling scenes in kabul as the taliban took power, and over the time since then, most, if not all, the promises they made to president trump's administration have been broken. for decades, the bbc has been one of the main sources of information which afghans have turned to,

but what is the situation there like now, particularly for women? the well—known afghan broadcaster shazia haya came to britain when the taliban took over. now she broadcasts to afghanistan from london. it's just like a prison because we are not allowed to go out of our houses. we don't have access to anything. we don't have our rights. we cannot work. we cannot earn something. we cannot help our family members. we don't have our voices. how does the taliban rule show itself? you can see taliban members on the streets, like their forces. they have police members. they have their own checkpoints. men can travel. they can go everywhere. they can interact with taliban members, with their forces, with their police members.

yeah, somehow they try to survive. but not women. you can't see women on the streets. if you do see woman on the street, that woman should have a male guardian. if you go to an organisation or a ministry or even to hospital, you will be asked "where is the male member of your family?" tell me about the broadcasting you do, the work that you do for the bbc. we have launched a satellite channel. it's called bbc news afghanistan. also we have our digital platforms. we have been interviewing afghan women from afghanistan and from different parts of the world. we have given them the platform to talk about their own issues. also i'm presenting a bbc educational programme, which is called dars. da rs means listen.

this programme is an educational programme for afghan children, including girls who are not allowed to go to schools. we have lessons about history, about chemistry, about physics, and most importantly, that now we do have every video has two lessons about english learning because in afghanistan now, people are not allowed to even allowed to learn english language. do you get a lot of feedback? they want a platform. they want that their voices should be heard. so i think they feel that the world has already forgotten them. nobody is talking about girls' education nowadays. it has been more than 1,000 days, three billion learning hours those girls have lost. it's a big thing in the 21st century. afghanistan is the only country that

women, girls are not allowed to go to schools, universities and work. and why the rest of the world is not saying that much, that's the question that, every time, afghan women are asking. do you think it will come to an end at some stage, that the taliban will be overthrown or leave or change? that's a really tough question. when i'm asking afghan women about the future, they are saying that we only see darkness. we only see uncertain future, we only see a prison. more than 1,300 people died from heat as they made the islamic pilgrimage, the hajj, in saudi arabia this year.

the vast majority of them were dumped in the desert by illegal tour operators in temperatures around 50 degrees centigrade. the paris 0lympics could well turn out to be the hottest games on record, worse even than the tokyo 0lympics of 2021, where temperatures were above 3a degrees and humidity approached 70%. greece and turkey have been recording far higher temperatures than usual and people have been dying as a result. in the us states of maryland and virginia, towns and cities have been recording shocking new levels of heat. so why is all this happening and what are the consequences likely to be? i turned to kate lamble, who presents the bbc programme the climate question. people have always died from heat exposure.

0ur body is constantly trying to regulate a constant temperature and the hotter it gets, the harder it is for our bodies to do it. what climate change is doing is it's making heatwaves more frequent. so, what might have been a one—in—a—100—year event becomes a one—in—10—year event, or an every—year event, depending on how much global warming we allow to happen and the choices that we make now. you only have to think back to the last olympics in tokyo and you can remember athletes sometimes fainting or vomiting on the finish line, notjust because of the exertion that they'd just been through, but because of the heat that they're experiencing. in the past couple of weeks there's been a report, and the president of the world athletics association has said that climate change should more and more be thought of as an existential threat to sport. you talked about the olympics being in paris. you just have to think of other big french athletics events like the tour de france, to think of athletes suffering from heat exhaustion. there's lots of discussions about what we can do about that. whether we can move certain outdoor events to cooler parts of the day, in the morning or in the evening, take more breaks. there's some suggestions, even, that specific events

like the triathlon, for example, should have a certain heat limit on it, so if the water gets over a certain temperature, then that part of the event will be delayed or even cancelled. if we achieve the paris agreement, which means limiting global temperatures to preferably a 1.5 degrees rise, then that will be 5% of the future population who live in these areas of extreme temperature. and if we stick with our current policies, we change nothing from now on, that will leave us closer to 2.7 degrees global temperature rise. that would be 20% of the future global population living in areas like this, with an average year round temperature of 29 degrees or more. and are you an optimist? i think i'm a measured optimist. certainly, in the meantime, we know we're going to have to adapt to these temperatures. we've talked about this at the moment and you can see this happening around the world. you see places like australia. there are parts of australia that are talking about how they can build houses and ban dark roofs to keep their homes cooler. those are these everyday things

that, we're not talking about things that need to happen in 20 years, or maybe one day we'll have to deal with them, we're dealing with them now. i mean, is it going to be possible to get the kind of, say, air conditioning that that we actually need in pakistan, in india, but also in the us? it's thought that there are going to be ten air conditioning units sold every second for the next 20 years, which is this astonishing number. as i said, it requires this energy. people in the us have been warned about blackouts during heatwaves in the past couple of years. it's certainly possible that people are going to be willing to sell that. i think these bigger questions about what we can do to mean that houses don't require that air conditioning is kind of more important. but, kate, are we getting closer to the thought that there will be places where human beings simply can't live properly now? all of that depends on how much we adapt. the world bank estimates that by 2050, 200 million people are going to have migrated because of climate change,

but a lot of that is thought to happen within countries. so people who live in, say, coastal areas of bangladesh, as flooding increases, might choose to move to inland cities. where we see people choose to migrate internationally is where people's livelihood is affected for a number of years. so people like subsistence farmers in central america who have experienced drought after drought after drought year after year, it's when that ability to provide for their families is eroded for a number of years, it's only after that that people may choose to make that long—term decision to move out of the area where they live, but we haven't yet got this adaptation, how we can change, how we can change the world around us, as well as how we live our lives under our belts yet. we're at this crossover point where we're suddenly realising... i think india hasjust built its first like dedicated heat stroke emergency unit. i've got friends who are absolutely in despair about the whole thing and i've got other friends who i suspect, like you think, 0k, it may not be 100% perfect, but our future, it could easily be liveable if we make just

fairly small changes. when you talk to climate scientists, they still say it's going to be really hard to meet 1.5. it's even going to be hard to meet two degrees, which is what the paris agreement says, but what they do say is even if you go over that target, it doesn't mean that nothing matters any more. it doesn't mean that we let everything go because every tenth of a degree makes a difference. every tenth of a degree reduces the chance of extreme events. i think i said every tenth of a degree keeps 140 million people from living in areas of the world which have these average temperatures over 29 degrees, these extremely high temperatures. so because every tenth of a degree matters, there are a lot of climate scientists who will say, even if that headline number, that 1.5 is breached, it doesn't mean that we should throw up our hands and say, "oh, well, we tried, nothing else matters." it means that we should be fighting per degree and that every little bit matters and makes a difference

to the future. kate lamble of the bbc�*s the climate question. sadly, that's the end of this season of unspun world. we'll be back again, as ever, in the autumn. in between now and then, though, it sounds, from what kate says, as though the northern hemisphere generally will have a pretty fierce summer in terms of weather and in terms of other things too maybe. my guess is it will become clearer over the summer months which way the ukraine war is going. already you can see the more confident way the ukrainians are feeling in the knowledge that the weapons and cash which nato, and especially the us, are giving them, are starting to shift the balance a little. senior british and american officials were saying publicly and privatelyjust a few months ago that russian forces could well be threatening kyiv, the ukrainian capital,

by the end of this summer. no—one seems to be saying that now. one of 2024's other great questions won't have been answered by the time we're back on air — which of two elderly men will be the 47th president of the united states? assuming, that is, thatjoe biden, the 46th president will have resisted pressure to stand aside. france, on the basis of the current opinion polls, may well be run by a deeply uneasy combination of a centrist president and a hard right, or maybe even a hard left, government. britain is likely to be run by labour by the autumn, but i reported on the 1992 british election, which, in spite of all the opinion polls, the conservatives under john major actually won.

0pinion polls can be more about which leader the voters like or don't like, rather than which party they will actually end up voting for. mostly, of course, they're the same thing, but not absolutely always. well, that's it from me and the superb unspun team until we meet again. hello there. the small chance of a few showers around today but, generally speaking, it's largely dry. we started off with some brightness and some sunshine, especially across northern england, but those sunny skies will be in rather short supply this afternoon. there is going to be a lot more cloud developing and it will be feeling cooler than it was yesterday with more of a north—westerly wind blowing.

it's quite a cool wind direction and the cooling trend will continue into next week. yesterday's front that was across the south—east of england this morning is clearing away this afternoon, taking any showers with it, so drying out here. there will be a lot of cloud and it will brighten up quite nicely across south—west england. a few isolated showers across the midlands and towards north—east england in particular. patchy rain for north—west scotland. 0therwise dry. plenty of cloud around, that will tend to melt away again towards the end of the day, but temperatures disappointingly low for the time of year, just 15 to 21 celsius. 0vernight tonight there will be plenty of clear skies around. the cloud will break up. in the clear skies temperatures could drop back into high single figures. there is a weather front approaching from the west that will bring rain into north—west scotland, northern ireland, down through western wales into tomorrow morning. tomorrow that rain is going to push its way further eastwards. it's quite a narrow band of rain really, lots of cloud with it, but some early brightness

for eastern areas and some late brightness out towards the west. the rain light and patchy towards the south, but it could possibly interrupt play towards the end of the day — the first day of wimbledon, of course, tomorrow. 14 to 21 celsius. again, it's slightly cool feeling for the time of year and the wind will pick up at times. it is still coming in from the north—west, of course. there goes that front. on tuesday, high pressure starts to build in from the south—west, from the azores, so tuesday is looking like a drier day. there will still be a few showers around. some of those showers out towards north—west scotland, north—west england just gradually sinking southwards and eastwards, but largely dry. the best of the brightness and sunshine probably for south wales and across south—west england too. temperatures again a little low for the time of year and that's where they remain as we head through much of the rest of the week, so no real warmth in store. it's not going to be raining all the time, but it is looking quite unsettled, wet and unseasonably windy on wednesday into thursday. bye— bye.

life in london, this is bbc news. to search for missing teenagerjay slater has been called off. the bbc hears from the _ slater has been called off. the bbc hears from the main _ slater has been called off. the bbc hears from the main uk _ slater has been called off. the bbc hears from the main uk parties - slater has been called off. the bbc i hears from the main uk parties ahead of this week's general election. prime minister rishi sunak defends the last 14 years of conservative rule and labour are challenged on defence spending and energy bills. it's been difficult, but we are now on the right track with the prospect of more tax cuts to come to give people more financial security. and that is the key choice for people at this election, building on the progress that we have made. voting is under way in the first round of france's

parliamentary elections —— this is the scene live