this is bbc news. welcome if you're watching here in the uk, on pbs in america, or around the globe. i'm reged ahmad. our top stories: the eyes to the right, 293, the noes to the left, 46. britain's parliament defies boris johnson — again blocking his call for a snap general election. it's the sixth defeat for the prime minister in a little over a week. parliament's now been suspended for more than a month. this parliament is accordingly prorogued.

authorities in the bahamas defend their response to hurricane dorian. we report from the abaco islands where tens of thousands are still desperate for help. two years after hundreds of thousands of rohingyas were driven out of myanmar, all traces of where they lived are being erased from the landscape. we have a special report. and, as the long—awaited sequel to the handmaid's tale is published, author margaret atwood tells the bbc her story's "closer to reality" than ever. in another day of high drama, the british parliament has again rejected the prime minister's call for a snap general election. it's the sixth defeat for borisjohnson in a little over a week. in a fiery final debate before

parliament is controversially suspended for five weeks, mrjohnson insisted that he would not ask the eu for an extension to the date of brexit, in spite of a law passed by mps compelling him to do so. opposition leaders accused the prime minister of trying to call an election to secure a no—deal brexit by stealth. this is how the result was announced. the ayes to the right — 293. the noes to the left — 46. that's less than last time. yes. for us. not for you. the ayes to the right — 293. the noes to the left — 46. so the ayes have it, the ayes have it. hear, hear. however i say, by way

of explanation for those —— the prime minister said the opposition was simply afraid they would lose the election. and the exchanges continued after the vote. i will go to that crucial summit in brussels on october 17th and no matter how many devices this parliament invents to tie my hands i will strive, mr speaker, to get an agreement in the national interest. this government will not delay brexit any further. we will not allow the emphatic verdict of the referendum to be slowly suffocated by further calculated drift and paralysis. the one thing the prime minister didn't say was that he was going to obey the law of this country. he did not say he acknowledged or accepted three votes that have taken place in this parliament and, under his request, the house is now due, apparently, this evening, to be prorogued for one of the longest prorogations in history, simply in order to avoid any questioning of what he is doing

or not doing, simply to avoid discussion about yellowhammer, particularly to avoid any discussion about the proposals he has or hasn't or do or don't exist that have been put to the european union. mr speaker, this government is a disgrace and the way the prime minister operates is a disgrace. leader of the opposition jeremy corbyn. with me is our news reporter gareth barlow. so the government lost that election, they wanted a snap election, they wanted a snap election but lost the vote. is that significant quest significant yes. it is the six vote that the government of borisjohnson has tabled and has lost. the opposition parties have said they don't trust

the government. they don't want the government to dictate the time and terms of a general election. they wa nt terms of a general election. they want one at some point but won't let the government of borisjohnson to decide when it takes place. we saw mps from across the political spectrum, including some conservative mps either voting against or abstaining, meaning that the government did not get the required numbers to call a snap general election. is a no-deal brexit off the table nao? no, not yet. while there is legislation to force the prime minister to ask an extension to force the deadline if he doesn't get an agreement later in october, there is potentially wiggle room. there is no blueprint for the point in which british politics is now in. potentially, the prime minister could write that letter asking for that extension, fulfil his requirements in law, and then follow it up with another letter saying ignore the first one, didn't really m ea n saying ignore the first one, didn't

really mean it, don't really want to, can we still leave nonetheless. or could he possibly find an eu member state to veto against any you legislation that would allow that extension and a delay in the deadline. we heard over the weekend the french foreign minister say he wasn't really a fan of an extension. but it is unlikely, really, the eu would an extension. parliament is a sitting now, it is prorogued, even though it is a very tense time. very tense. what will they be doing were not sat in the chamber for the next five weeks? they will be busy campaigning for the general election that does not yet have a date, has not been tabled. it is coming though. there will also be having party conferences as well. while parliament in itself is suspended there is no suspension of politics here in the uk. if anything, it will get more and more intense as parties now go to the people and start engaging them increasingly so to try

to get the public to decide who they wa nt to get the public to decide who they want in government in the future. gareth barlow taking us through all of those points. and for the latest developments on this story, you can go to our website for all aspects of brexit. just go to bbc.com/news or download the bbc news app. officials in the bahamas have defended their response to hurricane dorian, saying they are dealing with the disaster. at least 45 people were killed last week, and aid agencies say tens of thousands of people in the worst—hit areas, still have no access to food or clean water. aleem maqbool reports now from the abaco islands, one of the worst hit areas. with little left to stay for after the hurricane, there's a clamour now to get off this devastated island. the airstrip‘s opened on abaco, and though the planes keep coming, theyjust can't match demand. there's not enough. there's nothing to do, so... all you can do is try.

marsh harbor close by, though, is nowjust and obliterated and empty town. people who were here during the hurricane say those shipping containers were lifted up by the winds and the powerful tidal surges, and smashed into people's homes, and pushed further and further back. and the stories of loss and of those who are missing are everywhere. around here was the home of ebma francoise. we were going to accompany him back to the spot for the first time, but when we got to the edge of the town, he froze. you don't want to go there? no. why don't you want to go there? because you see how i smell? you see how it is. you could smell, you don't know what you smell there. it looks like something, people are still in there i know, so there are plenty of people dead. plenty people dead.

among the ghosts here for ebma is that of his girlfriend, lisa. her body was found, but the stench ebma talks of suggests many still haven't been. eva survived with her children, but three of her cousins are still missing. she's reluctant to fly out to the bahamian capital, nassau. they tell people to go nassau, i don't know nothing about nassau. because i ain't got no family in nassau there, because my kids need to go to school. i ain't got nothing, i lost all my things. i ain't got nothing in my life. it is the poorest who have been affected most by the hurricane, mainly from abaco's haitian community. many of them and feel the prospects are bleak, whether they stay or go. aleem maqbool, bbc news, on the abaco islands of the bahamas.

in his first comments since cancelling a meeting with the taliban president trump has said talks with the group are dead. he said he cancelled talks due to be held over the weekend at camp david because the militants killed a us service member. mr trump explained his decision. we had a meeting scheduled. it was my idea, and it was my idea to terminate it. i didn't even — i didn't discuss it with anybody else. when i heard very simply that they killed one of our soldiers and 12 other innocent people, i said "there's no way i'm meeting on that basis, there's no way i'm meeting." while talks maybe at an end there the united states relationship with north korea are continuing. pyongyang has said it's willing to hold denuclearisation talks with washington in late september — the first concrete offer of talks since the summit between donald trump and kimjong—un broke down in hanoi in february. well, a little earlier i spoke to frances brown, who is a fellow with carnegie's democracy, conflict, and governance programme.

she's also served under both the obama and trump administrations. i asked her about north korea offering to restart talks just as they've conducted yet another missile test. mixed signals once again from the north koreans. i think the question here is not is north korean willing to meet, which trump wants again, as you know, we've already had two negotiations with the us, it's between these two sides as well as a dmz meeting just earlier this year. i think the question is what will happen at the summit? both the hanoi summit and the singapore summit really ended with very little to show for it. the question i'm watching now is will there be anything that actually amounts to any thoughts that come from this? we saw from afghanistan that donald trump's strategy seems to be he is quite unpredictable. but in north korea's case, could that work, getting the other side to come to him?

certainly. i think in any diplomatic negotiation, some element of creativity when a previous approach hasn't worked, i think there is a lot to be said for that. i think the challenge when we talk about north korea and his negotiations is to actually get specific outcomes you need a fair amount of preparation, you need a lot of painstaking details to be worked out by senior and middle level officials ahead of time. i'm not sure if the president's penchant for unpredictability will really work with those requirements. talking about specific outcomes, how much is donald trump's foreign policy response or strategy trying to deal with conflict and how much is it about talking to his domestic audience? i think we've seen this administration is very driven by domestic considerations. we've seen this from mike pompeo and we certainly see it from the president himself. i think it's no secret the president

would like to claim a big win, claim a big deal when he runs for re—election next year, and here in the us as you probably know, the election season is already under way. so i think he's mindful about that. he would love to claim victory in afghanistan and about the taliban. and with north korea, if it were as easy as making a real estate deal, i think he would make the deal tomorrow and claim victory. on afghanistan, do you think we will see some sort of peace deal under donald trump's time as president? so it's a really open question and i think what we saw over the weekend has set the prospects for that. we have seen over the last year under special envoys and negotiators, a tremendous amount of progress towards patching out an initial deal between the us and the taliban. this doesn't mean it will be a deal that ends the afghan war entirely, it would be a specific bargain between those two parties, but it would be an important start. so we did see a lot of progress but i have to confess i believe this

episode over the weekend has really set back those talks and the prospect for that peace. frances brown, thank you so much for that. stay with us on bbc news. still to come: a concert in korea's demilitarized zone. how culture hopes to ease tensions between north and south. george w bush: freedom itself was attacked this morning, and freedom will be defended. the united states will hunt down and punish those responsible.

bishop tutu now becomes spiritual leader of 100,000 anglicans here, of the blacks in soweto township, as well as the whites in their rich suburbs. we say to you today in a loud and a clear voice "enough of blood and tears. enough!" translation: the difficult decision we reached together was one that required great and exceptional courage. it's an exodus of up to 60,000 people caused by the uneven pace of political change in eastern europe. iam free! this is bbc world news.

the latest headlines: mps have defeated the british government's call for a general election — parliament's now been controversially suspended for more than a month. authorities in the bahamas have defended their response to hurricane dorian. aid still hasn't reached tens of thousands in the worst—hit areas. two years after more than 700,000 muslim rohingyas fled from a savage military operation, they remain stuck in overcrowded camps in bangladesh. a second attempt to start repatriating the refugees failed last month when none of the 3,500 rohingyas selected would agree to go, citing fears for their safety. the government of myanmar says it is committed to bringing them back. however, our correspondent jonathan head was able to find evidence that, far from welcoming the rohingyas back, the authorities in rakhine state have been erasing

all trace of their villages. the border post in northern rakhine state. an immigration officer shows us lists of the rohingya refugees his government had approved last month. they want the world to understand how ready they are to have at least some of them back, though so far, they've had no takers. well, we've been allowed to come right up here to the border with bangladesh, and it's through these rusting gates that myanmar officials say they were expecting hundreds, even thousands, of rohingya refugees to come under the latest repatriation scheme. but of course, without any promises of citizenship, without any real investigation into the abuses they suffered, and most of all, without any reassurances about what kind of future they have, we know that at the moment none of the rohingyas over there on that side of the border are willing to make this crossing. if significant numbers of rohingya refugees do decide to come back, this is where they're likely to spend at least their first two months.

it is a transit camp, and as you can see, it would be pretty basic living. it's also fenced in, with watchtowers and armed police, and it's unlikely they'll be free to come and go. but most of them will not be able to go back to their villages, because they've notjust been destroyed by the violence of two years ago, but they've continued to be demolished even since then. in fact, this very camp is built on the site of what was an intact rohingya village that was then bulldozed. satellite images show two relatively undamaged settlements at the end of 2017, which within a few months are flattened to make way for the transit camp. yet the camp administrator seems unaware of this. why did you destroy the village, the muslim village that was here, to build this camp? "there's no village

in this area," he said. "there are no villages where we built the camp." two years ago, at the height of the military campaign against the rohingyas, i was able to film a muslim neighbourhood called myo thu gyi, which had just been burnt. today, on exactly the same stretch of road, there's a newly constructed government complex instead. myo thu gyi has completely vanished. we were also shown a relocation camp where returning refugees are expected to live, closely monitored by the security forces. there is a large new police barracks close by. here, two satellite images show that a rohingya village was demolished to make way for it. well, this is perhaps the strangest part of this tightly controlled government trip. they've brought us to a village called inn din, which is notorious for a massacre of ten muslim men in september 2017, and for which two reuters journalists went to prison after investigating it. now, they've brought us here showing

us scenes of ordinary life to stress that it is all peaceful and harmonious now with the non—muslim population. but if you come over here, behind this barbed wire fence is where the muslims used to live. there's no trace of them now. they've constructed some kind of government barracks behind there, and it's quite clear that the muslims are never coming back here. as we heard earlier, north korea has said that it's ready to resume nuclear talks with the united states. it comes exactly a year after the leaders of north and south korea signed a historic deal to take steps to demilitarise the border between them. since then relations have soured — so it may come as a surprise that the south has held a peace concert on the demilitarised border between the two koreas. the bbc‘s laura bicker was there. for world—renowned cellist yo—yo ma, this is a dream come true —

playing at the border between the two koreas. culture allows us to dream together, and together, we can achieve the impossible. this makeshift stage at dorasan train station is the last stop in the south. beyond lie lines of barbed wire and fields of landmines which make up the dmz. just last year, there were discussions to change that. last september, south korea's president moon and north korea's kimjong—un declared to work together towards disarmament. the two sides destroyed watchtowers along the heavily—fortified border, and removed landmines. but in recent months, harsher signals have come from pyongyang.

they've tested missile after missile. injune, there was this surprise meeting between donald trump and mr kim. each month since, the us has said talks would follow in coming days or weeks, but there's been nothing. the north has also said it will no longer talk to the south. so, as crowd—pleasing as this concert may be, is it in vain? translation: if we keep trying, i believe one day we will be unified. so, for some, the dream continues. there are those in the south who cling to the hope that, even if the north is not talking, it is at least listening. laura bicker, bbc news, the dmz.

one of the year's most eagerly awaited novels has been released at midnight in london. there were queues round the block at one book shop in central london. ‘the testaments‘ is margaret atwood's sequel to the handmaid's tale, it returns to the fictional world where women are little more than slaves, recently brought to a new audience, on television. our arts correspondent rebecca jones, has been speaking with the author. the world as she sees it can be a terrifying place, and in a career spanning five decades, margaret atwood's vision is as disturbing as ever. only dead people are allowed to have statues, but i have been given one while still alive. so starts her latest novel, the testaments, in which she returns to the nightmare future she created in the handmaid's tale. blessed be the fruit. may the lord open. 30 years after she wrote it, the television adaptation brought

the book to a vast, new audience. in the novel, america is ruled by religious fundamentalists, and women are reduced to sexual slavery. margaret atwood thinks its message of oppression has never felt more relevant. young women of reproductive age are always in the minority in any society. they feel that they're on the verge of having decisions made about them, and about their entire future and fate and body and health, that they have not been able to decide. and, after the election of donald trump, the handmaid's tale took on a new resonance. in america and beyond, women have adopted the striking uniform worn by characters in the novel to protest against laws restricting their rights. it's a brilliant demonstration stratagem, because you can't kick them out because they're not saying anything. they're sitting very modestly. and you can't kick them out

because they're dressed improperly. they're all covered up. but everybody looking at them knows what they mean. there's so much hype, fanfare, associated with the testaments. i apologise. well, do you feel any pressure at all? no, it is a book. it's not regime change. it's not riots in moscow. it's not brexit, dare i say. so it is actually a book. the wait may be over, but no danger, then, of margaret atwood getting caught up in the excitement. but, at the age of 79, having written 50 books and winning more than 100 literary prizes, perhaps that's not surprising. rebecca jones, bbc news. lots of fans anxiously awaiting their copy. and you can get a lot

more on our top stories on our website, bbc.com/news. hello. weather—wise, yesterday certainly wasn't the most shining of starts to the new week. it was cloudy, it was pretty wet for many of us, and also it felt on the chilly side. today, we flip the coin. it's much drier, it should be much brighter, and consequently, it will also feel warmer. this area of low pressure is the area responsible for the wet weather yesterday. that's off into the continent. today, we have a little ridge of high pressure. we start off with quite a bit of cloud around, perhaps some patchy mist and fog. could be a problem through the morning rush—hour across the midlands, but that will lift, and there's a lot of sunshine to be had through the afternoon. however, you don't need to look too closely to observe there's quite a significant change approaching northern ireland come the end of the afternoon.

this weather front is part of an area of low pressure that is actually ex—hurricane dorian. so it is nowhere near hurricane—strength as it makes its way to the uk, let's be clear about that. but it will be a very windy night. as that deep area of low pressure rolls across us, weather fronts will slide their way southwards. there will be some rain around, but mild into wednesday. through wednesday day, the centre of the low stays to the north of the uk. the isobars stay closely packed together. much of the rain will sweep away south—eastwards. we should actually be left with quite a bit of sunshine by the time we get into the second half of the day, but the strong westerly wind will feed quite a few showers into western scotland. and the wind will be particularly gusty, so potentially even disruptive, as gusts could touch up to 40—45 mph for exposed areas to the north and west of the uk. but the temperatures already starting to look healthier than they did at the start of the week. we're into the low 20s in the south—east. wednesday into thursday, we get another little area of low pressure running across us. this is ex—tropical storm gabrielle. again, basicallyjust quite a deep

area of low pressure. it will bring some windy weather perhaps to the south—west in western exposures for a time. the biggest difference, though, is the tropical area it pulls up to the south of it on thursday. so wet for northrthern ireland, wet for scotland, windy potentially, especially for the likes of wales and the south—west of england. but look how the temperatures get bolstered as we pull in the warm, humid air from the south. that then sets us up for the remainder of the week and to take us into the weekend, with high pressure building from the south—west. we feed that warmer air north across the uk. we should settle the weather down quite nicely, as well. friday and on into the weekend, there should be a lot of dry weather around, some pleasant spells of sunshine, and a return as well of some warmer weather.

this is bbc news. the headlines: in britain, mps have again rejected government efforts to call a snap general election. it's the sixth defeat for the prime minister, borisjohnson, in little over a week. parliament has now been suspended until mid october. authorities in the bahamas have defended their response to hurricane dorian. aid still hasn't reached tens of thousands in the worst—hit area. people who've remained in marsh harbour in the abaco islands say there hasn't even been a concerted attempt to recover bodies. president trump says us talks with the afghan taliban are ‘dead'. the decision to scrap negotiations came in response to last week's militant attack that killed twelve people, including an american soldier. the taliban said americans will "lose the most" for cancelling. those other