16 countries take the stage in liverpool later for the second semifinal. sticking with the eurovision theme, we are in liverpool at the shopping centre right in the heart of liverpool, surrounded by these beautiful eggs, i will tell you about them later on. the bank of england is expected to raise interest rates again today to 4.5%, the highest level in 15 years. it will be the 12th consecutive hike since december 2021, meaning mortgage payments could rise further for millions of customers. our business correspondent hannah miller reports. this is the first home gheev has owned, bought with his girlfriend two months ago. but since they agreed their mortgage, the monthly payments have gone up twice in line with the base rate of interest set by the bank of england. when we were coming to find a mortgage, the fixed rates were astronomically high. we figured that if the bank of england base rate goes up by another two or three percentage points, we re actually better off staying
to desecrating the quran and insulting the prophet muhammad in 2021. rights groups report that iran has put more than 200 prisoners to death since the beginning of the year. and in a further crackdown on high profile figures iran has charged two well known actresses with violating its strict dress codes for women. the president of iran, ebrahim raisi, has ordered an inquiry into the widespread protests seen here triggered by the death in custody of a young woman, mahsa amini, last september. taraneh stone from bbc persian joined me earlier in studio. this wasn t related to a protest per se, but it s causing a lot of concern about the high number of executions that we re hearing here and there in the news lately. we have heard in the news about many executions, especially the execution of minorities. and they re raising concerns over the imminent execution of some minorities, like arab minorities. now, we know that iran is notorious for executions, for death penalties. and w
welcome to the programme welcome we begin in ukraine where at least three civilians have been killed and more than 1a wounded in the last 2a hours in the latest wave of russian missile and drone attacks. the overnight attacks across ten regions of ukraine were the fourth such wave in just over a week. the southern city of odesa has also been targeted. russia has stepped up its aerial attacks ahead of an expected offensive by ukraine. a ukrainian general in bakhmut said russia had intensified its shelling of the devastated city too. russia s wagner group boss says moscow has agreed to his demands for more ammunition days after he threatened to withdraw his men from bakhmut. russian troops and fighters from wagner, a private military company, have been trying to capture bakhmut for months despite the city s questionable strategic value. earlier, zhanna bezpiatchuk from the bbc ukraine service, told us more about the drone attacks to kyiv. we have seen already a ra