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BBC News with Sue Montgomery.
Elon Musk has announced the formation of a new political party in the United States. He said "the America Party" would challenge what he called a one-party system that wasted public money and undermined democracy. Mr. Musk spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Donald Trump's election campaign, but the pair have fallen out over the president's big, beautiful bill spending plans. Here's our North America correspondent, Arunade Mukherjee. It would be hard to say what kind of overall appetite there is for a new political party. I think this could also be seen as something of him trying to test waters, given the kind of very serious opposition that he had to the big, beautiful bill. He had very categorically pointed out that this is a party that had promised to cut down on expenses, but it was doing just the opposite. So this is a man who says that he is ideologically committed to the fact that America needs to save, and forming a new political party, according to him, is the only way to do it. The number of people killed by devastating floods in central Texas has gone up to 43, including 15 children. Hundreds of rescuers are still searching for survivors along the Guadalupe River. A plane carrying people deported by the Trump administration has arrived in South Sudan, after the migrants lost a last-ditch legal effort to halt their transfer. Officials say only one is from South Sudan. The rest are from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar and Vietnam. Here's Will Ross. It had been quite a lengthy legal battle with lawyers for these people, arguing that their rights were in danger of being abused. They might be tortured, they might face persecution. The U.S. website, the State Department itself, tells people not to travel to South Sudan. The country is seen as being on the brink of civil war, and the U.S. State Department itself warns of the high risk of insecurity and armed conflict. Israel has confirmed it's sending negotiators to Qatar for talks involving Hamas on a possible cease-fire and hostage release deal in Gaza. But the Israeli Prime Minister's office said the Palestinian group wanted to make changes to the latest proposal that were unacceptable. Sebastian Usher reports. Hamas wants an immediate halt to the controversial new aid distribution mechanism run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and backed by Israel and the U.S. It also wants the Israeli army to withdraw to positions it held before the collapse of the last cease-fire in March. And it wants a guarantee from the U.S. that hostilities won't resume at the end of any truce. These are conditions that Mr. Netanyahu's office has now described as unacceptable. World News from the BBC. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has made his first public appearance since the end of the short-lived war with Israel 11 days ago. State television showed him greeting worshippers at a mosque on Saturday during a ceremony for the religious festival of Ashura. There's been heavy fighting between Somalia's army and the al-Shabaab Islamist extremist group in the central Hiran region. The Defense Ministry said after a base was attacked at dawn on Sunday and Saturday, clan militias helped the army fight back. An official said 10 al-Shabaab fighters were killed. The al-Qaeda-linked group says 15 soldiers died. Two Kenyan athletes have broken world records at a competition in the U.S. state of Oregon. Beatrice Chebet became the first woman ever to finish the 5,000 meters in under 14 minutes. Later, the reigning Olympic champion Faith Kipyegon raced a victory in the 1,500 meters, beating her own world record by about half a second. The legendary British heavy metal band Black Sabbath have performed a farewell gig in front of 40,000 fans in their home city of Birmingham. Over a dozen international acts including Metallica, Slayer and Guns N' Roses performed earlier in the day. The music writer Matt Charlton has this on the legacy of Black Sabbath. "They created their own genre from nothing. They were touring the U.S. in the early 70s and a review of one of their gigs in America saying they were about as musical as a ton of heavy metal. And when Life gives you Lemons you make lemonade, a whole genre was born from that. They have influenced everyone in that genre. And it's a big world. It's one that doesn't really make the mainstream media very much heavy metal because it's very harsh. But it is all over the world and it has so many fans." BBC News. |