taliban commanders have been photographed in the president's palace in kabul, as they retook the afghan capital 20 years after being forced from power. president ashraf ghani has left the country — taking a flight to uzbekistan. the taliban arrival has sparked an exodus from the city, with afghans trying to board flights out of the country. the us state department says american troops are now taking steps to secure the airport. thousands of us troops are assisting with the evacuation of embassy staff, citizens, and some afghan nationals from kabul. there's been a sharp rise in the death toll from the earthquake that hit haiti on saturday. almost 1,300 people are now known to have died. many more are feared to be trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings. hospitals are struggling to cope with the injured.

now on bbc news — dateline london. hello and welcome, this is dateline london, the only programme to bring together bbc specialists with foreign correspondence who write from here. it's an outsider�*s perspective on what's happening around the uk and the world. is the return of the taliban the least worst outcome for afghanistan? heat and monsoons getting longer and wetter. is the world willing or able to stop it from getting worse? and andrew cuomo desire —— resigns.

lovely to see you all again. the taliban are in controljust 45 miles south of kabul, the regional warlords and militia groups to whom the president has turned in afghanistan's hour of need, evidence that his army trained by the now departed americans is inadequate in the fight. one by one provincial capitals have fallen, clive, when you look at the picture in afghanistan the director of national intelligence who worked withjoe biden when he was vice president, jake clapper, said was inevitable,

once the american troops left it was inevitable, given these evacuation flights for nationals and embassy staff, is that kind of an implied admission that the attempt to keep the taliban out has been lost? yes, and the evidence on the ground is clear that the 20—year mission, yes, its initial point was to prevent another 9/11, another large—scale international major terror attack, and it has worked on that point of view. afghanistan for the last 20 years has not been a haven for terror groups. it does feel as if there is the smell of saigon and the final days of the us in vietnam and the british are trying to get troops in and expatriates out, and americans similarly,

but i was in afghanistan about three weeks after the taliban took control in 1996 and the response from local people to the taliban taking over was a very different to what you are seeing now. there was a sense the taliban were going to finally bring peace and stability and possibly prosperity to a country that had just come out of more than a decade of brutal civil war with warlords beating the hell out of the major cities. much of kabul was reduced to rubble and the taliban was seen as a stabilising force to bring security. fast forward 20 years, it is very different and we are seeing the roads leading into kabul full of refugees trying to get out of various areas where the fighting is taking place, the un announcing local countries should keep their borders open so refugees and civilians can get out and there is a sense it is not a matter of if but when the taliban take over what kind of a regime they'll put forward. stephanie, we are only weeks

from the 20th anniversary of 9/11, how will this look in the us on that day? which is always such an important day, but obviously the passage of two decades makes it even more significant. if the taliban is back in control, the people who were responsible and seen in the us as having given 0sama bin laden the environment to plot an organise those terrible attacks? i think the withdrawal will be regarded there as a huge mistake. biden appears to be proceeding and not wavering because that is an assumption it will not cost the us anything, and the real damage will not be clear until the reports of refugees flooding across borders, young girls being sold to taliban fighters and the real scale of the humanitarian disaster hits our screen regularly. already the republicans

are piling in and cut sizing —— criticising the decision, senate republican leader mitch mcconnell saying today the biden administration had been reduced to pleading with the taliban to protect the us embassy, and said the us risked a humiliating sequel to the fall of saigon in 1975. i think this is a stain on the biden— i think this is a stain on the biden presidency. and i think this is a rethink of how reliable the us is as a partner going forward. the afghans feel betrayed and when you see potentially facing millions of refugees flooding across turkey towards europe, there is a potential as many us military leaders have won that afghanistan could become a haven for terrorists. —— warned.

inaudible. after relative stability afghanistan was not perfect but a pretty good investment for relatively little cost, the us had not been engaged in combat operations since 2015 and it had not been front—page news in years so there's been a push, biden has wanted to fulfil his campaign promise to pull out, it's not like this has been a big rallying cry, it's not like this is necessarily going to cost the democrats the 2022 mid—term elections. maria, the peace process that was conducted over a protracted period in qatar and led donald trump to reach this agreement

with the taliban, at one point it even looked like they would go to camp david, have some sort of photo op, it never came to that but some sort of deal was done, was that kind of naive on the part of the americans and others in the west or kind of a self—serving process, an excuse for what they wanted to do anyway? i think the latter. i don't think- they could possibly be that naive. one of the important things to note is that the taliban l negotiators in qatar are very different and saying very- different— things from taliban leaders on the ground. there have been all sorts of fantasies put forward i about the american presence ini afghanistan from the beginning, i recall hillary clinton said - america had gone in to liberate afghan women and it was going to change and be wonderful - and there is now, she is backi in 2008 saying similar things, the taliban made a promise to be different this time. i

and i think obviously - they know what is going on. you only have - to watch the bbc news to know what is going on. stephanie, is there some sense that perhaps the experience of fighting the group that called itself islamic state in iraq and syria changed some of the perceptions about the taliban that in a sense they could be a containable if unpleasant regime, whereas the kind of nihilistic group that believed in worldwide jihad is something much more dangerous and kind of the lesser of evils? there does appear to be a wishful thinking that the taliban have changed, that they are not wanting to be this international pariah on the global stage and that they may not, in exchange for acceptance internationally that they will not impose

strict shariah law. we have a report today that the us had asked the taliban to spare the us embassy they had any hope of getting foreign aid as part of a future afghan government, which shows how far the us has come in terms of the way it regards the taliban. the taliban are clearly trying to push this perception that they are a more palatable partner than they were, but i think clearly from what we have seen they have not respected the agreements they have signed up to before and i think it is naive to assume that they will not be imposing their oppressive ideology on huge parts of the country like before. do you have any cause to hope that when we hear the spokesman — it's always men under that ideological outlook — say we want girls to be educated, and think education is a valuable thing,

that in the 20 years of being out of power with some of the leading figures exposed to external influences they have never been exposed to before, that it is just conceivable that some of those attitudes might have evolved? i wish i could hope that, but i have met and got to know a number of afghan women - and young girls in europe as refugees _ and the stories - and feelings i have heard from them suggest that is very unlikely and they are _ all still terrified. the other practical question is the one you mentioned, clive, is it likely the taliban will not be the welcoming committee for other organisations that need a base to operate their kind of globaljihad philosophy? the british spent £4 billion, americans goodness knows how much to arm this army with weapons and equipment as they are ready for a taliban administration are to take over.

it is a fundamental question, what have the taliban learned after 20 years in exile? and i think maria and stephanie are correct, in that all the protestations that they are now different when it comes to domestic treatment of women. the folk in doha say one thing on the ground, and we know from our reporting that is not the case — they have not changed domestic policy. and i suspect whilst the rest of the world well rub its hands and say it is a bad thing, they might

not be willing to do anything about it. 0n foreign policy has the taliban changed and i think there are fundamental differences between now and 20 years ago, there are different countries involved and that now includes china which wants afghanistan's minerals, they have signed deals with the authorities in afghanistan to extract minerals, they do not want islamic terror bubbling up, the russians are involved as well, iran and pakistan, all those countries do not want international terror spreading out from that country. frankly that is the best case hope for the united states and the west that it is those countries that keep the lid on this tinder box. scientists have been reluctant to proscribe particular events to climate change and correlation does not necessarily mean causation, no one can say for certain the wildfires affecting the western side of north america and southern europe are the consequence of a warming planet but the latest report from the ipcc, the scientists advising governments,

is blunt. achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 will come too late, a 45% cut is needed by 2030, to get to the arrival in 2010, have not the temperature rises cannot be containedl, making life on earth human life in particular hard to sustain. let's start on this question of what we can take from this based on some of your experience, maria, because you are just back from greece, we are still seeing greece and turkey and other parts of southern europe affected notjust by the heatwave but the wildfires and links to it. what did you see and what are people telling you? we have had heatwaves- and geese before but nothing —— in greece before, - but nothing like what greece is experiencing this summer, it used to be the temperature might go up to 40 or 45- for a couple

of days, - this was days on end . and we have seen fires but nothing like what we're seeing now. i in greece alone, more - than 100,000 hectares burned. i was not in the places where the fires are although i know| one of them, northern evia, very well. - but from when i was on an island - and in athens the air was full of smoke, there was ash, - the sun turned red i and there was smog, it was horrific, something i have never seen before. the pictures i was watching on television and studies i i was hearing from friendsj on those places were truly apocalyptic. huge columns of smoke, . mountains of flame, a third of the largest island l in greece has burned, those were pristine forests with villages where people| lived in a sustainable way, i collecting resin from the pine trees, growing olives - and keeping bees, they lived in and really with nature - and knew the land very well. the response to the fires

has been disastrous, - the firefighting equipment was underprepared and inadequate and firefighters - inadequately trained. i could go on about this - but people on the ground felt very much abandoned _ by the government, had to fight the files themselves. the policy was to get - villages to evacuate instead of following people who knew the ground and land - and what in the forests - who know every part to fight the files themselves. in the end they did i stay but it is a human and ecological disaster, the end of a community of people who are living in a sustainable way. i there is nothing for them . there now, the government is talking about investing in tourism and the area l but apart from asking why would tourists want to go| to a place that is stumpsl that is not the kind of life

with the natural environment that was lived there before. i one thing that is very odd - and paradoxical and frightening about this is the greek- government has been using the fact of climate change as an alibi for its failures, j in other words, it has saidj we faced a terrible natural disaster, there is nothing - we could have done but everyone knows that as i whole lot| they could have done had the invested and firefighting planes instead of warplanes| and hired more seasonal- firefighters as they used to do instead of more. police and so on. the other thing is there - is a kind of government green washing going on, saying - we are investing in these wind turbines which is true, 12% of decal chastity l is produced by turbines but the wind turbines l and in an environmentally . catastrophic way and there's profits to be made so insteadj of you thinking about what do

we need to do to conserve - the forest we have that be know at the most effectivel carbon on the planet, what to be need to do to save what is the that is this kind i of theoretical policy— making that is not what we need. i what about the united states, are you hearing much in the public debate from those prominent politicians, who are sceptical about man—made climate change or have the fires rather quietened them down? there has been an airy silence from republicans who have traditionally rejected climate change science and the wake of the ipcc report, they have not been talking about the files in order gone and california

and they are at the point that they can no longer deny the science, it is no longer a tenable position but i think at this point they are now trying to pivot towards saying we want to pursue climate change policies any more fiscally disposable way than the democrats have. there is an infrastructure bill through the senate this week that includes summer climate provisions but to the republicans have largely gutted the more ambitious proposals that biden had put forward forcing biden to pack it into another bill that does not need republican support to pass. that may be changing because the polling is such that it is clear the majority of americans want congress to pass legislation supporting the clean energy and combating climate change. you have seen this conservative climate caucus and the republicans banning together to push forward market—based solutions as an alternative to the what they called

the socialist plan of the democrats green new deal. the republicans have been light on serious policy ideas and have left that very much to the democrats to pursue and the irony is that actually the private sector is way ahead of where republic policy and what the market really needs is the kind of incentives and infrastructure needed for the auto industry to invest in electric cars and banks to invest in sustainable energy and they are just not coming forward with the concrete proposals. private companies want. the question is of political leadership which maria also talked about which is the idea we are going to do a lot

of green stuff but when you look out the detail it is kind of outweighed by the other stuff going on. in turkey the president concentrated on the economy, huge development and concerns about the impact on the climate and no water bombing planes that work. and he is reduced to tossing tea and sympathy in the absence of anything more substantial. for borisjohnson in the uk he and previous prime ministers and good on the rhetoric, does the substance back up their very ambitious claims and he will be in the chair of this all—important climate summit in october. everybody will be looking to him in glasgow for

the meeting and what activists would say is the uk is very good with theoretical, great with the rhetoric and the hope is the rhetoric will affect the minds of leaders around the world and encourage them to come forward with policies to cut greenhouse emissions but there is not enough walking the walk and talking the talk to back stuff up and the government's own climate advisers say they are not enough policies and place to reach the kind of commitments that the uk says it wants so the climate change committee, independent group of advisers advising the government on how to deal with climate change made it clear to months ago that borisjohnson�*s commitment and this government commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 70% by 2035 is not going to happen and that is because they have not got to the policies and place. coming forward with bold targets is notjust for the benefit of the uk and the people in this country, the ideas enters a force to help other countries realise this is what we should be doing but if the uk is not

achieving its own targets then what will the effect beyond other countries and activist will point to the fact that was discussion about whether or not a new coal miner should be opened in the north of england, new oil and gas licences given out in the north sea. some airports are extending their runways, leeds is one of those, as well as a multi—million pound programme to build more roads, so we talk the talk but where is the action? and i think that is the fear going into cop and glasgow that the uk will not be on the front foot as much as it should. and they worried about that and washington? joe biden has watched borisjohnson in action shedding the g7 promoter they have concerns about his capacity to pull this off.

they have not voiced them publicly but it is boris johnson failed to get an agreement about phasing out coal. less prepared than france when they did cop 21 in 2015, diplomatic muscle behind cop 26 that is needed to get substantial agreement. borisjohnson in terms of product push. they are doing a good job but he is notjohn kerry and the reality is the success of cop 26 will come down to us leadership, the real question is can china bring faster reductions and who will

persuade them to do that and given the tensions between the uk and china over hong kong i think that will be really hard. john kerry the climate envoy is in a few weeks and it be interesting to see if you can them to rethink the climate plan, they are reconsidered it now. they are as concern that there is not enough focus and planning at the last minute. a brief last word. we have still going - through the covid pandemic, we have seen what kind of resources can be put| into that, messaging - and education, the climate crisis as a much biggerl threat facing humanity, we cannot one with business as usual, there has to be - a real step up and resources and funding and education. i in terms of practical leadership do you see the capacity there?

do you think that is when you have seen what is happening in greece does it give you a sense of encouragement about the particle process and a capacity to seize a moment to persuade the public that it has to shift and accept some compromises and the quality of life is known to achieve the longer term policy. no, i don't see that, . i still see climate issues beings subjected to party politics but it is notjust. about persuading the public, this is a political issue. - we have to leave it, thank you for your time, stephanie and clive. this is datelined london. back at same time next week.

hello there. cloud features quite prominently in our forecast for this week. and with the grey skies come some relatively cool conditions for the time of year. northwesterly winds bringing all that cloud and some rather cool air, particularly at the start of the week, but it will often, if not always, be dry. just a bit of light and patchy rain here and there. this is the earlier satellite picture. you can see various areas of cloud. we've got low pressure up to the northeast, weak frontal systems which have been bringing cloud and some showery rain. there's quite a lot of low cloud waiting out to the west. and this is the set—up to start the week, with high pressure to the west, low pressure to the east, and that is what's driving this northwesterly wind. quite a brisk wind first thing, especially for north sea coasts. as we go through monday, we will see some sunshine developing, the best of that across northern and eastern scotland, the eastern side of england, whereas further west, we will keep more in the way of cloud, perhaps some spots

of light rain and drizzle at times, and some slightly heavier rain approaching northwest scotland and northern ireland later in the day. those winds only slowly easing. it stays quite breezy for all of us through the day and temperatures a bit below par, generally speaking — 17,18,19, maybe heading 20 degrees in parts of southern and eastern england. and then as we head through monday night, we will see this area of wet weather pushing its way southeastwards. the rain mostly quite light and patchy, but i think there will be the odd heavy burst. but with that, we're going to feed in an awful lot of low cloud, mist and murk, and that sets the scene for the middle part of the week. we still have this northwesterly wind, with high pressure and low pressure trapping us between the two, essentially, but that northwesterly wind picking up an awful lot of moisture, an awful lot of cloud and depositing it on top of the uk. so largely cloudy conditions on tuesday, a little bit of patchy rain and drizzle here and there. equally, that cloud breaking to give some sunny spells, especially to the south and the southeast of high ground. temperatures, at best, 18, 19, 20 degrees — still a little disappointing. and then into wednesday, more of the same, really, more mist and murk and cloud, the odd spot of drizzle. best of any brightness to the east and southeast of any

hills and mountains. and temperatures, well, maybe just creeping up a touch, 21 degrees there in london, 17 in aberdeen. and then as we look towards the end of the week, a quiet sort of day on thursday. by friday, well, there is the chance that we will see some rain pushing in from the west.

it was horrific, something i have never seen before. this is bbc news. welcome if you're watching here in the uk or around the globe. i'm david eades. our top stories: taliban fighters enter the presidential palace in kabul as they retake the afghan capital, 20 years after being forced from power. their arrival has sparked an exodus from the city, as afghans try to board flights out of the country and president ghani flees. embassies are closing, diplomats are flying out, leaving afghan civilians and former top officials fearing what lies ahead. imight i might face consequences that i might face consequences that i never even dreamt of, and i

guess that's the price that we pay for