Yeah

... his piece today.

It's a place where, uh, the MAGA faithful were there in the front row, the crowds, the adoring crowds are there.

He could speak at length, as you say, in quite a rambling way, and not necessarily be held to account for the, uh, truth or, uh, veracity of, um, his statements.

And it does definitely feel like one of the biggest reasons for doing this is to rally the crowds ahead of the midterms.

As you say, there was this very grabby, um, headline about him promising, um, this incredible amount of money for each American if the, um, party manages to retain hold of both the Senate and the House.

Yeah

...

Mm.

And people really didn't have time to do much preparation at all to flee, and the images that we're seeing reflect that.

Just incredibly terrifying images of huge waves of water pouring over, um, ground, um, people being swept away.

And we know now that these flash floods, um, have completely devastated parts of Nepal and on the other side of the border too in Tibet.

Um, they've caused roads to be swept away, bridges to be swept away, um, devastated entire communities, washed away villages.

And indeed the, um, president of the Nepal Center for Disaster Management has, uh, described it as a tsunami from the sky, which, um, really sort of conveys quite horrifically how, um, sudden and dreadful this event was.

And of course as you say, there's, um, a, a devastating and very upsetting death toll that's, um, likely to climb further.

Right

Mm.

And people really didn't have time to do much preparation at all to flee, and the images that we're seeing reflect that.

Just incredibly terrifying images of huge waves of water pouring over, um, ground.

Um, people being swept away.

And we know now that these flash floods, um, have completely devastated parts of Nepal, and on the other side of the border too in Tibet.

Um, they've caused roads to be swept away, bridges to be swept away.

Um, devastated entire communities, washed away villages.

Right

Mm.

Both, e- each side wants the other to go first because neither side trusts each other.

And what we saw last week was Netanyahu say very clearly, uh, he was rejecting this plan and that Israel would not withdraw until there had been the complete disarmament of Hamas.

So once, once again, we were back to this kind of starting point, and the deal fe- felt at that point a bit like a non-starter.

And what we're seeing today and yesterday is a bid to kind of revive that and try to get things going again.

Whether there will be any success on that remains to be seen.

Mm.

Um, he's not doing as well in the polls as he might hope.

Right

... you know, there's an acknowledgement there that this is a very close relationship.

As we've sort of discussed before, they, you know, have considered each other and have said openly that they are friends before, and there's certainly a kind of warmth there that, um, you don't necessarily see in other relations that both of those countries have with other countries.

But nonetheless, the relationship has shifted, and it does feel like China is trying to play a game where it is positioning itselfDepending on what could be for its advantage at this moment, rather than tying its mast to, um, Russia and saying that that is the relationship it wants to pursue at cost to all others, because that's definitely not the case anymore.

But i- is there any sign of what Xi is likely to be saying to Putin behind closed doors about ending the war in Ukraine? Like, do we know what sort of messaging he ha- he has towards Russia on, on that?

Well, this comes back to your point earlier about the sort of hypocrisy of both countries talking about kind of wanting stability in the world order.

China's position on the war has always, in terms of its public stance, has been very much it is a neutral player, um, and it's released these really kind of carefully caveated statements about wanting peace and, and the world order to be maintained.

But behind the scenes we know that it has supported Russia in many ways, diplomatically, you know, through state visits such as this one, and also economically with all these deals that are going on.

For them now, they could also face this new risk of being charged with the death penalty under this new legislation.

Yeah, so all sorts of concerns have been raised by human rights groups inside and outside of Israel about the treatment of prisoners, as you say, in these prisons because their access to due process is questionable at the least.

And there are allegations of torture.

We've reported on such allegations in the past.

And yeah, what this does, and the kind of key concern with this law really is that it is sort of discriminatory because it effectively applies only to Palestinians in sort of, even though in theory it doesn't, in practice that's what will happen.

It applies to the jurisdiction in the West Bank where military courts sort of operate and apply And therefore, by default, that would apply largely to Palestinians.

There is a sort of provision in Israeli civil courts for the death penalty to be sort of given.

We talk all the time about the way that Israel is so often able to act with impunity, but is there anything that can be done sort of internationally do you think to stop this happening or within Israel? So within

So again, this is another very significant person at a time when the Iranian regime has been very damaged by these strikes.

Yeah, and there's been a lot of reporting in recent days that, you know, the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei's son to that post was definitely not straightforward.

There was a bit of a power struggle behind the scenes in which Larajani himself is thought to have played a role.

But it's true that Mojtaba hasn't been seen in public since this appointment was made last week.

And there have been various reports, including from senior Iranians themselves saying, So one of our correspondents spoke to the ambassador, the Iranian ambassador in Cyprus, who said that he had been injured.

You know, we know that the strike that took out his father, several members of his family were injured in that.

And it seems completely plausible that he was amongst those.

I mean, what do we think we can understand about its ambitions?