a rocket booster capable of taking off and landing intact back on the launch pad. the successful test brings the company closer to its goal of achieving rapid reusability. king charles has lead tributes to scotland's former first minister, alex salmond, who died on saturday at the age of 69. it's understood the former msp collapsed after delivering a speech at an international conference in north macedonia. joe biden is in florida, where he's expected to announce more than half a billion dollars to restore power grids damaged by hurricanes helene and milton. millions of homes and businesses are still without power. now on bbc news — newscast. newscast. newscast from the bbc. hello, it's laura in the studio. paddy in the studio. and henry at home. with a terrifying plant. remind us, it's

an ethos or something? or a pothos or a pathos? ican't remember. it's about a year ago. sorry. this is sort of a recurrent plot line from some years ago now. um, recurring plant line. it's a pothos, isn't it? i don't know, it's getting quite big, though. yeah. well, yeah, i've been tending it. despite both of you claiming that it looks terrible. i think it needs to be pruned so that it's less long and more more plant like. it's a trailing plant. that's the point. prune your pathos. it's a classic covid thing. people got plants that sort of work in zoom backgrounds. um. i had one of them, until i appeared on newscast and you two decided that it's horrible. but it's like taking over your... we're not saying it's horrible. it's just got really big. it's going to take over you next time round. next weekend, you'll be like, you know, david bellamy coming through the pothos if indeed it is a pothos. newscasters, i'm sure that you will correct us when we're wrong, as we often are. so we will eventually get round to talking about the news. i should say we're sitting in a room with plastic plants.

yes, i take it back. henry's got better plants. so there's been a whole world of 100 dayism and a row over shipping. and you had the business secretary on. yes, we did. we had the business secretary, a billionaire and the country's biggest banker. and how many times can i say b? because this is a big business summit. it's happening tomorrow. yes, but the transport secretary managed to really offend one of the companies that's coming to the government's long planned investment summit. and the government was hoping very much they were going to put a shaky hand onto a cheque for £1 billion of investment. but this argument came about when lou haigh, the transport secretary, said that p&0 ferries, owned by dp world, was a rogue operator and she'd been boycotting them. it's a pretty embarrassing thing for the business secretary to have to come out and defend this morning. this is what he said. we have always said, and we believe that l what happened with - p&0 ferries was wrong. i believe even the - conservative government at the time was clear that they believed it was wrong. - the problem was it was lawful then. i it's not going to be lawful now. - and so we have changed the law.

part of our employment rights bill is what does this, - and therefore... that's when they got rid of some staff and then rehired them. absolutely. fire and rehire. and it was a particularly egregious case. - so we were clear about that. i'm not going to recall from that position, i but where companies accept that we're not allowing - that to happen anymore and we can work with i them on investments into the country. - we can have a conversation with them _ we will do so. it's not the government's position to boycott them. now, the problem here is that one cabinet minister said, oh, i've been boycotting p&0 and everybody should do that. then two days later the business secretary says, no, we don't say that you should boycott a company, that is a big company and we've changed the law around employment practices and that is just downright embarrassing. lou haigh, the transport secretary, has obviously had a metaphorical telling off. jonathan reynolds went on to say, well, i speak for the government on business, and it'sjust all a bit messy, really. so they've got to the position in the end. dp world is coming to the summit. jonathan reynolds told us that they are going to spend £1 billion. amazing.

so, you know, move on. well, but it's awkward for the government because they've told us again and again and again and again. 0h, after all the confusion of the tory years, we are going to be clear. we're going to be calm. we're not going to fight with each other. make each other look silly. and this has made them all look a bit silly. but faced with two outcomes, one where dp world did not go to this week's investment summit and did not give £1 billion, or versus the other one when it looked like they weren't going at all, henry. and there's two extra components to this story as well. just to add in. one is that the prime minister also did what johnny reynolds did this morning. in fact, he did it on newscast yesterday when he essentially said that louise haigh hadn't been speaking for the government or they didn't put it quite that way. but then you can also see why louise haigh would be annoyed, to say the least, with this development, because the language that she had used was very similar to language that went out from the government in a press release, which will have been signed

off by all the people in keir starmer's current iteration of number ten. um, and i think all of this does speak to a tension for a political party that is simultaneously trying to cast itself as the party of business, been doing so for years in opposition. and this investment summit is designed very early on in their tenure in government to demonstrate that, but also the political party which exists to defend the interests of workers. and i don't think in private, at least, you would find a single labour mp who would say anything other than p&0 ferries treated workers extremely shabbily and ought to face consequences for that. but then, of course, the law is changing. so the loophole by which the p&0 bosses did not inform the government because they didn't have to because of the flagging rules — that's been changed. so a company that wanted to do this at sea again could not do that. so they have squared the circle in a way. and if they've got the £1 billion investment conference, this is going to look

like small fry, isn't it? that's certainly what they hope. that is absolutely certainly what they hope. and that people will move on and there won't be any more kind of slip ups. but i think it talks to that balance of trying to be on the side of both workers and business. that is a difficult thing to do. that's a difficult... you know, you've got two things that you're trying to juggle and that's hard. there's another kind of point to this that i would just suggest, and some people say, oh, well, look, i mean, she'll be in trouble. and when there's a reshuffle, she'll be for the chop. well, if you're being really kind of nerdy about it and looking into the soul of what's going on in the labour party, i think part of this is also an example of what a quite a few people describe is there's a sort of inner ring of kind of precious government ministers who are all in the sort of inner beating heart of the starmer operation. and then there's a sort of outer ring of people who are very much not. and i think what you've seen here is an example of that. you've got somebody who might be in that sort of outer ring,

and that's not at all to be rude about louise haigh. ijust think it is a something that people in the labour party reflect, especially at this 100 days mark. i've been talking to lots of people across the labour party, and there's basically a sort of inner gang and an outer gang, and i think that's part of what's going on here. and one labour source actually asked me yesterday saying, oh, well, you know, we just have to get on with moving her on. and also obviously she's somebody who'll be for the chop. i'm not saying that's someone who's speaking with authority, but itjust plays into that sense that there's not a them and us, but even 100 days in, there's certainly the sort of special ones in the middle and then everybody else on the outside. and one thing to add to that, i completely agree, is that those cabinet ministers in the outer ring were generally empowered by sue gray. when she came in as chief of staff, she in opposition, a year or so ago, she kept saying, hang on, why are there no elected politicians in this meeting?

and she would get members of the then shadow cabinet and people like louise haigh, who weren't necessarily in the sort of strategic core of starmer's operation and empowerthem. and actually, i think as it happens, louise haigh personally was probably closer to sue gray than almost any other cabinet minister. and clearly, sue gray is no longer keir starmer's chief of staff. and you can see perhaps things starting to revert to that previous way of doing things. i mean, you can see the frustration for the labour government because she also, as transport secretary, has pretty much confirmed that the hs2 london link will be euston station rather than miles outside, which the conservatives were going to do. and, you know, i don't want to talk too much about london because newscasters live all over the uk, but that is a massive announcement. the £1 billion is a massive announcement. with more, there'll be more. and you can be sure of that. so there is an awful lot of noise, said mike tapp to me, the mp for dover and deal. and actually we're trying, we are going to try and crack on. that's interesting, isn't it? because this 100 day marker point, which is a completely artificial, completely, completely artificial, however, uh, you know, why not

have a yardstick? it's a kind of moment to say how they've been getting on. it has not gone as they had hoped, no doubt about that. they've done lots of things they're happy about, but lots of things have gone wrong. there is a massive question mark over whether or not the starmer 2.0, which we are already at, starmer 2.0, only in october, having won injuly, is it going to be a better operation than starmer1.0, now sue gray is out and morgan mcsweeney is in. we don't know the answer to that question. and there are some people in government who've been saying things to me like, well, sue gray actually was covering up the the fact that other people were failing because she became the target for everything. um, and actually, someone in the cabinet actually said to me that, you know, now the people who were failing have got nowhere to hide. interesting. so we will see. and you know, this this thing about p&0, isn't a kind of...

it's clearl the government thinks they've fixed it. is it a massive disaster, you know. no it's not, but it's another interesting little episode. and john caldwell, the... who likes to call himself a philanthropist but is also a billionaire. he of phones au. uh, he's backing labour. he backed them just before the election. but he did say this morning, they've got to be really careful about the steps they take. and also he said using that kind of language around businesses is basically completely bonkers. i paraphrase. so he says labour has to be careful about this. they have to really cherish people who can create wealth, who can create jobs. and it ain't always easy to do that, because politics doesn't always see business as an unalloyed force for good. yeah, it's quite funny. he says...he goes off on one about rogue operators and he shouldn't use that language. um, so, henry, i'm going to come to you with a swerve. and of course, the thing is about the hundred days and how they're dealing with business. i remember another number of days, 49 and how how liz truss dealt with business, which was to take the country to the cleaners, basically. and of course she would if she was here, and let's...by all

means, let's have her, she'd say she was wronged by the blob. but, henry, it's still the case for voters who might think it has been a bit rocky this 100 days, which is twice liz truss�*s premiership, is already much better than that. totally. and i think there's two contradictory thoughts that i'm holding in my head at the same time, while thinking about the 100 days as a yardstick. one is that for all that we've just said about things that have gone wrong and so on, it's 100 days. the next general election is not going to be until 2028, at the very earliest, i'd say more likely 2029. think back to how much has happened in the last four years and five years. who knows on what yardstick? um, the labour prime minister, presumably keir starmer, but potentially not, will be judged come the end of that parliament. 0n the other hand, and it is odd to talk about polling 100 days into a new government. 100 days into a new parliamentary term. but on the other hand, it does seem from what polling there is, that the public really have noticed some of this new government's difficulties.

keir starmer, his popularity hasn't dipped a little since july. it has collapsed. i know that there are people at the top of government who are worried about that. i was speaking to someone yesterday, in fact, who said to me that the thing they're really worried about is that they're now being told by mps that keir starmer's suits and the row over that is coming up way more on the doorstep than the winter fuel allowance ever did. um, and this idea that it's just become attached to him as a person and symbolises what people think of him as a person. now, a lot of people will think that's deeply unfair. nevertheless, i'm just passing on what someone at the top of the labour party who thinks that's deeply unfair was telling me. so i do think, you know, if this new government wasn't worried by how things have developed in 100 days, even though of course they're going to be there for another three, 4 or 5 years to come, then they wouldn't have made the drastic changes that they have already made to how the government is operating.

i think that's the biggest symbol of their their own concern. yeah. you mean the change of the chief of staff? yeah, that's a big deal to do that. of course it is. it's a huge deal to do that. and i think while we can say that 100 days well, it's all a bit silly, well, it is silly. it is silly. except that in politics perception is not all. but perception is incredibly important, and you do not get a second chance to make a first impression, and particularly on things that might seem a bit grubby or a bit sleazy, that the public can seize on very, very quickly. it took more than two weeks for the government to come up with a sort of a rule change, ora new position on donations and all of those things. two weeks when they let a story run that absolutely has got into the public conscience. and do you remember the first day that story came up? we sat here, we had david lammy on our programme in the morning, and our inbox was absolutely, on that first day, stuffed with angry emails from people saying, what is this all about? and that has... that's the kind of thing that's very difficult to rub out that impression once you've made it.

and it does matter. the timing thing. on all the days that there are, alastair campbell was on the today programme, he's one of the architects of the 97 victory and the presentation of the blair project. and he said actually what labour has done this time is allow a lot of time between election and the first budget. and actually maybe the part of the timing question that is real and i'm saying 100 days, schmundred days is that we're waiting for rachel. we used to be waiting for sue gray. now we're waiting for rachel. but you see, somebody in government was quite narked that people have been slagging them off about that. because to do a budget properly, you have to declare the office for budget responsibility to do the proper process. and essentially they couldn't really have done it any quicker unless they'd done an emergency budget, which is a made up thing anyway, or unless they'd done a budget without going through the proper process. so, uh, yeah.

so there, said somebody on the inside of government who who referred to that same comment that had been made and said, actually, the process is different in the 2020s than it was in the late 90s. however, it has created this sort of vacuum. it's created this sort of pause. and i don't think, you know, i know also in number ten, they're worried at how people are going to take the budget because it's going to have some nasties in it. and that it's not necessarily going to be the solution. it might make things even worse. and there's so much pressure on the budget being the moment when they could either really move on and start motoring or maybe create even more jeopardy and even more unhappiness. well, and bear in mind that one of the tonal shifts that has taken place in the past few weeks in the government is to move... i think they think they overdid the doom and gloom at the start, and they think that they need to present more of a sense of where things are going and the sunlit uplands that the country is heading towards, even if things are going to be painful for a while. but the budget is what it is. there's rhetoric around it, of course, but people will be able to see what the tax measures and spending measures are and work out for themselves that things probably are going to be quite

tough for some people. and so the budget becomes a sort of politically risky moment for the government as well, if the last few weeks of rachel reeves saying, actually, she's more optimistic about the future of the country than she ever has been, suddenly is kind of undercut by a series of tough tax and spend decisions. newscast. newscast from the bbc. the political obituary is being written this weekend of the former first minister of scotland, alex salmond, one of the biggest political figures of the last 30 years on the uk stage and, of course, the scottish stage. and when you spoke to the first minister, john swinney, this morning, who is now the snp leader who worked alongside him for many, many years, despite the rift between him and the snp leadership in the last couple of years. and it really struck me

that his most memorable, uh, it really struck me, he told us his abiding memory of alex salmond would not be the independence referendum in 2014. it would not be any of the huge things that they did in government, but it would be the moment when they actually were on their way to power for the first time. and he talked about the moment when he heard alex salmond on the radio when they'd just won the 2007 scottish election. i was driving to - edinburgh on the day after the 2007 election, - and i listened to him speaking on the radio when he'd arrived in edinburgh, l and he talked about how scotland had changed i and changed forever- and would never be the same again because of our| election win in 2007. and it was a deeply- emotional moment for me, because i heard my party leader at the time indicating _ that we had taken a colossal step i forward on ourjourney - to independence, and i fondly remember that moment and what it meant to me in signifying - the progress that we had made.

and i remember covering that election and actually, he was right. it was such a moment. you have to think, you know, for those of us who weren't lucky enough to grow up in scotland, the snp was absolutely on the margins. you know, for decades, they were a force on the fringe. it was a group of people and a group of a very activist kind of group who cared very deeply and very passionately about that issue. but they were not in the mainstream. and yet in 2007, then to take them into somebody having their bum on the seat in the first minister's office and then go on to win majority and then go on actually to get the referendum on independence. that is such a dramatic and actually for lots of people in scotland, a very unexpected journey.

and he was the driving force behind that without, without question. so it was very interesting to me that that was whatjohn, despite everything that's happened, that was the moment thatjohn swinney picked out. i can see why listening to it, because politics is power. if you don't have power, there's no point being in politics. and the system was designed that it did not deliver a majority. i remember when the holyrood system and henry, this is much more your territory than mine, whether you were based there or not. the new labour project to give devolution was a system that was never meant to deliver one party in office, so it was a complete lightning rod. david cameron had to concede a referendum all that time ago. well that's debateable. 0h, is it, henry? not only was it a system that would never have been anticipated to secure a majority snp government at holyrood, it was a system designed to, in the phrase of, i think donald dewar, but perhaps i'm wrong, kill scottish nationalism stone dead. um, and so that's the other, uh, stunning achievement of alex salmond

and his generation of snp politicians is that nationalism flourished under a process of devolution, which was designed to marginalise it even further than it than it was in the late 905 when, uh, tony blair decided to create, after a referendum, the scottish parliament and the welsh assembly as well. well, it was meant to be build it and they will go away instead of build it and they will come. you know, i mean, that's what happened. it was obviously meant to manage and deal with the problem of scottish voters wanting more of a say, after particularly having had a long time under mrs thatcher when there had been either varying between a handful or, at some points, no conservative mps in scotland and the devolution settlement was meant to deal with that. as, you know, newscasters

will no doubt know, but itjust all goes in this moment to underline, actually, the extraordinary achievements of alex salmond and then also reminding us how dramatic then the fall from grace was. well, i mean, in terms of this strength that we've described it before as one of the most extraordinary political movements in europe. what the snp achieved. and then to go to this psychodrama, as it was called publicly, it's not my name for it. it was called that by people very close to it, between alex salmond and nicola sturgeon, followed, henry, by this high profile court case. and the obituaries are including all of this, the sort of side of it that we would never have predicted and alex salmond never wanted to be known for. and you can see why some people are sort of saying that some of the tributes to alex salmond, warm and magnanimous as they are, you know, perhaps risk sanitising that element of his political fall from grace. and it undoubtedly was that, um, you know, that is the principal reason, i think, that he's spent the last years of his life estranged from the political party that he took to the brink of independence. um, and, you know, one of the great skills i always think of obituary writers and people who make tv

obituaries is, is to present someone's life, warts and all. um, and clearly, that is something that people will be doing about alex salmond over the coming days, because you can't not tell the story of why he ended up, um, you know, on russian state tv and then presenting a tv programme in turkey and, you know, not speaking to his former political protege nicola sturgeon. you can't tell that story without the story of the court case. sojust if... if newscasters don't remember it, there were multiple claims of sexually inappropriate behaviour by alex salmond. none of the charges were... he was never convicted on any of the charges. his defence lawyer in court, however, did acknowledge that he had behaved badly. and for many people who were caught up in all of that, there was an awful lot

of unhappiness on all sides. and also, i think, very sort of tortuous machinations and inquiries and investigations into what role the scottish government had played, what role nicola sturgeon had played in terms of all of this. so it was a huge mess with a lot of unhappiness for sure, which without question really soured relationships between him and the snp, and particularly this incredible breakdown in what had been an extraordinarily successful political partnership. but there's another point here as well is that his you know, he ended up again on the fringes while still being this massive, big political personality. but his leadership and also his sentiment about where independence had got to sort of embodied the frustration of a lot of people who'd been sort of true believers that actually, after the independence referendum, the snp should have kept vigorously trying to surge forward to another referendum or another vote. and there's definitely a real vein of frustration in the independence movement

that actually the sort of more...the snp leadership, nicola sturgeon and then john swinney and then humza yousaf had got, you know, had had got a bit to sort of corporate a bit too sort of comfy in power and didn't really want to... didn't really want to charge forward with the cause anymore. and of course, what's also happened is that their political support has fallen away very, very significantly. and independence, while people still care about it in, in, in great measure in scotland, it is nowhere near the sort of prominent issue that it was. and lots and lots of polling would tell you that actually scottish voters don't want to keep talking about the constitution. and that's one of the reasons why the snp have had so many problems. so we will move on and look ahead, henry, perhaps. well, it's a big few days for the government. i think. tomorrow is the investment summit. obviously the build up to it has been, uh, a little cloudy for reasons we talked about earlier. but nevertheless, i think the government hopes that this will be, um, a real kind of declaration of intent both to british voters about how

this government intends to operate, but also to british business in advance of what i think will dominate the next few weeks in westminster, which is the build up to the budget that's coming at the end of the month, uh, october the 30th. and i think that is going to be, you know, you will start to enter that period where you have more and more rumours and leaks about what the chancellor is planning to do. a very heavy hint from rachel reeves today in the sunday times about rewriting the fiscal rules. i think it's the worst kept secret in westminster. we prediceted it here. i was going to say, who was it who said, she'll probably change the rules? but it's clear as day and a couple of people who've been involved in conversations have... well, it'sjust it's really clear.

the question, of course, is how much are they going to twiddle around with the rules and the point newscasters of them fiddling the rules or twiddling the rules or whatever they do to diddle the rules, is that the government would be able to spend more cash and borrow, to spend more cash on things that might benefit the economy in the long term, without them getting a ticking off for racking up the national debt. we say goodbye to you. thank you very much for listening. please write to us. improve us and brickbats and bouquets. goodness knows we could all do with a bit of that. bye bye. goodbye. newscast. newscast from the bbc. sunday developed into a cool and cloudy story pretty much across the country and there is some rain which will put in on some rain which will put in on some of that will turn heavy across south—west england. this frontal system is starting to introduce milder air and it is going to push that cooler, northerly flow we've seen just recently out of the way as we go through the week ahead a change is coming. they might not suit all of you but it

looks likely that for the rest of this week it'll be a milder story and there will be some heavy outbreaks of rain around at times, particularly from mid week onwards. let's take a look at the details. here is the frontal system. at the details. here is the frontalsystem. during at the details. here is the frontal system. during the hours of monday morning drifting eastward steadily. by the early morning rush—hour it will have cleared away and leave a trail of cloud in its wake. northern in winter, northern ireland and scotland largely financial, scattered showers moving their way across the northern isles. top temperatures between ten and 12 celsius here, 13, 1a elsewhere. but look at this, 17 in the south—west, tapping into that warmer air already. we could see thundery downpours developing on tuesday as that mild air continues to move through. quite a lot of cloud and murk around potentially on tuesday but a good deal of dry weather with showers potentially staying across the south—west and running up through wales and into the irish sea. here we will see highs between generally 12 and 17 celsius once again. but it's

wednesday when the winds will strengthen further, still from the south, but we could see a speu the south, but we could see a spell of wet weather. a lot of uncertainty as to where that rain will be sitting at the moment. heaviest burst looked potentially likely to be a long west coast and moving their way steadily northwards with gale force gusts of winds in scotland. if we continue to see some breaks in the cloud and some breaks in the cloud and some drier weather in the south—east, that wind is tapping into some very warm air and we could get highs of 21 celsius, way above the average for this time of year. a ridge of high pressure keeps things quiet on thursday before the next area of low pressure threatens to bring yet more gales and another spell of heavy rain. if you are lucky enough to have the dry weather on thursday, make the most of it because as we close the working week it'll be potentially more wet and windy weather to come.

live from jerusalem, i'm lyse doucet. this is bbc news. un peacekeepers have demanded an explanation from israel, after it said israeli tanks had forcibly entered a unifil position on sunday morning. israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu says that the time

has come to withdraw unifil forces from hezbollah strongholds and combat zones. i'm azadeh moshiri in london. in other news... spacex achieves a successful fifth launch and return of its starship rocket. tributes have been paid to alex salmond, the former head of the snp who died suddenly yesterday. thank you for watching bbc news. you join us at 7pm in jerusalem. it comes on a day where tensions seem to have mounted hour upon hour between the united nations and israel. in the last few hours un peacekeepers had demanded an explanation from israel after what they described as shocking

violations committed by israeli