Hurricane irma has left a trail of devastation and claimed at least a0 lives. Its destroyed thousands of homes and has left millions without power and clean water. Now britain, france and the netherlands, which oversee territories in the caribbean, have been criticised for being slow to respond to the crisis. A state of emergency has been declared on the British Virgin islands where an aid operation is under way. The bbcs laura bicker has the latest from tortola, the largest of the islands. There is now a sense of desperation and fear in tortola. People are hungry, tired and in need of basic supplies. This was the line of traffic trying to get into the main town on the island. Most are heading to the supermarket for the First Time Since the hurricane, now that more roads have been cleared. Have you got enough food, water . No, cause everybody is fighting, and stealing. A lot is going on right now. People are breaking into peoples homes, going with what they have. Its a state of emergen
Ties with brussels. After more than eight hours of debate late into monday night, lawmakers voted by 326 to 290 in favour of the eu withdrawal bill. It will now go on to face days of line by line scrutiny. Ministers rejected the labour partys claims that the legislation amounted to a power grab. Heres our Political Correspondent alex forsyth this was one of the first big parliamentary tests for the government. This was a bill they wa nted government. This was a bill they wanted to introduce to bring all existing European Union law into uk law. When the uk leads the eu they would not be a big black hole and things could continue as usual. What was contentious was the government wa nted was contentious was the government wanted to allow ministers to make changes to some of those laws without full parliamentary scrutiny. Now, some opposition labour mps, including the labour party leader, said that was a power grab, that it was trying to bypass parliamentary scrutiny and it was not accepta
The Tropical Storm which hit florida as Hurricane Irma continues to push inland, bringing torrential rain and storm surges to the states of georgia and south carolina. As it hit islands across the caribbean irma, with ferocious winds and torrential rain, left almost a0 people dead. Now britain, france and the netherlands, which oversee territories in the caribbean, have been criticised for being slow to respond to the crisis. A state of emergency has been declared on the British Virgin islands where an aid operation is underway. Laura bicker has the latest from tortola, the largest of the islands. There is now a sense of desperation and fear in tortola. People are hungry, tired and in need of basic supplies. This was the line of traffic trying to get into the main town on the island. Most are heading to the supermarket for the First Time Since the hurricane, now that more roads have been cleared. Have you got enough food, water . No, cause everybodys fighting, and stealing and a lots g
The communist Party National congress. Theres been lots of reaction on social media to the unveiling of the countrys new leadership. More reaction from outside of the chinese mainland than inside it. A lot of it has focused on the make up of the committee. The gender balance is way off. This is Carrie Gracies the bbcs correspondent. Gender wasnt the only thing generating discussion their appearance did too. They are very similar, all in their 60s, wearing similar black suits and a range of coloured ties similar to each other and some jokes followed from that. Some say that the new look should have been something a bit more like this, but i think its unlikely i have been speaking to a member of the bbc monitoring staff who said that this is not a surprise. In the state media in the lead up to the announcement today, the names were more or less predicted. The official news agency, there were names mentioned that have been elected into the chinese congress, so when the announcement came o