To one of china's most senior economists after he criticised xi jinping? we think he disappeared some time earlier this year. That gives you an indication ofjust how cautious peoplei have to be in order to not run foul of the leadership in china. Sirens blare iran launched two big waves of missiles at israel on tuesday. But in case you might think world war iii was breaking out, it was all carefully choreographed. Distant explosions iran signalled what it was going to do, the americans knew about it beforehand and israel was expecting it. That's the way these things are done. The basic facts are unchanged. Israel remains dominant in the immediate region, and iran's hope of turning its two associate groups — hamas, in gaza, and hezbollah, in lebanon — into checks on israel hasn't succeeded. And a wider war between israel and iran doesn't seem altogether likely because neither country wants it — especially not iran, whose rulers know how fragile their control over their own population is. I sought the views of frank gardner, the bbc�*s security correspondent. We spoke just before iran's attack on israel. Israel started this with the pager — exploding pagers — and then the air campaign. But in the end, it was always inevitable that, to achieve their aims, they were going to have to go in on the ground, which they've done. And when they talk about a limited, targeted operation, doesn't that sound to you slightly familiar, like a special military operation? it'll be very easy for them to go into lebanon. It'll be much harder for them to come out with a quantifiable, achievable aim. And israel's aim is to clear out hezbollah�*s weapons and their rocket launchers so that their own residents can return to the north of israel to work on their farms, and so on. Hezbollah have said, bring it on. We're ready to fight you. So, we don't yet know how effective that fight—back is going to be. But i think it could be quite a long and bloody fight for ground troops in southern lebanon. It certainly was when israel occupied lebanon from 1982 to 2000, and again in the short war that they fought in 2006. In 3a days, they fought each other to a standstill. Nobody won that war. So, it's not enoughjust to kill all the leading military figures. They've got to decimate the structure further down than that, you mean? hezbollah, like any non—state military organisation, will know that there is a target on the back of their leaders and the next tier down, and probably the tier after that. This was probably faster and more brutal than they expected, but nevertheless, they have a succession plan in place. It takes time for them to acquire the same kind of level of experience and following, but they are all replaceable. So, the idea that you can completely eliminate this problem without a lasting, peaceful solution is. . . Is unrealistic. Of course, there are bigger issues here — there's gaza, and hezbollah have linked their campaign to that of gaza. They've said, we will stop firing rockets if there is a ceasefire in gaza. There's only going to be a ceasefire in gaza if both sides can agree — and the sticking point there is the withdrawal of israeli troops. Hamas wants israeli troops out of gaza and a guarantee they're not going to come back. Benjamin netanyahu's government is saying, we won't do that unless we — you know, we're not going to sign up to that, because what if we find you're smuggling weapons in again? so, there's an impasse there, a blockage — which the americans, the qataris, the egyptians have all tried really hard to get over, but they can't quite bridge it. And what about hezbollah�*s sponsors, iran? there will be those who will be saying in iran, we can'tjust stand by and watch our entire axis of resistance crumble. The israelis are taking us apart. Hezbollah was our main flag torchbearers for the islamic revolution in the arab world. We can't just sit back and let them be — we've got to do something. They've called on us to help, we need to help them. That will be the hardliners saying that. There will be others saying, maybe we're better off biding our time and doing whatever we want to do further down the line. Those will be the more cautious voices. Let's not forget that, 12 days after israel took out, or demolished, the iranian consulate in damascus, hitting the brigadier general who was in charge of coordinating the arms supplies from iran through syria to hezbollah, iran retaliated in a big way. It launched that barrage of roughly 300 missiles and drones directly at israel for the first time — notjust using its proxies, but attacking israel directly. Nearly all were intercepted. Israel was then — the hawks in israel said, we need to hit iran even harder now. With a lot of diplomatic pressure from the west, there was a restraining hand on israel, and they did a kind of token hit on an iranian nuclear site, or close to a nuclear site. You must have been watching with real interest to see how israel had instilled its deepest agents in all sorts of ways, not only in iran, but also, of course, in hezbollah. They've really gone through those organisations with tremendous ability, haven't they? they have, they absolutely have. It has had a chilling effect, i think, on hezbollah, because, you know, how do they communicate now? they don't trust mobile phones because they know that they can be hacked and tracked by israeli cyber specialists. Do they go back to walkie talkies? well, those blew up, as well. So, it's not easy for them to communicate. So, yeah — and when it comes to iran, you're absolutely right. Israel clearly has the mossad, israel's overseas spy network, has a network of people who are working for them, whether they're iranians or others. But they clearly have a network, because they've been able to assassinate a number of leading nuclear scientists. So, i think it's likely that the iranians are quite possibly now going to step up their nuclear programme to reach a point at which they could acquire breakout capability to build a bomb, should they choose, because they will see that as the best guarantee against being attacked. Speaking in hebrew benjamin netanyahu' switch of focus from gaza to lebanon appears to have been highly successful. 0n gaza, he has a large number of critics within israel itself. But where lebanon's concerned, most israelis seem to support him — certainly for the time being. I asked shaina 0ppenheimer, bbc monitoring's middle east specialist based injerusalem, for her view of what was going on. Fighting in the north gives a clean slate for netanyahu. There is no pressure, there is no hostages there. It's quite, erm, favourable. And the israeli public is actually quite, kind of, rallying around this. The idea of bringing back the israeli residents who have been displaced from their homes for the past year is not a new idea, but this kind of ability to perhaps get some kind of victory image that netanyahu wasn't able to get out of gaza, not being able to defeat hamas after a year of fighting, is perhaps a new opportunity for him. But the whole of his strategy so far in lebanon has been extraordinarily successful, hasn't it, from israel's point of view? after what was an incredible historic failure for the israeli army and its intelligence after the october 7 attack, this is an opportunity to reshow israel's abilities — their intelligence abilities and their air force's abilities in being able to carry out attacks like the pager attack, the walkie talkies attack, and also these air strikes, killing quite senior hezbollah leaders, including hassan nasrallah. What do you think about the whole way that netanyahu has approached all this, though? i mean, is itjust going from one tactical question to another? tactical victory, you could say? or does he have some long—term vision in mind? it is really unclear. I mean, the possibility of israel being able to push hezbollah back from the northern border with israel would be an incredible victory for netanyahu. But what's really interesting is that, when this war broke out and when the possibility of a larger escalation with hezbollah was first conceived, there was a lot of discourse in the public and the media about how disastrous the two previous wars in lebanon were. The world seems to have taken its attention off gaza and placed it on lebanon. But what's going on in gaza itself? there's continued air strikes in gaza. Palestinian civilians are continuing to be killed in gaza, and there is certainly worry there that the world has forgotten about what's happening there. What's quite interesting is hezbollah said, from the very beginning, that it was carrying out these cross—border exchanges with israel to force israel into a ceasefire with hamas, and that it would stop these attacks if a ceasefire was reached. There isn't a lot of rhetoric in israel about some kind of ceasefire with hamas as being the key to ending the cross—borderfire, and now escalation in the north. And in the meantime, of course, the united states being completely sidelined — does netanyahu really disregard the united states now, do you think? it seems that he's getting quite comfortable with the leeway that the biden administration is certainly being accused of giving him, while they're putting out statements expressing concern for the civilian casualties in gaza, and now in lebanon. And i think what is incredibly interesting is that there's a lot of public support for some kind of ceasefire in gaza and to bring back the hostages, and it is a priority. But that rhetoric almost seems to have gone away. And people who are quite critical of netanyahu, the way that he's conducted the war in gaza, have been in favour of some kind of escalation with hezbollah. Does it seem, though, as though further down the line there'll be more difficulties, more problems? well, if you contain itjust to what the israelis says are targeted air strikes on hezbollah leaders — which we know also has an incredible toll and civilian casualty rate — perhaps this could be seen as a victory. If you look at the long—term goal and trajectory in which this is going, it's really unclear how this would play out, just because israel went into lebanon in 2006 thinking it would be this quick defeat and it wasn't that. It was a very, very hard thing to do. Israel went into gaza with the same idea. It wasn't able to do that — it still isn't able to do that. Even now, the israeli army is pulling out and going back in over and over again to different places in gaza. This is certainly going to have repercussions for generations to come, and, in terms of support for groups that are seen as resistance groups amongst the public, it's not necessarily taking this region to a more secure future. Two years ago, in a scene that was quite painful to watch, the elderly former boss of the chinese communist party, hujintao, was ushered out of the closing ceremony of the party congress live on chinese television. Why, and what he'd done to offend the present leader, xijinping — assuming that he wasn'tjust ill, which was the official explanation — we don't know. Mr hu certainly hasn't been heard of since. The massed ranks of unelected delegates to the congress were given a fierce reminder that you do not fall out with president xi without paying a heavy price. That's a lesson which a top chinese economist, zhu hengpeng, failed to learn a few months ago. In an entirely private message on china's social media platform wechat, he criticised president xi. Not a good career move. Mr zhu has vanished without trace, and there are very few images of him left on the internet. I asked micky bristow, asia pacific editorfor the bbc world service, for more details. We think he disappeared some time early this year. His last known movements were in april, when he took part in a conference, and since then nobody on the outside world has really seen him. And how do we know he's disappeared? because his name hasn't appeared on, or it's disappeared from, the organisations for which he worked for. So, he worked for the chinese academy of social sciences. Name's disappeared from that organisation. He worked for an economic think tank at tsinghua university, one of china's top universities. His name's gone from there, as well. In many cases in china, you don't know something's happened to somebody until theyjust don't appear in the places that you expect them to appear. But he did make the mistake of criticising xi jinping semi—publicly, didn't he? what appears to have happened is, on an internal group, like a messaging group between academics, he's made some very impolitic comments about xijinping, notjust about his economic policies, but also about his mortality — because, of course, there's constant speculation about the health of xi jinping. That appears to have got him in trouble. Talking about someone who's a very senior economic adviser, someone who will have had access to the top echelons of the leadership in china, somebody whose advice will have been taken. And, even if he can disappear, even if it's difficult for him to speak honestly and openly within a small group of friends, that gives you an indication ofjust how cautious people have to be in order to not run foul of the leadership in china. And what about the health of the chinese economy, then? clearly, some part of the criticism was about the way that xi is running the economy. Yeah, the criticism of xi, generally and broadly, is that he's inflexible. He's not really suited to the 21st century, still harking back to a day of mao zedong, when state—run enterprises were given the most resources, and there were no private enterprises then. But he's gone back to that, to a certain extent, where loans, for example, from state—run banks, will go to state—run industries rather than newer industries, innovative industries and companies which might generate more money for the chinese economy in the years to come. Over the last few years, the economy has performed well, but not as well as it was doing at the beginning of the century. At the time xi jinping came in, there was a lot of hope that he was going to reform. If anything, he's gone backwards. He's gone back to an age which chinese people thought they'd seen the back of forever. And so, not only has he turned out not to be reformist, he's gone backwards — and perhaps backwards in terms of political liberalisation. There's never been a lot of that in china. But in the early part of this century, there was small wiggle room for people to criticise, for people to develop and develop businesses and say things around the edges. All that's gone. Is it part of a pattern? i mean leading figures in economic life in particular, just, you know, being knocked down, disappearing, jailed, whatever? well, it has happened before — most famously with jack ma, who at one point was china's richest man. Tycoon, brought himself up, self—made man who perhaps thought because of his wealth, because of his influence, because of the money he generated for the chinese economy, he could say what he wanted to. And so, a few years ago, he criticised china's financial reform. Very quickly, he was brought down back to earth. I think his finance company he was about to list on the hong kong stock exchange — that was suddenly cancelled. No explanation as to why that would happen. He disappeared for a time. He's reappeared, but. . . He's a broken man, though, isn't he? he's a broken man. He spends a lot of time, i believe, now, outside of china, injapan. But he certainly isn't vocal in any way, shape or form like he was before. If he can be silenced very, very easily, then who's going to speak out? who's going to be able to say things to xijinping? nobody would dare to do that. Even worse in terms of death and displacement than gaza, but mostly ignored in the outside world, the appalling war in sudan grinds on. At its heart is a personal grudge. General abdel fattah al—burhan, sudan's de facto ruler, had a falling out with his deputy, who's known as hemeti. Al—burhan commands the army. Hemeti has control of the paramilitary rapid support forces — or rsf. Their personal dispute has led to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of lives and livelihoods. And there are now fears of a majorfamine. Sam murunga is the editorial lead for africa at bbc monitoring. He spoke to me from nairobi. The consensus is that none of the two warring parties has the upper hand. The un has been saying for quite a while now, john, that this is the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Since the war broke out in april of last year, an estimated half of the sudanese population — about 2a—25 million people — have been displaced. A huge number of those have moved out of the country, into neighbouring south sudan, the central african republic, and chad and ethiopia as well. But there's a huge number, tens of millions of people, who are displaced in the country. In darfur, for example, in the west of sudan, where millions of people are displaced, the army has been reluctant to allow humanitarian organisations to operate there because they're fearful that the rapid support forces will use the entry of humanitarian aid to smuggle in weapons and other military logistical support. So, it's quite a complicated situation just because of, one, the scale of the fighting and the displacement, secondly, the damage to the infrastructure, but also the politics around who controls what. And in khartoum itself, what is life like? how difficult is it? about 80% of the hospitals throughout sudan — but most of these being in khartoum itself, but also darfur — over 80% of medical facilities are not operating. But also, apart from that, there's a complete breakdown of public services. The government has not been functioning for over 17 months now. There's no school for children, but also, beyond that, there's very limited basic items that you can go and buy — but even then, you have to dodge air strikes and potential attacks by the rapid support forces as well. It started out as a rivalry between one man and his deputy. Is it still the case? it was essentially a falling out between two men. The generals who have been, erm, at the control of this country since the oust of omar al—bashir in april 2019. The reason why they started fighting is because the army was demanding that the rapid support forces had to disband as a paramilitary group and join the army. And hemeti was not sure that his group would survive within the army. But since the war has been going on, the conflict evolved into something that has taken on ethnic dimensions. So, in darfur in particular, the rsf and allied groups — which are predominantly arab groups that have been targeted, the black ethnic groups — they've been told by the icc, as well as amnesty international and human rights watch, that what has happened in darfur, specifically the targeting of the masalit, which is a black ethnic group, will constitute what could be considered genocide. But then, the other ethnic dimension to this has been the army has also attracted backing from groups, especially in the north and the east of the country, that are quite powerful, but also ethnic armed groups that have come in to say, we will stand with the army to fight the rsf as well. And so, that has raised fears that essentially the country could split in the middle with the groups, with the rsf and the ethnic groups in the west of the country, favouring the idea of having their own, erm, civilian administration, but also then, on the east, the army retaining the backing of those powerful ethnic groups on that side. What success, if any, has there been for the desire to get the parties together and talk it through and find a solution? so, saudi arabia and the united states have, from the onset, been very vocal on trying to find a peaceful solution to the war. There have been rounds, all of them held in saudi arabia — until the last one in august, that was in switzerland, geneva, switzerland. That round that was held in switzerland was a bit of a disaster, in my view, because the sudanese army boycotted it completely. And so, that again ended without any clear way forward. What has happened since then, a lot of rhetoric by both the two generals, burhan and hemeti, saying they think the only solution is to win on the battleground. I don't see any peace initiative that offers hope that there could be a peaceful resolution any time soon. Sam murunga, speaking from nairobi. A former prime minister of israel once said to me that his country's main problem was that it always saw things tactically and didn't worry about the strategic long—term enough. He must be thinking exactly that now. The current prime minister, benjamin netanyahu, has succeeded way beyond most people's expectations. And though his gaza campaign has been hugely divisive in the wider world — and pretty divisive inside israel as well — mr netanyahu has switched everyone's attention away from the suffering in gaza. But the question of israel's future remains. Once upon a time, virtually the whole western world gave its full support to israel, because it was a small, beleaguered outpost of democracy in a menacing region. Nowadays — though, most european countries still basically support israel, especially after the savagery of the 7 october attacks from gaza — the tactics the israelis have followed have caused criticism and often revulsion throughout the west. What europe says or does doesn't much matter nowadays compared with what the united states does. And president biden has been an old—fashioned democratic party ally of israel. But neither kamala harris nor even donald trump support israel to the same extent. And attitudes are changing in america, especially among the young. An opinion poll last december indicated that more than 50% of young americans thought israel should simply be handed over to the palestinians. For a long time now, mr netanyahu has been doing exactly what the united states asked him not to do — and, yes, he's been pretty successful. But offending and humiliating his greatest ally again and again is problematic. And maybe the time will come when israel isn't so successful and so dominant any more, and will need friends badly. Well, thank you forjoining the unspun team and me for this edition. And, until we meet again, goodbye. Hello. A lot going on with our weather right now. We're going to see some heavy downpours for the next couple of days, then it will turn colder. We've got low pressure in charge — you can see areas of clouds circulating around that. There's also another deep area of low pressure in the mix. This is ex—hurricane kirk — this will stay to the south of us, but it will essentially join forces with our low. Some heavy downpours over the next couple of days, then the whole lot shifts eastwards, leaving us with northerly winds and something significantly colder. But in the short—term for tuesday, still relatively mild, actually, with a mix of some sunshine, yes, but also some really heavy, thundery downpours. A band of cloud and rain moving slowly northwards across the far north of england, northern ireland, into southern scotland — some parts of south—east scotland looking very wet, indeed. Northern scotland seeing a fair amount of cloud, it'll be windy, some spots of rain and drizzle. And then, further south, it is that mix of sunshine and showers, but some of the showers really heavy with some hail and thunder, the winds strengthening down towards the south—west. Temperatures north to south between 10—18 celsius, and then, these various clumps of showery rain just continue to circulate around that area of low pressure as we head on into the first part of wednesday. But these northerly winds will be strengthening up towards the north of the uk — things here will start to feel colder, and that cold air will start to sink a little bit further south as we go through the day on wednesday. Still some showery rain across parts of eastern scotland, north—east england, sunny spells and showers elsewhere. But, while it will remain relatively mild in the south, as those northerly winds strengthen , we could see gusts of 40—50mph in the north — it will really start to feel quite a lot colder. Temperatures at best in lerwick, stornoway, aberdeen at 9 celsius. And by thursday, that cold air will sink even further southwards. Now there should be a fair amount of sunshine around on thursday, i—2 showers — some of those showers wintry over the highest ground in scotland. And have a look at these — these are the afternoon highs we're expecting, north to south around 8—12, maybe 13 degrees. And we stick with that chilly feel for the end of the week. The weekend bringing some rain towards the north and the west, drier conditions further south and east. Welcome to newsday. Reporting live from singapore. The headlines. The israeli military continues an offensive on lebanon with air strikes and a ground operation. As those strikes take place, israel remembers — a year after the hamas attacks that killed more than 1,200 people. In gaza, nearly 42,000 people have died since israel began its operation. We look at the humanitarian crisis on the ground. Hurricane milton strengthens to a category 5 storm as it heads for florida. There are warnings it could be the worst storm to hit tampa in 100 years. It's 9am in singapore, and 4am in beirut, where there have been further air strikes on hezbollah targets in the lebanese capital. The israeli military carried out multiple bombings