ceremonies have been taking place in thailand to mark the start of a four day funeral for victims of a mass killing at a nursery. strike action leaves just 20% of regular rail services running across england, scotland and wales today as workers walk out for the 11th time this year. hello and welcome to bbc news. president putin has suffered an embarrassing setback in the war with ukraine, after a huge explosion on the only bridge linking russia with the crimean peninsula. the bridge partially collapsed, but has now reopened to light traffic. russia annexed crimea in 2014, and after occupying these regions in red, it s managed to establish a corridor up through southern and eastern ukraine. the kerch bridge, connecting russia to the crimean peninsula in the black sea, was an important supply route for sending russian in the black sea, was an important supply route for sending russian troops and artillery into ukraine. the blast there is another humiliation for the kremlin, a
president putin has suffered an embarrassing setback in the war with ukraine, after a huge explosion on the only bridge linking russia with the crimean peninsula. the bridge partially collasped, but has now reopened to light traffic. russia annexed crimea in 2014 and, after occupying these regions of ukraine in red, it s managed to establish a corridor up through southern and eastern ukraine. the kerch bridge connecting russia to the crimean peninsula in the black sea was an important supply route for sending russian troops and artillery into ukraine. the blast there is another humiliation for the kremlin, as our russia editor, steve rosenberg, reports. it is the bridge the kremlin built, and it was under attack. an explosion at dawn. this was the result. russian officials claim a lorry had been blown up here and that the fire then spread to a fuel train. whatever the cause, you can see the damage. this is the bridge that links russia to annexed crimea, and parts of the r
ten people have been killed and eight injured in an explosion at a petrol station in the republic of ireland police say it appears to have been a tragic accident . protests continue in iran and around the world as three people are killed in the country. now on bbc news it s political thinking with nick robinson. welcome to political thinking. one question haunts the chancellor, any chancellor of any political party. it is what will the iss say because the verdict of the institute for fiscal studies on whether the numbers add up, any budget and what these days we have to call fiscal events, can be devastating for a politician. it is what will the ifs say. that word is treated like the word of god, not least broadcasters like the bbc who have experts from the ifs on our programmes all the time. my guest this week is the director of the ifs, pauljohnson. welcome to the programme. if the ifs is the word of god that makes you god. how does that feel? , , ., that feel? very
welcome to bbc news. president putin has suffered an embarrassing setback in the war with ukraine, after a huge explosion on the only bridge linking russia with the crimean peninsula. the bridge partially collasped but has now reopened to light traffic. russia annexed crimea in 2014, and after occupying these regions of ukraine in red it s managed to establish a corridor up through southern and eastern ukraine. the kerch bridge, connecting russia to the crimean peninsula in the black sea, was an important supply route for sending russian troops and artillery into ukraine. the blast there is another humiliation for the kremlin, as our russia editor, steve rosenberg, reports. it is the bridge the kremlin built, steve rosenberg, reports. and it was under attack. steve rosenberg, reports. an explosion at dawn. steve rosenberg, reports. this was the result. steve rosenberg, reports. russian officials claim a lorry had been blown up here and that the fire then spread to a fuel
about the significance of the bridge being hit. it depends how quickly they repair the bridge. it is a huge symbolic setback because this bridge was mr putin s personal commitment to crimea. it opened in 2018, cost $3 billion, massively overpriced. one of his friends was in charge of the construction and he identified with this because this was a way of uniting the mainland of russia with what he took to be the mainland of crimea which was now going to be russian forever so the bridge is symbolically hugely important. in terms of logistics, the fact is, one carriageway seems to have survived this blast although it may only take light traffic and we don t know how bad the damage is to the railway grid above it. my guess is that although the russians will have a big motive to say that the bridge is reopen soon and all is fine, it will not reopen to military traffic which is very heavy so we will see how long it is before they can start to use the road and particularly the rail