of the institute for fiscal studies on whether the numbers add up, in any budget, or what these days we have to call fiscal event, can be devastating for a politician. that verdict is treated like the word of god, not least by 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? very strange. he chuckles all we are, as it were, we are a research institute who happen to work on fiscal things, which means public spending and tax, and when the government or the opposition make big announcements on tax and spending, we analyse it and we analyse it off the back of decades of experience we ve got. with the numbers, with understanding of what this stuff means. so we are able to say, do these add up? will it achieve what the chancellor says it will achieve? and what are the risks? when martin le
welcome to the first ever bbc green sport awards. i m ella al shamahi explorer, stand up comic and paleoa nthropologist. and i have no idea what that means. i m mark watson. i m also a comedian, a writer, huge sports fan, and we both care about the environment. that s what this programme is all about. you ve just seen recycled footage from a bbc sports programme from 30 years ago. and even the awards are made from recycled material, which is all part of the ethos of this programme. and it s why we ve occupied the bbc sport match of the day studio. former international footballers, and now pundits, alan shearer and ian wright have been locked out. they think it s temporary, but it s a dream for me to be in this place. i ve dressed up especially for it, there s absolutely no way i m leaving without a fight. by the end of this, i ll be the official new match of the day host, theyjust don t know it yet. and with the click of the fingers, we can make ourselves feel even more at
that the russians had full control of the city. we ve been hearing these claims, actually, from yesterday, and these claims have not been confirmed yet by the ukraine s general staff, the armed forces of ukraine, neither by the local administration and authorities. what we can say with certainty, of course, is the situation in lysychansk has been very intense for quite a while now. after the battle for severodonetsk, lysychansk was the key focus of the russian offensive, their ground forces have been affecting lysychansk nonstop, the city was under intense artillery fire, missile fire, bombardments, aerial bombardments. and like we ve always been saying, and our minister of defence confirmed it a few days ago, for ukrainians, the value of human life is top priority, so sometimes we may retreat from certain areas, just so that we will retake them in the future. and there are other claims that russia is encircling ukrainian troops, or encircling the town itself. what s your tak
a long track tornado cutting through neighborhoods just north of nashville. southern kentucky not spared either. more than 28 reported tornadoes spotted across the south. major cities in the northeast are now bracing for as much as six inches of rain and powerful wind gusts. that threat is expected to last through the night and into the monday morning commute. our team is on the ground in tennessee. and the latest on where that sprawling system is heading next. overseas in the war between israel and hamas, the new warning from qatar that the opportunity for a truce is narrowing as the idf intensifies its campaign, saying it struck 250 targets just in the past few days. the world health organization sounding the alarm with the health system on the verge of collapse. large crowds gathering desperate for food. our team is on the ground where families are fighting to stay warm and stay alive. james longman reports from israel. the woman challenging donald trump for the republ