it comes as former prime minister borisjohnson claims he was forced out after a report into his conduct during the covid pandemic. in ukraine, president volodymyr zelensky confirms that counter offensives against occupying russian forces are �*taking place.�* it comes after a week of speculation following an escalation of fighting in the south and east of the country. a man accused of stabbing four young children in a playground in the french resort town of annecy has been charged with attempted murder. authorities say the victims are no longer in a life—threatening condition. manchester city and inter milan fans are pouring into istanbul in turkey for the football champions�* league final. a win for city would seal a treble. they've already won the premier league title and the fa cup. now on bbc news... newscast.

newscast from the bbc. hello. it's adam in the studio. hello, it's alex in the studio. and there is a chris mason shaped hole just on that side of the table because he's off on his travels. he's in washington dc where he's been for the last day or two with rishi sunak, the prime minister who has been visiting joe biden. and on thursday evening they had a press conference. and alex, the centrepiece of this visit is this communique they've put out where they've talked about this new, new trade relationship. but don't call it a trade deal... because there's definitely not a trade deal. but what is not the trade deal that the conservatives promised they'd get with the us and clearly haven't got it is...

the atlantic declaration. so what effectively this is is them talking about how they're going to continue to strengthen their economic ties and work together and do some like deals which aren't trade deals they're little deals to help each other�*s economies work in tandem, particularly when it comes to things like the kind of green industries of the future where we know there's an awful lot of attention and conversation at the moment about is america basically going to scoop up all the good green stuff and everyone else is going to be like, wow, we're left behind. and this is effectively them trying to say, no, it's okay. look, we're still working together, we're still pals, we still got a special relationship. and a kind of the bumper sticker version because we're talking about american politics and they love a bumper sticker. you never really get them here, but we still use the phrase anyway, stop them. yeah, exactly. is this idea that they've said that they will treat the economy and the future challenges of the economy around. yeah. the environment and quantum computing and artificial intelligence in the same way that the us and the uk treat security. so like closest, closest of allies, i'm still not entirely sure what that will mean in practice. they've given us an example today, though.

so under the biden administration's inflation reduction act, which is this huge, huge, huge piece of legislation which gives like bazillions and bazillions of dollars of subsidies to things like electric cars, the uk is now going to get like a little piece of that, aren't they, in terms of the kind of the rare metals and things that go into electric car production, the uk will get a tiny little slice of that. yeah, it's what they call the critical minerals, which, if i'm honest, i don't know exactly what those minerals are. i think like maybe lithium is one of those minerals. but anyway, the bits that you need to make the batteries for electric cars which the uk exports to other places now that means that they're going to see some benefit of all of these subsidies that the us is putting into that scheme. so that's one tangible example of this kind of whole host of stuff. but i think what we should take away from this, we should be, i think a bit knowing they do do these big declarations and these big signings because what they want to show is that the uk still matters on the global stage in the uk on the global stage and the uk still matters to the us. and that's why, you know, we've seen those pictures of president biden and rishi sunak together and they had a press conference which is pretty rare

for the president to do. so, you know, rishi sunak wants to come back and says, look, you know, we still really matter to the us on the big global stage. but the point item is how much tangible benefit will the details of this agreement really bring? and that's always that massive question mark on the back of the bumper sticker. ijust have to recall being at the g7 summit in cornwall two years ago, about this time of year and with great fanfare, president biden and borisjohnson, because it was him as prime minister, signed this new atlantic charter, which was like harking back to the precursor of the atlantic declaration. yeah, exactly. and the atlantic charter, of course is what set up naito and the big fanfare. and this is, this is the 2021 version of the atlantic charter. and you know what? i don't remember what was in it. i couldn't tell you if it's made any tangible difference. anyway, that's our view of that from across the atlantic. and you know what? i don't remember what was in it. i couldn't tell you if it's made any tangible difference. anyway, that's our view of that from across the atlantic. here is chris mason's view from much closer to the action. hello, alex. hello, adam. welcome to the east room of the white house. exhausting, probably the polite way of putting it.

it isjust gone 8:00 in the uk here. as we record this, we're going to dash off and do the 10:00 news and we've been on a bus in a minute to the airport, so fingers crossed we can bodge something together to for the news a little later on. then it's an overnight flight back to london. the prime minister is giving a speech in yorkshire tomorrow afternoon. so my goodness, i like to think i've got a bit of stamina, but i'm not quite sure it's quite up there with his and as we head out, a little bit of smoke in the air. not quite as bad as it is in new york city, but you can certainly see it here. massive news story here, the whole business of these wildfires in canada and the smoke blowing down to the east coast of america. so it is hot and it is a little smoky. i'll talk to you soon. that's chris mason's take. let's get another one now from somebody who is incredibly well qualified to give one, not because theyjust because they spend lots of time in america and have observed american politics for a long time. but they're also truly at home on thursday night, political television.

and it's andrew neil. hi, andrew. it's good to be back in the old slot. oh, i'm sure the viewing figures will go up, so. oh, so they will soar from 3 to 5. now, i was striking a slightly cynical note because ijust remember these these atlantic deals being signed before and then people sort of never referring to them again. do you think actually rishi sunak has got something good on this trip, something meaningful? well, it is very surprising to hear the bbc cynical about us uk relations. so let me tell you why you're wrong. the important way of seeing this and by the way, as atlantic declarations go, it's not exactly up there with winston churchill and fdr during the war. i'll give you that. but it's more important than you've made out. and i'll tell you why. ..

you have to see this through the prism of china. america now sees almost everything and its relations with its allies through the prism of china. china now is the rising power. it is the one america has to deal with. and increasingly, the view in washington is that there could be a move on taiwan before this decade is out. now, president xie came out with his famous made in china declaration several years ago, which said that by the 2030 or soon thereafter, china would dominate all the world's new technologies a.i., robotics, digital, medical technology and so on. and the americans are determined not to let this happen, and they are going to not let it happen, notjust by their own efforts, but by mustering those allies that matter to work with them to counter the rise of chinese technology. and that's what this deal is really about, which is why, of course, the detail is what will matter in the end, but it is why it would seem to be more than just the rather vague and warm words. the united kingdom, along

with america and china, is the is the only country in the world with the trillion dollar technological sector. so there are a number of areas, given our close economic ties already, in which china, in which america and the united kingdom will now work more closely together. and the significant context to see this is the statement essentially says, for many, many years in military and security matters, britain and america have had the closest relationship of any two countries in the world. we now want to extend that to economic matters. and the reason we want to do that is the rise of china. andrew, you wrote a column i think was before rishi sunak went out orjust as he was going out to the us to visit president biden, urging him to be bold and effectively to make sure that he doesn't underplay the uk standing on the global stage. do you think this is rishi sunak? has he done that? is this like his win or is this because, you know, biden,

as you say, is looking at the threats from elsewhere like china and recognising it needs of the uk? i mean, who's how much of a win can rishi sunak claim this is? i don't think mr biden or the united states needs the uk in dealing with china, but i think it regards the united kingdom as the only european power that could bring anything to the table in terms of dealing with the rise of china. and indeed, you need to see this in the context of what's already happened before. don't forget, it's not that long ago we had the orcus deal in which britain plays a pivotal part in this new submarine deal with australia, america and the united kingdom to create a new generation of nuclear submarines. and then when mr sunak was out injapan for the 67, he signed the hiroshima accord with the japanese prime minister, which in a way is a version of what he's been talking

about with mr biden this week, which again is talking about not just military and intelligence cooperation, though there's plenty of that with japan now, but also getting involved in robotics and ai and medical technology and quantum computing and all the rest of it. and i think that gave this impetus that said, let's do a bigger version of this between the uk and the us. now, whether this is resulted in convincing americans that britain is really more important than the new york times or the washington post would say, i don't know, it's early days yet. these are not the kind of accords that are going to dominate the headlines for very long. on the other hand, i do think it does lay the groundwork for an economic relationship that is already deep to concentrate our mutual advantage. to concentrate our mutual advantage... on the technologies technologies of tomorrow and just gets britain a little inside the increasing protectionism that seems to dominate american economic policy. you spend a lot of time in new york.

i used to love hearing your stories about what had been going on in new york when you'd been over visiting. that city is now blanketed in this this thick kind of orange smog from massive forest fires in canada. what do you think those kind of apocalyptic disaster movie photos will do to the conversation about the environment in the us? well, i think it it's all grist to the mill, isn't it? i mean, some of my friends in new york have been contacting me. some have left the city. it's so bad. it does look pretty serious and there's not much you can do about it. as i understand it, when the wind changes, it will disappear almost as quickly as it arrived. but we don't yet know when the wind changes. and it is clear i was watching the mayor of new york have a press conference. i mean, children are being told not to go outside. people have been told not to do any exercise outside. don'tjog outside if you can avoid even walking outside. so it is serious and i think it ups the ante and it shows you the kind

of big events that can take place, whether there's a dialect direct link to climate change, i don't know. but there's a lot of fires going on in canada at the moment, not just in the east coast, indeed the west coast and and inland from the west. there's a lot of fires, too. something is clearly going on and it's big. another news story that we've talked about a lot on newscast this week is prince harry giving evidence in his civil case against the owners of the mirror newspaper and others where he is accusing them of using phone hacking and blagging to get private information about him over the decades which which they vehemently deny. what's your take on how prince harry's evidence went and where this case sits? i don't think we really got anywhere. i mean, the fact that hacking and blagging took place is not well—established and people have rightly paid a huge price for that. it's a battle.

it's a battle i think harry's already won. you know, the tabloids, as they were ten, 15 years ago, are a shadow of the former selves. we know he was badly treated by the tabloids. that's well established. they paid a big price for that. we know he still feels aggrieved, but being aggrieved doesn't... he should drop the vendetta. it's over. he won. he should declare victory and go home. i guess prince harry's contention and some of the thing that we heard certainly from the initial statement that he gave to the court this week was that while some of the details of this particular court case relate to things that happened a long time ago, some of them when he was much younger, the point that he was making was that he still feels that him and meghan are subject to unnecessary and invasive press intrusion, which is having an impact on their life now. so is it not that the battle that he still sees himself as fighting in his mind does still really matter and is still relevant if it's still affecting his day to day life and wellbeing as he's expressed.

last time i looked, he lives in america. so if he feels that there's still unacceptable press intrusion, he ought to take it up in america. and i would say good luck with that given the first amendment. i don't think he's going to get very far. you know, press intrusion is what it is. and if it's illegal, he's right to take action. if it's just inconvenient, that's a pity. then i wish people wouldn't behave like that. but it's not illegal and it's not a matter for the courts. and time and again, harry seemed confused about what had been actually happening. a number of the complaints he had about why did they know that turned out the information had come from the bbc. so the information that come from an interview he had given pa in other occasions, he couldn't remember whether he had even read the article at the time. i perfectly understand his general distaste for british tabloid practices. i share a lot of that myself. when i worked with rupert murdoch, a forum, one of the one of the few times when we really fell out was when i criticised the sun

and the news of the world. i've always disliked these kind of practices. it's not my kind ofjournalism, it's not your kind ofjournalism either. but despite this court case, feeling bad done, badly done by and i've been on the wrong end of the tabloids too. feeling that they're behaving badly is different from going to court on legal matters. and time and again in his evidence this week, he couldn't actually show that the evidence they had come from came from blagging or from hacking. and by the way, there is no doubt hacking and blagging had been taking place, but he couldn't show that. and in a court, you can't just moan and whinge. you got to have evidence to show. now, having said all that, my guess is he'll still probably win. i don't know for sure. it's only a judge taking the decision alone. it's not a jury. but there were 33 examples of what he regarded as press intrusion, which had come about by illegitimate means.

now, a lot of these, most of them fell by the wayside in cross—examination, but one or two didn't quite. and for him to win, he only has to get the judge to agree that one out of the 33 was illegitimate. and i think he's got a pretty good chance of doing that. and of course, because it's a civil case, not a criminal case, it's the balance of probabilities is exactly. it's not slightly not as high above. let me ask you about something else that's in the media landscape, andrew. and this is this this idea that the daily and sunday telegraph newspapers and the spectator magazine, of course, of which you are the chair, are going to be put up for sale because of the financial situation of the parent group. what can you tell us about it and what's what's the potential impact as you see it on the spectator in particular? very little. i don't know what the impact of this on the spectator will be. for us at the moment,

it's business as usual. we are a highly profitable magazine, a successful magazine. we willjust continue to produce week in, week out, the oldest magazine in the world, along with all the digital products that come with it. it looks like both the telegraph and the spectator are being put up for sale. the receiver is taking over a company that, as i say, is highly profitable, has no debt. unlike other parts of the media empire, we have no debt. we make good money, we're a going concern and we'll carry on doing that until the banks and the debtors and everybody else decides what's happening next. andrew, thank you very much for your analysis as always. and thanks to you, adam, entirely. it's great to talk to you. i don't know about you, alex, but this week it felt like the conflict in ukraine kind of went up a gear, which i realize is probably a very insulting thing to say to the people who are living through it. but as outside observers, it just feels like felt like some very big things happened. and we can chat about them now with our international editorjeremy bowen. hello. nice to be back with you.

thanks for coming in. i mean, everyone has seen the pictures of the dam bursting. are we any closer to knowing whether that was russian action, ukrainian action orjust a sort of accident? well, the mood very much on the... for ukraine and friends of ukraine is it's definitely the russians. however, there hasn't been a proper investigation, so perhaps we'll never really definitively know. we might never know. well, i don't know. i mean, who knows? the fragments of what's left of the dam are rapidly disappearing, disappearing into the river deeper. i mean, there are three main theories. theory one, the russians did it. they want to slow up the ukrainian offensive, which coincidentally or not so coincidentally started the day before, seemingly, and therefore that's why they did it. the other sort of pro—russian point of view is the ukrainians

did it to try to thwart the russians. and there's a third one which is essentially that there's been a lot of fighting in the area. both sides have bombed the area. the ukrainians and russians and some of that bombing has affected parts of the dam and maybe itjust collapsed because it hasn't been properly maintained. you know, dams don'tjust stand there forever without being... so i honestly don't know. adam was saying at the beginning that, you know, from those who are sort of watching this from our position, obviously this has been the really dominant story of the week because it's obviously a military consequence potentially in terms of access around the area. but there's also the humanitarian and the ecological consequences. i mean, it's a it's a really significant event across the board. right. well, i've seen this reservoir that's emptying now into the river. it's 150 miles long. that's the distance it takes. that's the distance between where we're sitting in london and my home town of cardiff. hmm. yeah. vitaly from ukraine

has got his laptop out because he's from there, so he's got loads of photos of what it's like because you go there and you have a picnic and you look and you can't see the other side. real perspective. i've seen it. i've seen i've driven down that area back last november when we were going towards kherson. i thought we'd got to the black sea, but we had to look to the map. that was quick! but we were, you know, 3 hours from the black sea, there wasjust this massive, massive. manmade lake. well, actually, on that note, i wonder and this is a very philosophical question, it maybe a little bit too ridiculous, but what's it like for you, having seen so many conflicts, seeing an act of war that actually looks more like a natural disaster? because what those pictures remind me of is the tsunami injapan inundated the nuclear

power plant at fukushima. this doesn't remind me of other wars. well, you know, actually, in the one of the the extra protocols, the additional protocols to the geneva convention, which is international humanitarian law, i.e., you break it, you might be doing a war crime, actually applies to civil objects like dams. if you destroy one willfully and put civilians who are protected people under the terms of international law. of international law... into danger, then that is also breaking the laws of war. so it's quite war related in a way. and of course, one of the most famous british enterprises in world war two is the dambusters, which, you know, we celebrate. that killed people too, you know, who were inundated by by the water. and how is this ukrainian summer offensive actually looking? because i wasn't sure it even started because these things are so sort of murky. they were very deliberately... they were very deliberately not willing to commit to that. because, you know, it's that thing about being in the middle of a war. if you give away too much on the airwaves, what does that do to your they gave they put out that video with soldiers fingers

on lips. they've been building up to this for months and months and months. there have been thousands of ukrainian troops have been taken out of the country and trained in poland, in germany, in the uk they gave the bbc some access up there and otherjournalists. all those new heavy weapons that they've been getting, not just tanks but other kinds of fighting vehicles, they are with those newly trained soldiers. so they built up a force for this counteroffensive, amounting to nine brigades in terms of soldiers that's something like 50,000. so the the pluses of all of that. are as follows that they are fresh troops, that they've got all these western... they're western trained western gear, western equipment is better than the russian stuff. the ukrainians in general have been fighting way, way better

than the russians anyway. and with this western training, the hope is that they will be able to fight what is referred to as, in nato's parlance, as an all arms operation. in other words, everything gets coordinated. the combat engineers go in and they blow up some of the defenses the russians have built. the tanks come in, the infantry support, the tanks. there's artillery. what it lacks, of course, is the air component pretty much anyway, which is for naito. it would be crucial. and just your position as a journalist and you've just done the amazing series on bbc sounds about whatjournalism is today. would you be happy kind of going into that to report it? or is actually this conflict now becoming so deadly and so dangerous? it's better to just observe it from the from a distance, analyze it and use your experience that way. no, i'd go. i mean, i will... we'll be going. and and, you know, if it wasn't for various logistical things, i probably would be there now, actually. but the actually the issues access at the beginning of the war, it was forjournalists, it was probably a bit more dangerous because we were able to get to front

lines and people i mean, of course, ukrainians and russians got killed. a few journalists got killed as well. and now the ukrainians, it's often the way in a war when it starts, it's pretty chaotic, especially if they they're taken a bit by surprise, as the ukrainians were, because they didn't believe the warnings that it was about to happen. then you can do little deals. you can meet a commander in a coffee shop and he says, yeah, come shop and he says, yeah, come with our guys if you want. i mean, now there's a sort of central bureaucracy that deals with this and ieds and all sorts of things. and quite rightly, from their point of view, they want to control the information. they want to control the information. it comes back to the point you were making earlier about the fact that they are now thinking about what they're saying about things like the summer offensive, because it has consequences. absolutely has consequences. and also they want to get a message out there that they are winners and they're going to win. and there's a broader political issue about that, which is they believe, yeah, they know that they have a lot of support in nato,

but they believe that that support is potentially brittle, could be quite fragile. i mean, the thing about this and there's just been a very interesting article in the top, top world affairsjournal in the u.s. called foreign affairs by an academic observer of these things who said that this might be an unwinnable war for either side. why? in a nutshell because even if how do you define victory? and that's something they haven't quite done yet, certainly the nato side hasn't, particularly, zelensky said. yeah, it's easy. you will go every russian, every russian soldier out of every inch of ukraine. but... they'll still be over the border. and if putin's in the kremlin and they're still armed, they can still do things.

they can still launch missiles. they haven't. it's not like going to berlin in 1945 and overthrowing the regime and no one suggesting that they're going to try and do that with the russians. and equally, if this this ukrainian offensive, worst case scenario went really wrong, the ukrainians are not going to lose the war as a result, either because they'll keep on fighting. so therefore. that's pointing towards politics, negotiation deals, something which has been pretty anathema, very anathema to the ukrainians and also to the brits. we said we'lljust follow you through, guys. but i think the time has come to try and look at how potentially it could finish. jeremy, thank you very much. and also, i will now be able to go to the pub at the weekend and dine out and pretend i read foreign affairs thanks to you. and people will think i'm incredibly smart and well. that's why i'm here. and alex, lovely to catch up with you as well. lovely to see you, adam, as ever. and thank you for watching and listening. and please join us on the new newscast, discord channel, where you can tell us exactly what you think, good or bad. why? newscast.

newscast, newscast from the bbc. hello there. a hot summer's day across the country for many, with temperatures in excess of 30 degrees. i'm sure it was too hot, but those across the east coast of england were probably cheering when they saw blue sky and sunshine throughout the day, because you've seen that low grey cloud for quite some time. and in actualfact, we had quite a lot of sunshine generally across the country this saturday. down into the south west, though, a different story. outbreaks of showery rain. now, for parts of south west england and wales, we haven't seen rain for over four weeks, so welcome news, really. you can just about make the raindrops out on the top of the water here in padstow, cornwall. as we go into sunday, we're going to start off with a lot of sunshine and once again, the heat is going to build. so by the middle part of the afternoon, there's

still a risk of some sharp, thundery downpours. they will be very hit and miss. not everyone will see them, but if you catch them, you'll really know about it. temperatures once again, perhaps, in southeast england, high 20s, low 30s not out of the question. a little bit cooler and fresher further north and west. still the risk of some sharp showers here. and we continue to see the risk of some sharp thundery downpours across much of scotland. just the northern isles staying wet at times, and a little bit cooler here with temperatures at 11; degrees. so with all that sunshine around, no surprise to hear that uv and pollen remain high to very high for the remainder of the weekend. now, as we move into monday, we still have the risk of some sharp thundery downpours. slightly cloudier skies out to the west, perhaps the best of the weather out to the east because we've got that light southeasterly flow. showers should be few and far between on monday afternoon, and temperatures down just a degree or so. it is going to take its time, but we're likely to see

highs generally mid 20s, perhaps as high as 27, 28 degrees in the southeast — that's 82 fahrenheit. moving out of monday into tuesday, we've still got very little in the way of significant rainfall to come across the country and the winds will start to turn around to more of an easterly direction. now, that means that further west, we continue to see some dry, sunny and warm weather. but even out to the east, we continue to see the clouds staying away. plenty of sunshine, but not quite as warm. live from london, this is bbc news. the uk conservative party faces three by—elections as another mp steps down with immediate effect.