hello i'm philippa thomas, welcome to outside source. anger grows at the goverment after tuesday's catastrophic explosion in beirut. three days of national mourning have begun — 137 people are known to have died, with thousands more missing or injured. 16 port officials have been detained. your anger is my source of optimism. president macron is the first world leader to visit — mobbed by crowds at the port who plead with him for help. new york state's top legal officer sues to dissolve

the powerful gun lobby the national rifle association, after an investigation into fraud. i think the nra should move to texas and lead a very good and beautiful life. and i told them that for a long time. africa is just a few thousand cases shy of one million coronavirus infections. and the bank of england says the uk's economic slump won't be as bad as expected but it will last longer. welcome. we start the programme in beirut, where in the last half hour, sixteen port officials have been detained over tuesday's massive explosion there. but today we've seen mounting anger directed at lebanon s political elite as well — anger that was witnessed up close today by the visiting french president. the blast has killed at least 137 people, injured more than five—thousand and left more than a quarter of a million homeless.

the scene at the port is one of utter devastation. you can see machinery being used to clear the wreckage. this is what the port area looked like injune — and today, after the explosion. that two and half thousand tonnes of ammonium nitrate blasted open a crater 140 metres wide. the explosion was so intense that it capsized a large passenger ship almost five hundred metres away. the blast began as a small fire which people in downtown beirut were watching from their windows. when the chemicals exploded, they received the full force of the explosion. and this photo has been widely shared — lebanon is a former french colony and french president emmanuel macron