welcome to bbc news. british diplomats and their families have been airlifted to safety from the sudanese capital, khartoum, as fighting between rival factions of the army enters a second week. the ministry of defence has confirmed embassy staff were removed under the cover of darkness. the united states has carried out a similar operation. there s no word yet on how other british nationals are supposed to leave. with the latest, here s our africa correspondent andrew harding. in war torn khartoum this morning, dramatic moves to rescue at least some trapped foreigners. overnight, american military helicopters flew into sudan, heading for the capital in the centre of the country. in a short but successful operation, nearly 100 us embassy staff and their families were airlifted to safety. there are reports of a convoy also leaving by road from the french embassy, and within the last hour, confirmation that british embassy staff have been extracted from the city. the prime minis
here in the uk, 2022 saw the highest number of excess deaths outside the covid pandemic in half a century. and france tries again to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. it s an unpopular reform that didn t go well last time it tried. we ll be live in paris. we start in ukraine. president volodymyr zelensky has said ukraine s army is facing an extremely difficult situation as fighting continues in the eastern donbas region. the focus is the salt mining town of soledar. the uk defence ministry says it s likely that russian forces including wagner group mercenaries now control most of the town. we ll be taking a look at why it s become central to this conflict. but first, here s president zelensky. translation: and what did russia want to win there? i everything is completely destroyed. there was almost no life left. thousands of their people are gone, the whole land in soledar is covered with the corpses of the invaders and scarred from the strikes. this is what madness loo
yours restored. i don t know where mine is, it may land back, we will see. if you want to get in touch, you can find me on twitter. quite a mixture of weather across the uk at the moment. some areas have seen a clearer spell, other with cloud and rain. the remnants of an area of low pressure pulling away eastwards. it will get somewhat clearer to start the new weeks, but it is also going to turn notably chillier. here is the low tracking towards the continent as we finish on sunday. behind the low, we are hooking in a northerly breeze and we are going to pull arctic air all the way south across the uk. that is for monday and will stick around for tuesday and wednesday. that cold air moving into scotland, even through the evening. strong winds,
of the uk will clear away, but there s plenty of isobars on the pressure charts for wednesday so yes, it ll be another blustery one. strongest of the winds out west where we ll see gales, particularly around coasts. there will be some sunshine around though compared to tuesday, but there ll also be showers, and they may merge together to produce longer spells of rain as they spread from west to east. and it will be a blustery day wherever you are, but certainly, like i mentioned, around western coast and over hill, some large waves crashing up onshore, too. a little bit cooler, i think, tomorrow than what we had today. we ve got single figures for most, just about 10 11 celsius in the southeast. and then through wednesday night, there s a clearer spell for a while, and the next batch of wet and windy weather spreads across the southern half of the uk and it remains windy with further rain across the west and the south west during the course of the overnight period. drier, clearer s