ambassador to afghanistan. after grenfell — tonight we are finally getting some clarity on how big a safety problem has been uncovered in england's tall buildings. the government now knows of more than 200 high—rises fitted with cladding that does not meet ourfire rules. and we return to mosul. a pulverised city, isis fighters still hiding out in pockets. can traumatised residents, and returning refugees remake their lives? this is what liberation looks like. iraq's second—largest city, just ruins. the bulk of the city is completely destroyed and devastated. there is nothing left. good evening. millions across the united states witnessed the great american eclipse this evening. from the oregon coast to charleston in south carolina, people gathered in sport stadiums and on beaches and city roofs as the country was plunged into darkness, coast to coast, for the first time in 100 years. it was said to be the most documented such event in history. centuries ago, an eclipse was everything from a divine warning to a sign to commence battle. the ancient chinese thought the sun had been eaten by a dragon. no matter the rational explanation, it is still for many an extraordinary moment, when we realise we are just a pinprick in the universe. so what's the draw, and can we actually learn anything from them? we'll hearfrom nasa in a moment, but first here's stephen smith. i have seen grown men cry at solar eclipses. across a great swathe of america, and in a breakfrom the norm, people have been taking a holiday and rushing to get out of the sun. the shadow cast by a once—in—a—lifetime solar eclipse. for once, the president did not seem to mind being put in the shade. for 90 minutes the eclipse tracked east over 1a states, from one american seaboard to the other, before heading out over the atlantic. if the eclipse is a highlight in the calendar, consider the men and women who devote themselves to studying solar activity. for then it is a real day in the sun, or rather shadow. i am working on how the sun shines and we keep making progress and understanding how the sun shines, but there are gaps and it is exciting to be outside and have the universe dark and and have this fabulous stuff go on in the sky. the view outside is fabulous. we have tried for a long time to explain this to people and my conclusion is you have to see it to believe it. it is unbelievable. on a rare day like this, our earthbound concerns seem suspended and it is possible to sense the awe and terror our ancestors must have felt at a celestial event like this. so that's it, that's the last this century. not until august the 21st 2017 will another eclipse be visible, 38 years from now. maybe shadow of the moon fall on a world of peace. abc news will bring you a report on the next eclipse. even better, this is evan davis on the spot in his eclipse chasing togs. a few observations. the sound changes. dogs start barking. we heard a cow in the distance and the insect noise changes. huge temperature drop. we have been in the burning heat, 94 degrees in american money, and suddenly it begins to cool down and become cool. perhaps the most exciting, just at the edge of the eclipse, as you look at the sun, you catch a bead, which is the sun catching behind the hills and valleys of the craters on the moon. you are seeing the sun glint behind the rough surface of the moon, as the shadow passes. it is really extraordinary. they are calling this the american eclipse. at a particular american moment. i suppose we do now have a president who really enjoys being the centre of attention. and finds it hard to be eclipsed, if you will. i found something maybe a little funny, that we have moment here where we really are, as americans, celestially required to look at something else, to look at something larger and think of ourselves as members of the planet. others say today is a reminder of what man now understands about the heavens. i have heard people say they are reminded of the awe of things but i think the opposite, that it shows humans have been able to understand the workings and predict this and understand how the stars shine with these details we are trying to improve. this brings the universe to us and humanises our son shows we can understand it. —— humanises us and shows. i'm joined from idaho falls by nasa planetary science director drjim green. and from wyoming by david baron, the author of american eclipse. good evening. i can see david baron in bright sunshine butjim greene, you look happy. what was it like the experience? it is the first one i have ever seen but i have to tell you there was not a cloud in the sky and it got dark and it was just beautiful. what did you learn? you have the awe and wonder, but what immediately are you learning from a scientific perspective? nasa has an array of instruments we tested, some from planes, others from balloons we launched. we launched 57 balloons along the path. they went up to more than 100,000 feet. we performed a variety of experiments. what will that tell us and help us, that we do not know now? i had, as a planetary scientist, an experiment on a balloon. a principal investigator david smith had bacteria we put on two coupons. one on the ground and one on the balloon and we did it to 30 balloons. we went to 100,000 feet. the reason we put the bacteria on it, and it is a hardy, harmless bug, but pervasive in this world, is that we wanted to see if it could survive the conditions. they were special conditions. at 100,000 feet you are above ozone and you get ultraviolet light. you also are at a temperature and pressure with the same conditions as on the surface of mars. the concept is, can these bugs survive on the surface of mars? david baron, you have seen many eclipses and have a rational response in a sense, but for you it is still magical when you watch eclipses. absolutely. i am a science writer and my background is in science, but chasing eclipses is about emotion. it is the most awe—inspiring spectacle anyone can have on this planet and i'd tell you everyone in their life owes it to themselves to see a total eclipse. after you have seen one you often want to see more. why? we have a rational response to it but in years past it was seen to be a harbinger of doom, harbingers of happiness. we imbue it with meaning. in ancient times you see this beautiful shining ring of light and people were confused and even today. we know that all is going on is the moon passing between us and the sun but it messes with your head. it looks like no sky you have seen and itjust connects you with universe like nothing else because you realise you are looking towards the centre of the solar system and you see with the naked eye what a beautiful object the sun is. it is notjust a simple disc in the sky, it has like air. beautiful tendrils coming off you can only see in a total eclipse. thank you. it's being reported in the new york times that in a major foreign policy speech tonight, president trump will announce a new military push in afghanistan. one that will put more american military boots on the ground — perhaps as many as 5,000 pairs — in order to ramp up the war against against the mainly taliban insurgents who have been making gains recently. trump has been accused by us lawmakers of dragging his heels over an intensification, and a kite was flown that suggested he might want mercenaries to do the job. but tonight, at fort myer in virginia, he is expected to indicate the us military will be the ones on the front line. we'll hear from a former american ambassador to afghanistan in a moment. first, i asked secunder kermani in kabul what the security situation was like there now. the levels of violence have been steadily increasing. and some of the statistics are really quite shocking. last year for example there were nearly 3500 civilian deaths in afghanistan. and parts of the country that were previously considered quite safe, like kabul, for example, have become increasingly affected. kabul has seen a number of high—profile, quite large—scale attacks this year. in fact, not too long ago there was a rocket attack near the canadian embassy. and across the country the afghan government only controls around 60% of the territory. insurgent groups, that's mainly the taliban, controljust over 10%. and they contest nearly a third of the country. so why has the us strategy failed? one of the criticisms in the past has been that president 0bama did commit to sending large numbers of troops back in 2010, 2011, there was around 100,000 american soldiers here in afghanistan. but he was also quite explicit in saying that he wanted america to withdraw from afghanistan and set a date for that. and the argument goes that that encouraged the taliban to effectively wait the americans out. 0n the other hand it seems there is no real simple solution to the conflict here. the crux of the problem seems to be that whilst many in afghanistan and internationally believe that peace can only be achieved through some kind of negotiated settlement with the taliban — because it is not going to be possible to defeat them militarily — at the moment the taliban do not really seem to have much of an incentive for coming to the table for talks because they feel they have got the momentum behind them. so what most analysts say needs to happen is there needs to be a greater level of military pressure exerted on the taliban to encourage them to come and start meaningful negotiations. so how will afghans take the news this evening of a kind of beefed up strategy by trump? well we have to wait and see what exactly president trump says but certainly the figures in the afghan government that i have been talking to want to see more american troops here in afghanistan. although at the same time they are quite clear that they want to see them in that training and advisory role that most american soldiers are primarily in in afghanistan at the moment. they want to see afghan troops take the lead on the battlefield. what they want to see more of is they want greater access to american military technology and aerial capabilities. one thing that many in the afghan government i think would be quite concerned about would be a greater role for private security firms which is meant to be one of the options that president trump was considering. i think that would also cause a great deal of concern amongst many in afghanistan. thank you very much. zalmay khalilzad is a former ambassador to afghanistan and us ambassador to the un under george w bush. he joins me from washington. good evening ambassador. reports coming out of the us of increased troop deployment. is that what you understand will happen? that is my understanding as well but we will have to wait and see until we hearfrom the president. he has inherited a difficult situation. he has been very deliberate taking his time, looking at the us objective going forward. looking at alternative strategies. and we will see what the result is. i hope the strategy he announces will be comprehensive as the review has been. the word is it could be roughly about 5000 troops. do you think that in this situation when the taliban seems to be back on the front foot that 5000 us troops will be sufficient for the task? the question is what is the task. if the task is as military leaders say, to stop the momentum of the taliban and also indicate unlike the previous administration in the us which set a timetable for reducing the forces that it had increased and was indicating it was anxious to get all troops out, which encouraged to tell about not to come to the negotiating table. that this increase plus giving more flexibility to the commanders to use the force as they see fit, plus pressure on pakistan which is a diplomatic issue of great importance affecting afghanistan, might change the taliban calculus, the power —— the pakistani calculus and therefore encourage negotiations. that is what the objective is and they believe that the troop numbers associated with the other things that i said could produce the results of a negotiated settlement. but we will have to wait and see. interesting that you talk about pressure in pakistan which is a us ally but it has been there for a long time but the war goes back 16 years. and tonight not even the whole of ten to say. why has there been such a long term failure of policy and indeed over the issue of pakistan, why have they failed to get to grips with pakistan and its continuing harbour of the taliban? afghanistan on the one hand is not what it was 16 years ago and i think it is a mistake to say it has been a failure. because now afghanistan has a large security force, it has state institutions that they did not have 16 years ago. we needed 100,000 troops only six or seven years ago to prevent the taliban from winning if you like or prevailing. now the military are saying we need only 4000, 5000. so that has been a positive change but on the other hand you are right that the strategy to encourage pakistan to play a constructive role has failed. and we need to and we will have to see what president trump says about this tonight, how to shed pakistan from its comfort zone that it can be an ally on the one hand and also act as an anniversary and support the taliban network. at the start of the interview you said president trump had been very deliberate and looked at reviews and taken is fine. 0thers accuse him of dragging its heels. and there was also talk that part of the announcement tonight, which may have come from the steve bannon win, that it was not military force but mercenaries. what you think of that? i think there is a role for contractors to assist the military. at the present time we have more contractors in afghanistan ben troops. but i do not think that you can subcontract the war to the contractors. their role is a limited role to be in support of the military. and i believe that is where it will come out tonight. thank you very much. today the results of the final significant fire safety test triggered by the grenfell disaster were released. they seek to help us work out which other buildings are safe or not, by working out what sort of cladding designs are fire—safe. the results make for troubling reading. i'm joined by our policy editor chris cook. i'll have we got here, just remind us. just after the grenfell tower fired the government began an audit of tall buildings across england to work out of the buildings that had aluminium cladding on the outside, what type of installation did they have and what sort of aluminium facing they had on the exterior. the reason why they wanted to know that was that it is possible to have some kind of slightly combustible installation and some kind of slightly combustible exterior cladding if you have them in the right combinations. if they are properly designed and only used in certain combinations. but they did not know what the safe combinations where. so having done that audit, they have done six fire tests so far, there will be seven, and these are to work out which combinations of materials can be used. so what is the significance of this report? this is the last of the ones that were in doubt, the conclusions are that when you take all the test results together we now know the right children 28 tall buildings across england that have designs of cladding, combinations of integration and aluminium cladding on the outside that is not fire safe. 200 buildings unsafe, how do we get to a situation where we handle that. in principle under the building regulations you should not be able to put up the stuff without going through a rigorous fire test of the sword the government has been doing. but the institutions that we rely on to police that requirement, they basically let us down. one example, the longest standing private institution that has a lot to do building inspection in the uk, the national house—building council, derry esteemed, not a jazzy company, they released guidance last year saying they would sign off combustible cladding and insulation without anyone needing to do any test or any further requirement to show it was safe just because culturally that is what was accepted. institutions like that who had a responsibility to the public to make sure buildings were safe they basically dropped the ball. they took their eye off fire safety. and now we discover many buildings to not read the rules that we set up. the coalition forces who retook mosulfrom isis have moved on west, where the battle is now for tal afar. in their wake, they have left a city, much of it abandoned and pulverised. mosul suffered three years of isis occupation and then a nine—month battle to take it back. 700,000 of the residents, many of them traumatised, were displaced to 20 refugee camps. now these people want to come home. but is there anything to come home to and is it really safe from isis? this special report by yalda hakim contains images some viewers may find distressing. the road to mosul is long and convoluted. to reach even the outskirts of the city you have to navigate numerous checkpoints and roadblocks. we've just entered west mosul. the baghdad government has declared victory. but the threat still lingers. there are still pockets of is fighters in the old city. and this is what liberation looks like. iraq's second largest city, just ruins. the bulk of the city is just completely destroyed and devastated. there's nothing left. nothing that is now not untouched. i cannot even begin to imagine what it would have been like for the people trapped in this city. they were not allowed out, isis wasn't letting them. and there was constant bombardment here. and now everything is destroyed. trapped beneath these ruins there are untold numbers of bodies. this woman is now homeless along with a million other people in this city. what are your children saying? this is the ambulance that has come to transfer me. this doctor is getting to work, the only way he can. i am a volunteer doctor, not a graduate doctor. and now i'm going to the hospital in the west of mosul. from the east side. mosul‘s only functioning hospital is overwhelmed. there is no one checking the people who are coming and going. and so the security forces are concerned that some of these people could be isis fighters or isis supporters. this is shrapnel in the back. and i'm examining the site of the shrapnel and the depth of the nail. at the height of the fighting the doctor was treating up to 700 people a day. now the numbers have dropped to 500. and not just from injuries but illnesses caused due to the lack of clean water. according to the army, retreating isis fighters have rigged 90% of the buildings with improvised explosive devices. do you have the resources, i mean, do you have enough men to...? explosion. is that another one? but the iraqi military is now accused of targeting and killing people they suspect of belonging to isis. the government say they are investigating these allegations. when islamic state swept into mosul three years ago the world watched in horror as they unleashed their reign of terror. allah akbar! at first many saw them as liberators from an oppressive shia dominated government. mosul university, once home to over a million books. rare maps, ancient manuscripts and a ninth century koran have all been lost. this is the college of computer and mathematics. this seat of learning represented everything isis stood against. intellectuals like ali al hadidi, a renowned professor of law, lived in fear for their lives. i have come to visit the doctor from mosul hospital at his family home. nice to see you. over lunch he explains that it was his profession that ultimately saved him and his family from the wrath of islamic state fighters. did that make you nervous, though, that your son would go out to treat isis fighters? is there fear then that there could be another uprising? the people of mosul now have to rebuild a broken and divided city. but real reconciliation will be a battle. and all the while, isis fighters are hiding amongst the population. waiting in the shadows. when is it appropriate to remove statues from our streets and squares and parks, erected to men whose past glories are now an embarrassment to many? when the city of charlottesville voted to remove a statue of general robert e lee, who commanded the confederate army of north virginia, the ensuing furore saw kkk, white supremacists and neo—nazis on the streets, violent clashes with counter—demonstrators, the death of one young woman, and approbrium heaped on trump for his failure to condemn the actions of far—right groups. in russia, it's the 80th anniversary of the great terror, the purges in whichjosef stalin killed and enslaved millions, and yet new statues to him are springing up in the country, led by vladimir putin's admiration of the dictator for his role in crushing the nazis. in a moment, we will be discussing what to do with fallen idols and how they speak to history now. but first, here's a vewsnight on the subject from dr rahul rao, —— but first, here's a viewsnight on the subject from dr rahul rao, from soas, university of london. and rahul raojoins me now, as does the historian tim stanley. good evening. let's have a conversation about how you decide all this. he suggested in his piece that it is possible to consider bringing down the statues of thomas jefferson. i admire him for his honesty and logic because a lot of people would say they want to stop at one set of statues but once you approach the subject from the principle of let us eradicate those things from the past that were morally wrong and not acceptable today, you cannot stop at confederate statues, you put everything on the table and the problem with that is you create an artificial sense of the past. we try to cleanse it of all things that make no sense morally today and therefore you rewrite the past and create a past that simply was not real. you are rewriting the past? not at all, i think a lot of these movements objecting to statues are not about rewriting the past. the rash of confederate monuments that scars the american landscape were exercises in revisionist history and built to nurture a view of the civil war as a noble struggle fought against northern aggression and removing them help source right a better history of the civil war. looking back at the second world war, and indeed looking at the spanish civil war, are you against the removal as has been done, statues of franco, mussolini to private places? it is about contemporary culture and context and it must be a legal process, not driven by a particular interest group. ukraine is removing statues of lenin, which makes sense to me. by contrast, consider parliament square because we are focused on big ben today. who is in the square? you have winston churchill, architects of empire, men with bigoted and unpleasant views. in parliament square you have nelson mandela. statues tell the full story. history does not start in leaps and bounds, it is evolution and if you keep all the statues, you then have a full history of empire for people to read. you cannot remove everything, obliterated his —— history. it is not about obliterating, the ascetics of celebration are different from the aesthetics of critique. it would be one thing to put the statues in a museum. it is quite another thing to put them on a pedestal literally in a public place. where do you stop? i could say you would not want a lot of statues of 19th century politicians because they stood against suffrage for women. i do not think any historical figure should be beyond examination and re—evaluation. does that mean removal? it could mean replacing those statues in a museum. if you put them in private places you do not have a dialogue. why put them in a museum? these people are so fundamentally immoral, why not get rid of the statue altogether? the objective is not to raise and skill, —— and obscure, to expose it. the renaming of robert e lee park as emancipation park tells the history better, that does not glorify slavery that recalls the struggles of those who were enslaved. that is a particular contemporary context but my fear is a lot of the effort to take down statues is not about correcting history but telling a particular political... what about oliver cromwell? one section of the community to them he was a tyrant and is remembered as a tyrant and to another section of the community he is not. when you have a divide, how do you decide? when putting up the statue of cromwell it almost brought the government down it was so controversial. i am catholic and have irish and my family and cromwell is a war criminal who shut down parliament. but 100 years on from the statue being erected i understand it is part of british identity and sometimes we lie to ourselves and tell national fantasies and it is part of our identity that cromwell stood up the parliamentary sovereignty. russia, vladimir putin seems hell—bent on rehabilitating josef stalin. the idea now that people in russia will look and see the man who murdered their ancestors put on a pedestal. i think we are talking about different examples as if they are equivalent and we need to distinguish between situations where those in power bill statues to ratify their stranglehold and those wanting to put up statues to get a toehold in a public sphere from which they are excluded. thank you. on a day when we looked to the heavens, we sadly lost a giant of the science fiction literary world. the great brian aldiss passed away aged 92 today. one of the pioneers of the genre who used sci—fi to hold up a mirror to humanity, he counted everyone from stanley kubrick to agatha christie, cs lewis to tolkein as friends and colleagues. so in his honour, we dug into the bbc interview archive to let him say goodbye in his own words. really, a novel takes you about a year to write, so you have not got to be bored by it, so you don't plan it. or i don't plan it — i embark on it. and it is a voyage of discovery. but doris lessing told me long ago, no, sorry, it wasn't doris, it was iris murdoch. iris said, you must never tell anyone how much you enjoy writing. you must always make out that it's really hard work. well, it is hard work, but it's also the second most enjoyable thing you can do in life. well, i don't agree with those people who think that science fiction is some kind of prediction of the future. it may or it may not be. i think it is a metaphor and it is a metaphor for the human condition. there is certainly something in me that urgently needs expression, and it doesn't quite tell me what it is. what the sadly to the weather did not play ball for looking at celestial objects in this country. they have better luck in the united states. first thing tomorrow, gloomy yet again. but mild as we step out the door. a weather front keeps the cloud thickenerfor some the door. a weather front keeps the cloud thickener for some rain across the northern parts of scotland. further south, if you are on the move, there will be held fog around and it will take, for some, quite some time into the morning before the day gets going. it will produce a little heat, and it will be worn for some. a little bit of sharrock tutti in northern ireland, some quite heavy, and some of itjust about getting across into the south—western quarter of scotland. the odd waterfront will produce gold conditions all day. some brightness on the borders, about 22, and some showers possible in the pennines and north wales. the temperatures and surely there are 21125, but if you are in the right place, it could be 20, 836 and are in the right place, it could be 20,836 and 27. are in the right place, it could be 20, 836 and 27. the are in the right place, it could be 20,836 and 27. the humid air is ahead of the cauldron. —— the temperature is i am showing you there are 2a or 25, but if you're in there are 2a or 25, but if you're in the right place, it could be 2627. rehn will become increasingly confined to the northern isles. the trailing portion is the dividing line between the walk towards the east and something slightly fresher out towards the west. —— could be 26 01’ out towards the west. —— could be 26 or 27. no ice age at all. high is generally about 2k degree. this low pressure will be close to northern ireland and that is throwing a weather front through, so another pulse of rain here. elsewhere, a mixture of sunny spells and showers. not a bad day in prospect. the breeze this time coming from the atlantic. so temperatures will be about 19— 2a some, but at best 22 also had a similar prospect as we get on through friday. —— rakitin. i'm rico hizon in singapore. the headlines: the us navy temporarily suspends operations worldwide, after one of its destroyers collides with a tanker near singapore. spanish police say they have killed the main suspect in the barcelona terror attack. i'm babita sharma in london. also in the programme: unveiling america's latest plan for its troops in afghanistan. in a few hours' time, president trump will announce his new strategy. a magical moment — the first time in a century americans get to watch the total eclipse of the sun.

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