has choosen kamala harris, as his running mate for november's us election. the 55—year—old california senator is the first black woman on a major presidential ticket in american history. they will take on donald trump in three months time. ceremonies have been held in the lebanese capital, beirut to mark the moment a week ago when the city was hit by a devastating blast. there was also a minutes‘s silence in the port area. many groups held pictures of those who died in the disaster. the main opposition leader in belarus has fled the country after disputing the re—election of president alexander lu kashenko in last sunday's poll. nationwide protests have continued against a result widely regarded to have been tainted. the police have blocked off city centres and thousands of opposition supporters have been detained.

now on bbc news, it's time for the travel show. it's been 75 years, but survivors argue their memories of nuclear attack still need to be heard. this week, hiroshima and nagasaki and the anniversary too important to cancel. hello and welcome to the travel show, coming to you this week from hiroshima, around 900 kilometres south—west of tokyo. 75 years ago, the world's first atomic bomb fell on this city, killing tens of thousands of people in a blinding flash of light and, three days later, another bomb fell on nagasaki. in this week's show,

we'll be meeting the survivors of those attacks and seeing how events designed to mark the 75th anniversary have faired during the global pandemic. also coming up on this week's show: christa uncovers the wartime secrets buried deep beneath gibraltar. we meet the people still trapped a long way from home because of covid—19. we feel like hostage here on board as we have no choice except being in our cabin. and rajan gets to grips with some new gadgets designed for a perfectly socially distanced holiday. i have come to a city injapan that's known all around the world, but it's known forjust one event — the devastation and destruction caused by an american nuclear bomb dropped on this city 75 years ago this month during the final days of the second world war.

today, though, much of hiroshima looks like any other japanese city. in fact, coronavirus aside, it's doing well. this exhibition shows how the city has blossomed since. each august, the city commemorates the event. but as this year's big 75th anniversary approached, coronavirus has severely restricted what was possible.

so this is to remember the dead. this is in honour of those who died and families come here and offer prayers for the souls of those who died. at hiroshima's peace park, an area that was once one of the city's busiest commercial hubs, but was flattened by the blast has been made into a focus for its annual commemorations. about 60,000 or 70,000 people were killed on that day, and mostly because of the radiation and injuries, up to 100,000 people died by the end of 1945. in what's been the effect on hiroshima today? it has scarred the city. people were terrified of radiation and people stayed

away from hiroshima. people who were from here were discriminated against and it took the town a long time to rebuild, but in its rebuilding, one of its focuses was on trying to seek to eliminate nuclear weapons in the world. so it's really always remained a central defining aspect of this city's experience and this city's focus. the testimony of survivors here can reveal japan's difficult relationship with memories of the second world war.

the number of survivors are dwindling every year and this year's ceremonies will be the last significant anniversary many will attend. but despite the limitations placed on proceedings because of the pandemic, many are still eager to come out and tell their story.

and it's not just personal testimonies which have a part to play in this year's events. across the city, a piano tuner was preparing his special piano that had been exposed to the blast 75 years ago for this year's scaled down ceremony in the peace park.

on august 6, the peace park ceremony went ahead, but with a socially distanced setup, allowing just 10% of the 11,000 attendees that were originally anticipated.

well, the anniversaries here in hiroshima and nagasaki aren't the only world war ii commemorations to be affected by the coronavirus pandemic this year. celebrations to mark the 75th anniversary of the victory in europe day back in may were also relatively low key. up next, though, while travel returns to normal in some parts of the world, elsewhere, some people are still stranded a very long way from home. we've been to meet some of them. marooned off the coast of brazil and the south atlantic ocean are three cruise ships. trapped on board are a total of 103 mauritian

and madagascan crewmembers. all passengers and some of the crew left in march, but those left on board have been unable to return home since the borders to their countries closed. i wanted to get home to mauritius because i'm missing my family and my loving one. i want to get home to mauritius because i belong there. i want to get home to mauritius because my mother just passed away. all: please lift the restrictions and let us go back to mauritius. to be stranded on board, far from our country, far from our family is very difficult because we are stressed here and we don't know exactly when we are going to be repatriated. we feel very lonely and depressed to get back home and praying to be on land soon. we feel like hostage here on board as we have no choice except being in our cabin, on our balcony, and taking our meal

all the day. now, another group of people who have been particularly hard hit by changing government policies are australians. as cases rise, strict arrival caps have been imposed, leaving people stranded. airlines have been forced to limit the number of passengers on their flights, pushing up ticket prices and making returning home even more out of reach. i'm originally from the uk, but i've lived in australia now for a number of years and i'm married to an australian, we're all australian citizens, we've got four kids. we came on holiday initially in early march for a 3—week holiday to visit family in the uk and we've been trapped here ever since, stranded. and it's now getting on for about 11.5 months. the main challenges is that we've got a small house and there are six of us. so we are filming this where i actually sleep. this is my dad's study in a shed in the garden. and the uncertainty of not knowing when that would stop

has been particularly difficult. when the australians decided to put limitations on the number of people arriving because of pressures on quarantine, the airlines have actually been forced to discriminate against the economy passengers and so we've actually been removed from a couple of flights. so it's not that we don't want to get home, it's not that we haven't been trying to get home. we've done everything in our financial means to get home, but we'rejust not able to. british citizen tom russell has been stranded in accra, ghana where his 1—week research trip turned into a 5—month aid operation. i was due to fly out of ghana the day after the borders closed, and i've had ten flights cancelled since. the trick is to accept you are stuck somewhere, and as soon as you do that, you just get on with life as much as you can, as opposed to kind of dwelling on it. and that's exactly what tom did, by setting up give back ghana.

the project started when tom set up boxes giving enough food for ten families for one week, which he gave back to locals to help funding for his trip. five months on tom and crowd funding and a business grant have allowed tom and his ghanaian business partner have put together thousands of boxes to help people across accra. i think it has completely changed my experience for the positive. i've met so many people through this. every part of it has given it some value as well. i'd like to see my friends and family, but the project is on here, and i've got to run with what i've started. well, let's hope they all make it home safely soon. still to come on the travel show: rajan has some

suggestions to keep your travel bubble intact if you are heading off on holiday. and christa finds there's more to gibraltar than first meets the eye. with the world slowly returning to some kind of normality, it's only natural that people are wondering where they can go on their next trip. but what do you do if you want to remain socially distanced from others but are still desperate for some kind of holiday? rajan might just have the answer. well, yes, with fears of a second imminent wave of the virus and spikes being reported across the globe, the idea of social distancing while travelling does sound like a good one. conventional crowded summer hotspots like beaches, theme parks and busy cities are being avoided by many people in favour of more rural locations to allow for social distancing. so with all of this going on, it's hardly surprising that some fun but pretty unconventional ways of travelling are

rising in popularity. around the world, businesses have been creating innovative ways for people to still have fun travelling while remaining safe. according to manufacturers, the ququq camping module is a mini mobile home in a box, which means everything you need is in one place to set off on a wild adventure without seeing a single soul, if that's your thing. how easy is that to turn this into a mobile home? let's do it. developed by a husband—and—wife duo in germany back in 2011, the boxes are now being used all over the globe. well, voila — amazing. as easy as that. tell me, where did the idea come from? prior to this, pretty much if someone wanted to use their own vehicle, it was our bed, mattresses, lying on a cold floor —

not very convenient, not all of their kit in one space. it's a proper stove. it will allow you to have an adventure effectively in the vehicle you already own and be able to social distance if you needed to or wished to. and moving directly from the campsite to the open water. what if i told you you could buy a caravan and you could move from land to water and sail it out to sea? kind of james bond for campers, right? dale, where did the idea for the sealander come from? my goald was to bring a new an innovative craft to an old—fashioned caravan market especially for people looking for more freedom and more flexibility in their leisure time. this solution is a kind of dream of everybody, so it's notjust physical, it's also symbolic for possibilities follow your own path. i guess ultimately, daniel, the beauty of this is you can travel across land and in water without meeting other people.

that's the soul of our product. you are free to do whatever you want to wherever you want. with hotel occupancy rates down globally and the virus not showing any signs of leaving us anytime soon, is the uptrend and socially distanced travelling a fad? i don't think it will be a trend. i feel that the quicker we find a vaccine, there is a possibility we will go back to as it was before. i think if it takes longer, we will actually learn a lesson about this. we will appreciate travel more. everything has become very homogeneous, and the reason behind travelling in the first place is that we wanted to explore and see something different, not something the same, and i think we've lost the plot about this way. what kind of activities or holidays can you see prospering in the future in this world? 0utdoor travel will become big. adventure travel will become big. touring holidays where you have small groups —

so you've got about four or five people per guide. there's a lot of stuff on our doorstep that looks like overseas. one of my favourite countries in the world is canada. i absolutely adore it. i'm not going to go to it this year, but scotland is like a mini canada. so there are lots of places that will resonate, and we've got plenty of opportunity to social distance, our budget. to finish up this week we had back to some of the darkest days of world war ii. the british territory of gibraltar was vital for allied access to the mediterranean, but it's very location made it vulnerable to enemy attacks, which is why a secret network of tunnels was built there. but before lockdown, christa headed there to discover some of its hidden past. this tiny territory on europe's southern tip has been the subject of fierce diplomatic wrangling for years. spain claims sovereignty, but it's been ruled by britain since 1713. tourists have always come

here to take in the sunshine and feed the famous barbary macaques, and it's not hard to see why this rock has been such a prized military asset too, especially during the second world war. up here on top of the rock, you really get a sense of why this was so strategically important during the war. as we follow the map, you can see the mountains of africa to one side, and we've got spain on the other side of the rock, and of course the entrance to the mediterranean from the atlantic, so a really important place, this. inside the rock itself, work has been going on which is revealing 1000 years of history, including information on how this place was repurposed as a military hq.

gibraltar is a fortress and it's covered in fortifications, but notjust on the outside. in fact gibraltar is honeycomb with tunnels, and there's 44 miles of tunnel inside the rock, which is more than double the amount of roads we got on the outside. so yes, gibraltar is a living fortress. these tunnels, they all connect up, and there are hospitals, there's kitchens, there's a bakery, there's frozen food stores. the plan was to be able to house and caterfor 16,000 and women. 16,000? yes. these rooms used to be the king's regiment headquarters. but one discovery in the 1990s stunned gibraltarians: the infamous stay behind cave.

all to do with an urban myth that was hanging around town ? people used to talk about this about hidden tunnels, secret tunnels. so for many years people were looking for them, but no—one ever found anything, so by the 1990s it was dismissed as an urban myth — until one day some of the cavers found something. if gibraltar were to fall into enemy hands, a top—secret plan called 0peration tracer was to bury six men in the rock with six weeks‘ supply of food. the job was to spy and radio back intelligence to the uk. what do we have here? this is what would have been the main living chamber. if you look at the floor, it's been covered by cork tiles. now, the idea of this was to suppress any noise

so the men wouldn't make any noise while they were living here. this would have been the radio shack. and the latrines. of the six people chosen, there were two radio operators, a doctor, an officer and a signalman. and here we have the remains of a bicycle. and instead of a bicycle chain, it had a leather strap, and that would have provided a means of generating electricity to power their radio. also at the back you can see there is a fan attached to what would have been the back wheel, and the idea was that was going to provide ventilation. the plan was for the men to hide and monitor air traffic on and off the runway, and shipping movements into the med, the bay of gibraltar and the atlantic. this was their only access to daylight. this is a really plumb spot. that's why they chose this particular point of view. access here is limited, but through the gibraltar museum, 30 people a year are able to visit the stay

behind cave on a first—come, first—served basis. christa exploring some hidden world war ii history there in gibraltar. that's it for this week. we'll be back with a new travel show very soon. next week there's another chance to see rajan making his way down the mighty river sava in the balkans. join rajan for that if you can. but from me and the rest of the team here injapan, it's goodbye.

hello. there is quite a mix of weather on offer across the british isles just at the moment. the headlines are being made by the heat but, at times, some low cloud is running in to some of the coastal areas, making it a great deal cooler and then, when all that heat really powers on through, we get that possibility of some thunderstorms and that is the mix that will take many of us through wednesday. there is heat to be had widely across western europe at the moment. the moisture being fed around this low out of biscay, up towards the british isles, where we start wednesday on another really humid note. widely across the british isles temperatures in the teens if not the low 20s. the bulk of the morning thunderstorms to be found across the north—eastern quarter of scotland. these gradually drifting towards shetland by evening, and then leaving behind just the chance of one or two thunderstorms dotted around, but generally they will begin to gang up

across parts of wales, the midlands, and central, southern england as we get on through the afternoon, where again the temperatures widely will exceed 30 celsius. although, underneath the cloud and murk, around about some of the coast, you could be closer to 17—19, something of that order. through the evening and overnight, those showers just getting a little bit further north and a little bit further out towards the west, and the murk becoming ever more extensive across parts of northern and eastern scotland, and into the eastern side of the pennines, and again where it's going to be a very close—night again. widely temperatures into the teens to the low 20s. thursday gets off to a pretty grey start. the cloud more extensive than we have seen it of late but a really close—feeling day, and it is that mixture of heat and humidity again that will spark those thunderstorms widely across the southern half of britain. always that fraction fresher and perhaps drier too further towards the north. though if the sunshine pops out here, again, you will be off into the 20s. as you move towards friday, i think we're going to see again the low pressure very much the dominant feature. and always that risk of those

torrential downpours affecting central and southern parts of the british isles. further north, again, the onshore breeze is dragging some low—level cloud into the eastern side of scotland. most of the best of the sunshine for northern ireland and across western scotland. although those temperatures look as though they are dropping awayjust a touch, i think you will still feel pretty close and it is going to take quite a while before we get something a good dealfresher moving in from the atlantic to affect all parts of the british isles.

welcome to bbc news, i'm mike embley. our top stories: making history. the democratic presidential candidate, joe biden, chooses black senator, kamala harris, as his running mate for november's us election. they take on donald trump in three months time, his campaign team has already weighed in, saying americans will resoundingly reject the pair at the ballot box. the people of beirut observe a minute's silence, marking the moment an explosion ripped through the city, one week earlier. the main 0pposition leader in belarus flees the country after disputing the presidential election result. nationwide protests are continuing for a third night. the hong kong pro—democracy activist, jimmy lai, is released on bail, 2a hours after his arrest under