president biden has visited florida to see the relief effort after the state was hit by two hurricanes. he said more than 600 million dollars would be made available for affected communities. in a world first, spacex has successfully tested a rocket booster capable of taking off and landing intact back on the launch pad. the successful test brings elon musk�*s company closer to its goal of achieving the rapid reuse of rockets. 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 othos or something. or a pothos or a pathos. about a year ago...

sorry, this is the sort of recurrent plot line from some years ago now. um, it's a recurring plant line. it's a pothos, isn't it? i don't know, it's getting quite big, though. well, yeah, i've been tending it well, despite both of you claiming that it looks terrible. i think it needs to be pruned so that there's less long and more more plant like, anyway. it's 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. 0h. i was one of them until i appeared on newscast and you two decided that it's horrible, but. it's like taking over your poster. 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 around 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? 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 it's a big business summit. it's happening tomorrow. yes, but the transport secretary, louise haigh 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 louise 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 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. it's not going to be lawful now.

and so we have changed the law. we've got part of our employment rights bill is what does this. and therefore they got rid. of some staff and then rehired them. fire and rehire and a particularly egregious case. so we were clear about that. i'm not going to recall from that position, but where companies accept that we're not allowing that to happen any more and we can work with 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. louise haigh, the transport secretary, has obviously had a metaphorical telling off. and 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. so, you know, move on. but it's awkward for the government because they've told us again and again

and again and again, oh, after all the confusion of the tory years, we're 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 welljust to add in. one is that the prime minister also did whatjohnny reynolds did this morning. in fact, he did it on newscast yesterday when he essentially said that louise hague hadn't been speaking for the

this is going to look like small fry. this is going to look like small fry-—

this is going to look like smallf. ., , ., , small fry. that is what they ho e, small fry. that is what they hepe. that _ small fry. that is what they hope, that is _ small fry. that is what they hope, that is certainly - small fry. that is what they hope, that is certainly what they hope and that people will move on and there won't be any slip ups but it talks to that balance of trying to be on the side of workers and business, thatis side of workers and business, that is a difficult thing to do, that is a difficult you know, you have two things that you are trying to juggle and thatis you are trying to juggle and that is hard, there is another point to this they are suggesting, people said she will be in trouble, she will be for the chop, if you are being nerdy about it and looking into the soul of what is going on in the soul of what is going on in the labour party, i think part of this is also an example of what quite a few people describe is a sort of inner ring of kind of precious government ministers who are all in the inner beating heart of the starmer operation. 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, to, 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 a 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, wejust 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 in 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 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 announced, 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're 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're already at, starmer 2.0 only in october, having one injuly. is it going to be a better operation than starmer1.0? now sue gray is out and morgan sweeney 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 grey actually well, sue gray actually was covering up the the fact that other people were failing because she became the target for everything. 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 clearly 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, who likes to call himself a philanthropist but is also a billionaire. he of phones for you. 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 it 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. so henry, i'm going to come to you with a swerve. yeah. and of course, the thing is about the 100 days and how they're dealing with business. i rememberanother number of days, 49 and 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 that 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's100 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? 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 sincejuly. 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. 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, four or five 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. 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 or a 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

it'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 one of the architects of the 97 victory and the presentation of the blair praiecl _ 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, 100 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 nice 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 is 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 morejeopardy 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. you know, 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 painfulfor 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 he 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 and he talked about scotland had changed 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 forward on ourjourney

and investigations. it was a huge mess with a lot of unhappiness which without question really soured relationships between him and the snp and particularly this incredible breakdown in what had been an extraordinarily successful partnership. there is another point here, he ended up again on the fringes while being this massive political personality. his leadership and sentiment of independence embodied the frustration of a lot of people. after the referendum that the snp should have kept trying to surge forward to another vote. there is frustration within the independence movement that the snp leadership had

got to corporate and did not really want to charge forward with the cause any more. what has happened is their support has fallen away significantly. while people still care about independence in scotland it is nowhere near the prominent issueit it is nowhere near the prominent issue it was.

live from washington. this is bbc news. israel says four soldiers have been killed by a his brother drone attack on an army base in the north of the country. the un accuses israeli forces of forcibly entering one of its bases in southern lebanon. a spokesperson for the peacekeepers says repeated incidents are making him question israel's motives.

they are making this thing, why are they doing it? hundreds of thousands of people are still without power, after a huge storm tore through sao paulo two days ago. spacex successfully catches a rocket booster for first time ever — as it returns to earth after the launch of its starship craft. hello, i'm helena humphrey, good to have you with us. we begin with breaking news out of israel — where the idf says four israeli soldiers have been killed and seven others severely injured in a drone strike by his brother. they say an investigation is now under way. it follows earlier reports that around 60 people were injured in a drone attack by hezbollah. the armed group said it launched "a swarm of attack drones" at an israeli military training camp in binya—mina, just south of haifa. some reports say people had been eating in a canteen at the time of the strike.