this is bbc news. i'm ben brown. the headlines: lebanon's prime minister is expected to announce his government's resignation within the next hour. it comes amid fresh protests in beirut — unrest has been growing following last week's devastating explosion in the capital. there's mounting anger in scotland over the downgrading of exam results. opposition politicians say it's a shambles and a fiasco — first minister nicola sturgeon accepts her government "did not get it right". i'm sorry for that, but instead of doing what politicians sometimes do and dig our heels in, we are determined to acknowledge that and to put it right. targetting education — borisjohnson says it is a priority for england — and all pupils must get back

to school for the new term. i think it's very important that everybody works together to ensure that our schools are safe and they are, they're covid secure, i've been very impressed by the work that the teachers have done working with the unions to make sure that all schools are safe to go back to in september. the home secretary visits border patrols deployed to monitor migrants crossing the channel — as britain says it wants to work with france to tackle the issue new research shows that antarctica's ice shelves have lost nearly 4,000 gigatons since 1994 — that's enough water to fill the grand canyon.

good afternoon. the lebanese government is reportedly about to resign amid mounting anger over last tuesday's devastating explosion in beirut that killed more than 200 people. an announcement is expected to be made to the labanese nation made to the lebanese nation at half—past five our time. the lebanese prime minister, hassian diab, has been chairing a cabinet meeting. he has said a general election is the only way to quell the mounting anger following violent protests which took place over the weekend. and the protests have continued in beirut today. let us show you some of them now. they do live pictures from beirut. some of the protesters have been crashing there. —— of these ally pictures. they have been demanding the resignation of the corruption

they say in the incompetence of the government and they blame the government and they blame the government to prevent leading to the explosion and to the storage of thousands of tonnes of ammonium nitrate and the port of beirut which blew up last tuesday. 0ur middle east analyst alan johnston told me the anger towards the government has been growing, in the aftermath of the explosion. there was absolute outrage that the authorities, the government could have allowed that great stock of ammonium nitrate that you mentioned to be stored in the heart of beirut, devastating the city when it erupted. unimpressed, too, many people in beirut at how little the government seem to do to try to help in the effort to clear up the city, at the same time, international communities shaped up to pour in aid, signalled very clearly that it simply didn't trust

the existing powers that be to handle that incoming money and made quite clear diplomatically that it intended to bypass the government. so this is the government under the most intense strain, yesterday we began to see ministers resigning, first the information minister, the justice minister, the environment minister, ahead of a crisis cabinet meeting today, we've had the finance minister was going to go, during that meeting we heard there were indications that many more ministers wanted to leave and the writing was on the wall. we are hearing from many well—placed sources that the resignation of the government is imminent, that prime minister hassan diab will address the nation in the next hour or two, as you say, and say that it's all over for the government. it's all over for the government but not all over for lebanon, and the question is, who on earth will replace that government and will they be any more effective as a government than the last one?

we just don't know exactly what will follow this announcement that we are expecting very soon now, how will the parties that supported that government react to its resignation? will they attempt to form a new administration? that is entirely possible. the prime minister, mr diab, indicated over the weekend that he favoured the holding of early elections but there will be a fair number of the government's opponents who would be uneasy about that, they would perhaps argue that the electoral system has been set up by the political