thousands of afghans and foreigners remain massed at kabul�*s airport in the hope of fleeing the new taliban rulers. us department of defense officials said it would still take several days to fly out the 6000 troops deployed to secure and run the airlift. the british prime minister is due to chair a virtual meeting of leaders from g7 countries. it's expected he'll ask the us president to delay the withdrawal of american troops from afghanistan. the taliban have warned there'll be "consequences" if the us and its allies extend their presence into september. the iranian government has said it's prepared to ship more fuel to lebanon to ease their continuing energy crisis. the move would be in defiance of a united states embargo on iranian exports. petrol shortages are paralysing much of lebanon's economy and threatening essential services. there's to be a clampdown

on covid test providers who've been accused of taking advantage of holidaymakers travelling abroad. more than 80 companies listed on the government website are to be warned over misleading prices. a further 57 firms are being removed from the website because they either don't provide the relevant tests — or they no longer even exist. 0ur transport correspondent caroline davies has the details. if you travel, you test. and you pay for those tests. the government's own website has a list of providers, but booking through them isn't to guarantee things will go smoothly — as barbara lowe found out coming from her holiday in portugal injune. we didn't get any test results at all. you couldn't get through to them on the phone, you couldn't contact them via the website. well, to be honest, i think it's quite farcical. i'm annoyed, and i'm upset that i've lost my money and i haven't got what i paid for, basically.

the government lists companies with the cheapest at the top, but some firms have advertised tests at lower prices, only to charge more at checkout, or the tests aren't available at all. today, the government has said that 82 test providers will be given a warning about misleading pricing and could be removed altogether. 57 have already been removed from the list because they no longer exist or don't provide relevant testing services. some testing companies hope this will help the industry's reputation. over the last weeks, companies in the space, the industry, has received a bad reputation, not because of everybody, just from a select few, so now that those select few are removed, we think that, you know, the industry can now show its capability, focusing on quality of service as well as obviously trying to reduce the price at the same time. this provider has done over a million tests, and it's pleased to say it hasn't been getting a warning. this is where the pcr tests are first processed when they arrived. testing for holidays has been going on for months,

but complaints about some operators have been going on for almost the same amount of time. it's meant that there have been some questions about why the government is only taking action now. we are really talking about the most basic of checks — we are talking about, "does the company exist?" "does the price it says it's going to sell the test at, does that exist?" there are lots of other problems behind us, so good news that the government is taking action, but my goodness, it really has taken a long time. the government has said it will do regular spot checks to ensure that prices are accurate and providers are legitimate. but the summer season has nearly come to an end, and for some testing has already left a nasty aftertaste. caroline davies, bbc news. now on bbc news: the travel show. this is the mighty mississippi. the economic backbone of early america, running north to south for more than 2000 miles, carrying the people and cargo that helped to turn this country from a fledgling upstart into a powerhouse. for much of the 19th century, steamboats like this ruled the river.

but in 1879, construction began on a transcontinental train line, that would link the newfound prosperity with the isolated far west. connecting the gulf of mexico with the pacific ocean. on this journey i'll be following the railroad that pushed the american dream along the mexican border all the way to california. every trip is unique. it's a moving city. and i will be meeting some of the people who help define this unique, diverse and fascinating part of the country. horn blares. new orleans, my first

port of call. right now in the middle of one of its annual street parties, the french quarter festival. jazz music plays. the area gets its name from when the french founded the city in 1718, as a strategic port on the mississippi and gulf of mexico. the spanish also ran the city, before it was bought by the us in 1803. and you can see all these influences in new 0rleans' world—famous architecture, food and music. jazz music plays. that is new orleans exactly how i imagined it. a brass band going down the street and a whole crowd following them,

getting into the vibe. fantastic. jazz music continues. now the city might be best known for jazz, but you can also find a type of music here that i've never encountered before. zydeco music plays. chubby carrier is a grammy award winner and the third—generation of a legendary zydeco playing family. the music, zydeco, tell me about it. zydeco music, a lot of people get it mixed up with cajun music. but if you hear zydeco music you're going to hear more of blues, r'n'b, soul and rock �*n' roll all mixed into one. zydeco music continues. this, chubby says, is the expression of louisiana's back creole community. it is a bit of african, a bit of french and some caribbean all mixed up. and apart from the accordion, chubby says the essential instrument of the zydeco sound

is the one that evolved from his grandmother's washboard. music continues. this was my grandmother's washing machine. this was her washing machine back in the day. and you hear that rhythm? the buttons on your shirt were making the little sound, and the grandmother was washing clothes at the time, and of course the daddy who was playing says "hey, that thing sounds good, it might fit with the accordion. bring it over here!" she said "you must be out of your mind, this is how i do my laundry". cani? you should try it, man, yes, yes, yes. it is all percussion in zydeco. plays washboard. you have the rhythm going like this and everything, that's it! that's it. but when you hit the board you lose it. why? i don't know. music continues. the streets are packed, and there's a jubilant atmosphere here. but it has been hard—won. it has taken more than a decade for tourist numbers to recover from the devastation of hurricane katrina in 2005. music has helped the city get

its mojo back, and festivals like this are busier than ever. i feel lucky to have a ringside view. when he point that camera to you, i want you to shake your booty like your mama gave it to you. crowd cheers. we are going to send this back to london and let them know how we do it in new orleans, all right? zydeco music plays. and then after my frankly disastrous ten minute lesson, this happens. slower zydeco music plays. bbc travel here, london, england, y'all. crowd cheers.

and the party goes on long into the night, but i have got an early start, and a very long trip ahead of me. music continues. so that was new orleans, in all its flamboyant glory. it is eight in the morning, and today i'm heading west. thank you so much. and the service i am taking is the sunset limited train line. the route dates back to 1894, and stretches some 2000 miles

coast to coast from new 0rlea ns to los angeles, passing through five different us states. an odyssey, really. so this is a route steeped in history, but i am hoping it's also going to tell me something about contemporary america, too. right up the stairs. thank you. back in the day, several railroad franchises joined up to create this pan—american rail network. and along the route, significant landmarks, historical and natural, reveal themselves to passengers. this is a view of the mississippi river on huey p long bridge. we are right in the middle of two lanes of traffic, which is a weird feeling.

it gets rocky, doesn't it sometimes? one of the tricks with moving down the train is to keep your feet about shoulder width apart, and keep one hand free so you can touch things as you are going through, whether it is the back of the seats, or we have the grab irons which you can use. have you ever fallen on a customer? yes. laughs. good morning ladies and gentlemen, our next station stop will be new iberia approxiately 30 minutes. train supervisor bruce is a veteran of the sunset limited line. the railroad was what granted the united states. it opened up transportation from east to west and that was the big thing, was transportation of both goods and people. the train might have been instrumental in the creation of modern—day america,

but today rail use is way below that of air and road travel, which are often cheaper and quicker. so why would anyone take the train? you have areas that you basically don't have planes flying into it, you don't have greyhound buses going to — so these isolated places in texas especially and new mexico, this is the lifeblood to get transportation through. every trip is unique. it's a moving city. you have people giving birth, you have people... that's happened ? oh yeah. 0n the train. sometimes we are an hour away from civilisation and babies don't wait. laughs. they cheer. 0n we roll as we cross into texas and are joined by a group of train buffs on a day trip.

so you are mostly here because of these two? yes, he saw thomas the train one time when he was about two years old, and since then he has been all about trains. join the club! laughs. i actually have a couple of 1/8 scale amtrak cars, and since i got them i thought they looked so good, that i was waiting for a long time to ride on amtrak, and i was thinking it was like, time to hit the tracks. some people don't get into the smaller areas, the smaller towns, so by going through the back areas, you have an opportunity to expand the mind, because once the mind expands it can never return to its original dimension. my next stop is the city of san antonio. but not before the sunset limited lives up to its name.

san antonio is a modern, prosperous city. in fact now it is america's seventh largest. it is very cosmopolitan, and in many ways not stereotypically texa n. but it has one historical attraction which gets to the very heart of what it means to be american, and more especially, texan. this is the alamo, a legendary site in us history, where in 1836 a small group of troops fighting for texan independence were laid siege by a much larger mexican army. the texan forces held out for 13 days before

they were overwhelmed and killed. dr winders, bruce, how are you? but historian bruce says it would be simplistic to see it as baddie mexicans versus goodie americans. this is a story about people. this is a story about two nations, this is a story about the idea of — what should government be like? it's really the convergence of mexican history and us history.the battle became a symbol of historic- resistance, and the struggle for independence, which the texans won later that year. company, prepare to load �*em 12 times. ready? load!

today, the alamo is one of the state's top tourist attractions, and re—enactors help visitors make sense of its complex past. fire! rifle fire. applause. so, i've been talked into having the full alamo experience, here. but, ryan, tell me... yep. ..there is a point of this, isn't there? right. this living history. absolutely. so as people come in here, and they can see how we would have cooked coffee, how we would cook meat over the fire, the kind of foods that we would have had here. parched corn and beef was the food they had to eat during the battle. and so what we try to do is just let people in on that side of history, give them — kind of a taste, the same emotional experience. what do you think was the mood of the people who were in this situation, waiting, in a sense,

for the mexicans to come? this was home for them. this was the chance for a new life. and so in that, they were willing to fight for something greater than themselves — which is kind of that, in — in my view, that's kind of the amazing feeling you get any battlefield site. this epic fight for freedom from mexico might be part of the folklore of san antonio, but hispanic influence is also a huge part of the city's current identity. we're only two and a half hours' drive from the border, and contemporary mexicana is celebrated here, like loteria. when you win, what do we say? loteria! what don't we say? bingo! alright. bingo. so, if you say bingo, i — i won't hear it. we don't use that b word. you say loteria. alright? does anybody else have any questions? you join a team, put the t—shirt on, and realise

this is about family, community — and winning. el diablo. el diablo — the devil. you've got the devil. the devil. next card, el venado — the deer. el venado. i think you had it. there it is. did i? oh yeah, el venado — the deer! excellent. el melon. el melon! the cantaloupe. you — you — you've got the melon. i haven't got the melon. 0h, we got loteria over here! let's check it. 0h, someone's won already! yes, you got a winner. congratulations. applause. alright, now. new game. we all know loteria. it's important to us because my grandmother didn't know english. i didn't know spanish growing up. i wasn't taught spanish all that much. i was taught tex—mex. so playing with my grandma, it gave us quality time together, because we were both learning. she didn't know english,

i didn't know spanish. so right there we had a connection during the game. hola, hello everyone. i'm from london. i'm going to bring you luck. ok? you ready for this? i'm going to bring you all luck. how's my team doing? very good! el barril — the barrel! how we doing out there? anyone close? anyone close to winning? loteria! we have loteria! are you sure? seguro? ok. applause. let him know he did good, this is his first time playing! right? yourfirst time? yeah, yeah, first time. his very first time playing. so let's — maybe let's let him win. what's it like being mexican—american? what's that like? i wouldn't change it. i love being tex—mex. i love being from texas. i'm all about texas. i have a shirt that says "i just lucky legal". which is true, a lot of people are just lucky legal. we're not illegals. you know, our — just because we're darker — it's hot out — it's hot in texas. our ancestors are from there, but we were born here, in the united states —

so don't try to send us back somewhere we're not even from. train horn blares. the next day, and a few more stops down the train line, deep into southern texas, and you find yourself even closer to the mexican border — the last frontier, some call it. alpine station is the jumping—off point to one of america's most remote national parks. we drive through a vista that feels straight out of a western. they call it big bend after a twist in the legendary river here that today separates the usa from mexico — the rio grande. this is the rio grande! welcome to the border!

yeah. this year marks the centenary of the foundation of the national park service in the usa. and what a spectacular asset they are. so just to get our geography sorted, erin, where is mexico, where is the usa? so we have mexico over here. there. yeah? texas over here. yeah? the actual border is the deepest current in the river. this would be the spot where some politicians in the us want to build a border wall. not sure how they'd manage that here. and it's notjust this spectacular border with mexico that makes the park unique.

so the chihuahuan desert — the chihuahuan desert extends north into new mexico, but this park definitely contains the biggest chunk of the chihuahuan desert. and then there's the chisos mountains, and you get up in the high mountains and you get different species of animals like black bears, and mountain lions, and trees. so you've got a big diversity in the flora and fauna. seven—one—zero. ranger doing foot patrol in the pantherjunction area. and there's more to this wild corner of the earth than its incredible diversity of living species. big bendd has more dinosaur fossils than any other national park — over 90 different species have been discovered here, dating back 80 million years. this is called a coprolite, which is fossilised dinosaur faecal material.

dinosaur poo is what you mean. this is dinosaur poo, that would be correct. wow. and that is fossilised — that stays like that... hard as a rock. ..for millions of — millions of years. wow. that's the first time i've held dinosaur poo. a new exhibit dedicated to the dinosaurs is opening at the park in september. it will include these giant bronze casts of fossils. this one is a crocodilian. this is deinosuchus riograndensis — we call it the big bendd supercroc. you can see from its size its a well—named species. i've seen crocodiles today, and they're pretty scary. but this is massive — this is huge. right? with about a six foot long skull, it would have had somewhere around a a0 foot long

length for the entire animal. sometimes we find scarring in other fossil bones from deinosuchus teeth. so he literally ate dinosaurs. he ate dinosaurs! incredible, isn't it? the landscape here may have remained unchanged for millennia, but the fact it contains 118 miles of border zone is more relevant today than ever. a hundred years ago, the people in this region — the border wasn't a significant part of daily life, the river was. so we had families that would live on the united states side with cousins in mexico. there would be crossing, there would be floodplain farming. there would be a multinational community here. because the boundry was not considered to be a significant part of daily life. now we've made it a significant part of our politics. jeanette and i head off to get a high vantage point

of the rio grande river and a mexican town across the border. we have a community of boquillas, mexico, over here, which hasjust a couple of hundred people. but beyond that, if we get into the hills over there, that's protected land in mexico. people can legally move between the two countries at an official crossing point in the river. there are also schemes where both sides work together to protect the environment. sometimes they help us out with protecting our resources from wildfire, and sometimes we partner together to remove evasive species, to help make the entire rio grande a better place. so the first half of my trek across the southern stretch of the usa ends, literally, a stone's throw from mexico. it's wonderfully tranquil here, so it seems kind of odd that this place has found itself at the front line of politics.

i'm going to relish my last moments of serenity, because next week i'll be continuing myjourney west, where things start getting strange. you and i have just started something that we can't stop. there is no big "oops" button down here. there's only one problem, right? what was that? we are on this thing, and there's no—one to turn it off. does that mean we are on here, like, forever? well, in theory, that could happen. hello there. county tyrone in northern

ireland was the warmest part of the uk on monday. and over the next few days, generally, it's going to be the western side of the uk that sees the highest temperatures and the best of the sunshine. the high—pressure is still in charge of our weather, so essentially it is fine and dry. coming in off the north sea, though, there is this cloud that's pushing towards northern england and eventually it will work towards parts of wales and it could produce a few spots of drizzle, some mistiness over the hills. mist and fog patches and scotland and northern ireland will lift, the sunshine comes out and south of our cloud will get some sunshine across more so than parts of england, as well. let's move northwards though into the northern aisles. cloudy skies here, certainly pegging back the temperatures. but elsewhere in scotland, many places enjoying lots of sunshine. temperatures in the west getting up to 2a or 25 degrees. sunshine for northern ireland, higher temperatures in the west of the country, more cloud than for northern england and particularly as you head towards them north midlands, lincolnshire affecting mid and north wales.

south of that, sunshine, stronger wind through the english channel affecting the south coast of england. many parts of the country and to stay with some sunshine, still some cloud in central areas, more cloud into the northeast as well. that is where we will see the weather front approaching as we head into wednesday. still got high pressure in charge, mind you. still some stronger winds as we head to wednesday across more southern parts of england and through the english channel. we still have this cloud in central areas drifting down perhaps across the midlands, wales, maybe even a little further south, allowing more sunshine in northern england, northern ireland, and in scotland away from the northeast. typical temperatures around about 21 degrees or so. but higher temperatures again across northern ireland, western scotland and this time in cumbria. maybe not quite as warm in yorkshire and headingley, but should be dry for day one of the third test. but more cloud and a cooler feel certainly, i think, for day two on thursday. that is because we will have a strong wind coming off the north sea behind this weather front here, which is more a band of cloud than anything else that will stretch its way down towards wales and the southwest. that cloud tending to break up through the day.

but with the stronger winds down to its eastern side of scotland and particularly eastern england, we will have more cloud feeding in here, much cooler on thursday, down to the north sea coast, up to 15 or 16 degrees. it's out to the west that we'll see the best of the temperatures and the best of the sunshine.

this is bbc news i'm david eades. our top stories... how much longerfor evacuations from kabul? president biden is due to make a decision on extending the deadline — the taliban does not approve. that is a clear violation, one thing. secondly, about consequences, it is up to our leadership how to proceed. g7 leaders prepare to discuss what would happen next if the rescue operation is not complete by the end of the month. if their timetable extends even by a day or two, that will give us a day or two more to evacuate people. because we're really down to hours now, not weeks. lebanon turns to iran to help with an acute shortage

of fuel, as the country continues to spiral