this time last year, we were seeing clear signs that ukraine s much heralded summer offensive wasn t doing very well. russia had had plenty of time to prepare its defences and ukraine simply couldn t break through them. the next phase, inevitably, would be a russian spring offensive, after the snow and mud of the winter gave way to firmer ground under the tracks and wheels of the tanks and armoured personnel carriers. ukraine s supporters around the world were nervous. might this be the moment when russia came crashing back, recapturing the ground it had lost and even maybe threatening kyiv, the ukrainian capital? the delays in getting the big us support package through seemed to make things much worse. and yet it hasn t happened. russia has made some gains, admittedly, but there s been no actual breakthrough. the bbc ukraine correspondent, james waterhouse, is back in london briefly, and i asked him for his view of what was happening. after ukraine weathered that initialstor
we will bring you more from our correspondent outside a hospital in a moment. a leading think tank, the institute for fiscal studies, has accused the main political parties of a conspiracy of silence over the economic reality behind plans set out in their election manifestos. the ifs analysed how the policies could impact the public finances and what that could mean for household incomes, public services and taxation. in its scathing assessment it said the parties were ducking the issues, by relying on faster growth to deliver more tax, which it said was far from guaranteed. it also warned the next government faced having to find new ways to raise taxes, or leave some public services exposed to billions of pounds worth of cuts. this a flavour of what the director of the ifs, pauljohnson, had to say. low growth, high debt, high interest payments mean we need to do something quite rare over the next few years just to stop debt spiralling ever upwards we need to run primar
is gareth southgate preparing to make changes for england s final group game.? we ll hear live from the manager and declan rice and he s arrived early when many doubted he d be able to make it at all. novak djokovic tells us how he s hoping to be fit for wimbledon e it, if eit, ifi e it, if i know i can play close to my maximum or play at maximum, i will play. hello again. we ll be bringing you live coverage of england s press conference ahead of their final group game at euro 2024 in the next 15 minutes, gareth southgate and declan rice will be speaking in cologne. but we turn first on sportsday to a scotland debrief. they re out of the tournament after a 100th minute goal for hungary settled their game in stuttgart, and decided their fate too. the totals for steve clarke s side make underwhelming reading: one point. two goals, only three shots on target. so i ve been speaking with former scotland winger pat nevin about where it went wrong. when you get to the rarefied level
talks in washington, i spoke to our north america correspondent peter bowes. these are very wide ranging discussions. mr galante is on a several day visit to the united states meeting his us counterpart in about 2k hours time. in the last few hours, focusing on his meeting with antony blinken. this issue of trying to avoid further escalation has certainly been uppermost in their discussions. and really avoiding escalation on two fronts, escalation of the war in gaza between israel and hamas, but also concern about the skirmishes that we have seen on the northern border with lebanon with his brother over the last few days. and there is very real concern that those skirmishes could turn into something more serious and escalate into a wider middle east conflict. we understand that antony blinken has been putting some pressure on mr gallant to seek some sort of diplomatic resolution to that situation on the northern border to see the return home of lebanese families. so concerns
diverted to other airports. it comes at the start of the busy summer holiday season amd the airport has apologised to passengers. in a moment we will have the latest from our correspondent at manchester airport. but first, let s hear from a stranded passenger. i spoke with nikita pearson, a fitness instructor stuck at manchester airport waiting to board his flight to istanbul. we got to the airport at about eight o clock in the morning and you could see people sat outside on luggage. we didn t think anything of it. we got the lift to go upstairs to terminal one and you couldn t even get out of the lift. you had to trample over people to get out of the lift and then you just stood there. hoards of people just not moving anywhere. there was no tannoy announcement, no staff nearby anywhere, there were children getting trampled on, there were babies, it was chaos. we stood there for about an hour and a half and then nothing at all. you mentioned you couldn t see any staff to spea