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flooding disaster in decades as official say at least 158 people have been killed. overwhelmed by mud and debris, the military is helping search for survivors in valencia with dozens of still missing. >> i am live in valeia, one of the worst hit regions, as the clear up operation continues. the local community is coming together to provide supplies for those who need it. samantha: the u.k. chancellor rachel reeves acknowledges her tax raising but it may affect pay for workers. deadly rocket attacks continue across lebanon and northern israel as u.s. envoy's push for a possible cease-fire deal between the israelis and hezbollah. a lebanese mp tells us she is very skeptical about prospects for peace in the region. also coming up on the world today, hope of breaking a ghoulish guinness world record in dorset with the largest gathering of ghosts to mark halloween.

welcome to the world today, an hour of international news from the bbc. 158 people have been confirmed dead after flooding hit parts of spain on tuesday. spain's interior ministers said dozens of people remain missing. king felipe held a minutes silence for the victims today with many residents still being told to stay at home because of rising waters and the prospects of more rain. the valencia region was devastated when torrential rain caused flash floods and swollen rivers in the mountains flowed down to the coast, forcing rivers to burst their banks, sweeping away rivers and bridges and roads. >> lifted to safety above the flooded fields, a one-year-old baby is rescued from an isolated house south of valencia. emergency teams are working around the clock.

hundreds of troops have been sent to help them in the search for the missing. this little town was hit hard. dozens of people were killed here andodies are still being found. there is mud everywhere. flash floods swamped the towns in minutes. shops, homes, and businesses have been devastated. in the ruins of his pharmacy, miguel told me everyone here knows someone who has died. >> everybody has someone who lost someone. i feel worse than yesterday. i couldn't sleep. it is like a nightmare, really big nightmare. >> camelia told us her husband

narrowly escaped being swept away just outside their front door. >> my husband was almost drowned. he was only saved by the neighbors. >> volunteers are arriving to help with the cleanup. people are struggling. in some places, there is no water or electricity, and the internet is down. the damage here is huge. just look at what the force of the floodwaters have done to this railway line. helicopters are flying overhead as people make their way through the mud. there is a sense of shock and deep sadness. all across the region you see cars and trucks swept away by the floods. >> the current, swimming, grand apocalypse. >> the authorities are warning that the emergency is not over yet.

people have been urged to stay home. the government has promised to help but many people here say they feel abandoned. samantha: shocking scenes there in spain. let's get the latest from our correspondent nikki schiller in valencia. you have been there all day talking to local residents. tell us what you have been seeing. >> i am in the city of valencia, about the worst hit areaf the actual city. you might be able to see behind, there is a jcb. you heard in the report that they are trying to move some of those cars. we see one of those cars overturned being moved away. down that road, there are probably hundreds of them. as i walked down earlier, about two kilomets, every single road has cars overturned and there is debris on the roads, and there is this mud.

you can see it here. it is absolutely everywhere. it has gotten into everyone's homes. really brought home to me earlier when i saw a young woman who was sitting on the pavement with what was a folder, covered in mud, and she was trying to clear it off because there was something in that binder that she really wanted to keep, but it was absolutely covered in this really grimy mud. that is what the locals are having to contend with. there is no power further down the road and they have very little supplies in terms of water. we have seen people with bottled water. in the last hour, i'm outside a church, and there was a big lori bringing water and there was a human chain to bring the water inside. you can see people are queuing up to actually bring in supplies for local people. that is food, that is toiletries, clothes, baby items.

the city council have organized this year in the church. honestly, there has been a stream of people comg across one of the bridges from the city center to hear, to bring items to bring items to people that need it the most. they will be distributed to people that need it most. the city council also organizing for a chef to come in and cook hot meals because they don't have power and a lot of the properties which means they cannotctually cook a hot meal. so the city council are going to do that for them. i have to say, earlier on today, a lot of local said not a lot was being done to bring food and water to them. i think the city council operation is beginning to gear up tonight so that there are those things like tin food, rice, past, and also hot food that people can take away. we have the clear up operation going on here, but it is a

different story in other parts of the region, where as you saw in bethany bell's report, still a rescue operation, still trying to get into those areas. when they do, sadly, they are funny people who have not survived, which is why today the death toll has risen so much. samantha: thank you. let's speak to a natural disaster expert at the university of portsmouth. welcome, thanks very much for being with us. as the cleanup, recovery operation continues and sadly e finding of more bodies, talk about the preparedness for this event given there were warnings of this heavy rainfall by the meteorological office there in spain. >> spain is very well prepared. they have protocols, emergency plans for these eventualities. it is when tse plans are

activated. i believe from the information that i have been finding, there was a delay in the activatioof the plan, that meant that some of the evacuations, early warnings were received too late by some of the people affected, impacted by it. samantha: obviously there will be investigations in the coming months as to what possibly went wrong, what could be done differently. explain how civil protection agencies prepare for this kind of disaster, and whether or not europe is ready for more of these kinds of extreme weather events? >> there is a lot of collaboration in europe in terms of preparedness, development of emergency plans. they normally involve evaluating different levels of certain regions. small flats might be happening

once a year or every couple of years. these types of really large floods are expected very rarely, maybe every 100 or even longer years. the protocols, the emergency plans involved, which are the priority areas, there will be maps that show areas that are more likely to be flooded. people that live there, therefore, will be the priority for civil protections in terms of evacuating. it will also establish which centers will be used for refugees, people to be able to find shelter. which groups will be rescue, search, all the needs in terms of equipment, in order to remove

debris to reach people. we saw members of civil protection in floating boats trying to rescue people. samantha: thank you for joining us. thank you for your expertise. here in the u.k., the prime minister has been defending yesterday's budget after criticisms about the hikes in taxes. sir keir starmer and chancellor rachel reeves visited a hospital to mark the billions of new money they are promising the health service. let's get more with our political corp. harry farley who has been following the fallout from yesterday. good to see you. what have the prime minister and chancellor been saying and more importantly what has the reaction been? >> you are right to ask about the reaction because this is day two after the budget after we see some of the fallout being unicked.

the main negative reaction has come from businesses. that is not surprising in itself because business really bore the brunt of those record tax increases we saw yesterday in the budget, particularly around the national insurance contributions. we heard the confederation -- the head of confederation british industry here in the u.k. saying that there is not enough bang for the buck, not enough growth coming out of all the money the government is spending, not enough economic growth. that is one of the key challenges for rachel reeves and the prime minister. they came into government saying economic growth was their number one priority. but actually the forecasts for how much the economy will grow in five years time have been downgraded as a result of the measures they took in the budget. when you speak to treasury officials, they argue there are lots of other measures coming down the road, for example,

changes to the planning that will increase growth, that have not been factored into those forecasts. we think we can defy those rather pessimistic predictions that the official forecaster has suggested will take place in the next five years. but that is a real challenge for labor. they talked about growth, growth. remember the phrase from sir keir starmer. if growth is as anemic, low as it is forecast to be, that would be a major challenge for them come the next election. one other thing to mention. we talked about the consequences for businesses. there are also consequences for the nhs. they got a big injection of funding this year and next. one of the changes the chancellor made was increasing the amount of employer national insurance contributions that employers would have to make. there are questions this evening over what aspects of the nhs that would apply to. the treasury says the public

sector are exempt, but what about gps, many of whom are under a partnership, what about care homes, social care, hospice? all these other aspects that provide nhs services but are not actually a part of the nhs itself. there are questions about they will be impacted by these really significant tax rises, whether they will be any mitigation for them. samantha: tha you. still to come on the world today, millions across the globe gathered to celebrate the hindu festival of lights. and hundreds wear white sheets to break a halloween record in dorset but have they broken the record for the largest gathering of ghosts? around the world and across the u.k., this is the world today on bbc news.

samantha: more now on the u.k. budget, one of labors announcements was the

introduction of vat on private school fees. now a group representing 1400 independent schools have said that it would press ahead with a legal challenge to stop the new levy. we will be speaking to the group in a minute but first let's speak to vanessa clark who joins us not to explain all of this. this was a policy that the labour party promised in their manifesto. now delivering on . explain what it means, how many it will impact? >> this was mentioned in their manifesto before they were in government. yesterday, the chancellor rachel reeves said it would go ahead from january. it means that independent schools, private schools who were exempt from vat will now actually be charged to. many will pass that on to the es that parents pay. now this group have decided to come together in light of the buet and to launch legal action. the main concern is that it will

each the european convention on human rights, and that is around two articles, one on discrimination, one on the right to education. the families basically say the particularly children with special education needs, they cannot find alternative accommodation elsewhere. there are a couple of challenges like this but this seems to be the biggest and they clearly feel they have a case. they just appointed lord panic, one of the country's leading barristers, to lead it. samantha: 7% of all children in the u.k. go to private schools. what is the government's justification for putting vat on the bills? >> this is all about raising money to go into the state sector. they have done an impact assessment which was published yesterday alongside the budget. it looked at things like children with special educational needs and said, if

that exempt the rise in fees for all children with special educational needs in the private sector, their policy wouldn't work because that would be a massive cost. this is all about raising money, so owning those children with a council care plan will be empt from the fees. this is about raising 1.7 billion pounds by 2030 which will go into the state sector. they talk about employing 6000 500 teachers in the state sector in england. this is a u.k. policy, so in wales, northern ireland, scotland, they will decide where the money raised will go, but the argument is the state sector, the quality will be raised, there will be more help their. its a choice and if you choose to send your children to private education, then these fees will have to apply. samantha: vanessa, thank you for explaining to us. we can speak to julie robinson,

chief executive of the independent schools council. thank you for being with us. explain more about the basis of your legal challenge to this. >> all throughout this debate our focus has been on children in schools who would be negatively impacted by the policy, so that remains our focus. we will be defending the rights of families who have chosen inpendent education but who may no longer be able to do so at the direct result of vat on the fees. samantha: how many is that? the institute says three quarters of students at private schools come from the wealthiest 30% of income earners the country. so actually how many, in your estimation, will be impacted by this rise? >> there is a whole range of reports. several of them predict that in fact so many people will move into the state sector that this policy will not raise any money at all for the treasury, particularly over time as the of x become independent -- apparent to independent schools.

it is very difficult to predict but the government has been told by tax experts and teaching unions, lots of experts, that bringing this policy forward to january was too rushed, it will exacerbate many of the problems involved with the policy, and yet, that has been ignored. samantha: would you support it if that runway was extended? >> we have been against the policy from the beginning but we had expected this policy to come in. schools have the right to expect it to come in at the beginning of the academic year. the expectation was that it would come in next september and not get rushed in in january in the middle of the year where children are settled in schools, families have made decisions about school placement, and schools have already set their budgets. samantha: are any independent schools reporting children being pulled up because parents say they cannot afford the 20% increase? >> yes, were finding already numbers are dipping.

for instance, into the first year of secondary schooling, this term, there has been a reduction since last year of 4.6%. according to demographics, that number should be up by 1%. we are certainly seeing a result, dip in pupil numbers across the country. samantha: supporters of the move argued that private schools are effectively businesses trying to protect their bottom line. isn't this an argument that private schools could absorb this, don't have to pass it on to the parents? >> if the government chooses to treat independent schools as business is, they need to remember businesses are treated differently. the same should be true of schools. across the schools we represent, some of them have thousands of pupils, and it goes down to some of our people referable units of just seven. it wouldn't be right to treat them in the same way, which the policy is doing. samantha: do you have any

sympathy for the government's argument that this will raise 1.7 billion pounds by 2030, that they can plow back into the education system and fund and employ the many teachers that are needed in the state sector? >> we have huge sympathy for improving funding into the state sector, that is absolutely something we would like to see, but we refute that this policy would be a way of achieving any meaningful increase. in fact, we believe the enactment of this policy will displace children from their subtle places in independent schools across to state schools. we know there is already a crisis in special ed in the state system, so we think it will put intolerable pressure on state schools. samantha: julie robinson, chief executive officer at the independent schools council, thank you. five days to go before the u.s. election, democratic candidate kamala harris and the republican candidate donald trump both held rallies in wisconsin last night.

donald trump took tothe stage wearing a high--vis jacket after joe biden apparently called his supporters garbage, something that harris has distanced herself from. >> donald trump, always high visibility, is all dressed up for his latest stunt. >> 150 million people are not garbage. i can tell you who the real garbage is. >> despite the odd fumble, he is going after democrats who he thinks had called his supporters garbage. he is trying to turn around a story that initially looked very damaging to his campaign. >> there is literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. i think it is called puerto rico. [laughter] >> a vulgar joke from a comedian at a trump rally upset many of the millions of puerto rican voters in america. a couple days later, as kamala

harris was giving one of the biggest speeches of her camign outside the white house, joe biden was inside on a call apparently describing trump supporters as garbage. >> the only garbage i see out there are the supporters. >> the white house says he only meant one supporter, the comedian, not all of them. >> he was not calling trump supporters garbage. >> is impacting kamala harris' campaign as she is forced to respond. >> i strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for. >> kamala harris may lose votes from people who think they are being trashed, but while donald trump thinks he is winning garbage gate, there are more than enough puerto rican voters in key states to make him lose. samantha: you can watch the results coming in here on bbc news.

they will bring you a special program from washingn, d.c. with our team of experts and correspondence. it is the first day of diwali, the festival of lights, and one of the most important events in the hindu calendar. in the city of mumbai, fireworks lit up the sky to symbolize the triumph of light over darkness and good over evil. some celebrated by lighting sparklers while others lit oil lamps and candles. there is a complete ban on the sale and use of firecrackers in the capital of delhi as it continues to tackle severe air pollution. on diwali morning, residents woke up to a toxic smog which was expected to worsen over the next few days.

and here were the scenes in neighboring nepal. these dogs were celebrated in the country's festival which is part of diwali. dogs across the country were honored with offerings of flower garlands, some tasty treats, and familiar marks on their head. in hindu, dogs are said to be messengers of the god of death, and worshiping them is thought to please him. stay with us here on bbc news. we are back with plenty more in just a few minutes time. i am samantha simmonds. thanks for watching. announcer: funding for presentation of this program is provided by... financial services firm, raymond james.

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