and emmy nominated journalist caroline modarressy tehrani. in washington, new house speaker kevin mccarthy is about to preside over his first order of business. the new republican led congress will sit in the next hour to vote on the rules package. now that might sound a bit in the weeds but it is the nearest thing to a formal contract, setting out everything the speaker gave away last week, as he fought to secure the support of those on the hard right. it includes a rule change that will meanjust one member can bring a motion to throw him out. there are also concerns among more moderate republicans that mccarthy has agreed to a budget deal that could result in a cut to defence spending. this has a proposed billions of dollars cut to defence, which i think is a horrible idea. when you have aggressive russia and ukraine, you ve got a growing threat of china in the pacific i m going to visit taiwan in a couple of weeks, how will i look our allies in the eyes and say, i nee
now on bbc news. welcome to hardtalk. he s in right now. he didn t want his ukraine invasion to become a protracted war in which his army is losing ground. he didn t plan to forcibly mobilise military age men across russia, and he didn t want to see internal but this is where he is seemingly in trouble. if putin is growing desperate, what does that mean for russia? thank you, stephen, for giving me that floor. oh, it s a pleasure to have you on the show. if i may, i want to begin with words from the kremlin chief spokesman dmitry peskov, on september 13th, he stated quite clearly there were no plans for any kind of mobilisation in russia. here we are, less than two weeks later, with a major mobilisation. what happened 7 it s not a major mobilisation. this is partially mobilisation. wejust mobilised, er, 300,000 people from reserve. it s just 1% from our total reserve people. i don t know what is happening with peskov s statement, but i know that we are in war with all nato
the pound remains under pressure from market concerns about government borrowing to fund tax cuts. a state funeral is due to be held for the former japanese prime minister shinzo abe. leaders from across the world are expected to be at the service. the event will start in just under an hour but there has been growing opposition with detractors citing the cost. and honours even as engalnd and germany share six goals in their final game before the qatar, world cup. of an asteroid travelling at 14,000 miles per hour! it s the first time it s ever been done, and it s hoped that it ll teach us how to change the speed and path of future asteroids and planets. our science editor, rebecca morelle, has been taking a look at what happened. closing in on the target. images beamed back from 7 million miles away as a nasa spacecraft approaches an asteroid. the details of the rocky world are revealed. but this probe isn t here to study it. itsjob is to knock the space rock off course by
we begin with the turmoil on financial markets today, the pound sterling continues to languish against the us dollar and several other currencies. the slide in its value was triggered by last week s mini budget, with its controversial package of tax cuts. let s get historical for a moment. we have records for sterling against the dollar going back through history, and in the early hours of monday morning it reached an all time low that is since the creation of the us currency in 1792. let s take a closer look at the past few days the dollar has been strong but this further drop down is about sterling weakness, with a bit of a recovery and then falling back again. you can see this dramatic few days, sterling weakness with a little bit of recovery before it fell back again. on friday and monday there were massive moves within a day, which for a currency like sterling is rare. and one of the impacts of a low pound means that we import inflation, oil and gas is more expensi
rachel reeves, the shadow chancellor, is there and they promise they will bring back the rate of interest tax to fund nhs staff. other news this afternoon. a moment of history in italy georgia meloni looks set to become its first far right leader since the second world war and its first female prime minister. a school shooting in russia has left at least 13 people dead, seven of them children. and nasa prepare to crash a space probe into an asteroid to find out how hard it would be to save the planet. welcome to bbc news, very good to have your company and it is going to be a busy afternoon. the pound fell overnight to its lowest level against the dollar for half a century. asian markets were reacting in part to the government s announcement last week of tax cuts and increased borrowing to pay for them. of course, that had come too late for their trading week on friday. at one stage, sterling plunged to around $1.03, before regaining ground. a weaker pound raises the cost