we did speak a short while ago to dave cohen of wwl-tv, short while ago to dave cohen of wwl—tv, who power. there are no rescue operations that can go out at this stage. we will keep you across it here on bbc news. hello there. sunday was a day of contrast — cool in the cloud, warm in the sunshine — and in actual fact, across southwest england, we saw temperatures into the mid—20s. a beautiful sunday afternoon for many. the next few days look likely to stay quite quiet across the whole of the country. quite a lot of dry weather around as well, but it will be mostly cloudy, and i suspect the temperatures easing away just a touch, around average if we're very lucky. high pressure still dominates the story. it's a blocking high that's preventing weather fronts from moving in off the atlantic. but a little bit more of a breeze always down towards the south, and that's going to continue to push this cloud in off the north sea, which could be thick enough on monday morning for a spot or two of drizzle. favoured western areas, perhaps as we go through the afternoon, seeing some sunny spells

let me bring in dave cohen, news director for wwl radio. are you with me?t seemed at first new orleans was spared. late at neat gene meserve called in to cnn trying to hold back tears, describing people on rooftops. we didn't know the full story. in a hurricane, it's like a fog of war situation. we may not know exactly what happens in realtime. you, of course, were on the air during katrina and for the hurricanes since. do you feel new orleans is better prepared than it ever has been for this size of a hurricane? >> from an infrastructure standpoint, there's no doubt about that, that the levees are taller and more sturdy and they've been armored and built now to be resilient and with withstand over toppling, like they did in katrina, 80% of the city being flooded and the worst disaster in u.s. history at the time. the billions spent in flood walls and gates and pumps and armoring the levees, clearly the city is better prepared. also technologically, all the cell phone towers have natural gas generators so they won't run out of fuel and go dead like they did

i asked dave cohen once he goes why would i do that. a lot of people go to biographies to be able to cheer for somebody. so it's a lot easier, like the rule of thumb, the broadway musical warp, well, musical, did it work? well, if people come out whistling then it works. but i don't do that. i want readers to form their own opinion. i wrote a book on franklin roosevelt trader to his class, and that title do you think it is a thumb's up or down, because traitor is a bad word, it's not traitor to his country, it's traitor to his class. anyway, i try to keep my distance as often as i can. in the last years of benjamin franklin's life he was coming home from paris, he was sick and wanted to die in america. he had been he stranged by his son williams in the revolutionary war and his grandson temple wanted to get his father william and grandfather benjamin back together so he arranged a meeting in england to ship from la habra and stop in for a last chance to meet. so temple brought the two of them together. and at the critical moment william