BBC在线收听下载:英国驻美大使宣布辞职

Hello, I'm Debbie Russ with the BBC News.

The southern US state of Louisiana is being battered by a powerful tropical storm, bringing torrential rain and ferocious winds. Storm Barry lost some strength after coming ashore as a category one hurricane the first of the season, but millions of people are bracing themselves for potentially life-threatening flooding. Rear Admiral Paul Thomas is from the US Coast Guard. We are quite concerned about this storm. It remains a very dangerous storm, particularly with regard to the amount of water that could be dropped in those areas in an already full river basin. It's really important that people around those parts of Louisiana, in general, and even up into Arkansas and Tennessee, take this storm very seriously.

The Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has told his British counterpart that Tehran will continue its oil exports under any conditions. After a phone conversation with Jeremy Hunt, Mr. Zarif said an oil tanker seized by Britain off Gibraltar last week was headed to a legal destination. Mr. Hunt told Mr. Zarif that Britain might facilitate the release of the ship so long as it didn't go on to Syria. We had clear evidence that this tanker was heading for syria. If we get the guarantees that it is not gonna get to Syria, then we can resolve the situation following due process in the Gibraltarian courts. And that was the purpose of my phone call. And it was also, I think, encouraging to hear that from the Iranian perspective, they have no desire to escalate the situation, they want to resolve it as well.

A British newspaper has published more leaks from diplomatic cables in which the UK's former ambassador in Washington strongly criticized the Trump administration. Kim Darroch resigned following the publication of the first tranche of messages last week and after Boris Johnson, the front-runner to be the next British prime minister, refused to explicitly back him. Here is our diplomatic correspondent James Robbins. This weekend, the focus is on the work done jointly by Sir Kim and Mr. Johnson during his visit to Washington as foreign secretary in May last year. The aim was to try to talk the administration out of abandoning the nuclear deal with Iran. Sir Kim is quoted as reporting back to London that Mr. Trump's administration is set upon an act of diplomatic vandalism to spite his predecessor Barack Obama. But now Sir Kim has resigned as ambassador. Some of the sting has been taken out of these newly revealed assessments. Instead, the focus has shifted to a row over press freedom in Britain after the Metropolitan Police warned journalists not to publish any more leaked material.

World news from the BBC.