this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. this is bbc world news. the headlines. disturbances break out overnight in the us city of atlanta after a black man is shot dead the police chief in the us city by police officers. of atlanta has resigned after an officer fatally shot officers had tried to arrest a black man during an arrest. rayshard brooks after he failed the killing sparked fresh protests. a breathalyser test. his family s lawyer spoke the fast food restaurant of his despair. i don t even know whatjustice is any more, and i have been doing this for 15 years. where 27 year old rayshard brooks was killed is now a crime scene. several french cities are clearing up after clashes between police and anti racism protesters on saturday. marchers in paris demanded justice for adama traore, a 24 year old black man who died when he was pinned down by officers. a virtual church service is held a virtual church service is held to remember the 72 people who died to remember the 72 people in the grenfell towerfire in london who died in the grenfell tower fire in london three years ago. three years ago. hello and welcome if you re watching in the uk or around the world and stay with us for the latest news and analysis from here and across the globe. there has been a night of unrest in the united states following the killing of another black man, rayshard brooks, by police, this time in the city of atlanta. one of the two white policemen involved has been sacked, and atla nta s police chief has resigned. cctv footage of the incident shows mr brooks fleeing on foot from police after they tried to arrest him on suspicion of drink driving in a restaurant car park. in the aftermath, police fired tear gas to disperse protesters but demonstrations continued late into the night. a warning this report from andy moore contains details and images of the incident you may find distressing. it started as a berry routine police incident, a man apparently asleep in his car, blocking the drive through lane of a fast food restaurant. somebody called 911 because you were asleep at the wheel. rayshard brooks, who had been celebrating his daughter s birthday, said he was doing no harm. it was all filmed on police cameras in footage released by independent investigators. after failing a breath test, the two white police officers tried to arrest him. he grabbed one of their fluorescent yellow tasers. during a brief chase, he pointed the taser at the offices, and one of them responds by firing live ammunition. i firmly believe that there is a clear distinction between what you can do and what you should do. i do not believe that this was a justified use of deadly force. polite as protests began at the scene of the incident, the police officer who fired the shots was sacked, his colleague put on leave. there police chief, a white woman, resigned. lawyers for rays ha rd woman, resigned. lawyers for rayshard brooks said police had no right to kill somebody who was threatening to use a non lethal weapon. i don t even care any more, i don t know whatjustice is, and i ve been doing this for 15 years. i don t know whatjustice is. is it getting him arrested, is it getting somebody fired? is it somebody stepping down? i know this isn t justice, what is happening in society right now. investigators in georgia have launched inquiries into 48 police shootings so far this year, 15 have been fatal. more than 100 people were arrested during yesterday s violent demonstrations in central london involving far right groups. they were detained for offences including violent disorder, breach of the peace and possessing weapons. six police officers were injured. the prime minister described the attacks on police as racist thuggery. sean dilley has this report. thousands of people join protests, despite calls from police to stay at home. many were peaceful, but violent clashes soon broke out. police officers were attacked throughout the day as they attempted to keep distance between anti racism and far right groups. a barrage of missiles were launched at them. to attack photographers. the prime minister, borisjohnson, condemned the minority of protesters on twitter. the individuals that are basically putting the safety of our police officers and the safety of the public at risk will expect to face the full force of the law. people from a variety of backgrounds turned out as self proclaimed protectors of statues after winston churchill s monument was damaged last week. this protester told us he felt british history under attack. come on. i mean, he had some racist views, but at the end of the day, he led us through our darkest hour. i mean, i m from south london, i ve grown up with black people. we are all working class, live side by side. nobody here has an issue with blm. outside waterloo station, police stepped in to quell scuffles. across the day, six officers were injured, protesters too. this man carried to safety by another protester. the violence in part of the capital contrasts with other areas where protests were largely peaceful. sean dilley, bbc news. a 28 year old man has been arrested on suspicion of outraging public decency by urinating next to a memorial to a policeman during violent protests in central london yesterday. the man is in custody in essex after going to a police station. pc keith palmer was stabbed to death in 2017 during the westminster bridge terrorist attack. in france, there have been clashes between protesters and police in several cities across france. demonstrators are demanding an end to racism in french society. police fired tear gas after crowds threw fireworks and bottles. gail maclellan has this report. demonstrations were most intense in the capital, paris, but also took place in marseille, nice and lyon. chanting. in the capital, around 15,000 gathered in place de la republique. they say the supposed glory of the republic doesn t apply to black people. rallies which started peacefully intensified. some protesters threw fireworks, bottles and paving stones. police responded. officials say more than 20 people were arrested, including 12 far right activists, who draped a white lives matter banner from an apartment block. the killing of george floyd in the united states has sparked a global wave of protests against racism. many here see parallels with the death of a 24 year old black parisian in police custody in 2016. chanting. the police officers involved in adama traore s death were exonerated. these people say justice hasn t been done. translation: the death of george floyd echoed the death of my little brother. what s happening in the united states is exactly the same as what s happening in france. our brothers are dying. there is a fractious relationship between police and ethnic minorities in france with frequent allegations of victimisation and excessive force. french officials say they will take a zero tolerance approach to racism in law enforcement and have banned restraints like chokeholds. police unions deny racism is rampant within the ranks. intense feelings of discrimination and unfairness have caused emotions to run high across france, but many say once the fog has lifted, much needs to be done to address systemic racism in french society. gail maclellan, bbc news. british prime minister borisjohnson has ordered a review of the two metre social distancing rule in england. business leaders and some of mrjohnson‘s own mps have warned large parts of the hospitality industry will not survive if the rules aren t relaxed. the review will aim to be completed by the 4th ofjuly, the earliest date when pubs and restaurants might open in england. the recommended distance you should leave between you and other people varies from country to country. all four nations of the uk observe the two metre rule, as do spain and canada. it drops to one and a half metres if you are in australia, italy and germany and then falls to a metre if you are in china, france or singapore. the official guidance from the world health organization says leave at least a metre between yourself and others to prevent the spread of coronavirus. but the uk government s scientific advisers say that being one metre apart carries up to ten times the risk of being two metres apart. our political correspondent jessica parker explained more about the government review. there is a date by which they are aiming to have a result, the 4th ofjuly, when you could see hospitality beginning to open up in england, and they are going to talk to economists as well as scientists, because, as you were alluding to, the economy is a great concern in this particular issue. it is something that rishi sunak, the chancellor, has been speaking about on the andrew marr programme. that review will be a comprehensive review, conducted soon, starting now. we have done the preliminary work, done with scientists and economists. i talk to business all the time, it has an enormous impact on their ability to operate profitably and maintain employment. it impacts public transport, schools and many other things. as much as everyone and i would like to see it reduced from an economic perspective, we can only do that if it is safe and responsible to do so. the chancellor outlining what a difficult balancing act it is. what are labour saying? labour saying the science needs to be followed, but they are, more broadly on coronavirus, accusing the government of dithering and delaying when it comes to making up their mind on crucial decisions. david lammy has also been on the andrew marr programme this morning. i don t think it is binary, what does the science say? follow the science. secondly, be frank and honest with the public in balancing risk, and i think the government has been slow, slow on testing, slow on lockdown, slow on ppe, and i suspect they will be slow on this. the warning to the government is that potentially millions ofjobs could be lost in the hospitality industry. rishi sunak was talking about the economic prospects for the country going ahead, and he says there will be hardship, that is very clear, in hospitality in particular, but also retail. the reason they want to see the two metre rule relaxed is, put simply, if you have a two metre rule in place, you can get fewer people into your venue, your pub garden, and if you have one metre, you can get more in, make more money, after being in lockdown for weeks and weeks. as you say, manyjobs seem to be at stake by the hospitality sector, i think that is why they have set this 4th ofjuly date, not long for the prime minister to weigh up the risk. one of the mps calling for a change to the social distancing rules is the former conservative leader iain duncan smith. hejoins us from north london. first of all, are you pleased the government will have this formal review on possibly cutting the two metres rule? yes, i am pleased that at last there is a real focus on this, because it is critical. as i say, all the evidence for this already shows that it is wholly feasible to move to one metre, other countries have gone to one, france, germany at 1.5. two metres, most of the scientists now agree, isn t absolutely vitally necessary at all, because the likelihood of airborne transmission is very small indeed, at two metres it is about 1.6%, and at two metres it is about 1.6%, and at one metre it is about 2.6%, and if you wear facemasks, that get it down below 1%. so the reality is it isa down below 1%. so the reality is it is a very small chance, and outside it is almost negligible, so it is very important, because transport, for example, in london, 40% of those who work go there by public transport, and if you don t get it down to one metre, they want to be able to use public transport, so businesses won t be able to work, the hospitality sector. it is not just the selling of beer and drinks, the truth is the hospitality sector in the uk is one of the biggest employers, and if it doesn t manage to get going, we will see a huge cascade of people onto the unemployment benefits, is a really vital we move on this and move fast. interesting, looking at public opinion, i saw one poll saying that about 58%, a big majority, think the two metres rule should stay, they feel safer with it. well, in a way, thatis feel safer with it. well, in a way, that is not surprising, because the messaging from the cut through the lockdown has been very hard message about the threat to everybody. the messaging from the government through the lockdown. and so many people in work have been furloughed, so people in work have been furloughed, so there is a sense that theirjobs are secure, they are ok, but they are secure, they are ok, but they are not. the reality is that many companies will be making decisions about whether they are viable, and u nless about whether they are viable, and unless they are back producing or delivering, the reality is they will shut, and when they shut, the reality of what happens will come home to people, which is they are unemployed. that brings health risks, mental health, depression, all those things, and it exacerbate any health conditions. the truth about covid 19, and the figures show this, for those without comorbidities, younger than 75, people who don t have existing serious health problems, the reality is this is not a disease that dramatically affects them. those who are vulnerable with comorbidities, yes, we must protect them, make sure they are carefully looked after, but they are carefully looked after, but the rest can really go to work. the key to this is hygiene, hand cleansing, cleaning shared surfaces, putting the hand cleansing stuff on your hands and making sure you don t touch or shake people. one metre, the who says, is sufficient, and if other countries are doing it successfully, we need to move now.l quick question also vowed yesterday s demonstrations, we saw quite a lot of violence in central london, a large number of arrests. borisjohnson london, a large number of arrests. boris johnson called london, a large number of arrests. borisjohnson called it racist thuggery, do you agree with that? well, i do not know who is committing it, alli well, i do not know who is committing it, all i know is thuggery, and that is to be condemned in whichever course, and those who carried out, attacking monuments or the police, particularly the police, who are doing theirjob, whoever is doing it, as far as i am concerned, needs to face the full penalty of the law. it cannot be acceptable for any kind of violence on the street at any time by anybody under any excuse whatsoever, they are to be condemned, whether they are racist 01’ condemned, whether they are racist or campaigning for something else. no excuse, no or campaigning for something else. n0 excuse, no excuse or campaigning for something else. no excuse, no excuse is viable. you must stand by the law and behave peacefully. anyway, these matches we i’e peacefully. anyway, these matches were not meant to be happening, they are banned under the present regulations. marches. india has announced new emergency measures for the capital, delhi, as it struggles to cope with a surge in coronavirus cases. testing will be rapidly increased, and 500 railway carriages will be converted to create 8,000 more beds for coronavirus patients. all the measures are designed to support the struggling health system and curb the further spread of the virus. one of bollywood s best known actors, sushant singh rajput, has been found dead in his apartment in mumbai. the 34 year old is best known for his acting in a biopic on former indian cricket team captain mahendra singh dhoni. police are investigating the circumstances around his death, and bollywood s biggest stars have been paying tribute to him on social media today. survivors and bereaved families of the grenfell tower fire are urging people to remember the 72 people who died by illuminating their homes tonight with green light. they want people to play a specially produced film on their tv and computer screens, which features the bright green colour that has come to symbolise the tragedy. the grenfell united campaign group says the fight for safe homes and justice continues, as our correspondent rajini vaidya nathan reports. the faces of those who died in a tragedy which exposed some of the deep inequalities in our society. each story of loss is as painful today as it was three years ago. hesham rahman lived alone on the 23rd floor. his family say marking this anniversary during a pandemic is especially tough. we are still going the grieving process and the rest of the country right now is grieving because of covid, and people have lost family and friends ahead of their time and we are grieving with them, and covid brought a lot of bad emotions for us, especially for how things were after the fire because there were a lot of similarities, being glued to the tv, listening to the number of deaths rising every day. the fire began on the fourth floor after a fridge caught fire. a public inquiry blamed cheap combustible cladding on the building for its rapid spread. later, the prime minister will deliver a message at a virtual memorial service where he will pledge to ensure a tragedy like grenfell never happens again. but a government target to remove flammable cladding on high rises by this month has yet to be met. about 2000 tower blocks in england alone are still potentially at risk. three years later, it s really frustrating that we re still talking about removing this cladding. it s just.the government keep making these announcements, but it materialising and actually happening is a completely different story. in one of london s wealthiest areas, some of its poorest weren t protected. grenfell tower has been described as a monument to inequality. what happened here three years ago is as relevant today as it was then. rajini vaidyanathan, bbc news. leading psychologists say the delay in getting children and adolescents back to schools here in the uk is a national disaster that is putting their mental health at risk. in a letter to the education secretary, gavin williamson, signed by 100 specialists in mental health, they say the isolation of lockdown is harming already vulnerable young people. and they urge the government to reconsider its decision, and release children and young people from lockdown. we can speak to the person who organised the letter, ellen townsend, professor of psychology at the university of nottingham. can you write thank you very much for being with us, why is it so important to draw attention to the mental health issues of children not being at school? thank you. well, i think there is converging evidence 110w think there is converging evidence now from a range of sources, from national surveys, from charities, from helplines, indicating that young people from preschool age to later adolescents are really starting to struggle with the extended lockdown. and a struggle in what way is in particular? i mean just talk us through psychologically the harm and the damage you think is being done to young people? well, we knew that mental health issues were on the rise even before the lockdown, and the factors that lead to mental health problems are ratcheting up as we continue in lockdown, and one we are particularly concerned about is social isolation. some of my collea g u es social isolation. some of my colleagues recently wrote in the lancet, we are social beings, and social interaction is a basic human need, so the lack of interaction continuing is extremely concerning. concerning perhaps, but the government say they have been following scientific advice and that there are dangers in reopening schools too quickly, and this is still a public health emergency, people are still dying, still a large number of cases, although the figures may be moving in the right direction, you know, of course the government want to reopen schools, but the question is, can they?” believe there is converging evidence that young people are at low risk of suffering with, you know, serious symptoms and the deleterious effects of covid, and i also don t seem to spread it about as much. so i think what we need to have is a proper dialogue with teachers and young people to understand the relative risks, and i think that the big picture thinking on the relative risks have been ignored. we have heard ideas like limiting class sizes to just 15 and so on, is that what you would like to see happen? schools reopening fully but with restrictions? this is where we need an open dialogue, and really we need to move to a situation where things can be as normal as possible as quickly as possible, and by that i mean allowing children to play face to face. this is vital for the social and emotional wellbeing and development. now, we are told that one day out of school can be extremely harmful for children and young people, and we are looking at six months plus. you have talked about the impact in terms of mental health and wellbeing, but in terms of education as well, people have talked about a lost generation of children. yes, and this will not be equal, there will be vulnerable young people who will be extremely impacted by this, and the educational attainment gap will widen even further. all right, thank you very much a for talking to us, professor, we will be interested to see professor, we will be interested to see happens next. one of the industries that has been hit hardest by the coronavirus lockdown, borders have been closed, people not able to travel, so a holiday has been out of the question in many places restrictions are being eased. we can talk about italy with tim allman. venice is not open for business. at least that s the message these venetians want you to hear. a human chain and a giant banner stretched out over one of the city s famous canals. the people here calling for responsible tourism. an end to the mass invasion that comes every summer. visitors are already returning. the famous doge s palace has reopened its doors. but locals are calling for quality, not necessarily quantity. we hope to have, in the future, slow tourism. slow tourism. this is very important. it means not less tourism, but better, good organisation. this is the first thing. around 30 million people visit venice each year, a city with a native population of little more than 50,000. many only come for the day, bringing little income to the local economy. and residents say many neighbourhoods are being ruined by landlords who turn rental properties into holiday lets, pricing out those who live here. then there s the cruise ships. larger vessels were banned from parts of the city after this crash last summer. their absence and then the lockdown has meant cleaner waterways, a cleaner venice. but that s the dilemma. these people need tourism, but they don t want too much. are they protesting against the one thing that will get venice back on its feet? tim allman, bbc news. for most of us another fine day, some by weather clouds will develop into towering thunderstorms, and we could have downpours of hail and gusty winds as well, but the chance of actually any one storm hitting your region is very low, and most of us your region is very low, and most of us will not be getting thunderstorms. there is a weather system circling the uk at the moment, that is helping to generate some of the clouds and thunderstorms. it is with us for the next few days, so we could have similar weather generally across the ukforafew similar weather generally across the uk for a few more days, that risk of showers and thunderstorms. by the end of the afternoon, storms developing across parts of the midlands, and in the south it is probably going to be shower and storm free, so warm sunny weather here, but from the east midlands into northern parts of wales and eastern areas of northern ireland, we eastern areas of northern ireland, we could see heavy downpours through the course of late afternoon and into the evening hours as well. eastern scotland, in fact the entire, or most of the north sea coast, completely different story, it has been overcast, misty in places, see fright will continue through this evening and overnight. the showers will die away overnight, so the showers will die away overnight, so very the showers will die away overnight, so vei’y warm the showers will die away overnight, so very warm in places, no lower than 14 degrees in liverpool. that weather system that i showed you are still with us, it will continue to generate showers and thunderstorms, but tomorrow the distribution of the showers and storms will be somewhat different, the thinking is across more northern parts of the country, so more northern parts of the country, so the midlands and the south will see so the midlands and the south will see far fewer storms. temperatures in the sunshine up to around 24 celsius. in due tuesday, we are expecting the showers to once again become more widespread across the uk, and you can see the showers brewing in almost every corner of the country, so again thunder and lightning is a possibility on tuesday almost anywhere, and a typical summer temperatures, low 20s in the south, high teens across the north sea coast. this weather will continue for a few more days yet, it looks as though at least until 00:28:33,404 > 2147483051:51:02,119 thursday we will see those showers. 2147483051:51:02,119 > 4294966103:13:29,430 bye bye.
this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. a junior minister has resigned over the handling of borisjohnson top adviser‘s travels during lockdown. it comes as other uk government ministers rally to support dominic cummings they say they understand public concern but insist he acted reasonably when making trips during lockdown. on the whole, as a man of integrity, he thinks that he did do the right thing. but he also recognises, as a fair minded man, that there are many other people who may take a different view, and i understand that. almost all shops in england will be able to reopen from 15thjune, as part of plans to further ease the lockdown. the world health organization halts trials of an anti malarial drug as a potential treatment for covid 19, as it s found it could cause heart problems. hong kong s leader has rejected suggestions that china s proposed new security laws could erode freedoms in the territory. as greece reopens for tourism, we travel with a team of doctors who will set up coronavirus testing where the virus has not yet been reported. newsreel: they are on their way home, home from the hell that is dunkirk. and we remember the heroes of dunkirk 80 years on. hello and welcome if you re watching in the uk or around the world and stay with us for the latest news and analysis from here and across the globe. borisjohnson may have been hoping to put the controversy surrounding his senior adviser dominic cummings behind him, but it continues to bedevil his government. in the last hour, douglas ross a junior minister for scotland announced his resignation from the government over the affair. in a written statement, mr ross said that dominic cummings‘ interpretation of the government s lockdown guidelines was not shared by the vast majority of the people who have done as the government asked . he pointed out that he had constituents who hadn t been able to visit sick families or say goodbye to those they loved and said, i cannot in good faith tell them that they are all wrong and one senior government adviser was right. he went on to say. this all follows an extraordinary press conference held by mr cummings yesterday afternoon, in which he replied to allegations that he had breached the government s lockdown rules by driving his family to london to durham in late march. we ll be getting the latest on this morning s resignation, and the reaction to that press conference, from westminster in a moment. first this report from our political correspondent iain watson on the background to the controversy. something you don t see every day. government advisers usually defend their political masters. this one had come to defend himself. dominic cummings took his family 250 miles from london to durham during lockdown, when his wife was already ill. yesterday, he was asked if he now regretted his actions. no, i don t regret what i did. as i said, i think reasonable people may well disagree about how i thought about what to do in the circumstances but i think that. i think what i did was reasonable in. . . in these circumstances. at the socially distanced impromptu press conference, he insisted that isolating close to his extended family was the best option in case he needed childcare. but why had he then also gone on a 30 mile trip from durham to barnard castle on easter sunday? apparently he was giving himself an unconventional eye test. my wife was very worried, particularly given my eyesight seemed to have been affected by the disease. she did not want to risk a nearly 300 mile drive with our child, given how ill i had been. we agreed that we should go for a short drive to see if i could drive safely. at his press conference last night, the prime minister sounded a bit more contrite than his adviser. i do regret the confusion and the anger and pain that people feel. i really did want people to understand exactly what had happened. but he wasn t going to sack his adviser, and he insisted that no one at number ten had undermined the government s message on health. and a range of cabinet ministers have taken to social media with a remarkably similar message time to move on. opposition parties will meet today, and are pressing for an enquiry into dominic cummings‘ actions. many of the papers are less ready to move on than government ministers, and some conservative mps are waiting to see if angry constituents have been soothed or riled by dominic cummings before deciding whether to renew calls for him to go. iain watson, bbc news. our political correspondent nick eardley is at downing street. nick, fill us in on this resignation bya nick, fill us in on this resignation by a junior minister. the government we re by a junior minister. the government were hoping that mr cummings explaining his situation yesterday would put this to bed and that he was acting in the interests of his family. quite the opposite seems to have happened this morning. douglas rossis have happened this morning. douglas ross is a junior minister at the scotla nd ross is a junior minister at the scotland office and he has looked at mrcummings scotland office and he has looked at mr cummings explanation yesterday and decided it just mr cummings explanation yesterday and decided itjust isn t good enough. and he can t tell his constituents that they were wrong to miss family funerals, or not go and visit sick loved ones and that mr cummings was right to drive from london up to durham, to self isolate, himself. what is really interesting about this tweet by douglas ross, i think it could be on screen now, but what is interesting about his letter is that he is doing this because of the feedback he has had from his constituents, and the danger for borisjohnson is that many other tory mps are getting similar m essa 9 es tory mps are getting similar messages from their constituents. we have heard over the last few days of a number of mps who are worried that they are being accused of hypocrisy by their constituents. harriett baldwin, another tory mp, said that because of that she has been getting, she thinks mr cummings should quit. i suppose that number ten will be looking now at whether potentially more of these criticisms and resignations to come later today. thank you very much, nick. let s speak now to anthony browne, conservative mp and a former adviser to borisjohnson when he was mayor of london. good morning. first your reaction to the resignation of your colleague is junior minister, douglas ross. there are junior minister, douglas ross. there a re pressures junior minister, douglas ross. there are pressures in the conservative party and amongst the public on the spot when dominic cummings gave his explanation yesterday he covered a lot of detail and answered a lot of questions and reasonable people can be on both sides of this. as it happens, i think he acted reasonably. we continue to get so many messages from people who are telling me things like this, this is from laurie. my sister is a single pa rent from laurie. my sister is a single parent with three kids, two of them autistic with severe adhd. she had covid early only look down and had to rely on her eldest child to look after them all. we live three hours away and we would have gone to her ina away and we would have gone to her in a heartbeat if we had been allowed to, by the government. we know that this lockdown has been extremely difficult for a lot of people, really for the whole country, and more difficult for some than others. people have lost their lives, loved ones, livelihoods. i have been spent lockdown talking to constituents in really difficult situations and helping them try to get out of them, and i must say that ifi get out of them, and i must say that if i had someone come to me with the unique situation of dominic cummings, where he was coming down sick with his wife, and a four year old child that didn t have any ca re four year old child that didn t have any care provision nearby, then in exceptional circumstances, and it is covered by the guidance, you are allowed to do what will most reduce harm and this is a principle in law. what matter the problem is, no one knew about it. there are thousands of m essa g es knew about it. there are thousands of messages from parents who found themselves in exactly the same situation as mr and mrs cummings and in worse situations and did not leave their home, because we were told by the government to stay at her had symptoms. i totally get why people are angry. this has been really difficult. also, just the sense that there is one rule for some people and one for others. it is important we all live by the same rules. but we haven t. in dominic cummings case, you listen to the details of it, i think he acted reasonably and within the law. did you know about this clause that allowed people to travel across the country if they had worries about childcare? what the clause does say is that, if you can t look after small children, they do act within the guidance, only if you can but otherwise in exceptional circumstances, you can do what you need to come harm. i m really sorry, it doesn t say that. i m just going to read exactly what it does say. you have been reporting it on your website so i know that it is there. the government could have made more about the exceptional circumstances close but it is a fundamental principle in law, that actually, law doesn t cover all circumstances. if there are exceptional circumstances and people are acting reasonably, then the courts are usually fine, behind that. if the rules allowed forjudgment, as behind that. if the rules allowed for judgment, as mr cummings behind that. if the rules allowed forjudgment, as mr cummings claim, why did almost nobody else do what he did? i don t know what everyone else did. i haven t spoken to eve i’yo ne else did. i haven t spoken to everyone in the country. it is because the government told us to stay at home, and most people did that. he went through everything in great detail yesterday and people have to make up their own minds looking at that whether he acted reasonably or not reasonably, and i think he acted reasonably and within the law. what matters now as a whole is moving to the next stage of easing the lockdown, and the government has announced measures on opening up shops. some people would say that what matters now is trust, and whether people can trust what your government and the prime minister says, when it comes to future advice, and a number of people are suggesting that they absolutely will not do what the prime minister says in future because of this example from mr cummings. i, and many mps, regret the anger and cummings. i, and many mps, regret the angerand pain cummings. i, and many mps, regret the anger and pain this episode has caused. if there is a loss of trust thatis caused. if there is a loss of trust that is to be regretted, there is no doubt about that. in the particular case of dominic cummings, we have gone through it endlessly over the past two days and i think he acted reasonably. what are you going to do about that loss of trust, all of those people who said that they lent you their vote back in december, what are you going to do about it? if there has been a loss of trust in the government has to earn it again to get us through the rest of this pandemic, to ease the lockdown, make sure that there isn t as much economic damage, there is as little of it as possible, get the country going again, make sure that as few lives are lost as possible, to do that with integrity, doing it a b in the same rules as anyone else and being seen to obey the same rules as eve ryo ne being seen to obey the same rules as everyone else. what did you think when mrjohnson said mr cummings did what any parent would do ?|j when mrjohnson said mr cummings did what any parent would do ? i don t think many parents where in the same situation as dominic cummings. no, many were in much worse circumstances. he had death threats in protest at home, he was coming down sick, he was worried about his wife also coming down sick and about being able to look after his child, and most people who are reasonable listening to that would think that what he did was reasonable.” listening to that would think that what he did was reasonable. i will read a couple more. georgie says, my husband and i got sick for a0 days whilst caring for a nine month old and a three year old got ill, we didn t see us all, i was breast feeding and getting around a-s breast feeding and getting around a 5 hours sleep a night. we have this e mailfrom a 5 hours sleep a night. we have this e mail from patricia. a 5 hours sleep a night. we have this e mailfrom patricia. she a 5 hours sleep a night. we have this e mail from patricia. she says isa this e mail from patricia. she says is a conservative supporter i am totally disgusted. this came in to us just before 10am today. why does mrcummings have us just before 10am today. why does mr cummings have such power, why does he have so much hold over our prime minister? that is no conservative supporter, mr brown. you are talking about douglas ross. i ve had e mails from constituents from across the political spectrum. there is no doubt that the public are upset about this. and mrjohnson has said that he regrets the pain and anger that this has caused. but not enough to sack mr cummings. that isa not enough to sack mr cummings. that is a decision for the prime minister and he has decided not to. i don t think that he needs to, because he has acted, going through it, i think he acted within the guidelines. thank you for talking to us, anthony brown, conservative mp. in a moment we ll be speaking to another mp who earlier criticised the prime ministerfor his handling of the dominic cummings controversy. but first, all non essential retailers in england will be able to reopen from isthjune, as part of plans to further ease the lockdown. retailers will have to adhere to new guidelines around social distancing and hygiene standards, in order to protect shoppers and staff. outdoor markets and car showrooms in england will also be able to reopen from istjune. the world health organisation has temporarily halted the testing of the drug hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment for covid i9 because of safety concerns. the drug, traditionally used to treat malaria, has been described by president donald trump as a game changer in the battle against the virus. imogen foulkes reports from geneva. there are so far no known treatments or vaccines for covid i9, but there are many clinical trials of many different drugs to try to find them. one drug hydroxychloroquine is already in use as a treatment for malaria. some among them, president donald trump think it could work against covid i9, too. he s even taking it himself. i m taking it, hydroxychloroquine. when? right now, yeah. couple of weeks ago, i started taking it. why, sir? because i think it s good. i ve heard a lot of good stories. the world health organization has repeatedly said there is no scientific evidence so far that hydroxychloroquine can treat covid i9, let alone prevent infection with it. the who had been running clinical trials to test anecdotal reports that it might be beneficial. now those trials have been stopped after a study suggested the drug could cause heart problems, and might even increase deaths among covid i9 patients. the executive group has implemented a temporary pause of the hydroxychloroquine arm within the solidarity trial while the data the safety data is reviewed by the data safety monitoring board. the who said the decision to suspend trials was a precautionary measure. now it will gather more data on safety before deciding whether to continue testing. however, it said patients taking hydroxychloroquine for established reasons such as malaria should continue to do so. imogen foulkes, bbc news, geneva. the scientist leading the uk s largest coronavirus tracking project says that people will have probably died prematurely, as a result of attending two major sporting events that took place in march. professor tim spector, from king s college london, has analysed data from millions of volunteers across the uk. he identified covid i9 hotspots following the cheltenham festival, and liverpool s champions league match against atletico madrid. countries across europe are beginning to open themselves up to foreign visitors, as infection rates continue to fall. spain says foreign travellers will be able to visit the country from the beginning ofjuly without going into quarantine. the spanish foreign minister said the country was looking forward to welcoming tourists back now the worst of the coronavirus pandemic was behind it. 80 million visitors travel to spain each year 20 million from the uk. meanwhile, greece has taken another major step towards re starting its tourism industry, opening its islands to domestic visitors for the first time in months. a team of doctors from mainland greece were among the first visitors to the remote island of sikinos, in the aegean sea. our correspondent quentin sommerville accompanied them on theirjourney. on a 100 mile plus journey, these athens doctors are the first visitors to sikinos in months. the greek islands are accepting visitors again. the mayor of the island welcomes them ashore. we re greeted with elbow bumps instead of handshakes. there are enough coronavirus tests for whoever wants them. we do know that, so far, there haven t been any cases on the remote islands, but there hasn t been any testing also. there are only 250 people on this island, and none of them have been tested for covid i9 until today. the village was built on a hilltop to safeguard it from pirates. they re hoping its isolation continues to offer protection. greece has only had 172 deaths from covid i9, and is leaving lockdown faster than expected. foreign tourists still have to undergo quarantine. terry harris has been living here for a0 years. i came here and i isolated myself for two weeks in my house and the lady from the supermarket flora she delivers everything, so they brought up, on a donkey, water and any supplies i wanted. at the temporary test centre, father theodorus leads the way. these tests are essential as greece prepares to welcome back foreign tourists in the coming months. today is the first day that everything comes back to normal, including restaurants and all the borders and ships, so we are concerned about everything being planned in the best possible way. greece is emerging from the pandemic earlier than others not unscathed, but in better shape than most. isolation is a way of life here, but so, too, is tourism. the health of the islanders depends on both. let s return to the controversy over uk prime minister borisjohnson s senior advisor dominic cummings and the allegations that he breached coronavirus lockdown rules by driving his family from london to his parents home in north east england when his wife fell ill. this morning as we ve been reporting there s been a ministerial resignation over the affair. joining me now from his constituency in kent is sir roger gale i would like your reactions to the resignation of douglas ross, the junior minister. he is a decent man and a good minister. we cannot afford to lose people like douglas, from government. he said the reasons he resigned was because it did appear that a government adviser had done something different to many of his constituents, and he couldn t tell his constituents that they were wrong, and the government adviser was right. i have great sympathy with that point of view. during the technical problems, i was listening listening to your conversations with dan hodges. i had great sympathy with what you are seeing in terms of human compassion because any parent would like to look after their child, we understand that but this is a man at the top of the government, who had devised and was trying to enforce rules upon one set of people, that he doesn t appear to have wa nted of people, that he doesn t appear to have wanted to obey himself. he had the opportunity, had he chosen to do so, to go to his line manager, the chief of the civil service, sir marc sedwill, and say to him, that i got a real problem, but i m quite certain that wouldn t have been sorted and the family would have been got out of harms way, and he would have been given approval to do what he did. by saying i m going to do what i like, but you can t do what you like, i m afraid, and this is the bottom line on this, he sent out a very damaging and dangerous message. why dangerous? over the weekend, scores and scores of people we re weekend, scores and scores of people were in my constituency of margate and in herne bay. i wasn t there myself but i have seen the pictures. the place was heaving with people. and i am told that a lot of those people were saying, well, it is now a right to be here, because if one person can travel, everybody can travel. what none of us wants is another spike. the nation has been through two months of absolute hell with people dying, with terrible things happening to families, businesses and we want to come out of this on the sunny side, we want a summer season, we want of this on the sunny side, we want a summer season, we want everything to be open in july, summer season, we want everything to be open injuly, for the school summer be open injuly, for the school summer holidays. and the danger in this, i pray that it doesn t happen, but the danger is that we will now get, as a result of this lack of social distancing, another spike. nobody wants that.|j social distancing, another spike. nobody wants that. i don t want to be pedantic but we are in england allowed to drive to beaches as long as we observe social distancing.” know we are, that was a message sent out a fortnight ago, i said at the time that it was the wrong message andi time that it was the wrong message and i have been begging people not to come to herne bay, having spent 37 years begging them to come, trying to get them not to come, but the weather as it was and with the brake on, it was inevitable there was going to be a flood of people, and those people were not social distancing. that is the problem. the rules were not being adhered to. and now i am getting floods of e mails this morning saying, if it is ok for them, it is ok for me. it is the wrong message. why were you not satisfied with mr cummings explanation yesterday? he said he had not broken the rules, he had exceptional circumstances, he did what he thought was right for his family. i listen to what he said with great care, and i have nothing but sympathy for someone with a sick wife and a child they got to look after, but had he gone about it the right way, everybody would have understood that and the right way would have been to have gone to the head of the civil service, i got a problem, and that could have been taken care problem, and that could have been ta ken care of. problem, and that could have been taken care of. as it was, he did his own thing, he didn t apologise to the nation for what he d done, something he was telling everyone else not to do, and he has sent out yet another message, clearly, saying, will effectively i can do what i like, and this is the man who is advising the prime minister. he is advising the prime minister. he is not elected. we didn t elect dominic cummings. we elected a conservative government led by boris johnson. and those of us in parliament as well as outside of it expect him to run the country. and you can t have a maverick going off and doing what he likes, whether it is over this or anything else. but you can because borisjohnson is keeping him in hisjob. you can because borisjohnson is keeping him in his job. boris johnson is keeping him in hisjob, for the moment. people like me i think now have to shut up. i feel i have said too much on the subject already, probably. there is no conspiracy. nobody is trying, as far as i m aware, to bring cummings down. apart from my whip who i spoke to, i rang him as a courtesy, to tell them what i was doing and why. apart from him i have spoken to no other conservative member of parliament about this so i have no idea what my colleagues in the house are saying, but i think time has come for those of us who have expressed real concern is to take a step back and take it to the 1922 committee, and i hope the 1922 committee, and i hope the 1922 committee will take a very clear message to the prime minister. the 1922 committee is the backbench committee of conservative mps, and the message you want them to take to the message you want them to take to the prime minister is what, sir roger? i think they have to say that this has gone too far. there is a huge public backlash against what has happened and the way in which it has happened and the way in which it has been handled. it has become a distraction from thejob has been handled. it has become a distraction from the job of getting people back to work, back to school, protecting health and rebuilding the economy. that is what we are here to do and what we ought to be doing. and the time, i think, has come for mrcummings even at and the time, i think, has come for mr cummings even at this stage to resign, orfor the mr cummings even at this stage to resign, or for the prime mr cummings even at this stage to resign, orfor the prime minister to say i am terribly sorry, but we have dispensed with your services. thank you very much for talking to us and again, apologies for the technical problems and thank you very much for your patience. sir roger gale, the conservative mp for north thanet. in hong kong, carrie lam, the chief executive, has been defending china s new controversial security law calling it a safeguard against violent political protests. and she criticised international leaders who ve supported protesters resisting the legislation. translation: national security legislation is a matterfor a country. it is the case in any country. it doesn t matter if the country has a unitary system or multiparty system or a federal system. now legislation on national security is always a matter for the central authorities. so for overseas politicians making such comments, they probably, you know, practising double standard. now i think there is no one country that will allow an important matter like national security to be flawed in any way or to have a void in any way. our correspondent in hong kong, danny vincent explains how, after months of protests seen in the semi autonomous territory last year, trust in the city s chief executive has eroded. carrie lam this morning has been attempting to reassure the hong kong public that the city will remain a free and open society, regardless of when this law is enacted. in some ways, carrie lam has lost the trust of at least a portion of society definitely the protesters. the protesters took to the streets last year for back to back protests that lasted for many months. they were calling for carrie lam to resign simply because they felt that she no longer held the interests of the hong kong people, instead, she was simply relaying the message from beijing. i think today she technically almost is doing that this time because this law actually was proposed by beijing, not by carrie lam herself. so some protesters i have spoken to, they feel the message from carrie lam is now somewhat irrelevant because they now want they re protesting showing their anger towards the central government. now protesters have planned more protests over the next few days. we are expecting protests tomorrow. it will be a real test to see how many hong kong people actually go to the streets. of course they will be breaking not only the law there is a law here that says that if more than four people cause a public nuisance , that is technically illegal but also they will be breaking the social distancing rules that were put into place to try to stop the spread of the coronavirus. so i think hong kong is bracing for more protests, and i think it will be interesting to see what happens in the next 2a hours. we will get a better sense of how hong kong residents respond to beijing and the hong kong governments recent messages about this law. hello, this is bbc news with me, victoria derbyshire. the headlines. a junior minister has resigned over the handling of the borisjohnson top adviser‘s travels during lockdown. it comes as other uk government ministers rally to support dominic cummings they say they understand public concern but insist he acted reasonably when making trips during lockdown. almost all shops in england will be able to reopen from 15thjune, as part of plans to further ease the lockdown. the world health organisation halts trials of an anti malarial drug as a potential treatment for covid 19 as it s found it could cause heart problems. hong kong s leader has rejected suggestions that china s proposed new security laws could erode freedoms in the territory. as greece reopens for tourism, we travel with a team of doctors who will set up coronavirus testing where the virus has not yet been reported. more british retailers have been given the go ahead to reopen in england next month, if they can meet the coronavirus guidelines to protect shoppers and workers. outdoor markets and car showrooms will be allowed to resume trading next monday, the 1st ofjune. but the main rollout is planned for the 15th with everything from department stores to small independent shops opening their doors once again. so how will that work, and what covid secure guidelines will businesses have to follow? i m joined by stephen norman, the the managing director of vauxhall motors. hello, good morning. good morning. festival, your reaction that car showrooms will be able to open from next monday. absolutely delighted. it is the very beginning. it will aid production through the factories, so it is great news for the industry and great news for the uk economy. what will it mean for car showrooms who have to be over to secure car showrooms who have to be over to secure “ car showrooms who have to be over to secure covid secure? car showrooms who have to be over to secure covid secure? car showrooms tend to be large, airy, bright open spaces. in a way we are lucky compared with the rest of the retail sector insofar as it is not difficult to make them covid safe and secure. of course we will find social distancing guidelines in terms of areas, ways to walk around the showroom, to look at the vehicles that are on display, and so on. and of course they will have to be disinfection between test drives and inspections of the vehicles. but all of those things, to meet government guidelines and even go round, because of course every manufacturer tends to go beyond guidelines, and to be doubly and triply secure. we have been ready for two weeks. have you? do you think you could have opened earlier? well, i don t want to get involved ina well, i don t want to get involved in a political discussion but across continental europe, showrooms are now open, so, yes, we are perhaps one or two or three weeks behind the rest of europe in being able to reopen. the essential thing is the government has announced that from the 1st ofjune, government has announced that from the 1st of june, next government has announced that from the 1st ofjune, next monday, and we are very thankful for that. as i said, we are ready to support the demand. you know there will be an increased demand for small personal transport, inevitably, with the guidelines being to avoid, at least for the time being, public transport. that may be true, but nobody has any money, do they? well, when 80% of motor vehicles bought in the uk i purchased on a finance plan, and with interest rates at the way they have been in recent months, andindeed way they have been in recent months, and indeed years, i think people, if they only need to go online and start looking they will be very pleasa ntly start looking they will be very pleasantly surprised. the monthly rates that are available, but also at employment insurance and even deferred payments. yes, the industry is absolutely ready to support the customer, as i said, for the last two weeks and especially from monday to. a broad final thought. how much has your industry been damaged by this crisis and the lockdown that ensued? well, if it had not been for furlough, we wouldn t be able to have this conversation today. the industry is incredibly grateful to the government for furlough. we are not used to shutdowns in summer holiday periods, but nobody would have expected the industry to close down for two months in one of the most important selling periods of the year. when you talk of damage to the year. when you talk of damage to the industry, it is damage to the sales and indeed damage that will have to be caught back in coming months and possibly more than months to get back to the proper rate of the market. thank you very much for talking to us, mr norman. pleasure. all the best. as the world awaits a coronavirus vaccine, doctors and scientists in england have been looking at different ways to treat those who are severely affected by the disease. it s hoped plasma therapy could offer a solution. it s a process which sees recovered patients donate their blood which contains antibodies. our health correspondent laura foster has been finding out more. when alessandro contracted coronavirus and ended up on a hospital ventilator, he feared he d never get to see his family again. it s why, when he recovered, he wanted to help others by donating plasma in his blood. instinctively, the last thing you want to do is go in a hospital environment again and have a needle put, but then i thought actually that i had been given so much and literally, like, you know, those people saved my life. and you feel so hopeless and you feel so unable to help others, and that was the only way i could figure at that point to give some of this back. when alessandro was sick, his immune system produced antibodies to help fight the virus. these antibodies are found in the gold coloured part of our blood known as plasma. the idea is that this plasma can be given to other people, whose immune systems are struggling, to help them fight coronavirus. the nhs wants more people who ve had covid 19 to donate their plasma. it s making its donations centres bigger and creating pop up ones so they can take up to 8,000 donations a week. it can be very, very emotional and it does actually get you quite upset sometimes, but then you see these people have come out from the other side and they re so. like i said, they re so enthusiastic and so willing. the researchers have found that men, those over 35, and anyone who was hospitalised with coronavirus produce the most antibodies. in fact, alessandro s blood contains a0 times more antibodies than the average donor. so that means i can give a lot of them away, which i m very pleased to do, and suddenly, as my friends knew about that, they all become very nice to me in case they ever need it in the future! they re particularly asking for people to come forward in manchester, birmingham and london, where there have been a lot of cases of covid 19. laura foster, bbc news. a british couple is coordinating efforts to help a hospital in haiti prepare for a spike in coronavirus cases which they believe could overwhelm the country s healthcare system. the country has just 60 ventilators for a population of 11 million and is ill prepared for the pandemic. the bbc‘sjon hunt has more. while in britain we may be past the peak of the pandemic, in haiti cases are rising sharply. at this hospital set up by a uk charity, they re having to improvise making ppe out of raincoats and diy masks. this is actually made out of a ladder. rob dalton is an a&e nurse from surrey volunteering for the charity. i ve been working six days a week. sometimes too busy to get to eat and things. there s so much to do here. they need all the help they can get. the preparation at the hope health action hospital is being coordinated from crawley in west sussex. the charity s founders say one of their biggest challenges is access to oxygen. there is no access to a ventilator at our hospital, there s only 15 20 icu beds for the whole country. so we are focusing on provision of oxygen but that can be a struggle. we ve invested to get a number of oxygen concentrators out to the country in the last couple of weeks which arrived over the weekend. the charity is also doing community outreach work to teach social distancing and promote good hand washing. you can have ten people living in a one bed house, which means that self isolating is just nearly impossible. and communities all function really closely together. with donations from the uk, they have been able to set up an isolation ward for covid 19 patients and a triage system. the peak of the pandemic is due in haiti in the next two weeks. john hunt, bbc news. pressure is being put on governments across europe to allow businesses and shops to re open. rich preston reports now on the massive economic impact of the virus. spain once had some of europe s toughest lockdown measures. now the bars and restaurants of barcelona are serving customers once again. here, as well as in the capital, madrid, people can now meet in groups of up to ten. translation: i am so moved. i m shaking from feeling so happy after staying home for such a long time. this is phenomenal. it is really, really good. in popular resorts like majorca, people can once again visit the beach. spain has urged foreign holiday makers to come back to visit the country in july, when it will stop quarantining new arrivals. once at the heart of the pandemic, italians can go to the gym again, but with strict hygiene rules in place. you must keep your hands clean and keep apart from others enjoying a work out. people in the czech republic can get back to one of their favourite pastimes again this is the country that drinks more beer per capita than any other. but masks must be worn unless, of course, you re taking a sip. the czech republic wasn t hit as badly as some other countries by coronavirus and perhapsjust a coincidence was the first to make the wearing of masks in public compulsory. as well as bars, breweries and restaurants, popular tourist sites are reopening, too. cultural attractions like theatres and museums can now organise events for up to 300 people. and in the uk europe s worst hit country a plan to ease out of the lockdown. on 1stjune, outdoor markets and car showrooms can open up. two weeks later, all other nonessential shops, like department stores, can open their doors provided they are covid secure and have measures in place to keep people apart and protect both staff and customers. europe s first official case of coronavirus was recorded at the end of january. since then, life on the continent has been turned upside down, affecting lives and livelihoods. after four months of restrictions on everyday life and tens of thousands of deaths europeans hope for a return to some semblance of normality, however gradual it may be. rich preston, bbc news. seafronts across england were busy over the weekend, as sun seekers tried to make the most of the bank holiday weather. with travel restrictions eased earlier this month, crowds flocked to beaches in bournemouth and southend, but in other parts of the uk where stricter lockdown is still in place many tourist destinations remained quiet. adam mcclean has more. in scotland, beaches were largely empty. and in northern ireland and wales, people are still told to stay home. this was southend on sea. in what looks like any normal bank holiday but this was yesterday. a scene repeated in other english beauty spots in the middle of a global pandemic. thousands enjoying the sun and the sand. in seaside towns, there are concerns about what visitors may bring and take away. people living near the beaches depend on everybody who does come to behave responsibly, and it s better if you live a long way away not to come to the beach yet. you can do that another day, in good weather, when this crisis is over. there were concerns about shifting attitudes towards coronavirus rules after senior government advisor dominic cummings said he didn t regret taking his family to county durham. i ve barely left my house on lockdown. this is the first sort of time getting back out, and then we find out these sort of stories. and when they do get caught out, there s always some sort of excuse. he says one thing but does another. i don t think it should be one rule for the elite and one rule for sort of everyone else. we have not seen family, and obviously, with a young baby, people are missing. people are missing seeing her, as well, like grandparents. but others here in merseyside feel it s an issue that s gone too far. like, we were told that we couldn t go and do this and that, and he went and did went out. but personally, i feel like we just all need to get over it a bit. one advisor or individual has got, you know, a personal decision, and he s made it. and i wouldn t imagine we need to, you know, just spend time, money, to dig out why he s gone. here on formby beach, groups were happy to spread out across the miles of sand and keep their distance, as many headed out for fresh air and sunshine, after nine weeks of lockdown. adam mcclean, bbc news. the headlines on bbc news. a junior minister has resigned over the handling of the borisjohnson top adviser‘s travels during lockdown. it comes as other uk government ministers rally to support dominic cummings they say they understand public concern but insist he acted reasonably when making trips during lockdown. the world health organisation halts trials of an anti malarial drug as a potential treatment for covid 19 as it s found it could cause heart problems. a0 million tourists flocked to thailand last year, but because of the coronavirus pandemic the industry there has collapsed. among those affected are elephant keepers who rely on the income they get from elephant experience camps and shows. keepers and their elephants are now migrating across thailand, from the country s tourist centres to the remote villages where they grew up. bbc thai correspondent chaiyot yongcharoenchai joined one group making thejourney home. hundreds of elephants are on the move in thailand. translation: we are taking the elephants back home because of covid 19. there are no more tourists. we have been waiting for several months to see if it would get better, but it s not. so she is taking the elephants to her village, where she can feed them. it s more than 100 miles away in the mountains. it will be a difficultjourney. translation: we expect it to take three days and two nights, but we have a young elephant and an old one. the baby elephant is four months old. if they are tired, they can rest. elephants are synonymous with tourism in thailand, but it s an industry accused of cruelty. the 3,000 elephants that rely on tourism are at risk of starvation, and for some elephants, the pandemic has meant more suffering. translation: if it doesn t get better in three months, i will contact people i know along the myanmar border. i will take my elephant to work in the business there. after two days of travel, the convoy is chased out of village. locals think the keepers may have coronavirus. tired, the team stops at a river to rest. translation: the elephants got very thirsty and it seemed the little one had no energy to walk. theirjourney home has been funded by a local charity owner. she thinks this is a chance to transform the industry. translation: if there was no pandemic today, elephants would still be in the same state. tourists would be swarming here in thailand. but after covid 19 we will think, and tourists will have time to think, too. after three days of travelling, the keepers and their elephants have arrived safely. and they are having a buffet right now that the villagers prepared for them to welcome them home. translation: i felt relief! my elephants were not fainting. no one died on the way! but their arrival is only the beginning of a longer struggle. translation: we didn t expect to become rich, just not to have debts, orjust to be able to support our family. chaiyot yongcharoenchai, bbc news, thailand. back in march the uk government instructed councils in england to find emergency accommodation for all those who were sleeping rough on the streets. it now says nearly 15,000 of them have been given a roof over their heads. what will happen to those people when the corona crisis is over? earlier i spoke to louise casey a former deputy director of shelter and formerly the anti social behaviour czar it was very clear that covid 19 would disproportionately affect rough sleepers, people stuck on the streets, and people in communal night shelters where the spread of the disease would be much faster than anywhere else, so the job was to literally unrelentingly get any accommodation we could opened up using commercial hotels, universities, anything. disused buildings that could be brought back into use really quickly. so, so far we have managed to bring 15,000 people both in off the streets and also people who were at risk of homelessness during that time. and i think what i don t want to happen is that those people, particularly the vulnerable rough sleepers, some of whom have come off the streets for the first time, that those people then end up going back to the streets. so i want a national effort, everybody wants a national effort, everybody wants a national effort about everything at the moment, i accept that, but this is possibly sort of a tiny silver lining in an otherwise horrific period in the country, where actually some good is going on to try to help some very vulnerable people, and i don t want them to go back to the streets. initially we had figures from local authorities at 5a00 people who had been sleeping rough had been brought into this emergency accommodation. you now say it is 15,000. are you sure about that number? can you break it down for us? essentially, this was all done very much on the hoof, so at easter, i think it was, we were pretty sure, by doing an analysis of every local authority in the country, and also obviously in london where the voluntary sector, the charities have been running many of the hotels, notjust st mungo s, but others, we were pretty sure there were 5a00 people. now in mid may, as we are, or it mid to late may, we are now at the numbers around 15,000. i think it is 1a,600 at the last census of that. those numbers are not people that we re those numbers are not people that were long term rough sleepers and had been on the streets for a long time. that was between five and seven. time. that was between five and seven. there are time. that was between five and seven. there are over time. that was between five and seven. there are over 2000 that have come in from communal night shelters where they were living in dormitories and on the floors and things like that. again, not the right place to be during this covid 19 crisis. then there have been. local authorities, covid 19 crisis. then there have been. localauthorities, like many organisations, have been trying to keep the show on the road during this period and actually i think one of the things they have done is taken in people who were at risk of rough sleeping, and during covid 19, victoria, that is completely the right thing to do. why i have asked the prince s trust and authority is backed by comic relief and backed by cardinal nichols, justin welby, the archbishop of canterbury, is that i think although the government have made a good start by bringing forward money and adding money to it, to bring 6000 new homes, 3300 of which will be in this financial year, that is a great start. but i think the government needs to do more, i think that we all need to do more, i think that we all need to do more and we need to do it in partnership. the government can t do it on its own. ok. louise casey. the evacuation of more than 300,000 allied soldiers from the beaches of dunkirk in 19a0 is still regarded as one of the most successful rescue missions in history. a fleet of little ships, including sailboats, trawlers and lifeboats were used to ferry soldiers off the beaches and onto waiting royal navy and merchant ships. 80 years on, robin gibson has been looking back at the miracle of dunkirk. archive: all along the rivers and creeks of britain, yachtsmen and part time sailors are kissing their wives farewell and making the knots for dover. a true story that became a legend arguably the greatest escape of world war ii. i wish i could meet the people, the chaps who came over and picked us up, because they were very brave blokes. because there were mines, and there was a good chance of being machine gunned, as well. our cameraman is on a tiny merchant ship. he is risking his life to bring you the pictures. he is on his way to dunkirk. crossing the channel on a trawler or a pleasure boat in 19a0 to face the killing fields of the dunkirk beaches was a test of bravery bordering on madness. they were in the thick of it for several days, some of them. so i have huge admiration for them, and i have huge admiration for the little boats. because they are tiny little boats that were used to go up to the beaches, to get the boys off the beaches, and then ferry them to the larger vessels standing offshore. so they stayed. our ideas today come largely from recreations, dramas and films. home. at 100 years old, john port is one of the last left to describe what it was to spend days on that beach, then to be rescued by a scheme which the german generals could barely believe. it was a horrendous experience. we were just lying on the beach, hands on the back of the head. there was. a brighton paddle boat was there that was burning from end to end. and another transport was loaded with our chaps, and a bomb dropped right amongst them, in the stern. that was pretty awful. sadly, the still surviving wooden boats aren t able to mark their 80th anniversary. but they do send a message from the past, symbolising a moment when people with their backs to the wall came together to face down disaster. that was robin gibson reporting. you re watching bbc news. now it s time for a look at the weather with carol. hello again. if you re hoping for some rain in the forecast today, there isn t much to offer at all, and in fact for the next few days that s going to be the case. it will remain dry for most of us. it s going to be sunny and warm and by the weekend, for some, it will be very warm as temperatures climb from the mid to the high 20s in celsius. today, high pressure s in charge, we ve got a weak weather front sinking south, producing all of this cloud. so the sunshine across parts of england and wales today will be hazier than it has been, but it won t make it down towards the south, so we ll hang on to brighter skies here. now behind this weather front it will brighten up in north wales, northern england, northern ireland and scotland. still quite breezy across the north west of scotland, and temperatures here 12 to 1a degrees, 20 in newcastle, 25 as we move down towards london. now through this evening and overnight, our weather front will continue its descent southwards, getting into southern england. there ll be some fog patches forming across south wales and south west england. a lot of clear skies, and then by the end of the night for northern ireland and also scotland, we ll see cloud building as a weather front comes our way, and it s also going to bring some patchy rain into parts of northern ireland by the end of the night. cooler in the north than the nightjust gone. tomorrow, then, we pick up this weather front. still coming in across northern ireland we could see some spots of rain getting into western scotland, as well. the fog in south wales and south west england lifting, and a lot of sunshine. but at times there ll be a bit more cloud just hugging the coastline in parts of eastern england. temperatures 12 in the north to 25 in the south. wednesday into thursday, we see that weather front cross us and then clear off into the north sea. high pressure still very much in charge of our weather, so things still very settled. so a lot of dry weather, a lot of sunshine, the weather front moves towards the east, taking its cloud with it. we could see the odd spot of rain in southern scotland, north east england, but there won t be much to talk of. and temperatures 11 in the north, 21 in glasgow, 26 in cardiff. on friday, there will be a lot of dry weather. we re starting to pull in all this warm air from the near continent across the board. gentle breezes and temperatures by then well, we re looking at 25 in london and liverpool, 2a in glasgow.
this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. a junior minister has resigned over the handling of borisjohnson s top adviser‘s travels during lockdown. it comes as other uk government ministers rally to support dominic cummings. they say they understand public concern but insist he acted reasonably when making trips during lockdown on the whole, as a man of integrity, he thinks that he did do the right thing. though he also recognises, as a fair minded man, that there are many other people who. who may take a different view, and i understand that. almost all shops in england will be able to reopen from 15thjune, as part of plans to further ease the lockdown. the world health organisation halts trials of an anti malarial drug as a potential treatment for covid 19 as it s found it could cause heart problems. hong kong s leader has rejected suggestions that china s proposed new security laws could erode freedoms in the territory. as greece reopens for tourism, we travel with a team of doctors who will set up coronavirus testing where the virus has not yet been reported. they are on their way home. home from the hell that is dunkirk. and we remember the heroes of dunkirk 80 years on. hello and welcome if you re watching in the uk or around the world, and stay with us for the latest news and analysis from here and across the globe. borisjohnson may have been hoping to put the controversy surrounding his senior advisor dominic cummings behind him, but it continues to bedevil his government. this morning, douglas ross a junior minister for scotland announced his resignation from the government over the affair. in a written statement, mr ross said that dominic cummings interpretation of the government s lockdown guidelines was not shared by the vast majority of the people who have done as the government asked . he pointed out that he had constituents who hadn t been able to visit sick families or say goodbye to those they loved, and said i cannot in good faith tell them that they are all wrong and one senior government advisor was right. he went on to say he realised both the immediate and long term implications of my decision to resign from government . this all follows an extraordinary press conference held by mr cummings yesterday afternoon, in which he replied to allegations that he had breached the government s lockdown rules by driving his family to london to durham in late march. we ll be getting the latest on this morning s resignation, and the reaction to that press conference, from westminster in a moment. conference, from first this report from our political correspondent iain watson on the background to the controversy. something you don t see every day. government advisers usually defend their political masters. this one had come to defend himself. dominic cummings took his family 250 miles from london to durham during lockdown, when his wife was already ill. yesterday, he was asked if he now regretted his actions. no, i don t regret what i did. as i said, i think reasonable people may well disagree about how i thought about what to do in the circumstances but i think that. i think what i did was reasonable in. . . in these circumstances. at the socially distanced impromptu press conference, he insisted that isolating close to his extended family was the best option in case he needed childcare. but why had he then also gone on a 30 mile trip from durham to barnard castle on easter sunday? apparently he was giving himself an unconventional eye test. my wife was very worried, particularly given my eyesight seemed to have been affected by the disease. she did not want to risk a nearly 300 mile drive with our child, given how ill i had been. we agreed that we should go for a short drive to see if i could drive safely. at his press conference last night, the prime minister sounded a bit more contrite than his advisor. i do regret the confusion and the anger and pain that people feel. i really did want people to understand exactly what had happened. but he wasn t going to sack his advisor, and he insisted that no one at number 10 had undermined the government s message on health. and a range of cabinet ministers have taken to social media with a remarkably similar message time to move on. opposition parties will meet today, and are pressing for an enquiry into dominic cummings actions. many of the papers are less ready to move on than government ministers, and some conservative mps are waiting to see if angry constituents have been soothed or riled by dominic cummings before deciding whether to renew calls for him to go. iain watson, bbc news. conservative mp william wragg has written, we cannot throw away valuable public and political good will any longer. it s humiliating and degrading to their office to see ministers put out agreed lines in defence of an advisor. this is a time of national emergency and our focus must be unrelenting. we owe it to the nation. our political correspondent alex forsyth is in westminster. that tweet and the letter from douglas ross, this is all rather uncomfortable for the government, isn t it? undoubtedly so and the hope had been that by dominic cummings giving that very rare press conference in the garden of downing street yesterday that they would draw something of a line under it and it did seem initially that in giving that explanation of his actions, that defence of what he had done that it had taken some of the heat out of the anger circulated amongst some sections of the conservative party but clearly not all of it because as you say we had that stark tweet from william wragg calling it humiliating that the government is using up a public goodwill and we ve also have the first resignation from douglas ross, who was a junior minister in the scottish office. so this has by no means gone away. nonetheless, we have had some mps and senior cabinet minister michael gove on the airwaves this morning defending once again the actions of dominic cummings, which is a strange phenomenon to have a senior cabinet minister defending the actions of an aid but it is happening. and some conservative mps see say they can see the justification for what dominic cummings did. anthony brown isa dominic cummings did. anthony brown is a conservative mp and former aide to borisjohnson when he was in the mayor of london office. this is what he had to say. clearly there are strong passions in the conservative party and amongst the public about this but i think when dominic cummings gave his explanation yesterday he covered a lot of detail, answered a lot of questions people can be on both sides of this. as it happens, i think he acted reasonably and certainly legally. i must say that if i had somebody come to me with the unique situation of dominic cummings where he was coming down sick with his wife worried about it, and he had a four year old child that didn t have any care provision nearby, then in exceptional circumstances, covered by the guidance, you are allowed to do what is most likely to reduce harm. so you see there is some defence of dominic cummings s actions and people say they can understand his thinking around it that there are two aspects here. there are the specifics of what dominic cummings did or didn t do when there are still some questions over the choices he made about where he drove and when, but there is the broader point of principle and when you speak to conservative mps a lot of them say they are still getting a lot of anger from their constituents who perceive this as being one rule for one and one rule for them. in fa ct for one and one rule for them. in fact you heard from douglas ross in his letter earlier and he was talking about the idea of the sacrifices some of his constituents have made because they simply thought that they were following government guidelines which were in pa rt government guidelines which were in part drawn up by dominic cummings and that is the bit that s increasingly hard for some conservative mps to reconcile, certainly sir roger gale, one conservative mp who still does not remain convinced dominic cummings did the right thing and this is what he had to say earlier. this is a man at the top of the government who had devised and was trying to enforce rules upon one set of people that he does not appear to have wanted to obey himself. by saying i m going to do what i like, but you can t do what you like, i m afraid, and this is the bottom line of this, he has sent out a very damaging, very dangerous message. as you say, alex, there are clearly supporters of dominic cummings and those who are critical of him. more broadly speaking, how much damage is this whole thing doing to borisjohnson as the prime minister though?” think that is the key thing to this whole situation. dominic cummings has largely been a controversial figure and that s not something he s really backed away from. these accepted that is part and parcel of his role and he sometimes perhaps even courted that controversy but he is often believed that that kind of controversy remains here in what they call the westminster bubble and it s only people who operate in and around parliament that care around these issues. the difference now you hear from conservative mps in particular is they say this has got cut through, that is that their constituents are angry about this because what they see as a double standard and there are others who are genuinely concerned that this could in some way undermine the government s public health message, particularly at a time when we are going to a more nuanced phase in the lockdown where there will be questions around people using their ownjudgment more questions around people using their own judgment more than there have been with the clear black and white message of the past, so we ve had people express concerns about this. that s not to say it is universal. there are some people who believe dominic cummings did right but the question now is whether the prime minister can retain his authority because crucial to this whole pandemic has been whether people believe in what the government is saying and are willing to follow their advice. that has been crucial in the early stages of lockdown and perhaps would be more so as we move on and that is why this row really does matter. alex, for now, in westminster, thanks. countries across europe are beginning to open themselves up to foreign visitors, as infection rates continue to fall. spain says foreign travellers will be able to visit the country from the beginning ofjuly without going into quarantine. the spanish foreign minister said the country was looking forward to welcoming tourists back now the worst of the coronavirus pandemic was behind it. 80 million visitors travel to spain each year, 20 million from the uk. meanwhile, greece has taken another major step towards re starting its tourism industry, opening its islands to domestic visitors for the first time in months. a team of doctors from mainland greece were among the first visitors to the remote island of sikinos, in the aegean sea. our correspondent quentin sommerville accompanied them on their trip. on our 100 mile plus journey, these athens doctors are the first visitors to sikinos in months. the greek islands are accepting visitors again. the mayor of the island welcomes them ashore. we re greeted with elbow bumps instead of handshakes. there are enough coronavirus tests for whoever wants them. we do know that, so far, there haven t been any cases on the remote islands, but there hasn t been any testing also. there are only 250 people on this island, and none of them have been tested for covid 19 until today. the village was built on a hilltop to safeguard it from pirates. they re hoping its isolation continues to offer protection. greece has only had 172 deaths from covid 19, and is leaving lockdown faster than expected. foreign tourists still have to undergo quarantine. terry harris has been living here for a0 years. i came here and i isolated myself for two weeks in my house and the lady from the supermarket flora she delivers everything, so they brought up, on a donkey, water and any supplies i wanted. at the temporary test centre, father theodorus leads the way. these tests are essential as greece prepares to welcome back foreign tourists in the coming months. today is the first day that everything comes back to normal, including restaurants and all the borders and ships, so we are concerned about everything being planned in the best possible way. greece is emerging from the pandemic earlier than others not unscathed, but in better shape than most. isolation is a way of life here, but so, too, is tourism. the health of the islanders depends on both. earlier this morning quentin sommerville explained the situation in greece. greece is accelerating the lockdown and the results from the pandemic have been better than expected, and injuly and have been better than expected, and in july and august have been better than expected, and injuly and august is when the island really makes its bread and butter for the rest of the year, so bread and butter for the rest of the year, so we bread and butter for the rest of the year, so we got here yesterday for the first reopening to domestic tourists and the island was hardly overwhelmed. there were a few people who arrived on the ferry, those doctors you saw in my report, but they are hoping that these initial first steps will get them back on the road to the tourist industry that they so much rely on. let me just show you a bit more of the island, if you can bear it. these tavernas, for the last couple of months, everything has been closed, bars and months, everything has been closed, bars a nd restau ra nts months, everything has been closed, bars and restaurants were only open for takeaway business. as of yesterday, they opened for business properly stop you can sit down, have a retsina, some moussaka and enjoy the spectacular view as well. these restrictions are being lifted all across greece and a whole new bunch of rules have come in for hotel owners. they are beginning to reopen as well but we won t see foreign tourists start to arrive here until july the 15th, sorry, june 15, then onjuly the 1st, july the 15th, sorry, june 15, then on july the 1st, all the july the 15th, sorry, june 15, then onjuly the 1st, all the airports across greece will reopen. that was quentin somerville on the situation in greece. the number of deaths involving coronavirus in england and wales reached its lowest weekly level for six weeks in may according to figures released by the office for national statistics today. the figures cover the period up to the 15th may. our head of statistics robert cuffe has been looking at the figures and joins me now. what are the figures first of all telling us about deaths from the virus? if you look at the death certificates that mention covid 19, slightly different to the figures we here in the press conference from the government every day, they show the government every day, they show the numbers of covid 19 deaths have been falling for a few weeks and have now reached the lowest level since the start of april so there are about 3800 covert deaths last week, well below the previous weeks, and if you add in scotland and northern ireland, it adds about a00 to the total, but the trend is the same. coming down and lower than we ve seen in a long time. there is a slight glitch in the figures because the total number of deaths in the week registered to the 15th of may increase slightly but that s because there was a bank holiday on friday the 8th of may so there were no registrations made and they come in following week. despite the slew of extra registrations, we still see week on week falls in the number of covid 19 registered deaths. we are a long way off normal but the trend is going on the right direction. who has been the hardest hit? it s been clear in the epidemic that it s been the oldest two are the hardest hit. if you look at the over 75 is, and we can see the total number of deaths we have seen in that age group and that is the red line on the chart and you can see it has shot up since the middle of march, and the grey line going along the middle is what you would expect to see each week and you can see we have seen many see each week and you can see we have seen many more see each week and you can see we have seen many more deaths than we would expect at this time of year, well over 50% more, so that the total number of deaths we would expect to see since the middle of march and we have seen all of those plus half again. that is the effect of the over 75 is, but as you go down the age groups, it s a different picture. if you look at those aged between a5 up to 6a,, sorry between 55 and 6a, you would expect less deaths because the group is younger but the bump is less sharp and doesn t bump so high and the all extra deaths we have seen is far lower, even lower when you get younger and younger and you cannot even draw the graph once you get to school age kids, they have been four deaths of under 15 is that mention covid 19 out of the more than a0,000 registered across the whole uk. so there is a massive difference in this between the very young and the very old where you go from four deaths in the under 15 is to tens of thousands over 75. that raises the question about care homes. what is the situation there? the situation is moving in the right direction. it s a little bit behind the population in general but we have seen a population in general but we have seen a slight fall in the number of deaths in care homes, kind of mirroring the population pattern at large. a slight uptick in overall deaths caused by the registration lag on bank holiday friday and care home deaths down slightly, it has to be said, 1600 deaths, down by six, and not a big increase, but deaths in care homes are still running well above the long term average so care homes are bearing half of the coded registered deaths and they don t account for half of the population so account for half of the population so it is a hard pocket of the population but moving in the right direction. robert, thanks for coming to explain the figures. in hong kong carrie lam, the chief executive, has been defending china s new controversial security law calling it a safeguard against violent political protests. and she criticised international leaders who ve supported protesters resisting the legislation. translation: national security legislation is a matterfor a country. it is the case in any country. it doesn t matter if the country has a unitary system or multiparty system or a federal system. now legislation on national security is always a matter for the central authorities. so for overseas politicians making such comments, they probably, you know, practising double standard. now i think there is no one country that will allow an important matter like national security to be flawed in any way or to have a void in any way. our correspondent in hong kong, danny vincent, explains how, after months of protests seen in the semi autonomous territory last year, trust in the city s chief executive has eroded. carrie lam this morning has been attempting to reassure the hong kong public that the city will remain a free and open society, regardless of when this law is enacted. in some ways, carrie lam has lost the trust of at least a portion of society definitely the protesters. the protesters took to the streets last year for back to back protests that lasted for many months. they were calling for carrie lam to resign simply because they felt that she no longer held the interests of the hong kong people, and said she was simply relaying the message from beijing. i think today she technically almost is doing that this time because this law actually was proposed by beijing, not by carrie lam herself. so some protesters i have spoken to, they feel the message from carrie lam is now somewhat irrelevant because they now want that protesting showing their anger towards the central government. now protesters have planned more protests over the next few days. we are expecting protests tomorrow. it will be a real test to see how many hong kong people actually go to the streets. of course they will be breaking not only the law there is a law here that says that if more than four people cause a public nuisance, that is technically illegal but also they will be breaking the social distancing rules that were put into place to try to stop the spread of the coronavirus. so i think hong kong is bracing for more protests, and i think it will be interesting to see what happens in the next 2a hours. we will get a better sense of how hong kong residents respond to beijing and the hong kong governments recent messages about this law. a report into the death of 1a year old jaden moodie, who was knocked off his moped and stabbed to death in east london, says the authorities could have intervened when he was being exploited by criminal gangs. a serious case review by waltham forest safeguarding children board said jaden should have been more closely supervised in the two years before his murder in january last year. i m joined by our home affairs correspondent daniel sandford. daniel, first tell us what we now know from the report about jaden moodie s life. first of all it s worth reiterating that he was murdered at the age of 14, that he was murdered at the age of 1a, run down on a stolen motorbike and then stabbed to death. he was born in 200a in leicester to parents who were quickly separated afterwards. then he moved to nottingham had a largely uneventful primary school but then in secondary school got into trouble with bullying and some suggestion he threatened a child with an imitation firearm and his mum, spotting he was getting into trouble, decided to ta ke getting into trouble, decided to take him out of school and home school him which seems to have been reasonably successful at first but then she went back to work and he was getting less and less supervision at home, getting into more and more trouble and his mum ended up being threatened by local gangs about money her son owned and she decided to move him from nottingham to london and there he stayed in the living room of his grandmother s house while his mother was sofa surfing on other friends houses and went on getting into more trouble and ended up in bournemouth ina trouble and ended up in bournemouth in a cuckoo house with 39 wraps of crack cocaine and two packets of crack cocaine and two packets of crack cocaine and seems to have been exploited into selling drugs in bournemouth. his mother was struggling to find a house. he got excluded from school for pictures on social media which showed him with a gun in his school uniform and slowly, he was drifting inexorably into this kind of drugs, county lines world and ended up being killed aged 1a on the streets of london. what did the report tell us about the way his case was handled by the authorities? first of all it highlights the home schooling and how little monitoring was going on of his home schooling and how when his mum went back to work, those responsible for home schooling in nottinghamshire had no idea it had happened and he wasn t any longer getting properly supervised. secondly, there is quite a lot of criticism around the fact that his mother struggled to get housing in london even though her reasons for moving to london were quite sensible in terms of trying to get her son out of trouble, and how long it took for her to get allocated a house. thirdly, a lot of concentration in the report on the missed opportunity when he was caught drug dealing in bournemouth, aged 1a, the police officers in dorset just bournemouth, aged 1a, the police officers in dorsetjust drive him home and there doesn t seem to be any great huge crisis meeting in waltham forest, the council who are responsible, to say, what are we going to do with this 1a year old who has been found drug dealing on a cuckoo house in bournemouth? has the report made recommendations, and what might they be? it has and it focused on the home schooling issue. there needs to be much better monitoring of who is being home schooled, what is going on in those homes while the home schooling is going on and the other focus is on the idea of communication between agencies around these kids that are being drawn into county lines drug dealing. there needs to be much better communication around saying, right, this is a young child who s been caught drug dealing so let s get everyone together, police, housing, social workers, the youth justice system, and sit down and try and sort that individual child out. there needs to be national standards around how that is done. daniel, thank you for that. let s get more on the resignation ofjunior minister douglas ross now. in a statement, he said he doesn t believe dominic cumming s interpretation of the government advice was shared by the vast majority of people and therefore, this morning, has tended his resignation as under secretary of state for scotland. i m joined now by shadow secretary of state for scotland and labour mp for edinburgh south, ian murray. thanks so much forjoining us, mr murray. are you surprised by the resignation of douglas ross? the only thing i m surprised at is there hasn t been more government resignations to this debacle and douglas ross is the only person in government at the moment that seems to have any integrity and i think his resignation letter speaks for itself when he talks of his own constituents who have had to make huge sacrifices and he cannot in good conscious tell them they are wrong and the special adviser to the government is correct. that is the way he has put it in his own resignation letter and i think that is what the country has been saying for the last 72 hours. of course, dominic cummings did not breach any regulations. he said he behaved reasonably and legally. he did, didn t he? i don t think you did. i don t think anybody would think it is reasonable when you have a suspected case of coronavirus to leave your home. the government instruction north and south of the border were very clear and to drive 260 miles there and 260 miles back when you could be carrying the virus is really not the right thing to be doing, and indeed, even the additional driving of a 16 mile round trip to barnard castle to test your eyesight, the public are shaking their head in disbelief that even decided to try and make an excuse for that. the special adviser has broken the rules and the prime minister should have done the right thing in order to maintain the very rules that the special adviser put in place for the rest of the country. the rules did say though that if there was a reasonable excuse to leave home, you could do and a reasonable excuse to leave home would be to provide care and assistance including personal care toa assistance including personal care to a vulnerable person, so as i say, he didn t actually break the rules, did he? i think he has broken the rules and douglas ross in his own resignation letter has said quite clearly that douglas being a father he would put his family first but in saying that, if anybody in his family had coronavirus, including his wife or son, he would have abided by the government rules to stay at home. those of the rules so you don t infect others or make the position worse for your own family, and to travel 260 miles would not be seen and to travel 260 miles would not be seen to be reasonable in any sense andindeed seen to be reasonable in any sense and indeed durham constabulary themselves have an investigation going to see if he did actually break the law, so rather than us listening to dominic cummings in that most remarkable, arrogant press conference yesterday, perhaps cabinet secretary should do a full enquiry as has been asked by the labour party for the last 72 hours, get to the bottom of all of these questions decide whether or not what dominic cummings did was indeed legal because i think most of the population in terms of their anger in the last 72 hours would say it is not. you mention what you call the arrogant news conference yesterday. would it have made any difference to you had he apologise?” would it have made any difference to you had he apologise? i think the vast majority of the country yesterday expected an apology, maybe saying he mustjudge what he did, apologise to the public and then say it is incredibly important for the majority of the public, all of the public, to abide by the rules from government. we heard a whole list of excuses, no contrition, no apology. that alone should have said to the prime minister that his position in government is untenable. for the prime minister not to have acted, then to have had an extraordinary press co nfe re nce then to have had an extraordinary press conference yesterday was really just sent to the general public that it is one rule for the prime minister and his advisers and one rule for the rest of the country. that is incredibly dangerous at this moment when everybody is trying to work incredibly hard to suppress this crisis. can you also understand what some members of the public are also saying, that at the minute we are in the middle of a global pandemic, he is not a minister, he is an unelected adviser, and why does all this matter? why are we even talking about it? because he writes the rules. he wrote the rules for the prime minister. this goes right to the heart of the integrity of the prime minister and the integrity of the government. thankfully, douglas ross has shown some integrity in the last 72 hours. you can t ask for the public to abide by strict rules while at the same time allowing the special adviser who helped write those rules to flight them. the anchorin those rules to flight them. the anchor in the general public shows quite clearly it is one rule for them and one rule for government advisers. that is a dangerous position for the public to be in during a time of crisis when we need the entirety of the population to be working together. the government has decided that they have doubled down on this. for michael gove to be on the media this morning and sank a 60 mile round trip to castle barnard castle was to prepare him to see if he could go to work. borisjohnson should seek to remove dominic cummings from his position, try to draw a line under this and emphasise again to the public that it is necessary for everybody to abide by the rules. perhaps what this is about is that his actions drew attention to flaws in the original rules. what do you say to that? well, if there were any flaws in the original rules the vast majority of the general public have inflated them and he has used those rules to flight them and he has used those rules to flight them himself rather than closing any problems. to be fair to the government, they are all rooting for governments to do well in this, we wa nt for governments to do well in this, we want the crisis to pass as quickly as possible. keir starmer has been very clear that we will support the government. if there are loopholes in the regulations it is not for a special adviser to then exploit them. it is for that special adviser to close those loopholes and make the communications to the public clearer. one feature to this government is a complete lack of clarity from the government and what they can and can t do, but the public has abide by them, one person he hasn t is the person who helped write them. good to talk to you. thank you for your time. hello this is bbc news. the headlines: a junior minister has resigned over the handling of the borisjohnson top adviser‘s travels during lockdown. it comes as other uk government ministers rally to support dominic cummings they say they understand public concern, but insist he acted reasonably when making trips during lockdown. almost all shops in england will be able to reopen from 15thjune as part of plans to further ease the lockdown. the world health organisation halts trials of an anti malarial drug as a potential treatment for covid 19 as it s found it could cause heart problems. hong kong s leader has rejected suggestions that china s proposed new security laws could erode freedoms in the territory. as greece reopens for tourism, we travel with a team of doctors who will set up coronavirus testing where the virus has not yet been reported. the world health organisation has temporarily halted the testing of the drug hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment for covid 19 because of safety concerns. of the drug hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment for covid 19 the drug, traditionally used to treat malaria, has been described by president donald trump as a game changer in the battle against the virus. imogen foulkes reports from geneva. there are so far no known treatments or vaccines for covid 19, but there are many clinical trials of many different drugs to try to find them. one drug hydroxychloroquine is already in use as a treatment for malaria. some, among them president donald trump, think it could work against covid 19, too. he s even taking it himself. i m taking it, hydroxychloroquine. when? right now, yeah. couple of weeks ago, i started taking it. why, sir? because i think it s good. i ve heard a lot of good stories. the world health organization has repeatedly said there is no scientific evidence so far that hydroxychloroquine can treat covid 19, let alone prevent infection with it. the who had been running clinical trials to test anecdotal reports that it might be beneficial. now those trials have been stopped after a study suggested the drug could cause heart problems, and might even increase deaths among covid 19 patients. the executive group has implemented a temporary pause of the hydroxychloroquine arm within the solidarity trial while the data the safety data is reviewed by the data safety monitoring board. the who said the decision to suspend trials was a precautionary measure. now it will gather more data on safety before deciding whether to continue testing. however, it said patients taking hydroxychloroquine for established reasons such as malaria should continue to do so. imogen foulkes, bbc news, geneva. let s return to the news that hong kong s chief executive, carrie lam, has been defending china s new security law, calling it a safeguard against violent political protests. she has criticised international leaders who ve supported protesters resisting the legislation. let s go live to hong kong and speak to lo kin hey. he s the vice chairman of the democratic party, the third largest in the legislative council of the territory. thank you so much forjoining us here on bbc news. how reassured where you buy what carrie lam had to say? what carrie lam hasjust said is very lame to hong kong people. for the past many years in hong kong the hong kong government and the chinese government have been lying to the people. a lot of people are arrested for fighting for their own rights on the mainland. they arrest them using those national security laws. this so called reassurance is just some lame explanation and excuse and trying to lie to the whole world. i believe that hong kong people will not be lied to by her. you paint a bleak picture. china insist this new security law won t affect hong kong? high degree of autonomy or the liberties of hong kong residents. are you saying china is not to be believed?” kong residents. are you saying china is not to be believed? i think china can never be trusted, especially on so called national security issues and on the promises of the rights of the people and freedom of the people. those national security laws, no matter if you are doing some sort of political activity or doing some human rights activities, we are quite sure that those kind of things will be affected. if you are a human rights organisation in hong kong and they decide because you are an international organisation and you are affecting the national security of the country, they can expel you or arrest you. it is very dangerous for international human rights groups and for local political activities to be held in the future. this kind of national security law make very serious harm to hong kong liberty and hong kong? people s rights. a senior manager member of the legislature in hong kong should said she should not be feeling the peers that you are. he said that hong kong courts would still have the final say on what happens to people. does that not assuage your fears in any way? no, because the hong kong courts can onlyjudge by what is written into the legislation. at this point in time we don t have the ability to know what exactly will be written into law, but we can expect it to be written in a very vague way and in a way that will not protect human rights. if those things are written into the law, the court would have no power to protect the people from human rights or freedom violations. really good to talk to you. thanks for joining really good to talk to you. thanks forjoining us on bbc news. thanks forjoining us on bbc news. as the world awaits a coronavirus vaccine, doctors and scientists around the world have been looking at different ways to treat those who are severely affected by the disease. it is hoped plasma therapy could offer a solution. it is a process which sees recovered patients donate their blood which contains anti bodies. our health correspondent laura foster has been finding out more. when alessandro contracted coronavirus and ended up on a hospital ventilator, he feared he d never get to see his family again. it s why, when he recovered, he wanted to help others by donating plasma in his blood. instinctively, the last thing you want to do is go in a hospital environment again and have a needle put, but then i thought actually that i had been given so much and literally, like, you know, those people saved my life. and you feel so hopeless and you feel so unable to help others, and that was the only way i could figure at that point to give some of this back. when alessandro was sick, his immune system produced antibodies to help fight the virus. these antibodies are found in the gold coloured part of our blood known as plasma. the idea is that this plasma can be given to other people, whose immune systems are struggling, to help them fight coronavirus. the nhs wants more people who ve had covid 19 to donate their plasma. it s making its donations centres bigger and creating pop up ones so they can take up to 8,000 donations a week. it can be very, very emotional and it does actually get you quite upset sometimes, but then you see these people have come out from the other side and they re so. like i said, they re so enthusiastic and so willing. the researchers have found that men, those over 35, and anyone who was hospitalised with coronavirus produce the most antibodies. in fact, alessandro s blood contains a0 times more antibodies than the average donor. so that means i can give a lot of them away, which i m very pleased to do, and suddenly, as my friends knew about that, they all become very nice to me in case they ever need it in the future! they re particularly asking for people to come forward in manchester, birmingham and london, where there have been a lot of cases of covid 19. laura foster, bbc news. more retailers have been given the go ahead to reopen in england next month, if they can meet the coronavirus guidelines to protect shoppers and workers. outdoor markets and car showrooms will be allowed to resume trading next monday, 1stjune. but the main rollout is planned for the 15th, with everything from department stores to small independent shops opening their doors once again. stephen norman, the managing director of vauxhall motors ssays it s great news for the industry and the uk economy. car showrooms, with one or two very rare exceptions, tend to be large, airy, bright open spaces, so in the way we are lucky compared to the rest of the retail sector is insofar as it is not difficult to make them covid safe and secure. of course we will find social distancing guidelines in terms of ways to walk around the showrooms to look at the vehicles that are on display and so on, but of course there will have to be disinfection between test drives and inspections of the vehicles, but all of those things to meet government guidelines and even go beyond, because every manufacturer tends to go beyond guidelines to be doubly secure, all of those things, we are ready now. in fact, we have been ready for two weeks. we are not used to shutdowns, for example in summer used to shutdowns, for example in summer holiday periods, but of course nobody would have expected the industry to close down for two months and one of the most important selling periods of the year, so when you talk about damage to the industry, it is damage to the sales and damage that we will have to club in coming months and possibly more than once to get back to the proper rate of the markets. simon gompertz and joins us now from central london. tell us more about these nonessential shops that could open on the 15th. you mentioned the outdoor markets in the car dealerships. it is obvious with them there is a bit more space if you re outdoors there is less risk, but the crucial thing is the 15th ofjune because then it is shops in general that will be able to open. these are the standard stores you will see in high streets and shopping centres. it will be much easier for the it will be much easierfor the big shopping malls. they have large areas for people to walk in and stay separate, but it will be more challenging for your typical high street. we are likely to see more queues outside because the shops will be responsible for maintaining social distancing inside. that is what shoppers will see, spaces between them, those perspex greens probably seen and more shops, encouraged to use contactless payment rather than cash and some smaller rules like things that dated back to the shop, they will be able to be put on display immediately, they would have to wait 72 hours before being put back on display. and the ability to be hygienic, so washing facilities available, hand sanitiser is, for instance. those will be the sort of things that people will see. it is not all the shops there will be open at that stage, there will still be exceptions and things being kept from us until later. tell us more about those exceptions. one of the kind of shops i was wandering about, will charity shops be reopening? i expect quite a few households will have gathered a few bags to donate during lockdown. well, they are on the high street, that is fine. i have heard of people looking into ingenious ways of making things like charity shops, which are quite small, being available to the public. for example, a door at the front and an exit door in the back so front and an exit door in the back so you get a flow of people and not going ina so you get a flow of people and not going in a circle and meeting each other again on the way out. it will be very much up to the shops to be clear that they are abiding by quite strict guidelines. there will be spot checks, as well. the things that are being kept for later, crucial areas, what is broadly called hospitality, but we are talking about pubs, cafe is, hotels, they are being told to wait until they are being told to wait until the ath ofjuly at the earliest. i know pubs are in negotiation with the government. they want to get pubs that have gardens to be opened first. they would like to see a restriction on the two metre rule, bringing it down to one metre to make it more feasible for drinks and bars to operate. that is being kept until later. of course, dentists, they are still heavily restricted. that sort of thing we will keep to much later. touchy parlours, beauty salons, hairdressers. that is quite a big part of the high street, they are being kept close still for the moment. thank you, simon. pressure is being put on governments across europe to allow businesses and shops to re open. rich preston reports now on the massive economic impact of the virus. spain once had some of europe s toughest lockdown measures. now the bars and restaurants of barcelona are serving customers once again. here, as well as in the capital, madrid, people can now meet in groups of up to ten. translation: i am so moved. i m shaking from feeling so happy after staying home for such a long time. this is phenomenal. it is really, really good. in popular resorts like majorca, people can once again visit the beach. spain has urged foreign holiday makers to come back to visit the country in july, when it will stop quarantining new arrivals. once at the heart of the pandemic, italians can go to the gym again, but with strict hygiene rules in place. you must keep your hands clean and keep apart from others enjoying a work out. people in the czech republic can get back to one of their favourite pastimes again this is the country that drinks more beer per capita than any other. but masks must be worn unless, of course, you re taking a sip. the czech republic wasn t hit as badly as some other countries by coronavirus and perhapsjust a coincidence was the first to make the wearing of masks in public compulsory. as well as bars, breweries and restaurants, popular tourist sites are reopening, too. cultural attractions like theatres and museums can now organise events for up to 300 people. and in the uk europe s worst hit country a plan to ease out of the lockdown. on 1stjune, outdoor markets and car showrooms can open up. two weeks later, all other nonessential shops, like department stores, can open their doors provided they are covid secure and have measures in place to keep people apart and protect both staff and customers. europe s first official case of coronavirus was recorded at the end of january. since then, life on the continent has been turned upside down, affecting lives and livelihoods. after four months of restrictions on everyday life and tens of thousands of deaths europeans hope for a return to some semblance of normality, however gradual it may be. rich preston, bbc news. a pakistani man who lost five members of his family on board friday s deadly plane crash in karachi has told the bbc about the pain of learning of their deaths after initial reports saying they had survived. the airbus a320 travelling from lahore crashed into a residential area shortly after attempting to land. of the 99 people on board, only two passengers survived. umer nangiana reports from karachi. after a year of study in london with her three young sons, sara was desperate to return home to karachi and her husband, in time for the holy festival of eid. but rather than celebrate, relatives now mourn the young family. the coronavirus pandemic meant sara and her children had to meet her husband in lahore before they all boarded friday s ill fated flight pk 8303 for the final leg of theirjourney home. when the plane crashed, it was thought they had survived. but soon the reality that all including four year old siddique had died, was made painfully clear. my nephew. the news came he survived, he survived. but actually this type of incident, any time it happens, you will not get a clear picture. this incident, we will neverforget. never. the five bodies of the family are yet to be recovered. authorities say it will require a painstaking process of matching their dna. some bodies have been returned to their families and are starting to be laid to rest. after the difficult part of identifying the bodies, the focus now shifts to investigations. investigators from the aviation industry are busy collecting evidence from the site, and they hope that this will help them determine the cause of the crash. key to piecing together the final moments of flight pk 8303 will be understanding why warnings from a control tower were ignored shortly before the crash. the government has promised to quickly deliver the findings from what they say will be a transparent investigation. pakistan has a chequered history when it comes to air safety. in 2016, a pakistan international airlines flight crashed, killing all a7 on board. but the findings from that incident have never been made public. the ongoing demand for information from that disaster will nowjoin the growing public pressure for answers from this latest tragedy. a man and a teenage girl died in separate incidents along the cornish coastline on bank holiday monday. the girl had become trapped beneath a capsized boat while the man was pulled from the water by a member of the public. despite warnings not to go into the water, volunteer and off duty lifeguards rescued dozens of people in a spate of incidents yesterday. police said it had been a very tough day for local emergency services . a young italian boy has been praised for his courage after an encounter with a wild bear. tim allman has the details. never have the words don t panic seemed more appropriate. looking back over his shoulder to see what s behind him, a young boy moves slowly ever so slowly down the side of this hill. ambling along in his wake, a giant brown bear just a little bit curious about this small visitor, perhaps. alessandro and his family were enjoying a picnic when the boy went off for a stroll. it turns out he had made a new friend. his mother s partner tried to reassure him, explaining that the bear was just minding its own business. mamma! alessandro can then be heard calling out to his mother. mamma! shh! if you think alessandro was scared, think again. he told the italian media he d been really excited, and this was the best day of his life. the bear, on the other hand, was unavailable for comment. tim allman, bbc news. now it s time for a look at the weather. hello, again. if you re hoping for some rain in the forecast today, there isn t much to offer at all, and in fact for the next few days that s going to be the case. it will remain dry for most of us. it s going to be sunny and warm and by the weekend, for some, it will be very warm as temperatures climb from the mid to the high 20s in celsius. today, high pressure s in charge, we ve got a weak weather front sinking south, producing all of this cloud. so the sunshine across parts of england and wales today will be hazier than it has been, but it won t make it down towards the south, so we ll hang on to brighter skies here. now behind this weather front it will brighten up in north wales, northern england, northern ireland and scotland. still quite breezy across the north west of scotland, and temperatures here 12 to 1a degrees, 20 in newcastle, 25 as we move down towards london. now through this evening and overnight, our weather front will continue its descent southwards, getting into southern england. there ll be some fog patches forming across south wales and south west england. a lot of clear skies, and then by the end of the night for northern ireland and also scotland, we ll see cloud building as a weather front comes our way, and it s also going to bring some patchy rain into parts of northern ireland by the end of the night. cooler in the north than the nightjust gone. tomorrow, then, we pick up this weather front. still coming in across northern ireland we could see some spots of rain getting into western scotland, as well. the fog in south wales and south west england lifting, and a lot of sunshine. but at times there ll be a bit more cloud just hugging the coastline in parts of eastern england. temperatures 12 in the north to 25 in the south. wednesday into thursday, we see that weather front cross us and then clear off into the north sea. high pressure still very much in charge of our weather, so things still very settled. so a lot of dry weather, a lot of sunshine, the weather front moves towards the east, taking its cloud with it. we could see the odd spot of rain in southern scotland, north east england, but there won t be much to talk of. and temperatures 11 in the north, 21 in glasgow, 26 in cardiff. on friday, there will be a lot of dry weather. we re starting to pull in all this warm air from the near continent across the board. gentle breezes and temperatures by then well, we re looking at 25 in london and liverpool, 2a in glasgow.
this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. a junior minister has resigned over the handling of borisjohnson s top adviser‘s travels during lockdown. it comes as other uk government ministers rally to support dominic cummings they say they understand public concern but insist he acted reasonably when making trips during lockdown. on the whole, as a man of integrity, he thinks that he did do the right thing. though he also recognises, as a fair minded man, that there are many other people who. who may take a different view, and i understand that. almost all shops in england will be able to reopen from 15thjune, as part of plans to further ease the lockdown. the world health organisation halts trials of an anti malarial drug as a potential treatment for covid 19 as it s found it could cause heart problems. hong kong s leader has rejected suggestions that china s proposed new security laws could erode freedoms in the territory. as greece reopens for tourism, we travel with a team of doctors who will set up coronavirus testing where the virus has not yet been reported they are on their way home. home from the hell that is dunkirk. and we remember the heroes of dunkirk 80 years on. hello and welcome if you re watching in the uk or around the world, and stay with us for the latest news and analysis from here and across the globe. borisjohnson may have been hoping to put the controversy surrounding his senior advisor dominic cummings behind him, but it continues to bedevil his government. this morning, douglas ross a junior minister for scotland announced his resignation from the government over the affair. in a written statement, mr ross said that dominic cummings interpretation of the government s lockdown guidelines was not shared by the vast majority of the people who have done as the government asked . he pointed out that he had constituents who hadn t been able to visit sick families or say goodbye to those they loved, and said, i cannot in good faith tell them that they are all wrong and one senior government advisor was right. he went on to say he realised both the immediate and long term implications of my decision to resign from government . this all follows an extraordinary news conference held by mr cummings yesterday afternoon, in which he replied to allegations that he had breached the government s lockdown rules by driving his family from london to durham in late march. we ll be getting the latest on this morning s resignation, and the reaction to that news conference, from westminster in a moment. first this report from our political correspondent iain watson on the background to the controversy. something you don t see every day. government advisers usually defend their political masters. this one had come to defend himself. dominic cummings took his family 250 miles from london to durham during lockdown, when his wife was already ill. yesterday, he was asked if he now regretted his actions. no, i don t regret what i did. as i said, i think reasonable people may well disagree about how i thought about what to do in the circumstances but i think that. i think what i did was reasonable in. . . in these circumstances. at the socially distanced impromptu press conference, he insisted that isolating close to his extended family was the best option in case he needed childcare. but why had he then also gone on a 30 mile trip from durham to barnard castle on easter sunday? apparently he was giving himself an unconventional eye test. my wife was very worried, particularly given my eyesight seemed to have been affected by the disease. she did not want to risk a nearly 300 mile drive with our child, given how ill i had been. we agreed that we should go for a short drive to see if i could drive safely. at his press conference last night, the prime minister sounded a bit more contrite than his advisor. i do regret the confusion and the anger and pain that people feel. i really did want people to understand exactly what had happened. but he wasn t going to sack his advisor, and he insisted that no one at number 10 had undermined the government s message on health. and a range of cabinet ministers have taken to social media with a remarkably similar message time to move on. opposition parties will meet today, and are pressing for an enquiry into dominic cummings actions. many of the papers are less ready to move on than government ministers, and some conservative mps are waiting to see if angry constituents have been soothed or riled by dominic cummings before deciding whether to renew calls for him to go. iain watson, bbc news. our political correspondent alex forsyth is at westminster. here we had a government hoping to draw a line under this whole episode dominic cummings and then the resignation of a junior government minister, and his letter made pretty painful reading, didn t it? yes. i think there was a sense perhaps after yesterday afternoons news conference with dominic cummings where he took questions from journalists and went through his actions in detail and his justification for those actions, i think there was the hope, certainly from downing street, that it might have taken some of the heat out of the anger being circulated by some conservative mps but as you say, we had that resignation this morning of a junior ministerfrom had that resignation this morning of a junior minister from the scotland office and we had several conservative mps either reaffirming their anger at this through the day and a handful of new ones adding to it as well. that s not to say it s universal. we did hearfrom michael gove this morning, defending dominic cummings saying he did not break any rules and regulations and some other conservative mps have said something similar, obviously wanting to draw a line under it but also suggesting that they can understand dominic cummings explanation for his actions. among them was anthony brown, a former aide to boris johnson when he was mayor of london. this is what he had to say about it this morning. clearly there are strong passions in the conservative party and amongst the public about this, but i think when dominic cummings gave his explanation yesterday he covered a lot of detail and answered a lot of questions and reasonable people can be on both sides of this. as it happens, i think he acted reasonably uncertainly legally. and i must say, that if had somebody come to me with the unique situation of dominic cummings where he was coming down sick with his wife, and worried about it and had a four year old child that didn t have any care provision nearby, then in exceptional circumstances, and it s cove red exceptional circumstances, and it s covered by the guidance, you are allowed to do would most reduce harm. there are still some questions over the specifics of what dominic cummings did ordidn t over the specifics of what dominic cummings did or didn t do through that period, where he travelled and when and the reasons for it and there are also questions over the broader principle and that is what we are hearing from some conservative mps who have continued to express their anger this morning, suggesting that they are hearing from their constituents that the way this looks is there is one rule for those in downing street and one rule for them, and that is hard for some conservative mps to reconcile and thatis conservative mps to reconcile and that is why we have had douglas ross this morning suggesting he had heard personal stories about the sacrifices people made and he did not feel he could justify dominic cummings s actions to them and he isn t the only one that has expressed that view. we heard from sir roger gale, one of the first critics of dominic cummings over the weekend and he today again said that he thinks he should now be sacked or resign. this is what sir roger gale said earlier. this is a man at the top of government who had devised and was trying to enforce rules upon one set of people that he does not appear to have wanted to obey himself. by saying i m going to do what i like, but you can t do what you like, i m afraid, this is the bottom line in this, he has sent out a very damaging, very dangerous message. the time i think is, either for message. the time i think is, either foercummings, even at message. the time i think is, either for mr cummings, even at this stage, to resign or for the prime minister to resign or for the prime minister to say, look, i m terribly sorry, but we have to dispense with your services. clearly dominic cummings has his supporters and he has his detractors, as you ve been telling us. where does all this leave boris johnson though? that is of course at the heart of all this because this isa the heart of all this because this is a prime minister who is managing, or attempting to manage a global pandemic and this is at the very least a very unwelcome distraction which is why i think there was a hope inside downing street at the press co nfe re nce hope inside downing street at the press conference yesterday that it would have drawn a line under it but that simply doesn t seem to have happened. at the heart of all this is, of course, the public health messaging because the government has been asking people to follow its advice on the basis of what it says is scientific evidence and i think now there is some questions from conservative mps and opposition leaders who met this morning about whether or not that public health message has been undermined by this. people thinking, why should i follow the rules if others aren t? as we ve heard, dominic cummings and his supporters, including michael gove, suggesting never break the rules or regulations but the question is whether the public are convinced they should still follow the rules and regulations of government, particularly as we enter the next phase of this lockdown where things could become more nuanced and people might be asked to use, as the government suggested, common sense as we move forward and we see shop starting to open. that of course was meant to be the focus of government messaging now and instead the focus at the moment is still on the actions of this aid, and that is certainly not what the government would want right now. alex, thanks for that. in hong kong carrie lam, the chief executive, has been defending china s new controversial security law calling it a safeguard against violent political protests. and she criticised international leaders who ve supported protesters resisting the legislation. translation: national security legislation is a matterfor a country. it is the case in any country. it doesn t matter if the country has a unitary system or multiparty system or a federal system. now legislation on national security is always a matter for the central authorities. so for overseas politicians making such comments, they probably, you know, practising double standard. now i think there is no one country that will allow an important matter like national security to be flawed in any way or to have a void in any way. let s talk to anthony dapiran, he s a hong kong based writer and lawyer. thanks so much forjoining us here on bbc news. i d be very interested in your views as a lawyer as to what this new national security laws will actually do. well, we haven t yet seen a actually do. well, we haven t yet seen a draft of the law as such. what we ve seen is a decision from the parliament in beijing for all of china and the national people s congress, saying they will go ahead and draft the law which will outlaw sedition, secession, terrorism and the interference by foreign governments orforeign the interference by foreign governments or foreign forces inside hong kong and they again are going to d raft hong kong and they again are going to draft that law and impose it directly on hong kong above the heads of the hong kong duly elected legislature. so how concerned are you and other lawyers? there is a great deal of concern about two things. firstly, the way the law is being imposed on hong kong. hong kong, in its basic law, its constitution, says very clearly that the hong kong legislative council will on its own enact national security laws but that hasn t happened for various reasons. it s been a political hot potato in hong kong for the 23 years since the hangover handover, beijing having lost its patience for hong kong to enact the laws is going ahead to do it over the head of the hong kong legislature, which is inconsistent with what the basic law says at its face, and that is the position the hong kong bar association made in a strongly worded statement last night, but the second concern is exactly how this law is going to be drafted and how it will be applied. one very concerning paragraph in the decision from friday says that chinese central government state security, national security, effectively china is giving the ability to set up their own branches in hong kong and operate to police national security on the ground in hong kong. and i think they have been very concerned to have the prospect of china s secret police effectively operating on the ground openly and with some legality in hong kong. on the other hand, a senior member of the legislature in hong kong has said, and you mentioned the application of the law, and this is exactly what he was talking about, he said the imposition of the laws will still be taken in hong kong, and the hong kong courts would still have the final say in what happens to people. does that assuage your fears in any way? it frankly doesn t. firstly because we were already aware of cases where people were subject to intense political pressure whether in the media, directly or indirectly by the blazing politicians or government and you can see national security agents from beijing and hong kong. the beige and government have already of the hong kong constitution that say that central government agency should not interfere in hong kong in fact does not apply to them when those agencies are here carrying out the work of supervising hong kong, so it appears they intend to be operating effectively outside the law. so i m not really reassured by those sorts of statements and neither are many here in hong kong. anthony, thank you for sharing your thoughts and insight. good to talk to you. thank you. more retailers have been given the go ahead to reopen in england next month, if they can meet the coronavirus guidelines to protect shoppers and workers. outdoor markets and car showrooms will be allowed to resume trading next monday, the 1st ofjune. but the main rollout is planned for the 15th with everything from department stores to small independent shops opening their doors once again. so how will that work? and what covid secure guidelines will businesses have to follow? let s speak to kyle monk, head of retail insights and analytics at the british retail consortium. very good to have you with us. can you just before we go into the easing of lockdown. can you tell us a bit more about the impact that the pandemic has had on retail? yes, so this news is really incredibly welcomed by the industry and obviously april was the worst month on record for retail sales, down 19.196 on record for retail sales, down 19.1% and that cost the industry an estimated 5.5 billion, almost 1.5 billion a week was being lost due to the close years, so 83% of stores we think were closed over this period, in the nonessential category, and a lot of the lost sales revenue is not revenue that will be made up later. it isa revenue that will be made up later. it is a foregone revenue, so it s very important and we re very glad the government have given some clear guidance on when stores will be able to open back up again and begin serving the british public again. so you paint a stark picture and clearly you welcome the government s decision, but how is it actually going to work and how are you going to persuade shoppers that it is safe to persuade shoppers that it is safe to shop and indeed, those people who work in the shops that it is safe to be inside them? safety is paramount by the shop workers on the british public. we are taking the learning we have got from the food sector and we have got from the food sector and we will apply that as best we can do non food categories. we are also looking to other countries within europe, so austria, germany, who are a bit further ahead in the cycle to see what measures they are taking there and watch can be applied to british retail. so that might be the closure of changing rooms, plexiglass at points of sale, it might be fewer shoppers in store and control over how many shoppers can enter a store, so it will take some time before we get back to normal, but as we say, safety really is the most important thing in the short term. it s interesting you say it will take some time to get back to normal and we ve all seen the large queues outside supermarkets and food shops and you do wonder, are people going to be prepared to queue in that way to get inside to perhaps go and buy a pair of trousers? there are some green shoots in other countries. we ve seen in austria where a number of fashion retailers open several weeks ago that actually they sold better than anticipated numbers in their in store sales in the weeks following that relaxation of limitations, so those high hopes the same will happen in the uk and asa the same will happen in the uk and as a nation we have been penned up for some time now and before this all happened 70% of retail sales we re all happened 70% of retail sales were made in stores, so although it won t return to that in the next three or six months, we hope that people will go out and support the high street once they are allowed to. clearly as you say, safety is a worry. what other concerns do you have? the pandemic hasn t affected all categories equally, so it will be how brands adapt to this coming crisis, sorry, to the relaxation of the rules, so safety is the main factor, and the other will be how different kinds of retail adapt, so we ve talked about fashion retailers not opening the changing rooms, but how does that apply to cosmetics and how does that apply to cosmetics and how does that apply to cosmetics and how does it apply to others? we are working with the industry to make sure there is consistent guidance across all retail so they are ready to reopen injune. across all retail so they are ready to reopen in june. good to talk to you and thanks forjoining us on bbc news. thank you very much. countries across europe are beginning to open themselves up to foreign visitors, as infection rates continue to fall. spain says foreign travellers will be able to visit the country from the beginning ofjuly without going into quarantine. the spanish foreign minister said the country was looking forward to welcoming tourists back now the worst of the coronavirus pandemic was behind it. 80 million visitors travel to spain each year, 20 million from the uk. meanwhile, greece has taken another major step towards re starting its tourism industry, opening its islands to domestic visitors for the first time in months. a team of doctors from mainland greece were among the first visitors to the remote island of sikinos, in the aegean sea. our correspondent quentin sommerville accompanied them on their trip. on our 100 mile plus journey, these athens doctors are the first visitors to sikinos in months. the greek islands are accepting visitors again. the mayor of the island welcomes them ashore. we re greeted with elbow bumps instead of handshakes. there are enough coronavirus tests for whoever wants them. we do know that, so far, there haven t been any cases on the remote islands, but there hasn t been any testing also. there are only 250 people on this island, and none of them have been tested for covid 19 until today. the village was built on a hilltop to safeguard it from pirates. they re hoping its isolation continues to offer protection. greece has only had 172 deaths from covid 19, and is leaving lockdown faster than expected. foreign tourists still have to undergo quarantine. terry harris has been living here for a0 years. i came here and i isolated myself for two weeks in my house and the lady from the supermarket flora she delivers everything, so they brought up, on a donkey, water and any supplies i wanted. at the temporary test centre, father theodorus leads the way. these tests are essential as greece prepares to welcome back foreign tourists in the coming months. today is the first day that everything comes back to normal, including restaurants and all the borders and ships, so we are concerned about everything being planned in the best possible way. greece is emerging from the pandemic earlier than others not unscathed, but in better shape than most. isolation is a way of life here, but so, too, is tourism. the health of the islanders depends on both. quentin sommerville, bbc news, the southern aegean. earlier this morning quentin sommerville explained the situation in greece. (sot) greece is accelerating its efforts coming out of the lockdown because its efforts in the pandemic have been better than expected and that all important been better than expected and that all importa nt tourism season, been better than expected and that all important tourism season, in july and august, that is when this island really makes its bread and butter for the rest of the year, so we got here yesterday for the first reopening to domestic tourists. the island was hardly overwhelmed. a few people arrived on the ferry, those doctors you saw in my report, but they are hoping that these initial first steps will get them back on the road to the tourist industry that they so rely on. let me show you a bit more of the island, if you can bear it. these tavernas, for the last couple of months, everything has been closed. bars and restau ra nts has been closed. bars and restaurants were only open for ta keaway restaurants were only open for takeaway business and as of yesterday they opened for business properly and you can sit down and have a retsi na properly and you can sit down and have a retsina and some moussaka
the world health organization has said there is no scientific evidence so said there is no scientific evidence so far but that it can treat covid 19 or be effective against it. anecdotal reports were that it might be beneficial. but those trials have been stopped, suggesting the drug could cause heart problems and might even increase deaths among covid 19 patients. the executive group has implemented a temporary pause of the hydroxychloroquine arm within the solidarity trial while the data is reviewed by the data monitoring board. the who says the decision to suspend trials was precautionary measure. . however, it said patients taking hydroxychloroquine for establish reasons such as malaria should continue to do so. in england, two people have died in separate incidents along the cornish coast on bank holiday monday. a teenage girl died after a boat overturned at wadebridge. a man was pulled from the water at padstow by a member of the public but was pronounced dead at the scene. the royal national lifeboats institution said it had its busiest weekend so far this year despite warnings that there were no lifeguards on patrol and is calling for the government to restrict access to the coast until lifeguard patrols are back on beaches. the rnli chief executive mark dowiejoins me now from salcolmbe in devon. before we come onto what you want to happen, give us a sense of how busy you have been across the coast? over the weekend, we had about 120 lifeboat launches. that is way more than a normal weekend. certainly along the strip of coast you just referred to, all four lifeboats near those incidents were out during the course of yesterday, so a very busy weekend indeed. so you have written to the public, not only do you want them to heed your safety advice, but i may write you re also calling for people to stay away from beaches? the situation we find ourselves in is very unusual. normally we would have trained something like 1600 lifeguards for our 2a0 beaches that we lifeguards use around the coast, and those lifeguards would be being rolled out across the beaches as the season start, and several of the beachesin season start, and several of the beaches in cornwall would have had lifeguards by now in the normal course. but because of the restrictions, we were unable to train any lifeguards throughout the period of lockdown and we are now having to deal with a situation where we are training lifeguards in new protocols, to make sure that they themselves are safe on beaches when they go on to provide the essential lifeguard cover. it is what we are able to do now, right now, is bring a service onto roughly 70 of the 2a0 beaches that we cover and that will happen over the course of the next couple of weeks. we hope 15 beaches, and we are certain 15 beaches will open over the course of the next few days, or will begin to be being life guarded, including eight in cornwall. and as the situation, depending on whether we see a second viral spike or if the local authorities are comfortable with lifeguards being back on the beaches, is the situation develops we will look to add to that service through the course of the summer. but i m looking at your letter, and you are saying that we are asking the government to restrict access to the government to restrict access to the coast until we have lifeguard patrol is back on beaches, as you just explain, and i suppose the difficulty is you have got fine weather and they are desperate to enjoy freedom after weeks of lockdown. clearly people have been cooped up for a long time and live by the coast and they have been able to go to the coast through this period because they not have the same difficulties with travel restrictions. what we are really keen to see is there is strong government support for getting the water safety messages to people, to really make sure that people are super really make sure that people are super aware really make sure that people are super aware of the dangers that they put themselves in when they go to the sea to see to have that experience and that people just generally use common sense, keep theirfamilies safe generally use common sense, keep their families safe and don t use things like inflatables and follow all of our water safety messaging. the government hopes that giving all of those messages would be giving very helpful. mark dowie, rnli chief executive, thanks for talking to us on bbc news and joining us from devon. hello this is bbc news with rebecca jones. the headlines: a junior minister has resigned over the handling of the borisjohnson top adviser‘s travels during lockdown. it comes as other uk government ministers rally to support dominic cummings they say they understand public concern, but insist he acted reasonably when making trips during lockdown. almost all shops in england will be able to reopen from 15thjune as part of plans to further ease the lockdown. the world health organization halts trials of an anti malarial drug as a potential treatment for covid 19 as it s found it could cause heart problems. hong kong s leader has rejected suggestions that china s proposed new security laws could erode freedoms in the territory. we travelled to greece with a team of doctors who are setting up virus testing were no coronavirus insta nces testing were no coronavirus instances have been reported. we re going to edinburgh for the daily coronavirus briefing from scotland s first minister, nicola sturgeon. a total of 1200 patients are in hospital with confirmed or suspected covid 19 covid 19. that is a decrease of 69 from yesterday, and 16 in the number of confirmed cases. a total of 36 people last night were in intensive care with confirmed or suspected covid 19, that is a decrease of a cents yesterday. i am to confirm today that since the arch, a total of 3589 patients who had tested positive and required hospitalisation have been able not to leave hospital. unfortunately, in the last day, 18 deaths have been registered of patients who had been confirmed through a test of having the virus. they take the total number of deaths in scotland under that measurement to 2291. yesterday was a bank holiday and registration may have been lower, so that should be taken into account when considering today? figures. each one of these is notjust a figure. each one is an individual whose loss is being grieved by many. i want to send my condolences to everyone who has lost a loved one to this virus. let me also express my gratitude as they always do to your health and ca re they always do to your health and care workers who continue to do an incredible, exceptionaljob in the most difficult of circumstances. today, i want to take a little bit of time to focus on the launch later this week of nhs scotland s test, trace and isolate programme, which is called test and protect in scotland, you will see the logo for it on the screen behind me. from the end of this week, through test and protect, anyone who suspects that they have covid 19, anyone who has they have covid 19, anyone who has the symptoms that we advise you to be aware of, will be tested. if you test positive, your close contacts will be traced and advised to isolate for 1a days. the aim of test and protect is to quickly identify cases of the virus and then act to break the chains of transmission. you may recall that on the ath of may we published our initial plans for this programme and i can confirm today that the system will go live in every single one of scotland s 1a health board areas on thursday of this week. test and protect will be an extremely important tool for us in the months ahead. it will help us suppress the virus while we slowly ease lockdown restrictions. i need to stress today that it will only be effective if we all play our part. today, i want to briefly set out with a capacity of the new system will be at the point of launch and how this will develop. i will set out how you, as an individual, your workplace and your employer can support us in making it work. firstly, we said that to lunch test and protect nationally we needed the ability to conduct more than 15,000 tests a day. i can confirm that this capacity is now in place. that capacity is now in place. that capacity is now in place. that capacity is being delivered through a combination of nhs labs, academic partners, the scottish national blood transfusion service, and the lycos lab in glasgow. secondly, we said we would enhance and extend use of the software that public health already useful contact tracing in relation other infectious diseases. that software has been piloted in fife, lanarkshire and highland over the past week and i can confirm it will be operational in every health board by thursday. thirdly, we said that we would aim to have 2,000 contact tracers are available by the end of this month. i should say, based on our current demand estimates, we assess that around 700 will actually be needed in the early phase. however, ican will actually be needed in the early phase. however, i can confirm that by the end of the month we will have a pool of around 2,000 to draw on if necessary. this is a system that will operate at a scale not seen before in scotland. of course, we have had testing and contact tracing before, but it is substantially increasing the scale. therefore, over the first couple of weeks it will need to betterjoin, but introducing it at the same time as we ta ke introducing it at the same time as we take the first very cautious steps out of lockdown gives us the opportunity to address any operational issues ahead of a potentially more substantial easing of restrictions at the next review date in three weeks. over the next few weeks, we will also add enhancements to the system. the technology used by contact tracers will be in place from the start, but we will also add a digital platform to allow people who test positive to enter details of their contacts online. we will also continue to build testing capacity because we need more than the 15,500 in future, and we will work over the next few weeks to make access to testing more locally accessible. we will keep you updated on all of that. let me outline what we are asking you, the public, to do. let me stress that just like lockdown itself, really, this is something that will only have the desired effect if we all do what is required. it cannot be seen as optional. to make sure we all understand what is required of us, i can tell you that a public awareness campaign will start later on this week. during june information will be delivered to every household across the country. i want today to set out some of the basics. firstly, as of thursday, we are asking that if you have any of the symptoms of covid 19, that is a calf, temperature, or loss of taste or smell, that you take immediate steps to book a test. please don t wait to see if you feel better after a day or two. time really is of the essence, so or two. time really is of the essence, so get in touch as soon as you experience symptoms. how do you do that? you can go to nhs informed doctor scott, or if you can get online, you can call nhs 2a on 0800 0282816. online, you can ask for a test for yourself or someone else do you live with and took it at one of the drive through testing centres or mobile testing units. for some there will be the option of a home testing kits. as i said earlier, we will be working in the coming weeks to further expand local access to testing. if you can go online, call nhs 2a. 08000282816. we will speak to an adviser who will go through questions with you and booking in for a test. while you wait for your test and the result, it is essential that you and your household self isolate, which is what we advise you to do already if you have symptoms. that means staying at home at all times with the exception of going out for the test. you should not go to the shops come out for exercise or see anybody else. in line with current guidance, the person with symptoms should isolate for seven days from the start of the symptoms. other members of the household should isolate for 1a days. if any of them start to display symptoms during that time they will also go through the testing process. if your test come back negative, you and your household can enter a solution at that point. however, if you are contacted that point. however, if you are co nta cted to that point. however, if you are contacted to be told that you have tested positive, you will be asked at that stage for details of people that you have been in contact with. the definition of a contact as people within your household, people you have had face to face contact with and people you have been within two metres of for a period of 15 minutes or more. the contact tracers who take the details will then guide you through that. i want to take the opportunity now to assure you that your privacy will be respected at all times during this process. the information you provide will be held securely within the nhs and it will be used only for the purposes of tracing your contacts. let me be clear, it will not be used by the scottish government. we will not have access to the information. all of the work of identifying and tracing contacts will be done within scotland? nhs. tracing contacts will be done within scotland ? nhs. let tracing contacts will be done within scotland? nhs. let me turn briefly to what you do if you receive a call from a contact address to say you have been in contact with someone who has tested positive. it is no exaggeration to say that how any of us respond at that point will be vital in breaking the chains of transmission of the virus and stopping spread. if you get that call, you will be asked to self isolate immediately. our success of test and protect will depend on all of us trusting this advice and, for the sake of ourselves and each other, agreeing to abide by it. if you are at work, the advice will be to immediately head home. we are publishing guidance today for employers, making clear that they should support any member of staff who is asked to self isolate through test and protect. if you are well, don t have symptoms yourself, and you are able to work from home, then your employer may well expect you to do that, but they should not ask you to go into work. the scottish government is also in contact with the uk government to ensure that employment rights and entitlement to benefits, including statutory sick pay, take account of the fact that people might be off work or unable to attend appointments through no fault of their own. we have published today general advice for anyone who is asked to self isolate. this is something that over the months ahead could happen to any of us are more than one occasion. this guidance includes hygiene advice for your home, advice for other people in your household, what to do if you ca re in your household, what to do if you care for somebody, and what to do if you need help accessing food and medicine, or even accommodation. it also suggests how all of us can make some preparations in advance. i will run “ some preparations in advance. i will run i some preparations in advance. i will run i know! some preparations in advance. i will run i know i havejust run through a lot of information there, but don t worry, there will be a public awareness campaign starting later this week and we will take steps to ensure that everyone knows what we are asking you to do. this isa what we are asking you to do. this is a big thing, it really matters, therefore we will be careful in making sure that the different steps are well understood. for now, let me leave you with these points. test unprotected is a really important tool for us in the period ahead. the more effective it is, the more of the lockdown restrictions we will be able to left. however, and this is an important point, although it is vital, it can t do all of the work of suppressing the virus on its own. all of us will continue to have a vital role to play in our everyday lives. that means, even as we is locked on, physical distance and, good hygiene and following appropriate advice will continue to be essential. so too will all of us doing what is asked to fast. testing protect will only be effective if we all come forward for testing when we have symptoms, and if we all agree to self isolate when we are asked to do so. it will only work if the government steps up to give you the support you need to do so. in short, test and protect will require exactly the same spirit of solidarity and care for each other as lockdown has done. it will be our collective national endeavour. people will need the help of family, friends, colleagues, employers, volu nteers friends, colleagues, employers, volunteers will have a part to play in supporting people through test and protect. government will have to ensure the right capacity, resources and support is in place. all of us will have to agree to make sacrifices for the common good, just as we have been doing in these past weeks. in short, and i guess this is the nub of what test unprotected is intending to do, by agreeing that some of us will have to stay at home at times when we have symptoms, test positive will have been in contact with someone who test positive, we will gradually be able to move away from a situation that we have now where everybody is being asked to stay at home all of the time. as i said earlier, we will make much more information available in the days and weeks to come, but i wanted to give you a preview of what is a significant initiative. let me leave you with the most important message. if you have symptoms of covid 19 used to go online to nhs in form or call nhs 2a and book a test straightaway. for now, all of us must continue to stick with the lockdown measures. please let stay at home for now except for essential purposes. when you delete a more than two metres away from others and to meet up with people from households other than your own. you should wear a face covering if you are in alnwick an enclosed place, such as a shopper public transport. that will be covered in the transport transition plan that will be outlined in the scottish parliament later this afternoon. we should continue to wash your hands thoroughly and regularly and if you or someone thoroughly and regularly and if you or someone else in your household has symptoms of covid 19, right now, even before test and protect, you should stay home completely. these actions are vital to slow the spread of the virus even more, to continue to protect the nhs and save lives. my to protect the nhs and save lives. my thanks once again to all of you for your patience, forbearance and willingness to make the sacrifices for the good of all of us. i have taken a bit of time today to go through that, such as the importance of test and protect. i will not go straight to questions from journalists. i am joined straight to questions from journalists. iam joined by straight to questions from journalists. i am joined by the chief medical officer and the chief nursing officer who will help me to a nswer nursing officer who will help me to answer questions. first up, i will go to lan campbell from the bbc. the bbc poll today suggests that 70% of people think we went into lockdown too late. there is probably much end up too late. there is probably much end up all that you agree with, but i wonder do you agree with the majority who think we went into lockdown too late? i think it is a perfectly legitimate and understandable question. in the fullness of time we will want to look back and take a very hard look at what we did right and what might have differently had we known then what we know now about the virus. i don t shy away from that. what i do say is that we took the decisions we thought were best at the time based on the knowledge and information we had. we will have made mistakes. every government in the world will have made mistakes and it is important for the future that we are candid about that when the time comes to look at that properly. all i would say in addition to that, is over the weeks i have stood here taken questions, i have been asked questions about her past approach that come from both ends of the spectrum. i have been asked a question did we go into lockdown too late, and equally is there any point of lockdown at all? we had the swedish expert opinion put to you saying that lockdown is pointless. we ta ke saying that lockdown is pointless. we take the best decisions we can at the time and try to learn as we go. in the fullness of time there will be scrutiny and enquiry into what went right and what we could have done better. i am absolutely in agreement that that is important and will welcome that. hopefully, we will welcome that. hopefully, we will not have another pandemic for a long time to come, but we may well have them in the future so it is important that we learned lessons as we come out of this one. is it possible to say why, whilst it is important to have the r number blow one on the way out of lockdown, why it was allowed to get between four and six on the way in?” it was allowed to get between four and six on the way in? i will hand over to greco there. you say i like to, we got to a situation where we had widespread community transmission of the virus. if we go back to the press updates at that time, you would have heard me and the chief medical officer talking about that at the time and that guided our move from the four stage plan, that planted all four nations of the uk published at the outset, the tickets from content into a delay of the virus. that was about community transmission. these are judgments we made. all of the steps we have taken all along have been about trying to slow down, firstly contain, then slow down the spread of the virus and that will continue to be the case. i have talked for more than two months here about the importance of slowing the spread of the virus. that has driven us. it is hardly surprising that the r number was much higher in those early stages because there was much more in the population susceptible to the virus at that point. when you look at the way the virus was introduced to the uk with multiple introductions across the country into communities, some of which were easily detected, some of which were not detected, just because there wasn t the knowledge about the type of symptoms at that point in time that people made experience. it is no surprise to me or anybody that at that point in time the r number was very much greater in the united kingdom. the important thing is, with the measures we are taking, it has with the measures we are taking, it ha s a llowe d with the measures we are taking, it has allowed that r number to be greatly reduced, so we got a sense of control over the way the were spreading. as i sat in parliament last week, the handling of this virus is not a popularity contest, it is trying to do the right things based on the information we have got. there is strong support for the government? phased and careful and cautious approach coming out of lockdown. i don t take that for granted. it is why i think it is so important that at every stage of the process i here and explain to you why i am acting asking you to do these things. i never take that support for granted because we are asking everybody to do really difficult things and it is important that we continue to have that open conversation about it. colin white from stv? is there any improvement in the speed at which test results come back? secondly, what is your reaction to the resignation today of douglas ross? on the turnaround time for testing, we are seeing reductions in the turnaround time for tests, but we are trying to get that even lower than it is, because asi that even lower than it is, because as i said, speeders of the essence. from the point somebody. phones up goes online with symptoms, that is why a sad don t wait, we all know what we can be like when we feel a bit unwell. you might decide to wait a few hours or a day to see if you feel better but it is important you don t do that. you book a test straightaway, get tested as quickly as possible, then the processing of that test is done really quickly so the contact tracing process can also be done quickly. we are trying to reduce that as much as possible. looking at the turnaround times for tests from the beginning when we started testing compared to now, we have been able to make a huge impact on the duration of reporting for our test results to be given back to a patient. we are still exploring ways we can improve that further and i expect over the coming weeks and months we will refine new techniques in terms of how we can do that, techno samples through the processes ina techno samples through the processes in a safe and efficient way so that we can further reduce the amount of time it takes for the whole testing process from beginning to end. the lab part of the process is only one aspect, it is also how you sample it, how you get it to the lab and how you return the result back to the patient. that all has to be factored into the whole duration of these tests. fair play to douglas ross, on the second part of question. the majority of the population, i expect, got that the actions of dominic cummings were not a cce pta ble actions of dominic cummings were not acceptable under retrospective rewriting of the rules to somehow justify that is not acceptable either. he has taken the principal position of resigning from the uk government and we will see whether others decide to follow suit. i have had my say on dominic cummings and i don t intend to say very much more about it. my views are well known. my about it. my views are well known. my focus right now, as it has been for the last couple of months, is to continue to tackle this crisis and things like test and protect our massive pieces of work for any government and my job massive pieces of work for any government and myjob is to stay focused on all of that. james matthews from sky? thanks, first minister. scotland ? matthews from sky? thanks, first minister. scotland? universities and places of higher education speak of their economic troubles, economic armageddon, they say they are in a serious state and they stress the importance of tuition fees. would you guarantee you will not scrap tuition fees? i will guarantee that i will not introduce tuition fees. we have free tuition in scotland and i don t want to see students having to pay tuition and i don t think transferring the real financial challenges that universities face onto the shoulders of students or graduates is the way to do it. university graduates, who often earn more, pay more through income tax. we believe that news conference there from nicola sturgeon, scotland s first minister. a comprehensive update from her, including a significant announcement about the launch of the test and protect programme in scotland. basically, anyone who suspects that they have covert 19 covid 19, are being advised to take a test. if you test positive, your close contacts will be contacted and advised to isolate. nicola sturgeon sang the system will go live on thursday and there will be more details announced before then. i also just want to bring you a spot of breaking news from mclaren. it has announced it will cut 1200 jobs from its operations. that represents around a quarter of its workforce of more than a,000. mclaren, one of formula 1 s most historic names, thejobs will be spread across all its operations. let s catch up with the weather. yesterday, temperatures reached 27 degrees in teddington in greater london. i expect london will also see the highest temperatures today. more cloud in the sky than in recent days, particularly so across wales and northern england. this line of cloud is just what is left of a very wea k cloud is just what is left of a very weak all front. no rain left on it, just a little bit of patchy cloud drifting southwards. overnight, we could well see some low cloud form across the hills and coast of south west england weather could be a few mist and fog patches developing. it is a mild lie, particularly in the south of england and wales, 1a degrees in cardiff at the end of the night. fresher air for northern england, northern ireland and scotland. over the next few days, that warmer air in the south will push northwards, so there will be a warming trend over the next few days. wednesday, most of england and wales will have a sunny start. more in the way of cloud for northern ireland and scotland. it could be an odd spot of rain in northern ireland, but not amounting to much. in the best of the sunshine in england and wales, temperatures could reach the high 20s in a few areas. whereas, for scotland, northern ireland and the far north of scotland, the high teens. the warmer areas on its of scotland, the high teens. the warmer areas on its way and on thursday, this rain moves out of the way and the warm air will push n in the afternoon. sun chang for england and wales, sunny day for northern ireland. a small amount of ram for the farnworth of scotland. temperature is 20 degrees in belfast, 22 and edinburgh. the heat is really concentrated across england and we are is, where we are likely to see up to 27 degrees in the warmest areas. for friday, we are all in the warmer air. the onshore wind will keep our eastern coastal areas a little bit fresher. the warmest weather and lands. in edinburgh, up to 2a degrees as we finished the week. i find one that we care. on into the weekend, the fine weather is set to continue. temperatures widely into the loo or mid 20s. that is your weather. following the actions of the prime minister s chief aide. junior minister douglas ross says he s stepping down because of the government s defence of dominic cummings and his family trip during lockdown. we ll be getting the latest reaction from westminster. also this lunchtime weeks before they re back at work, retailers say they re worried about how they ll cope with stringent new restrictions, if shoppers do come back. before this all happened, 70% of retail sales were made in stores, so although it won t return to that in the next sort of three to six months, we re hoping that people will go out and support their high street. heading in the right direction the trend in deaths from coronavirus continues downward, with the lowest rate for six weeks.
this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. a fifth night of protests in minneapolis, following the death of george floyd, a black man, in police custody. protestors and officers clash again despite a curfew. the governor urges people to stay at home. it is very clear on this, this is a very simple order, there is a curfew issued by the mayors and backed by the state that you should not be on the state that you should not be on the streets tonight and i will leave it at that and if you decide to make the decision to go out tonight, the assumption is you are out to join the decision to go out tonight, the assumption is you are out tojoin in the destruction. protests spread to at least 30 other us cities including tampa in florida, where tear gas has been fired. president trump blames looters, and left wing radicals for the unrest. after 10 weeks at home, more than two million people in england who ve been shielding during lockdown are told they can go outdoors. how dutch classrooms have been managing coronavirus, but governors of english primary schools say all children shouldn t have to return before summer holidays. three, two, one, zero. ignition. lift off of the falcon 9 and cruise dragon. and, a new era for space travel as the first ever commercial rocket carrying humans into space is successfully launched. hello and welcome to audiences in the uk and around the world. across the united states curfews are now in place in at least 13 cities, but they haven t stopped more and more protestors taking to the streets for the fifth night in a row. they are angry after the death on monday of george floyd, an african american man from minneapolis, who died after a police officer knelt on his neck. president trump has blamed far left groups and anarchists for the violence. our north america correspondent david willis reports. this was the night america rose up in protest. angry, destructive protest aimed at the police and their treatment of racial minorities. curfews were imposed in more than a dozen american cities, but they were ignored. many of those protests had started peacefully. we can t breathe the mantra of a movement that has taken george floyd s final words and turned them into a rallying cry. i cannot breathe. mr floyd was captured on video gasping for breath and pleading for his life. the police officer seen with his knee on mr floyd s neck is now facing murder and manslaughter charges but that s done little to abate the anger and calls are growing for the three other officers involved in his arrest to also be brought tojustice. in minneapolis, the state s governor had promised a muscular, no nonsense response after five days of rioting that left burned out buildings and ransacked stores. but despite activating thousands more national guard officers and firing tear gas grenades, the demonstrations continued, along with the violence. it was a similar story in the country s second largest city, los angeles, where some likened these scenes of unrest to the rodney king riots which razed part of the city to the ground nearly 30 years ago. like george floyd, rodney king was a victim of police brutality caught on camera. police fired rubber bullets after protesters ignored the mayor s desperate plea for calm. president trump said the us military was ready, willing, and able to deploy if the unrest continued. as he hunkered down in the white house, protesters rallied for a second nightjust outside the gates. a potent cocktail of factors are at play here. the coronavirus pandemic has thrown a0 million americans out of work and trashed a once buoyant economy. people have been cooped up indoors for months as a result. some knowing it may be months if not years before they get theirjobs back. david willis, bbc news, los angeles. lucy sherriff is a journalist on the scene in downtown la in the last hour, she spoke to my colleague karin giannone about how the situation is unfolding there. during the peaceful protest, there were still some individuals who were throwing rocks and glass bottles a nd other missiles at the police, but they very much where in the minority. unfortunately, around, i would say, 6pm, there was a curfew announced for 8pm and after that, things definitely started to go downhill. there was a huge fire that was started on an intersection near here and i witnessed three orfour small, here and i witnessed three or four small, three or four small, independent stores being trashed, looted. i actually spoke to a woman who owned one of the stores, she is an african american woman and she was shouting at them, you are stealing from black people and it was quite an upsetting sight to watch, actually, because she was just in absolute bits over the fact that a protest that is supposed to be aboutjustice for african america ns has turned into something like this. lucy, i do not know if you are able to flip the phone around and give us a sense of the street you are on and what has been going on? yes, so in front of me, i do not know if you can make out but i cannot unfortunately get that close, but there are about ten men lined up against a building being arrested. i do not know if you can see that. yes, we can see that very clearly. the building has been completely graffitied and then there is a burnt out carjust next to those police cars and over the street over here there are a few people the other side of the street putting up wooden boards and you can see here as well, these wooden boards have been put up in anticipation of what, i assume, is going to be more of the same tomorrow. you showed us what was going on behind you. a number of people who have been arrested, lined up. just describe the area, this is right by beverly hills, you say? this is an upmarket area with affluent businesses? yes, it is indeed. and actually, i saw, i did not see it myself, but i saw. a video posted. yes, sorry they are just telling me i am going to be arrested if i do not go home. lucy, if you do need to get out of the way of anyone. i showed them my press badge, so they re 0k. earlier i saw a video of a mercedes car showroom being looted and people were driving mercedes off the lots. so, that is kind of where it has got to today. right, and we have been looking at pictures of a bank on fire, we saw a store being looted, if you are ok to continue talking, is there any sense you can get from where you are, how widespread this is or how it restricted to certain areas?” widespread this is or how it restricted to certain areas? i have heard, so i know downtown has been a bad today as well, especially in the evening. the whole of melrose, i was there earlier, there was a huge fire, there were maybe five or six fire, there were maybe five or six fire trucks and i was there for about an hour watching the fire and they were trying to put that out. there is a big shopping mall called beverly centre and that has been looted. all around this area, that i would say, if you miles, it is being looted at the moment. more than two million medically vulnerable people in england, who have been shielding at home since the start of lockdown, will be allowed to spend time outdoors from tomorrow. the updated government guidance means they can go outside with someone they live with, or meet a person from another household if they live alone. our political correspondent chris mason reports. this is what the beach in bournemouth looked like yesterday and, in london, this was regent s park and this was primrose hill. but not everyone s been able to take advantage of some of the restrictions easing in recent weeks. the clinically most vulnerable to the virus, who were asked to shield, have been stuck at home all day every day for around ten weeks. this morning, for the more than 2 million people in england in this situation, big news. from tomorrow you can head out with others in your household or, if you live on your own, with one other person from another household. why, though, is this now deemed safe? ministers say it s because fewer people have the virus, meaning the average chance of catching it is down from one in a0 to one in 1000. the big challenge for the government and for all of us is managing the risk posed by the virus alongside tentatively tiptoeing back towards normality. what do you say to those scientists and others who say that you re easing the lockdown in england too quickly? i believe and you ll recall i was at the podium when the disease activity was very high in the uk and i said it was a very dangerous moment. i believe this is also a very dangerous moment. professor van tam knows how to turn a phrase and make a point. he was also asked directly about dominic cummings, the prime minister s most senior adviser who, among other things, drove 50 miles to test his eyesight during the lockdown. the rules are clear and they have always been clear. in my opinion they are for the benefit of all and in my opinion they apply to all. 0uch. the prime minister s team had nothing to say when i asked for their response to this. instead, theirfocus is on how more people in england can slowly edge out of the lockdown. chris mason, bbc news. let s get more on this now with phil anderson, who s head of policy at the ms society. hejoins me from north london. many people suffering from ms are amongst those 2 million people who have been shielding. will this news that restrictions are being eased on them, will that come as a relief?|j them, will that come as a relief?” think it will come as a relief to some but we are hearing a lot of confusion. people have spent in many cases over two months being told not to leave the house because of the very severe risk of coronavirus and this is. a lot of people wanting to know about the evidence behind this decision for doctor they would wa nt to this decision for doctor they would want to hear more about the scientific guidance behind this, guidance? you only have to imagine living at home without being able to go out for 60, 70 days fearing for your life from an infection knowing. your life from an infection knowing that you can go outside, it will be ready for some people but others will be worried about the idea. how ha rd will be worried about the idea. how hard has it been for those people psychologically to live like that? i think the prime minister was saying pretty much in captivity? we know about one in three people with ms have said their mental health is suffering during the pandemic for that there is another 130,000 living with ms in the uk and many were suffering with loneliness before the pandemic so what we are seeing is that the current situation is exasperating what was already a very serious problem for our community. in some ways, everybody who has been shielding will welcome this, but at the same time, they are going to be understandably nervous. yes, understandably nervous. yes, understand be nervous and i think also really looking to see this as a first step in a wider step of support for people who are shielding. it is great to go outside but we need people who are shielding prioritised for nhs services, especially mental health services, and to have safe ways to get other health care that by definition they need by being in the extremely vulnerable group in the first place. thank you for talking to us. thousands of children in england will return to school tomorrow for the first time since march. nurseries, pre school and reception classes are allowed to restart as well as years one and six. but there are fears that letting children return to class could result in a surge of new cases. the exact rules will vary, but there are examples to follow in europe. the netherlands was one of the first countries to send pupils back and anna holligan has been to see what the impact has been at one school in north brabant, one of the country s worst hit regions. can you guess what it is yet? six months ago we had never heard of it. now six year olds can sketch coronavirus molecules from memory. translation: little bacteria bugs that make you sick. that s corona. translation: i know about it from the news, my girlfriends, and the teacher. for these pupil at springboard primary going back to school comes with five new rules. 0nly pupils and teachers are allowed inside. scrub every time you enter the building. there s one of these pumps at every entrance. use shields designed to reduce the spread of germs. year groups must attend on different days. in some schools they ve split the classes to reduce the number of children in the building. 0lder pupils from age six must stay 1.5 metres away from their teachers. these are lessons they hope will save lives. for the younger ones, practically nothing s changed. but teachers like miss daisy are working behind the scenes. i think it s very important for the children that everything is as normal as possible. we have some new things, new rules into the schools, but the most important is that they are happy and they get comfort and they can be a child. this feels unusually relaxed, especially compared to elsewhere in europe. in belgium where the teachers are wearing visors. in denmark where the children can t hug their best friends. but here in the netherlands, they believe the benefits of giving children this freedom outweigh the risks. at least 99 dutch primary school teachers have tested positive for covid 19 so far this month. they re still monitoring the infection rates. so there s hospital admissions, there s icu admission. the issue with these two measurements is that it s quite late in the chain of, you know, events after an infection occurs, so we d rather look at things like the number of gp visits, the number of positive tests, because that s a little bit earlier in that same chain. but in all these different sources we don t see an effect of the school opening. every one of these pupils told us they re happy to be back in class. something to celebrate. they re starting to find a way to live and learn through the pandemic. anna holligan, bbc news, den bosch. here in the uk, rachel tomlinson is the head teacher of barrowford primary in nelson, lancashire. a decision has been made for her school not to open tomorrow. thanks for being with us. why are you not opening tomorrow? lancashire cou nty you not opening tomorrow? lancashire county council and director of public have issued a statement on wednesday to say that the five tests had not been met locally in anxious and it was not safe for schools to open from monday in lancashire does micro not been met locally in lancashire. do you think that is the right decision? in terms of making decisions about public how that should be public health experts and not head teachers, so i m quite happy to be informed about public health decisions by public health experts. what are your thoughts on how hard it is going to be, if and when children do come back to your school, let s hope it is not too long, but how will they maintain that social distancing? do you worry about the dangers of having kids backin about the dangers of having kids back in your school? we have always been open for children of the key workers and other children, so we have had up to 20 children in every day since the 23rd of march. in some senses, we are not worried about expanding that more children because it will just be expanding that more children because it willjust be the same process, children will be in small bubbles and we have got lots of things in place, as in the clip from the netherlands really, hand sanitiser is, stations are to clean hands, desks, to do all of those things. so ina sense, desks, to do all of those things. so in a sense, i think it isjust about trying to keep the school as normal within those measures to keep eve ryo ne within those measures to keep everyone safe and hygienic. but there have been quite a lot of concerns expressed by teachers and by teaching unions. yes, and i think those are public health concerns and i think once the public health concerns, once we know that we can operate in a controlled environment where it is safe for children and staff to be together with those extra measures in place, then i think teachers will be really excited to get back and starts teaching again. for the children, having missed this huge chunk of the education, albeit at quite an early stage of their education, how important do you think that will be, how disruptive will that be to their education? i think the most important thing when they come back to school it to really focus on mental health and well being and make sure they are ok. make sure that they feel safe enough to learn again. children are very resilient and ina again. children are very resilient and in a context where they feel safe, they will learn, that is what children do best. they learned that thatis children do best. they learned that that is what they are made for really. good to talk to you and good luck. the third holiest site of islam, the al aqsa mosque injerusalem has re opened after being closed for two months because of the coronavirus. worshippers are now required to wear face masks and have to follow social distancing rules. the mosque, located in occupied eastjerusalem, closed its doors in late march as the epidemic took hold. two us astronauts are due to arrive at the international space station later today, after being launched into orbit on the first manned mission by a private company spacex. the rocket is the first to carry a crew from american soil in nearly a decade. jane 0 brien watched the launch at cape canaveral in florida. three, two, one, zero. ignition. liftoff of the falcon 9 and cruise dragon. go nasa, go spacex. godspeed! as the countdown reached single digits, the clouds broke, the sky cleared and the first commercial rocket to carry humans into space finally took off. astronauts bob behnken and doug hurley are now in orbit, heading for the international space station. travelling at 17,000 miles an hour, they should arrive in as much time as it takes to fly from new york to sydney. right now, everything continuing to look good. the astronauts are the first to launch from us soil in almost a decade, after nasa retired its shuttle programme. since then, russia has provided transport to the international space station. the multibillion dollar deal with spacex is intended to reduce the cost of human space flight, including landing on the moon and eventually taking people to mars. i think this is something that should really get people, i mean, right in the heart of anyone who has any spirit of exploration. yeah, really quite overcome with emotion this day. it s kind of hard to talk, frankly. been 18 years working towards this goal, so. it s hard to believe that it s happened. those of us who saw the spectacular and unforgettable lift off this afternoon watched more than an act of history, we watched an act of heroism. we wish them godspeed on theirjourney and as one proud nation, we salute their fearless service, thank you, thank you. applause. thank you. the shuttle s reusable falcon 9 rocket has already been retrieved at sea by a drone ship. radio: i m going to kind of do a side spin. when the capsule returns to earth, splashing down off the coast of florida, it too will be recovered and reused. after all the nail biting excitement of the launch itself, it s easy to forget that the astronauts still have some work to do, but spacex mission control says everything s going well so far and they ve already carried out their first manual flight tests. jane 0 brien, bbc news, at the kennedy space center. garrett reisman is a veteran of several space shuttle and international space station missions and the only astronaut who s acted as a consultant to spacex to help build the new rocket. he told us why this mission is so special. first and foremost, this is the first time in nine years that we have launched our american astronauts, nasa astronauts, on our own vehicle. we have been paying for rides from the russians to get our astronauts up to the space station, so having the capability domestically again is huge. 0n so having the capability domestically again is huge. on one hand, we want to keep them there to do work but on the other hand we wa nt to do work but on the other hand we want to bring them back, because until they come back, we get all the data back and complete the mission, the certification process is not complete. the thing about this is, we can use the same vehicle, the rocket, the spacecraft, to take ordinary citizens into space as well and the next present to ride it could well be a non nasa astronaut, so it is really the beginning of a commercial space rocket that has been long coming but is finally here. a belgian prince has contracted coronavirus after attending a party during lockdown in spain. the country s royal palace says prince joachim went to the party in the city of cordoba, while visiting spain last week. spanish reports suggest the prince, a nephew of belgium s king philippe, was among 27 people attending. under cordoba s lockdown rules, a party of this size would be a breach of regulations, as gatherings of no more than 15 people are currently permitted. a reminder of our top story. more than a dozen cities in the united states are under curfew as violent protests have continued for a fifth night over the killing of george floyd, an african american man killed by police. at least 30 cities across the united states have been hit by the unrest. demonstrators have clashed with police in many places, setting alight police vehicles and throwing stones at officers. that is the latest from the united states, you are watching bbc news. it has been a very sunny spring and a pretty dry may for many. the final day of the month brings more warmth, more sunshine and more dry weather across the country. as we go through this afternoon, we are going to see some areas of patchy fair weather cloud developing across england and wales, perhaps some high clouds turning sunshine hazy in scotland and northern ireland. you will notice the strength of this easterly breeze, just like yesterday, that will make it feel a little bit cool close to some north sea coasts. aberdeen, 18 degrees, not bad for this time of year, but with some shelter in inverness, more like 25 degrees. warmest weather in northern ireland will be across western counties and the east coast of england on the cool side, exposed to those breezes, but come to the west, some spots will get up to 26 or 27 degrees. strong sunshine with high uv levels and high pollen levels for most. through tonight, clear skies overhead except for this lump of low cloud and fog which i think it is likely to work into some coasts of eastern scotland and north east england. temperatures at between seven and 13 degrees for most. tomorrow, we could start with some mist and tomorrow, we could start with some mistand murk tomorrow, we could start with some mist and murk for these eastern coasts but it tend to retreat as the day goes on and then patchy cloud and sunny spells butjust day goes on and then patchy cloud and sunny spells but just the day goes on and then patchy cloud and sunny spells butjust the small chance of a afternoon shower across scotla nd chance of a afternoon shower across scotland or northern ireland. this temperatures again at 19 to 25 across temperatures again at 19 to 25 a cross m ost temperatures again at 19 to 25 across most parts of the uk. things are changed moving from monday to tuesday as this frontal system sinks in across scotland which will bring some outbreaks of rain southwards. that could turn a fairly heavy for a time and behind the rain band, the winds are coming from the north and that will introduce some air, temperatures in the north west highlands, much lower than they have been over the last few days. further south, more sunshine and more warmth, 27, maybe 28 degrees it was the south east. however, as we head deeper into the week, we see cooler air sweeping southwards across all parts of the uk and with that there will be some outbreaks of rain, perhaps not an awful lot of rain down towards the south, but still there will be some and we really could do with it.
this is bbc news, the headlines: a fifth night of protests in minneapolis following the death of george floyd, a black man, in police custody. protesters and officers clash again despite a curfew. protests spread to at least 30 other us cities including tampa in florida where tear gas has been fired. president trump blames looters and left wing radicals for the unrest. after ten weeks at home, more than two million people in england who ve been shielding during lockdown are told they can go outdoors. how dutch classrooms have been managing coronavirus but governors of english primary schools say all children shouldn t have to return before summer holidays.
now on bbc news, panorama. tonight on panorama shocking new evidence about a national scandal. i ve never heard of anything like it at all. it s a quite extraordinary story. we reveal how the post office ruined hundreds of lives. they ve been lying, not just to the postmaster, to everybody. they ve been lying from day one. the post office knew its computer system could make money go missing, but they accused staff of stealing anyway. it s chilling. i mean, my blood ran cold. ..and postmasters were jailed because bosses kept the truth from coming out. you can t create this kind of injustice on people, and then just walk away with it scot free. for ten years, i ve been investigating a scandal at one of our most loved institutions. it may turn out to be one of the biggest miscarriages ofjustice in british history. the post office prosecuted hundreds of postmasters over missing money. postmasters like janet skinner. here. this blue bit. yeah, it is a police station. still a police station. yep. yeah, they read me my rights, and then theyjust repeatedly ask you the same questions. did you steal the money? have you taken the money? have you borrowed the money? have you lent the money to somebody? the evidence against the postmasters came from the post office s computer system, horizon. in 2006, it showed £21,000 missing from janet s till. she panicked, and hid the shortfall in her accounts while she tried to work out what had happened. i knew that i hadn t done anything wrong, and i just thought, it s their problem, it ll come back. so what happened next week? it just doubled, and then itjust got beyond the point where. it was like i d just buried my head in the sand, and i didn t know what to do, to be honest. when auditors arrived at janet s branch, horizon showed £59,000 was missing. the post office charged her with theft and false accounting, then they offered her lawyer a deal. he said, if you will accept the guilty plea for false accounting, they ll drop the theft charge. so, and then i said, well, what does that mean? so he said, well, it means you probably won t be looking at a custodial sentence. so i said, well, i ll do that, then, because i didn t want to go to jail. butjanet did go to jail. she got a nine month sentence. on herfirst night inside, she was allowed to call home. i remember phoning the kids. erm. that was hard. what were they saying to you? just how they love me. and i was just telling them that i love them, that i was going to miss them. she said, i ll come and see you. i said, no, you won t. you re not coming to see me. i said, i don t want my kids growing up with that memory of me. postmasters were told they had total control of their horizon accounts. so when money went missing, the post office said it was their fault. but what if the computer made mistakes? there s a very early one of me in 2000. a lot younger in those days. i think that was the first time we ever had anything in print, which was december 2003. 2003, wow! yeah. former postmaster alan bates has spent 20 years trying to prove horizon made money vanish from his post office. there s a lovely quote from you here. i m going to fight this for as long as it takes because of the grave injustice i feel has been done to myself and the people of craig y don in the way my contract was terminated. very true. fight this for as long as it takes, alan. yeah. i unfortunately seem to be living up to my word. well, exactly! two decades on. alan was sacked after refusing to pay back money horizon said was missing. he was one of the first to argue that computer bugs were responsible. but the post office wouldn t listen. i ve always felt that they ve been trying to keep it covered up, the whole thing covered up, about the condition of the system. how many people are sitting on the truth of what they knew at the time? it has to come out, nick. there are so many people who have suffered over the years with all of this, and there are probably so many more out there that we haven t heard from yet. more postmasters joined alan s campaign. i ve met dozens of them over the years. ..like sue knight, who was a respected member of her church and local community. the king of glory. she lost her home. post office have no idea what they ve done. no idea. or noel thomas. he was accused of stealing £50,000. i waited for a suspended sentence, and they said, take him down. i spent my 60th birthday in prison. orjo hamilton, whose customers raised thousands to pay off the money she was accused of stealing. we re not going to stop until they actually address what they ve done, and be held to account for what they ve done. 557 postmasters took the post office to court. some had beenjailed, and some had been forced to pay back large sums of money the computer said was missing. horizon was put on trial, and the postmasters were proved right. cheering bugs in the computer system could make it look like money had disappeared. thejudge has found that, on numerous occasions over the years, bugs, errors, and defects in the horizon system caused discrepancies in postmasters‘ branch accounts. the judge criticised the post office for insisting horizon was robust when the evidence proved it wasn t. the judge found that there was an excessive culture of secrecy within post office, and that definitely reflected our experience of dealing with them. it was very difficult to get things out. they held all the cards, and they weren t exactly putting them down on the table face up. the post office has agreed to pay £58 million in compensation and legal fees. but that mayjust be the start. the court of appeal will now review the convictions of 47 postmasters, including all the convicted postmasters featured in this programme. the post office is also assessing 900 prosecutions that may involve horizon evidence. this is potentially a huge miscarriage ofjustice, and i support fully the demands of people who are affected by it to get answers, and now finally, i hope, we are on the verge of getting justice and closure for the people affected by this miscarriage ofjustice. the post office says the court found the risk of bugs affecting balances in older versions of horizon was greater than post office believed. it does not mean every shortfall was caused by a bug and each case would need to be determined on the full evidence . the post office should have done more.to investigate the risk, and provide more help to postmasters. that is something we deeply regret. the high court case has given me the chance to finally get to the truth. i got access to dozens of internal documents. they show problems with horizon coming up time and time again. these documents show the post office knew there were serious problems with horizon. so when they said the system was robust, that wasn t true, and people s lives have been destroyed because of that. they show error after error logged by the it firm running the system. some bugs made it look as if money had gone missing. these messages show the post office, known as pol, was told. but they carried on prosecuting postmasters anyway. there were bugs that affected horizon before janet skinner was accused of stealing. we ve uncovered further stuff that demonstrates the post office knew about bugs in horizon well before they prosecuted you. we should have been aware, made aware of the system failing that was going on, and they just didn t, they didn t tell anybody. do you think the department that prosecuted you were aware. yes. ..that horizon had bugs and faults? yes. yeah, i do, yeah. and theyjust obviously just ignored it. the lawyer who advised janet to plead guilty is now a labour mp. he says they should never have been put in that position by the post office. that realisation that janet skinner perhaps shouldn t have been in the situation that she was in, how did you react personally? well, it s chilling. i mean, my blood run cold. we now know she should never have been prosecuted in the first place. she went to prison, her life was absolutely categorically ruined. there was problems that they knew about then, they were not disclosing any of that at the time, and we now know, we certainly suspect strongly, that there was corporate cover up. this is the woman who ran the post office for almost a decade. paula vennells always insisted she wanted to get to the truth about horizon. we are a business that does genuinely care about the people that work for us, and if there had been any miscarriages of justice, it would have been really important to me and the post office that we actually surfaced those. politicians have tried to hold her to account. i.went along to the post office headquarters and met paula vennells, the chief executive of the post office, and we said, we can t go on like this, this has got to be sorted out, there s a real problem here. the response we got was actually very encouraging. they said, we ll do this properly, we ll get to the bottom of it. in 2012, the post office appointed independent investigators called second sight to look at the postmasters‘ complaints about horizon. they were promised full cooperation. i made it completely clear to the chairman and chief exec. ..that this was not an investigation that i was remotely interested in carrying out unless they were committed to the search for the truth. that s the only way we operate. well, there was the famous phrase, seek the truth at all costs. but the post office s independent investigators soon suspected there was a problem with the convictions. out of all of the cases that we looked at, i don t think we ever came across a single example where, um. the proceeds of crime, so to speak, had ever been identified in any form of satisfactory way. i might have expected to hear about an expensive holiday or a flash car or something like that. we saw nothing to indicate that, if money had been stolen, that it had been used to benefit the sub postmaster or their immediate family. second sight were initially given access to internal legal files, but then the post office stopped handing them over. the investigators told mps. we, unsurprisingly, asked for full access to those legal files. paula, why don t you give those files over? what s the problem? so i think the point i wanted to pick up first, if i may. no, just answer my question first. why won t you give ian henderson those files? why? we have. as far as i m aware, mr zahawi, we have shared whatever information was appropriate on. that s not what ian henderson s saying. most of the legal files were never released. the investigators, paid by the post office, think there s been a cover up. if there was a decision taken to deliberately try and put obstacles in the way of your investigation, why? well, i think that s pretty screamingly obvious. it s the consequences of. ..a loss of confidence in the underlying core system, horizon. so it is existential for the post office to. ..to maintain the position that horizon is completely reliable and that the people and the processes surrounding horizon are completely reliable. the post office says it cooperated with second sight as appropriate , second sight were not experts in criminal law , and it was therefore not appropriate for them to have access to the privileged prosecution files. it says it s seen no evidence of a cover up. those legal files are critical to the first case i ever encountered in this scandal. it s the story of a postmaster called seema misra. there is no evidence that i ve taken any money, and then the jury came back with the word guilty . what i had in front of me, my husband, my children, and i m pregnant that time. seema was jailed for stealing £74,000 after she covered up the fact cash was missing. key evidence came from the horizon computer system. in the summing up, thejudge said there s no direct evidence of theft, you have to infer it. how can somebody listening properly come back with the verdict guilty ? so there was.it was shocking. and you then had to go to prison. yeah. i asked one of the officers if i can borrow his jacket so they can.cover my handcuffs, i didn t want anybody to see like that. seema might not have been convicted of theft had her trial heard the truth about horizon. we found crucial evidence in her legalfile that was never seen by the jury. these documents are shocking. they show post office prosecutors refusing to hand over information which could have helped seema prove her innocence. this isjust one example an e mail from the post office security team to the criminal law team. it s about a bug in horizon that makes money simply disappear. the security team are worried it may have repercussions in future prosecution cases. the attachment says that any branch encountering the problem will have corrupted accounts . in one case, more than £30,000 went missing in another, almost £5,000. the document was printed out by the post office legal department just three days before seema misra s trial, but it was never disclosed to her defence. we showed our evidence to a leading expert on criminal law. what do you think of the behaviour of the post office throughout the misra trial? it seems to me, and it goes to the heart of this, that quite clearly the post office had material which they should have disclosed which they did not, and in my view, resulted in the wrongful conviction of miss misra. there should be a thorough examination of all the evidence in respect of any person who might have committed misconduct in the course of these prosecutions by the post office. the post office says it has always accepted its legal obligations and has taken advice throughout . it s conducting a further review about disclosure. it wasn tjust computer bugs that the post office was keeping to itself. there was another way money could disappear from the horizon system. in 2015, we discovered postmasters‘ accounts could be changed without them knowing. we made a panorama which uncovered vital new evidence, but it was bitterly contested by the post office. the horizon computer system is run from this office in bracknell by fujitsu. a whistle blower told us that financial records were sometimes changed remotely by fujitsu s staff. he knew because he was one of them. we went in through the back door and made changes. sometimes you d be putting several lines of code in at a time. if we hadn t done that, then the counters would have stopped working. it was an explosive revelation. if the accounts could be altered remotely, then missing money could be down to human error or, worse still, theft by those with secret access to the system. the post office said we were wrong. senior managers flatly denied remote access was possible without the postmaster knowing. one meeting was recorded. it wasn t for broadcast, so we ve re voiced their words. can the system be accessed remotely and without anybody‘s knowledge in terms of, it doesn t leave a footprint, then no, it would leave a footprint. so in sum, it is not now and never has been possible for anybody from post office or fujitsu to interfere with transactions without the clear knowledge of the sub postmaster? it is 100% true to say we can t change, alter, modify existing transaction data, so the integrity is 100% preserved. and that s true now and has been. yes. ..for the duration of the system? ok. despite these denials, our evidence of remote access was crucial to the postmasters‘ victory in their high court case. the bbc panorama programme that you did in 2015 was very important in that. in fact, i m not sure that this litigation would ve happened as it did had panorama not made that programme. thejudge decided our whistle blower was right. remote access was possible without the postmaster knowing. why was that so important? because it made a fundamental difference to the reliability of the accounts and a fundamental difference to the credibility of post office in what it had been saying to a number of people, including in response to your programme. the post office told the court it had inadvertently misled panorama. the post office s barrister said it was a matter of enormous regret that the senior managers who dealt with panorama were not aware that remote access to horizon was possible. the post office claimed that that was just an honest mistake. but our documents suggest that isn t true. this ernst & young report was sent to post office directors back in 2011. it says it has again identified weaknesses in the horizon system and it warned that fujitsu s staff have unrestricted access to postmasters‘ accounts, that may lead to the processing of unauthorised or erroneous transactions. so the post office knew all along that remote access was possible. we showed our evidence to the then chair of the business select committee. what does that say to you about their attitude towards the truth? hmm. they were either mistaken or they were misleading the courts. but this document suggests that they couldn t be mistaken because the truth is here in black and white. just spell out to us how serious that is. look, i think this is very serious. it is very serious that the post office was sitting on information that told them and could have told the courts and their sub postmasters that other people could access their systems. fujitsu was also sitting on information. the judge was so worried about the evidence fujitsu witnesses had given in other post office cases, he referred the matter to the director of public prosecutions. fujitsu says it takes the judgment very seriously and is conducting a thorough process to review the court s statements. the post office has launched a scheme it says offers redress for those who may have experienced shortfalls. its new leadership is promising fundamental change and greater tra nsparency . so what about the woman who was in charge of the post office for so long? paula vennells left the organization last year and was given a cbe by the government, and two newjobs, but the government has now turned against her. there s no question that the post office management at the time behaved disgracefully. none of them are now in position. officials were misled by the post office and the information provided was not correct. paula vennells declined to be interviewed, but said it was and remains a source of great regret that colleagues and their families were affected over so many years . she s truly sorry we were unable to find a solution or resolution and for the distress this caused . but she hasn t answered any of our questions. phone rings hello? hello, miss vennells. it s nick wallis from the panorama programme. this conversation is being filmed. i d like to ask you some questions about your tenure as chief executive of the post office. nick, i m sorry, i ve already given a statement to the programme. thank you. no, i would like to ask you why the post office knew about remote access. call ends ..to the horizon system. this is one of the biggest frustrations about covering this story for so long the consistent refusal of the chief executive and the people at the top to answer serious questions about what s been happening. i think the postmasters deserve better than that. mps have demanded answers from paula vennells. and politicians on both sides of the house want a public inquiry. people went to prison. people s livelihoods were lost and some of the victims ended their lives. that is enough for a judge led public inquiry. i ve never heard of anything like it at all, where a government owned organisation attacked, on the basis of false evidence. ..the integrity of so many pillars of the community. it s, it s. a quite extraordinary story. has there been a cover up? i believe that there has been. and it s probably still going on. the postmasters won t stop until they get to the truth. they ve been lying, notjust to the sub postmaster, to everybody. they ve been lying from day one. i want to see somebody be held accountable for what s happened because you can t go. you can t create this kind of injustice on people and then just walk away with it scot free. a much loved national institution has become a national disgrace. and hundreds of lives have been shattered by the scandal at the post office.
this is bbc news. welcome if you re watching here in the uk, on pbs in america or around the globe. i m lewis vaughan jones. our top stories: america s top general apologises for appearing alongside president trump at the height of the anti racism protests. as many of you saw, the results of the photograph of me at lafayette square last week sparked a national debate about the role of the military in civil society. i should not have been there. us stock markets suffer their sharpest fall for three months as fears grow over a second spike in coronavirus cases. is it a brexit u turn? the uk abandons plans to introduce full border checks with the european union in january. spanish football is back, behind closed doors
this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. the first commercially built rocket to carry astronauts into space has lifted off from florida. appeals for calm after a fourth night of violence in the us city of minneapolis following the death of george floyd, an african american in police custody. a former police officer is charged with murder and the pentagon puts the us military on high alert. the situation in minneapolis is no longer in any way about the murder of george floyd. it is about attacking civil society, instilling fear in disrupting our great cities. the uk government insists that it continues to be led by science over the next stages of the easing of lockdown measures after concerns were raised by some leading scientists. we need to proceed in a very cautious way. so we have set out a road map, but at each stage we are saying we are not going to proceed with that unless we are confident that we can do so in a safe way. the return of competitive sport is announced for the uk from monday, starting with horse racing. other sports given the go ahead to resume behind closed doors include football, rugby and cricket. but in india, the daily total of new coronavirus cases has hit another record high today with nearly 8,000 new infections. hello and welcome if you re watching in the uk or around the world, and stay with us for the latest news and analysis from here and across the globe. first, a historic event in the us today where, in the last half hour, spacex has successfully launched a rocket carrying two nasa astronauts to the international space station. it s the first manned us mission to space in nearly a decade. this is also the first rocket produced by a private company to carry us astronauts to the iss. until now, nasa has relied on russian rockets to send astronauts into space since scrapping its shuttle programme in 2011. president trump travelled to cape canaveral to watch the launch and spoke to the press shortly after take off. mr president, what did you think?m was incredible, the technology, the power, i m so proud of the people and nasa, all the people that work together, public and private. when you see a site like that it s incredible, the power of the machine and the danger. when you hear that sound and the role, you can imagine how dangerous it is when you feel the shake, we are very far away, but you hear the shake over here, beautiful site and a beautiful ship, i would say it s a beauty. they have a long way to go but that s a very dangerous part of it right there, thatis dangerous part of it right there, that is a big part of the danger. let s ta ke that is a big part of the danger. let s take a look at the moment the launch happened. three, two, one, zero. ignition, lift off! go, nasa, go, spacex, godspeed! america has launched! so rises a new era of american space flight and a new generation continuing the dream. 20 seconds into flight stages nominal. t plus 30 seconds in this historic mission, flying crew on board dragon and falcon nine, and look at it go. 60% chance this would not happen because of weather which of course will stop the launch taking place on wednesday. we can bring in our correspondent, jane o brien, who is at cape canaveral in florida now, from where the rocket launched. tell us what it was like, jane. tell us what it was like, jane. it was the most exhilarating thing i think i have ever experienced. to see history being made and made in such a visual, sensory fashion, the sound of that rocket taking off and the vibrations you feel going all the vibrations you feel going all the way through you was extraordinary. and then to see that shining bright light of the rocket itself taking off and still visible when all you could really see was the cloud and tracer of the atmosphere coming out of its tail, i found it absolutely extraordinary. and what it must have felt like to be part of the team that was able to pull this off, the astronauts on board, ican pull this off, the astronauts on board, i can only imagine, especially after the disappointment of wednesday when weather stopped it, and being a classic brit i was complaining of thunderstorms on wednesday but now i m complaining about the heat, but for spacex and then and a very different business model for nasa, no longer a government funded. a government built spacecraft but something built bya built spacecraft but something built by a private company in california? nasais by a private company in california? nasa is the custom in this relationship. spacex developed this with support, considerable financial support, from nasa, and boeing is also developing a similar transport capsule but spacex won the race on this occasion and as a result the idea is it will drive down the cost of actually putting humans into space which will enable nasa to focus on the big like getting humans back mars and then of course want to mars. the moon and then mars. and it is hoped that these sorts of commercialflights it is hoped that these sorts of commercial flights will be an integral part of these future missions so this is really about changing the way we think about space exploration and changing the way it is actually done. the first new design though is 39 years and even better in these days of sustainability bits of it can be reused. and we already know that the rocket itself has been retrieved, it landed on spacex s drone ship, leaving the capital itself free to enter orbit and dock with the international space station which has a 19 hourjourney. we still do not quite know how long they will be up not quite know how long they will be up there. they have got to deadlines they have to meet, the first commercialflight they have to meet, the first commercial flight itself for real because don t forget this as a test flight, because don t forget this as a test flight, the first commercial flight involving a japanese astronaut on the 30th of august and also a slight issue with power because the dragon capsule itself is powered by solar panels, they ran out ofjuice within 114 days, so they have limits. but they can be brought up early, the idea is they test out the capsule and work out all the kinks. for the moment, jane, thank you very much, enjoying the excitement in cape canaveral. and the nasa administrator has said for the first time in nine years we have now launched american astronauts. i m so proud of the nasa and spacex team for making this moment possible. you re watching bbc news. the us state of minnesota has announced the mobilisation of its entire national guard for the first time in its history after violent protests continued for a fourth night in minneapolis. the governor, tim walz, said rioters had caused wanton destruction and chaos, without regard for life or property. but he stressed that peaceful protests could go ahead. this is the scene live there now. the disturbances were sparked by the police killing of an unarmed black man, george floyd, in minneapolis on monday. this is the scene live there now. with the authorities expecting this evening s protests to be the fiercest so far, the pentagon has also moved to put military units on a four hour recall status, if needed. 0ur correspondent barbara plett usher is in minneapolis, and her report contains some distressing images. america is rising up in anger over the killing of another black man in police custody. in minneapolis, protesters defied a curfew taking over the streets for the fourth night in a row, turning them into a smoky battle ground. security forces were overwhelmed. the governor has now announced the largest mobilisation of the national guard in the state s history. he blames outsiders for spearheading the violence. the situation in minneapolis is no longer in any way about the murder of george floyd. it is about attacking civil society, instilling fear and disrupting our great cities. here in minneapolis, this is the damage after another night of chaos. authorities thought they had calmed things down after they moved swiftly to charge a police officer for the death of george floyd. and they were shocked when the virus escalated instead. i cannot breathe! a widely publicised video shows the officer kneeling on mr floyd s neck as he begged for air. in footage that emerged today, you can see two other policemen were also holding him down. ignoring his cries to let him stand. the graphic images have ignited protests across a country already grappling with a deadly pandemic. and suffering its worst economic crisis since the great depression. in seattle, washington, demonstrators hurled a rock at an amazon store. they chanted i can t breathe and black lives matter . in charlotte, north carolina, police fired tear gas. a city council member was among several people arrested. and in atlanta, georgia, protesters threw rocks and smoke grenades at police. trashed cars and smashed windows at cnn headquarters. the governor issued a state of emergency and the mayor pleaded for the riots to stop. you are disgracing our city. you are disgracing the life of george floyd and every other person who has been killed in this country. we are better than this. we are better than this as a city, we are better than this as a country. i am duty bound to be here to simply say that it is your duty not to burn your own house down for anger with an enemy. accountability is what the protesters are demanding. the lack of it so many times before has stoked the smouldering anger that is exploding now with such force. donald trump has again condemned the violence that erupted in minnesota on friday night. boarding an aircraft to travel to cape canaveral, mr trump urged the authorities there to be tough on those he said were bent on violence and added that federal reinforcements could be despatched if necessary. they ve got to be tough, they ve got to be smart. we have our military ready, willing and able today if they ever want to call our military. but we can have troops on the ground very quickly if they ever want our military. they re using their national guard right now, as you know, they have their national guard out. we can have our military there very quickly. they ve got to be tough, they ve got to be strong, they ve got to be respected. because these people, it s antifa, it s a lot of radical left, bad people. and they ve got to be taught that you can t do this. so i m going now to watch a great launch and we ll see how we do. thank you very much. us attorney general william barr has also been speaking about the case. he blamed what he labelled outside radicals and agitators for hijacking the protests in us cities over the death of george floyd but also he said they were working at speed to prosecute those responsible his death. the outrage of our national community at what happened to george floyd in minneapolis is real and legitimate. accountability for his death must be addressed and is being addressed through the regular process of our criminaljustice system both state and federal level. that system is working and cases have been fired by the state and that puts professor kaye whitehead is an educator, author, and media host who is known as the #blackmommyactivist. she teaches african and african american studies at loyola university in baltimore, maryland, from where she told me that the violence had a clear context. i think it s important to recognise that the murder of george floyd comes on top of so much injustice and so many unarmed black men, women and children who have been killed ever since we have been protesting black lives matter. we can go back and look at the modern civil rights movement, the history of how we got here, but if we just focus on black lives matter, i can easily go through a litany of names of black men, women and and children and most recently we had a black woman shot and killed in her own home in kentucky. a man shot and killed in georgia, and now george floyd, the latest incident is so disturbing because you can watch it in real time and you can hear him struggling, yelling out that he cannot breathe, calling for his mother, it is the injustice that we are dealing with as black and brown people in this country when we see this happening to people that could be part of our families and then we don t see people being held accountable so there is a lot of pent up frustration that got us to this moment. you can change policy, but that does not necessarily change attitudes, not least within the police. so how do you bring about meaningful change? it s interesting that we have been wrestling with this question around change for quite a while. what would it look like if we were to do something different? we talk about police officers, that s kind of a point blank. to do an intensive training with police officers so that we can build a bridge between the police force and the community. there is predatory policing that is happening in economically challenged black communities where they are overpoliced, herded and controlled, rather than protected and served so that needs to happen. we need to have more accountability for police officers so when they do what these police officers participated in it s notjust that they are arrested, not just that they are fired, not just that they are charged, but they are found guilty and they serve time so that people understand there is a price to pay. there is accountability. a second thing is to think about reparations. right now we re looking at how we are economically challenged in this community, we see how the income of black people is steadily dropping by the year 2053, the estimate of income will be zero in comparison to our white counterparts. so a way of redistributing funds we hope will turn around decades upon decades of economic injustice in our community, and third which i think is the hardest piece is how do we change the hearts and minds of people? there is a large community of people not of colour in this country of white people who really believe that black folks are inferior. they are groups of white nationalism and supremacy and they are pushing that age old agenda that race is a determining factor. we are fighting against the hearts and minds of those individuals as well. the uk is at a dangerous moment and the easing of lockdown has to go slowly, england s deputy chief medical officer has said. professor jonathan van tam said the consensus among scientists was that new easing measures being introduced were not expected to push the rate of infection above 1.0. the uk government insists that it continues to be led by science over the next stages of the easing of lockdown measures after concerns were raised by some leading scientists. several members of the sage advisory group have spoken out against the pace of change. from monday in england, up to six people from different households can meet outside, including in private gardens. 215 deaths have been recorded in the uk in the last 24 hours. it brings the total number of deaths to 38,376. 0ur political correspondent, chris mason, has this report. york in the sunshine has always proved popular. a socially distant queue. a spot of refreshments. in scotland and northern ireland, groups are already allowed to gather outside. england and wales will follow on monday, but the number of coronavirus cases falling, ministers say the time is right. but some of those advising the government have concerns. if we make multiple releases of the lockdown at the same time, we won t know what is causing the inevitablejump in cases. and we don t have an established test, track and isolate process to follow these people up. so we re at a very risky point where we could take the lid off a pot that is still bubbling in places and it risks overflowing in places. he s one of several members of the scientific advisory group for emergencies to speak out. the labour mayors of london and greater manchester are also worried this loosening of the rules has come to soon. so, at this afternoon s government news conference, i asked. what you say to those scientists and others who say that you re easing the lockdown in england too quickly? we haven t got that much headroom. that s why the prime minister has been clear we need to proceed in a very cautious way. so we ve set out a road map but at each stage we are saying we will not proceed with that unless we are confident that we can do so in a safe way. i believe and you will recall i was at the podium when the disease activity was very high in the uk, and i said it s a very dangerous moment. i believe this is also a very dangerous moment. we have to get this right. the public in general to actually follow the guidance. don t tear the pants out of it and don t go further than the guidance actually says. professor van tam knows how to turn a phrase and make a point. he was also asked directly about dominic cummings. the prime minister s most senior adviser who among other things drove 50 miles to test his eyesight during the lockdown. the rules are clear and they have always been clear. in my opinion, they are for the benefit of all. and in my opinion, they apply to all. questions about mr cummings keep coming. questions about easing the lockdown will too. the government has published new guidelines to allow the return of competitive sport from monday. athletes will still have to maintain social distancing where possible. the announcement was made by the minister for culture, media and sport, 0liver dowden. i m delighted to announce today that the government has published guidance which allows competitive sport to resume behind closed doors from monday at the earliest and, crucially, only when it s safe to do so. it s up to each individual sport to decide exactly when to resume competition. they know their sports best. but football, tennis, horse racing, formula 1, cricket, golf, rugby, snooker and others are all set to return to our screens shortly with horse racing first out of the gate in the north east next week. the headlines on bbc news: the first commercially built rocket to carry astronauts into space has successfully lifted off from florida. appeals for calm after a fourth night of violence in the us city of minneapolis following the death of george floyd an african american in police custody. a former police officer is charged with murder and the pentagon puts the us military on high alert. the uk government insists that it continues to be led by science over the next stages of the easing of lockdown measures after concerns were raised by some leading scientists. brazil has reported nearly 27,000 cases of covid 19 in 24 hours a new daily record. almost 28,000 coronavirus deaths have now been recorded there the world s fifth highest figure. the us has seen the most deaths with more than 100,000. the government of india has announced further plans to relax lockdown restrictions, just as the country s daily total of new coronavirus cases hit a new high to nearly 8,000. from june the 8th, hotels, restaurants, shopping malls and places of worship will be allowed to re open. so, what s the government response on this new fugures? here is our correspondent samlan ravi in delhi. everybody is worried and today the prime minister has sent a message to the people of the country saying that he could see migrant workers and other people in distress, but then he said that this distress should not turn into a disaster. more and more migrant workers are leaving their villages. tens of thousands of cases of corona positive are rising. just a single day, the highest spike so far. altogether, 173,000 cases positive so far, 5,000 deaths. time is passing by, and 35 migrant workers are reaching their villages as the lockdown is being reached, tomorrow. as this lockdown ends, social distancing will not be possible in market areas and that is that cause of concern. one of the most recogisable buildings in the world the leaning tower of pisa is one of the tourist attractions in italy being allowed to re open today after an easing of coronavirus restrictions. numbers will be limited to 15 at a time, and all visitors will be provided with an electronic device which goes off if someone breaches social distancing rules. let s bring you some live pictures now from washington. in minneapolis much floyd, the american was we can take you to washington as well, i pictured here amongst the protesters, a very big police presence again and we can show you what is happening in chicago as these protests have spread across the country. anchor that a black man has died yet again in police custody. but the governor of minnesota has said that he is mobilising the state s in taia national guard and in his view the protests are national guard and in his view the protests a re no national guard and in his view the protests are no longer in any way about the death of george floyd. you re watching bbc news. when 15 year old sirine jahangir lost her eyesight five years ago, she turned to her love of music. now sirine has become something of a star after impressing the britain s got talentjudges with her singing and piano skills. the bbc asian network s shabnam mahmood has been catching up with her. # treat each other right, best friends. from an early age, sirinejahangir has had a passion for singing. but she only started taking music seriously after losing her sight at the age of ten. when i lost my sight, me and my dad were in the car. and i couldn t look out through the window anymore. and my dad didn t know what to do, so hejust put the music up really loud and i rememberjust smiling so much, laughing and singing along. i started songwriting when i was six and i used to write about princesses, best friends, ponies. as i grew up and started to face more difficulties, ifound it hard to express my emotions and tell people how i felt, so what i would do is i would write about it and i would sing my emotions rather than say them. the 15 year old says she doesn t want her loss of sight to hold her back. i don t like to dwell on my blindness because although it s affected my life in such a massive and immense way, it s also strengthened me in other ways, given me so many gifts i m so grateful for. what s your name? my name is sirine. up till now, sirine has been performing at home for her family. but an appearance on the reality show britain s got talent has earned the teenager the appreciation of millions around the world. sirine plays piano. i have never done anything like it and the fact i was able to stand on stage, show people what i love and get appreciated for it is just the most amazing amazing experience of my life. # my salvation. sirine is now one of the bookies favourites to reach the finals of the competition. meanwhile, she is hoping to inspire other teenagers through her music. we had warm sunshine but some of you will be wanting rain. the skies were almost clear in aberdeenshire and much of the uk. we will keep those clear skies overnight. it stays dry. the only exception to that story is low cloud and fog form around coastal parts of eastern scotland particularly the north east and a few mist patches in north east england as well. comfortable night, temperature is 12 celsius. tomorrow, any fog, mist and low cloud will clear away from the eastern coastal areas. 0therwise, sunny start to the day and we keep the sunshine into the afternoon. the day s highest temperatures and western parts, highs of 27 in parts of western wales. beyond that, signs the weather would cool off into next week and some of you will see rain at times as we head towards the middle of the week. goodbye. the first commercially rocket is successful heading out of florida. the us state of minnesota launching the national guard for the first time in history following several nights of violent protests black men in police custody. the states government said the deployment was needed because outside agitators what the death of him to spy chaos. the uk government insists that it continues to be led by science over the next stages of the easing of lockdown measures after concerns were raised by some leading scientists. we need to proceed in a very conscious way. so we ve set out a road map that at each stage where you saying we are not going to proceed with that unless we are confident that we can do so in a safe way. confident that we can do so in a safe way. the return of competitive sport is announced for the uk