you're watching bbc world news. i'm babita sharma. our top story: rescuers are set to resume their search for a youth football team who are trapped in a cave in thailand. 12 members of the team and their coach went missing when they went into the caves on saturday, but were trapped by heavy rain which flooded the entrance. members of parliament in britain have approved controversial plans to build a third runway at heathrow airport, near london — the busiest in europe. and prince william continues his tour of the middle east. he has arrived in israel, making him the first british royal to make an official visit to the country. the prince will also visit the occupied palestinian territories. it's being seen as a diplomatically sensitive trip to the region. that's all from me for now. stay with us here on bbc world news. it is disk on half—past midnight.

more from me later on bbc world news. now, it's time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i'm sarah montague. senatorjeff flake is one of president trump's harshest critics. he thinks the president is a danger to america and to the republican party, and he has exhorted his fellow republicans to do something about him, but any republican who speaks out against president trump suffers in the polls. it's why senator flake won't be standing for election again. he knows he won't win. so why does he think republicans need to reclaim their party from their own president? senatorjeff flake, welcome to hardtalk.

thanks for having me on. why do you say that president trump is dangerous? well, what i said is, he's the type of, the type of politics that he practices is a danger to democracy. a type of politics that is crude and crass and that really doesn't recognise our allies and expresses a fondness for authoritarians and dictators, that upends arrangements that we have had a hand in creating, this rules—based international order that has made the world prosperous and generally free for 70 years now. that is risked by an american president that behaves the way that he has. 0k, well, let's take a look at how he's behaved over one particular issue, immigration, most recently, where we've seen that, in a way,

something you've charged, the checks and balances aren't working but arguably they are working, he has listened and softened a policy that is popular with those who voted him in. certainly, he came in, the first day of his campaign he talked about this danger from the south, he talked about mexican rapists, and talked about later a judge who had mexican heritage who couldn't judge really orfairly. that was really a dog whistle to those — the baser part of our politics. and i think he went too far with this last policy of trying to deter immigration by splitting up families. and gratefully, gratefully, it was too far. but what he was doing there in separating children from their parents, and we know over about six weeks there were about 2,300 children separated, was that he was enforcing a law that already existed. that's right. his argument is, people were arriving, crossing the border illegally.

they could have gone to entry points and claimed asylum but they tried to do it illegally and if you enforce the law, that means you separate a child because you're not going to prosecute a child. there's no doubt we need to change the laws. it is inconsistent, the laws we have on the books, particularly the flores settlement, which says you can't hold children and because you can't hold children away from their parents, you can't hold the parents either. ultimately, you have a policy called catch and release. you can call it capture and release, catch and release, whatever the case, it doesn't deter, it encourages people to come with children. congress does need to change the laws but in the meantime, we need to understand that the worst thing you can do is separate families the way the administration was. prior administrations, faced with the same dilemma, handled that commitment differently. his argument is they

were encouraging the problem, there were these loopholes. in the words of the department of homeland secretary kirstjen nielsen, the voices most loudly criticising our current laws are those who created this crisis and whose policies created it. is she right? there are a lot of things that drive immigration across the border. we're at fairly low levels historically. it's spiked up a bit this year but it has more to do with economic trends and what's happening in central and south america. the department of homeland security says the increase in families entering illegally is up a35%. that's over a pretty low base, over a short period of time. if you look at overall yearly trends, we're down significantly from where we were a couple of years ago. a couple of years ago, we had a spike in unaccompanied minors who came to the border absent their parents and we had to deal with them,

so we had to stand up facilities and whatnot and it never is good, but i can't think of anything worse than what we went through the past couple of weeks. president trump's argument, and yes, he has adapted the policy, is that it wasn't working and it wasn't being addressed. and that actually, he's been calling on legislators to do something about the loopholes. do you agree with him? well, i agree that congress needs to fix it, but he lays the blame squarely at the democrats. i was part of the so—called gang of eight and have been in congress 18 years and worked on a number of proposals during that 18 years, not all on a bipartisan basis. there are democrats who want to fix this, and not all democrats. very few democrats want open borders. we all want to fix this. it's just been very polarising and difficult. the president doesn't make it any easier by demonising just one side,

and it makes it difficult for republicans to partner with the democrats. or the democrats certainly to partner with republicans. we are in a situation where he is saying, and his press secretary is saying, funding a border wall, tightening immigration laws, they should all be fulfilled as part of any legislation. is that right? i would like comprehensive reform, i have worked on better reform. what we passed in 2013, the so—called gang of eight bill, was comprehensive and provided significant resources for the border and interior enforcement work programmes, some mechanism to deal with those who are here illegally. won't that open a situation where there is almost an encouragement to bring your children because you will get in that way? a lot of that would have been dealt with in the legislation. we also dealt with the situations

in el salvador, honduras and guatemala, the so—called northern triangle. where we appropriated money to help deal with those asylum cases at us consulates there, so they don't make the trip. but given where we are now, and republicans are not agreeing, is it right, is president trump right that actually, the answer to this for the united states is what he's saying, is to fund the building of a wall? i mean, you know, if you build a wall, in terms of asylum cases, which a lot of these are, then they'll simply come to the points of entry into the border. so the wall is not a berlin wall—type of wall, gratefully. would you vote in favour of putting up the money to build a wall? well, it depends on what you mean by wall. the president's changed his own definition. in some places, we need a more physical structure and in some places, the terrain is such... i'm from arizona, i've been on the border a lot. some places you need no barrier at all simply because it's so remote, so this notion of a 2,500—mile wall is ludicrous and the president

recognises that, as does the department of homeland security. we need more resources for the border. i point out the bill i mentioned, in 2013, designated between manpower, personnel, technology, border infrastructure, it was about $41 billion. significantly more than what the president was talking about, but it didn't envision a 2,500—mile structure that the president kind of puts out there and that a lot of people envision as something very different from what it is. do you think as a result of this process, and perhaps he always intended it, that he is more likely to get he wanted? you know, it depends on being able to say, oh, i got a wall. initially, it was the mexicans were going to pay for it. he still says that. nobody believes it. but to be able to say, i got a wall. sure, he wants to do that. we do need more infrastructure there, like i said.

but far more important is what you do in terms of the drivers of immigration. part of the reason that we have far less immigration across the border than we did perhaps ten years ago or so is because of nafta. we have helped the economy of mexico so for mexicans, we have net migration south of mexican citizens, so there are other things that need to be done as well. we're working with these northern triangle countries to try to improve their systems of justice and whatnot, and if we can continue to do that, we can relieve some of the pressures. you have been, as i say, one of president trump's harshest critics within his own party, but you've also said i'm not going to stand for election again. right. if is so important to you, why not? there is no place in this party for a republican like me. it used to be that if you polled

in arizona, for example, what are the most important issues to you? it would be the economy or jobs, sometimes immigration. now the most important issue if you polled those who vote in a republican primary is, are you with the president? that has become the litmus test. are you with the president? i am with the president on some things, but i am not a number of things. i could not continue to speak out as i am and win a republican primary, it is not possible. when president trump heard what you'd done, he tweeted, the reason senator flake and senator bob corker dropped out, they have zero chance of being elected. they now act so hurt and wounded. you know, i never had the choice, frankly. i could never have supported this president. initially, long before he was a candidate, when he espoused this birther theory. and pushed it so hard.

that president 0bama was not american. that's right, that was too much for me. and then the comments on mexican rapists and then referring to my colleaguejohn mccain, somebody who can not be honoured because he had been captured. it was never on the cards for me to support him. i had hoped that after the election, people would, the electorate in arizona and elsewhere would say, hey, we need people in there who will provide a check on the president, and will vote for him when they think he's right and vote against him when they think he's wrong. right now, we don't have that in the party. 90% of the republican party is right there with the president. this is the president's party right now. i could have, certainly, gone along with that and made myself ok with the president's policies and his behaviour. but i couldn't have. i,justi... you said it's about his policies and behaviour. it does sound almost as though

it's also about decorum. no, it's more than that. decorum, certainly. what now has become normal, these tweets, these insults. this degradation of the political culture is awful. and so that's a problem, but it's more than that. but you are offended when it comes to what he actually doing. there are people who heard the speech and thought you were going to stand up against him. within hours, you're voting on a policy in line with him, which you have done more than 80% of the time. well, keep in mind, i'm a conservative. i believed that we certainly had to have corporate tax cuts. i would have done the tax bill differently, but we needed to lower the corporate rate. we simply aren't competitive. voting to repeal 0bamaca re, i voted some a0 times before the president came along.

you don't object to what he is doing, just the way he is doing it? trade policy, we haven't had an opportunity to push back on the president's trade policy. a huge mistake to exit the tra ns—pacific partnership and a worse mistake if we were to pull out of nafta, the steel and aluminium tariffs are detrimental to the economy, as well as our relationship with our allies. the president's muslim ban was patently unconstitutional and unwise, it morphed into something that is probably constitutional but still unwise. the president's policies on picking winners and losers in the economy, right now saying that the department of energy ought to buy power from coal plants to keep them alive, regardless of whether they are economically viable or not, those are not policies i support. you also said when you were criticising him, the most vexing thing of all, the supposed hoax

at the heart of the russia investigation. right. do you think that president trump is only in power because russia influenced the election? no, i don't. i do think the russians tried to influence the election, they did intervene, not at the behest, but certainly to benefit donald trump. we don't know if that was dispositive or not, if that effected the election. i accept that donald trump is the president, he was duly elected, we will never know how much influence that had, but i am troubled that he simply won't let that investigation take its course. it ought to. i have a lot of faith in bob mueller. the investigation is going on. president hasn't done anything to stop it. right, well, he hasjust tried to undermine it. so i hope he lets it take its course, that he doesn't fire bob mueller, rosenstein orjeff sessions.

but it is not healthy, it is not right to denigrate and undermine and institutions like the fbi, the department ofjustice and the free press. the president — this is a real problem i have as well, is that calling fake news real and real news fake and referring to the press as "the enemy of the people". he should know that that phrase does not have a noble pedigree and those things are dangerous, particularly when you have journalists around the world being detained and in some cases, killed, certainly detained in record numbers, in some cases, on fake or false news charges that echo the language that he uses. that is very detrimental. but when you accused him and you picked up accusing him of using stalinist language,

the republican national committee chairwoman tweeted that you have gone too far, comparing the leader of the free world to murderous dictators is absurd. certainly i don't compare him to stalin. i say that certainly the president of the united states should know better than to use a phrase that someone like stalin made famous, that is what i was pointing out. you criticise the president and yet you are talking about a man that is overseeing an incredibly strong economy, where unemployment is at its lowest in 18 years, gdp revisions keep going up, it is growing strongly. he — whilst there are people in the united states who are strongly opposed to him, amongst the republican base he gets ratings of 85% or even more. it's his — the argument is that he is doing the right thing and you shouldn't even be there. you have lost. well, keep in mind, these things that i think have been main

drivers of a better economy have been pushed by congress for a long time, in particular, regulartory reform. we use something called the congressional review act, to throw out a lot that were enacted by the previous administration. the president has done a lot of good things on regulation. we were overburdened on the regulatory state that has been a good thing for the economy, even better than the tax cuts. they were important as well, particularly for corporate tax. that has laid the groundwork for a good economy. i am afraid that in the long—term, trade wars will nix it all. we don't win trade wars. try as we might, we haven't been able to move the president on that notion that there are, that trade is somehow a zero—sum game. if somebody is doing well, somebody must be losing. president trump has imposed tariffs on steel and aluminium and there are retaliatory tariffs at least from the eu being put in place, do you see it

as inevitable that there will be a trade war? yes. i don't know how you can impose tariffs and stick to them like that. what is even worse... how will it play out? people say, ultimately, he is saying this is a bad deal for america. he is in it to get a better dealfor americans. right. nafta. there were parts of nafta needed to be changed, what of those we going to be revised in the tpp. but what we say, those of us who believe in free trade, that we have rules—based international order that we were the main architect of and that if we have issues with china, and we have many, some of our trade partners and even allies, use that structure that you have set up, not simply go around it and impose tariffs. what happens is that there is retaliation, certainly

there is going to be, already has been, from the european union, canada and mexico. and the response is then to ratchet up yet again. nobody wins trade wars. but you recognise even that you have lost the argument, don't you? for a time. i do think that we will get through this, we have to. populism is called populism for a reason, it is popular. you can win elections now and then, but you cannot govern with it. anger and resentment is not a governing policy and it only goes so far and there are pendulum swings in american politics. so i do think that this is president trump's party right now, it is, no doubt. you cannot win a republican

primary around the country if you are a highly critical of the president's of that behaviour or his politics, but that is not always the case. how long? i don't know. it could be... you have said and you wrote a book, you said these are the spasms of a dying party. is the republican party dying? if we continue on this course, yes. look at the demographics. women and young people have been walking away from the party for a while. they are in a dead sprint right now. looking out there, republicans did the right thing after mitt romney's loss, saying it let's do this autopsy, let's see where we are. the conclusion was we've got to appeal to a broader base. now, a couple of months later, we chased a populist. you can win the election here or there, but overall there are simply not enough people... what is the answer? you are not alone, there was the likes of steve schmidt, a long—time strategist who was advising george w bush

and john mccain, he has renounced his membership of the party because he says it is fully the party of donald trump, it is corrupt, indecent and immoral. 0ur politics are broken. what is the option for someone like you, to stand for another party? no. our history has proven that two strong parties produces pretty good government, usually divided government is best, if you believe in fiscal conservatism for example, liberal government, economic freedom, you at least need a divided government periodically. so i hope the republican party can come back. so you are not walking away from the party, renouncing your membership? no. i'm not. you will stand in the party and do what? stand against him as president? i said i hope someone else does run in the republican primary. would you?

i haven't ruled it out, but i would rather not. i have been in politics now 18 years in congress, i would rather wait until this fever breaks. i did go give a speech in new hampshire because i think republicans are dying to know that there are real republicans and conservatives out there who are... so you will stand at some point to run for president? i am not saying that. you are not not saying that, that is what is so interesting. well i do hope somebody goes out to remind republicans what republicans stand for and what conservatives stand for and that offer an optimistic vision of where we should go. you talk about the situation being a recipe for disaster and you use the word danger, the pendulum needs to swing back. how dangerous — or how disastrous — could things get you for the pendulum swings back? well, if you spark a full—scale trade war, then that effects the global economy. it's notjust our economy,

it is the world economy that is affected. if you continue to express fondness for authoritarianism, then you give licence to governments that shouldn't have that licence or that credibility. so it does have an effect. these things, on the trade issues, it has more than just an economic effect as well. pulling out of the tpp was disastrous because those countries, particularly in south east asia, would like to be a part of our trade orbit, but will be sucked into china's vortex. and for somebody who expresses, and i think quietly so, this opinion that it is china, they are a competitor, we have certainly done everything that we shouldn't have done if we were to address that situation because we have made it far easier for china to fill the trade vacuum and that has implications notjust with the economy, but with

geopolitics as well. senatorjeff flake, thank you for coming on hardtalk. thank you. appreciate it. whether you like it or not, there is absolutely no end in sight to this hot spell we are experiencing right now and it is a heatwave, temperatures will remain well above average for the rest of the week and into the weekend as well. monday was the hottest day of the year so far, 30 degrees celsius, and many of us experienced temperatures in the high or mid—20s and the jet stream

is way to the north of us across iceland there, rushing into northern scandinavia with a bit of a dip here into the mediterranean. we will talk about what that means for the med in a second but as far as we're concerned, high pressure dominating the scene stretching into scandinavia and the whole of west and central europe and southern parts of scandinavia will be warming up so through the early hours, very little happening on the weather front. all the weather is bypassing to the north of us, so way above my head, closer to iceland. the morning will be mild, warm in the south. a little bit chilly in eastern scotland and the north—east of england, possibly single figures and we have a strong sunshine right from the word go on tuesday. beautiful day, some of us loving it, for some of us, a bit too hot but what we find is more of an onshore breeze around these eastern coasts and the north sea is relatively cool is still so temperatures won't be all that high in hull and norwich. he deep orange is displaced further to the west and that is where

the highest temperatures will be. i suspect around 30 in the midlands, london maybe only the high 20s, for example, on tuesday. i mentioned thejet stream dipping into the mediterranean. here we have a low pressure and the weather is not all that great around greece, the greek islands. 25 degrees celsius expected in athens. we are actually warmer here in the uk than in athens, at least on wednesday, but that will change. athens hotting up to about 30 degrees in the next couple of days. back to the uk, a lot of hot weather around midweek. that is an onshore breeze around the kent coast, east anglia, that north sea coast. hulland norwich, a bit cooler, the low 20s. high 20s expected further west. even belfast, getting up to around 26 degrees, 28 in the lowlands of scotland.

you don't need to be a meteorologist to guess that the next few days, sunshine galore, as i said, whether you like it or not. bye— bye. welcome to newsday on the bbc. i'm sharanjit leyl in singapore. the headlines: the search is set to resume in thailand for 12 teenage footballers and their coach, who've been trapped in a flooded cave since saturday. and fake news takes its toll in india, with false rumours behind a series of brutal murders. i'm babita sharma in london. also in the programme: prince william arrives in israel, becoming the first british royal to make an official visit to the country. and drama and delight in the world cup, as portugal and spain make the knockout stages. we'll have the latest from moscow. live from our studios in singapore and london,