shashi tharoor, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. good to see you again, stephen. you just heard me talk about india s current place in the world, the most populous nation, a growing economy, a stable government. would you agree that india right now is in a good place? it s not in a bad place in overall terms. that is that it s a country, it has always been, i think, a country to be reckoned with on the world stage, but now it s number one in global population, it s number three in purchasing power parity terms in the overall gdp, number five in dollar terms. it s a country of some substance. it does have free and fair elections. every once in a while we sort of overturn state governments, so we haven t yet been able to overturn the central government. so it counts for a great deal on the world stage. and i must say that when you look at things like technology, it s done rather well for a so called developing country. it s got some very fine talents. we seem to have exported an
hour. what an inspire story. sandra: i love a good story with a happy ending. this very special conversation coming up as the student athlete, the sixth grader and his mother, all join us live coming up. we ll start things off with this fox news alert. john: secretary of state antony blinken wrapping up his historic trip to beijing and attempt to clear the air between the world s top two superpowers. sandra: they say the conversations were constructive but admitting they failed to reach notable breakthroughs on taiwan, slamming the talks as fruitless. the risk here of this renewed engagement strategy is we will abandon important defensive actions to engage in a series of endless fruitless talks with the ccp. john: a bipartisan group of lawmakers is calling on president biden to take a page out of his predecessor s playbook. he want to expand israel s diplomatic ties with countries in africa to keep china from establishing a bigger footprint there. sandra: we will
announcer: live from our studio in singapore, this is bbc news it s newsday. thank you for being with us. we began in ukraine where floodwaters are still rising in the city of kherson after a major dam was hit on thursday. tens of thousands of people have been stranded and whole neighbourhoods submerged. officials say they could be a catastrophic impact on agriculture which would worsen the global food shortages. this eastern bank of the dnipro river is currently a no man s land. neither russia nor ukraine control here. now, no one can live here. the ukrainian army drone spotted catalina trapped in her home. they tried to drop her water no luck. her son then makes the crucial catch. they re both taken to kherson, along with her daughter, maria. a city once occupied by russia, then liberated by ukraine, now on its knees. translation: we managed to find the simplest boat, i but my father and a neighbour got carried away in it. it came loose, and the current was too powerful
but if you have lived through the last three or four years in this country should appreciate just how fragile our freedoms really are. our founding fathers understood this and benjamin franklin walked out of the constitutional convention he was asked on the street what have you given us a republic or monarchy? he said a republic if you can keep it. you can have the best constitution in the world you can have the best declaration of independence they do not run on autopilot. they require citizens in each generation to answer the call when freedom is under attack. so we are called upon to carry the torch of what george washington called the sacred fire of liberty. we are called upon to stand firm for the truth. we are called upon to be resolute in defense of the enduring american principles that mark us as a free society. here s what i can tell you i will do. if you support me and i earn the nomination to be the republican candidate, set your clock to january 20, 2025 at high n
plans for supermarkets to introduce a cap on the price of basic food items to help tackle the rising cost of living. now on bbc news, unspun world withjohn simpson. hello, and thanks forjoining me here at the bbc s headquarters in central london. is there any sign yet of the much heralded counteroffensive by ukraine? for the west, in ukraine, if they were to go too early ahead of all of that hardware being in place, then we could see the front lines we see now in place for some time to come. after the g7 summit in hiroshima, is a chinese attack on taiwan more likely or less likely? i think for now, xi jinping has made the calculation that he simply can t afford to invade taiwan. and, should we lose sleep at night for fear that artificial intelligence, ai, is going to take over the world? we ll have to have systems in place to police it. - we almost need a new police force entirely focused on al. i the city of bakhmut, in ukraine, now seems to be pretty much entirely in russia