the defence secretary grant shapps said the royal navy is working on a new dragonfire laser weapon to complement its existing weaponry, the sea viper air defence system. that s to be upgraded with a new warhead and software to counter ballistic missile threats. here s grant shapps. we have, for example, the largest ships that we have ever put to sea in the aircraft carriers. i toss it off, i think, 13 frigates and destroyers which are under commission at the moment. we are modernising the navy, going throughjust massive through just massive capitalisation programme and just this morning, for example, i have been on x, twitter, yesterday, the results of a new weapon which is a laser weapon called dragonfire, capable of doing what those men and women on hms diamond have been doing, with the sea viper missile system, and doing it with a labour laser instead to bring down incoming so the technology is also moving on very fast, as well as the investment. economists have warned
much to get through this hour. as israel intensifies its military operations in the south of the gaza strip, hamas officials say more than 700 palestinians have been killed in the past 2a hours. that number comes from the hamas media office. hamas is considered a terrorist organisation by the uk and us governments. i want to show you these live pictures first of all in car newness, in southern gaza. car this is live outside al nasser hospital in khan younis, an area that has been under frequent assault. further south in the strip, near rafah, at least seven palestinians were killed in an israeli attack in the early hours of sunday. we re also keeping an eye on what s happening further north. this is live looking at the israel gaza border. all this as israel has come under renewed pressure from top figures in the biden administration. the defence secretary, lloyd austin, has said israel driving could be driving the civilian population into the arms of the enemy, and that
entries suggest that sir patrick vallance had said that a number of ministers were trying to in essence use science to make decisions so they didn t have to make decisions themselves, and there isn t a great structure in that. the point of the inquiry is to learn how to make those decisions, should they need to be made again. there are questions for scientists as well. we have heard in this inquiry, back in february 20 20, six weeks before the uk finally went into lockdown, that there were those in downing street, particularly borisjohnson, who maybe were not taking covid as seriously as they might or should duff done considering what ended up happening, so there are questions to the scientists, had you understood the scientists, had you understood the virus sufficiently and should you have worn people earlier? that could have had a different outcome in terms of restrictions being made earlier and different outcomes to what happened. h0??? earlier and different outcomes to wh