towards the wall and they load bricks on his back, until he collapses, and then put a bucket on his head and they start battering him. president biden visits the country he called an international pariah a couple of years ago. hypocrisy or just an acceptance of saudi arabia s new importance in the world? of course, for the president, it s all about how your voters think, and one of the huge issues in the us at the moment is the price of fuel. and has the day passed for a health service free at the point of delivery here in britain and in other western countries? there is a lot of support| for the nhs as it now is, but frustration at waiting a long time for a routine operation. i in early september, there ll be a new prime minister in downing street. borisjohnson s supporters, and there are still plenty of them, insist that his big achievements were getting brexit done, ushering britain through covid, and being ukraine s number one supporter after russia invaded. when the ne
yet now, especially in europe and the western world, it feels as though the disease has passed us, even though it actually hasn t. it s as though we couldn t take all the restrictions it brought any more. life has opened up and only a minority of people are wearing masks now. in china, by contrast, the epidemic still dominates everything. i talked to fergus walsh, the bbc s medical editor, about the world s experience of this modern day plague. covid is going to be with us for years and years to come. and there was a lot of talk right at the beginning about herd immunity the idea that we d all get it once and then that would be it. well, now you can get omicron, the latest variant of concern, and you can get that again and again. so it s going to be, in a way, a little bit like flu and vaccines will be our best protection against it. they have been the extraordinary success story of this pandemic. i think the fastest ever developed vaccine was. took four years to develop an
hello, and thanks for joining me for unspun world the programme where we tap into the bbc s unrivalled array of experts worldwide to get the unadorned facts about what s really going on. this week, can vladimir putin survive his army s widespread lack of success in ukraine? he sounded as if he was trying to argue that this is not a mistake, believe me as if he was pleading his case in a way. is the war entering a new phase? both sides are trying to assess where they go next, how long they can last, how much ammunition they ve got. and how has it all gone so badly wrong for one of the world s most delightful cities, beirut? the lights have just gone off. 0h, they ve come back on again. is that a thing that people have to go through all the time? 0h, three to four times a day. last monday, victory day in russia, looked like being a moment when we d find out what direction president putin seems to be taking his war in ukraine. would he make nuclear threats against nato? woul