over the next few nights, the nairobi audiences are in for a treat. people are freaking out, joel. they thought that this our main and developing story this was the best show ever. but that s only cause they weren t hour is the fifth night of protests here for last night. yeah, and they don t know when it s not good or not. in cities right across america. we can only pray. romeo &juliet, balcony scene. after the death of george floyd. he died after being held on the back of the neck to the ground by a police officer in minneapolis. that sparked protests in that city and they have now spread to dozens and dozens of cities right across the country. cu rfews have been cities right across the country. curfews have been in place in scores of cities and some people have it was amazing to watch, honestly. obeyed those cu rfews of cities and some people have obeyed those curfews and left the streets after protesting peacefully just spectacular. this afternoon. but others have from the last time i saw him dance to now, his skill remained on the streets and there level has improved. it s just fascinating to watch. are tonight clashes between i thought it was amazing. protesters and police forces across i enjoyed every second. america. and it was such a pleasure to look at. here, private tenants are more likely to be in financial difficulty the first night of the performance, than home owners because of opening night, my mum was there, the pandemic, according my sister was there. to a new study. and i didn t know that she was going the report by the think tank the resolution foundation says many to come onstage and give me flowers renters have seen afterwards the performance, their incomes fall. which was pretty cool, because i had never gotten the government insists it s taken action to support tenants, including banning evictions a chance like that. for three months, as our business correspondent katy austin explains. so it was lovely for herjust to be on stage with me and give me flowers paying the rent has become too much at the end of the performance in nairobi at the kenyan national for denny while her hair salon is shut. theatre and it was pretty cool. her landlord has agreed to postpone two months‘ rent, to be paid back in future. i enjoyed it. at the moment, we owe april and may, and thenjune is due back in london just a week later, the 1st ofjune. the harsh reality of exams, assessments, and auditions i feel sick, actually. is beginning to hit home. because at the moment, now, that s obviously one of our biggest outgoings, the rent. today i m doing a class with alexander whitley citizens advice estimates 2.6 at the wayne mcgregor studios, million tenants expect to fall because i m graduating behind on rent because of in three months time. coronavirus, and the resolution foundation think tank says one in five private renters have been basically the students furloughed or lost their job. are auditioning for certain it says they are struggling companies, ballet companies, with payments more than homeowners. going into the crisis, they had lower levels of savings, contemporary companies. for example and, critically, they also spent considerably more of their income on housing costs in the first place. government has brought in measures considering this is the first time he s done class with us, to try and help struggling tenants. i think a lot of it isjust in march, evictions were banned for three months, but a committee being familiar enough with the kind of mps has warned a crisis of exercises to be able is looming in the private rental to learn them and do them sector. quickly, you know. one, two, three, back. he s got the willingness and the aptitude to try and take risks and explore new things. when we re out there citizens advice says further just doing our thing, measures will be needed you re happy, you re when the eviction ban smiling, so i think no, i know that it s ends in late june. going to be amazing. whether he decides to do what we want the government to do ballet or contemporary, one things for sure, is make sure that there joel s dancing career will take off is protection for people who have once this lockdown is over. fallen into arrears due but, for now, as with most of us, to coronavirus, and then also joel and his friends in kenya to accept and make sure the landlords have to put spend their time online taking in place things like classes and looking forward affordable repayment plans. to the day they can take landlords say they are working out solutions with tenants wherever possible. to the stage again. the ministry responsible for housing said support for renters joel, would you like to be our first guest teacher next week? and landlords is being kept under review. katy austin, bbc news. um, sure, yes, please. actually, no, i ve changed my mind,because they ve had you recently for romeo and juliet. now on bbc news, before the coronavirus lockdown, professional dancerjoel kioko all the boys. returned to his home city, ten push ups. nairobi, meeting dance students face your camera down. emerging from a thriving classical ballet scene in kenya. you ready? ready? laughter. and one and two. oh, i miss this. i used to do this! four, five, six. seven, eight. one month since the coronavirus nine. lockdown started, 19 year old joel kioko completes daily ballet classes at his home in london, with instructions coming in from his teacher via zoom. come on! demi detourne. derriere. stretch out a little bit. ten! oh, no. switch davant fondu. you only get ten. you re only getting ten. second. all right. let go of the bar. that s fine. that s about nine. front reverse the port de bras. back in february, joel was taking his final classes hello there. at the english national ballet saturday brought more school and preparing for a major dry, sunny, and warm challenge the leading weather across the whole of the united kingdom. role in romeo and juliet now, it was a fine end to the day in london at the kenyan national theatre. and west london did quite well for temperatures. with classical ballet, heathrow got up to 26 degrees. you re always learning something. but for the most part on saturday, the highest temperatures were across that s how i see it the north and the west i don t know how other of the uk with kinloch here in the highlands people see it of scotland, the nation s and especially for me, hotspot with highs of 27. because i started late, we re going to see similar kind i have so much to learn. joel has come a long way since his upbringing in the kuwinda of temperatures for these slums, where his incredible talent was spotted. he s the first student western areas as we get from an emerging classical ballet on into sunday as well. now over the next few hours, scene in nairobi to train most of us are going to keep professionally in london. the clear skies but probably some low cloud and some sometimes, when i am fog begin to push onto the eastern shores of scotland in class, i am like and although temperatures i have never seen that in the towns and cities between around 8 13 degrees, in the countryside the coldest spots get down to about 3 before but i have to play degrees so it will be quite chilly for some of you to with it because later on, i ll go start sunday morning. sunday, well, that low cloud into the studios and i ll play and fog can take the first with a certain movement that i ve few hours of seen that i ve never seen before, the morning to clear away from east scotland. and i ll practice and i ll do until it will be perfect. but i think i m comfortable to go out there and start dancing. maybe a bit of misting this i just want everyone to just get a job and dance. as well in north east england. to reach this stage in the competitive ballet world has been hard work, and the dancers will take up places in international but otherwise, a sunny start to companies when the current the day and a sunny afternoon. isolation ends. now, the highest temperatures companies when the current in scotland probably again to the north west isolation period ends. of the country, the highlands doing ok with highs probably so our third years will be taking reaching around 25 26 degrees celsius here. auditions for companies outside, you might see another 23 or 2a for westernmost areas of northern ireland. so they would have finished, and some of the highest temperatures in england they would have got across western areas and wales too. they would get their diploma you could see highs locally hitting around 27. injuly, after a school performance. now for monday s forecast, they are already auditioning the high pressure is still for all sorts of different companies in charge of our weather, all over the world so, so we ve got more of that dry weather to come. you know, to find a job. more of the sunshine as well. temperatures still on the high side for the time of year, that s everybody. looking at highs of 2a in glasgow, 26 or so head of year and joel s tutor mr yow in cardiff, but from then on we re going to start to see has guided them throughout. the weather changing somewhat because an area of low pressure is going to start to develop ok, so last time we got to see to the north of the uk you doing nutcracker. and move in as we head this afternoon, the class towards tuesday and wednesday. so, that is going to be bringing some cloudy skies rehearsed pas de deux. with rain or showers pushing southwards and as well as that, the area is going to piano plays. be getting cooler. so temperatures will be coming back down close to normal for the time of year and normal isn t something we ve seen for quite a long time. so, scotland is going to be cooling down as you can see, there will be some rain and showers around as well as we go through tuesday and wednesday. perhaps some of the heaviest rain actually working through during tuesday night. it is quite scary for the students further southwards to go out there in the big world across england and wales, still hanging onto some warm sunshine on tuesday after being in a school for three but the change comes really on wednesday with thicker cloud. years with the same friends. again, rain or showers working in. that s your latest weather. but once you re out there, you have to look after yourself. so we actually, as a school, try to prepare them for that. joel is one of our students. he is very professional. after hours of technical classes, later in the day the students get to practise their own choreography. third year innis‘s piece is based on swan lake. five, six, seven, eight! you can choose any music and then you get four dancers or more, if you want. i have three. i don t have a name for it yet but i ve chosen indian music. it is based on contemporary and kathak. you need that. i need that passe. oh, wait, shouldn t we do this? we did a passe! yeah, yeah, we did it. this is the beginning. yeah. as well as the movements, joel is working out the soundtrack with his classmate ludmila. it s one of their last projects together before they leave college. it s a bit sad, because we ve known each other for a long time good morning. and knowing that from next year, welcome to breakfast with ben thompson and sally nugent. we re not going to have each other our headlines today: to come to talk to, so it s curfews across america as a fifth going to be very sad. night of protests spread to more than 30 cities. as this chapter of their lives, the bonds formed police cars are set on fire during their halcyon days at college will stay with the students long riot officers respond with tear gas. after they have left. we are very close. demonstrators converge on the white house in washington. the unrest follows the death of an african american man in the hands of the police. we i think we ve grown more into, like, very good friends. when i first metjoel, after ten weeks at home, more than two million people it was so interesting to hear in england who ve been stories of, you know, shielding during lockdown, where he d came from. are told they can go outdoors it is really quite amazing and inspiring how far he has come and how lovely he is as a person and a dancer. we share a passion. i think i ve gotten closer with most of my school classmates. everyone has started getting close but in the beginning, because it was new competition, no one really wanted to talk to anyone else, it s really lonely. sometimes you get homesick, i am not going to lie. sometimes, when i ve been walking around london and i see a picture of my mum on facebook while i m on facebook, and i am like, oh, yeah, i miss my mum . for three years, joel has been living with a london family, so he has four new surrogate sisters. but now, joel will soon be reunited with his family as he has been offered a unique opportunity to return to nairobi to play romeo, with the dancer who first discovered him playing juliet. it is going to be boiling all day long doing ballet. it s going to be emotional because we share so much and, especially with romeo and juliet, it s like it s all about love. i know something good is going to be created. soon, joel will once again meet the dancers who discovered him as a boy. touchdown. so we re going to one of the studios, which is in hardy. that s where we re going. we re going to rehearsal because we only have a week to put this on. romeo and juliet is being staged under the directorship of american ballet dancer cooper rust, who founded dance centre kenya. dance is taking over nairobi and even spreading beyond. the employment opportunities in the city that has 40% unemployment and now all of a sudden, there s dance teachers and it is an opportunity for people to make a living through dance and i am just as excited about training future dance teachers and having more of these little studios around nairobi and around kenya as i am about training dancers that are leaving kenya and going abroad, likejoel. annabel shaw, playing juliet, from the northern and manchester city ballet is on hand to greet him. romeo and juliet is my favourite ballet. i think the score, prokofiev s music, isjust to die for. i think it s gorgeous. when cooper told me kind of, yeah, only five weeks ago, oh, you re going to do romeo and juliet. you re going to be juliet. joel is coming but he is not arriving until a week before the show, i was kind of like oh, 0k! the cast have already been rehearsing for three weeks asjoel arrives, with the opening nightjust seven days away. for now, i want you to get your tights and your dance pointe on. i don t have to put my tights, no? uh, yeah, we have rehearsal until seven. go ahead, next section. everybody go with your partners. michelle, you work with pamela, but michelle can help you discuss a lot. joel is thrown straight in at the deep end as the company begin rehearsals for the ball scene, where romeo falls forjuliet. i learned a lot of the choreography beforehand because at least, if one of you knows it, you ve got at least something to fall back on. but what s really nice is that, because we do know each other so well, a lot of the figuring out has kind of already been done over the years, so a lot of the kind of partnership and predicting where the other is going to be and how we re going to fit together, we ve kind of already done all of that, so that definitely makes it easier, as well. do it again. back up and set her back down. i would recommend not trying this the first time with a skirt on. 0k. joel and annabel have just six more days to learn a one hour and 50 minute ballet. let go of your dancers around. things do not always go quite to plan, even for experienced dancers like joel. so let s hear this musically, this whole section. step, up, up. dance. music playing. by the end of the first day, joel has already learnt the first pas de deux. i do not even think about it. i see it s just a dance that s it. as long as i keep on repeating it, that s why we have rehearsals, it will be there. the movements, i have seen them, and i think that is why i remember them. i have seen them before, you know the names, you know the terminology and i guess that is why it is easier to remember. through artists for africa, a charity set up by cooper, more children from the slums are hoping for a career in dance. cooper fosters eight of them, including 12 year old michelle and 13 year old lavender, who regularly travel to rehearsals after visits to their families in kibera. i m from kibera slums, which is one of biggest slums in kenya, and i love it there because i was born there and i m from there. and that is why i started dancing. you, like, have to do everything correctly, like, arms and put your legs where they are supposed to be but then africa is like, you are just free, you can do anything. for now, i want to be a professional dancer when i grow up, because i love it so much. keep them it s very hard. withjoel as their role model, the young people cooper has fostered from the slums, and others like them, believe a career in dance and an escape from poverty is possible. joel s friend silas is the first certified male ballet teacher in kenya. it is a growth for me. i see it as a growth of talent and growth of art in our country, not only here at dck, but as a country. it shows that there is a bright future ahead. dance teachers going out into schools around nairobi through artists for africa are inspiring the next generation of children from the slums. 1,2 -i, 2. sometimes the kids come from slums, they have a lot in their heads so when they dance they free up their minds. the kids can choose what they want after a dance. maybe others want to be an engineer, maybe others want to take dance as a career. so it is up to us to show them the way. today the cast are learning the scene where tybalt kills romeo s friend mercutio and, in turn, romeo exacts his revenge and is banished from verona. five, six, seven, eight. one, two, three, four, down, up, down up. learning the fights is hard, not to mention the acting. you want him and them to be friends now after 20 years of hating each other. so don t grab it. na uh uh! it s even the fingers in the. don t. i m serious. details matter. it s not fingers in front as if you re grabbing it. it s fingers in back as if you re saying hey, excuse me . it s a very different gesture. as well as the fight scenes, joel must learn the harlot‘s dance with benvolio and mercutio. romeo &juliet - morning dance. when they re not in the main rehearsals, joel and annabel practice in a side studio. it has gotten on ok. tiring. but i m getting there. almost done with, like, with the first act almost finished. by the end of the third day, joel almost has the ballet done. this is absolutely insane. him learning all of romeo and juliet in three days. we ve got about six minutes left here. an hour and 56 minutes or something like that. he just has a few minutes left to learn. and it ll be done this evening. with the castjust needing to fine tune their routines, joel is absolutely exhausted. getting the show onto the stage at the kenyan national theatre seems a long way off. finally, there s a break in rehearsals for romeo and juliet, so annabel is taking joel to visit his mother. it s going to be nice. have dinner. hang out with my mum. because i haven t done that in a while. mum! many of the families here were forced to relocate after a massive fire, including angela. angela has seen her son transformed since the days he started dancing. he told me he was going to dance and then he was dancing, everyday dancing. at first i wasn t taking it seriously. i didn t know that dancing was done for, maybe, for a career. joel regularly returns to kibera, where he used to give ballet classes to the children at the angel kindergarten. me teaching the kids was always fun, stressful sometimes, because i didn t know how they would react to it. you see them smiling, you see them happy. they are talking, they are dancing. i was very eager to learn in the beginning when i started doing ballet. it was through an outreach programme like this thatjoel first met annabel. we were both really young. i was maybe 14 and joel was 13 or 12. but i sort of spotted joel. he was always coming in, he was always on time, and he had this beautiful elevation and his long legs when hejumped. annabel decided to invite cooper rust in to seejoel dance. and immediately i sanoel. so i started home schooling him so he could both learn to read and learn to dance. asjoel‘s skills increased, cooper secured an audition for him at the english national ballet school. she has pretty much changed a lot of lives. she s a mum to a lot of people. she s my best friend. whilejoel trained, he spent most of the time with his ballet friends at cooper s. these are home grown zucchinis? yes. cooper s really amazing that she does all of that. i don t think i ve met anyone else who can do such brilliance that she does. it really brings us together. emotionally we talk about everything. and we just really understand each other. so let s get everything cleaned up tonight and teeth brushed and ready for bed and we ll make some plans. cool? after dinner, cooper has some last minute notes forjoel. in the death pas de deux. more emotion. a lot more emotion. by putting your own worst nightmares into it. when you re acting it out you have to take it all the way. when you re in the moment it s ok and annabel won t mind. it ll help her. i think sometimes you re like what comes next, what comes next, what comes next it s natural. but you have to think what comes next, what comes next, what comes next. laughter. after a late night there s just time to grab some breakfast. it feels surreal, because, first of all, i would never have imagined performing romeo and juliet here. it s something that never crossed my mind even as a role that i would ever get to perform. so i m just thankful. i don t know. it s crazy. it is crazy. while the theatre technicians get across the lighting and stage cues, the company have a chance to get used to this space, including a renowned actor john sibi okumu playing lord montague. it is a wonderful story and i wanted to be on the same stage asjoel. because what he has achieved is phenomenal. to get where he is, and annabel, these are home grown superstars. at the kenyan national theatre, the public arrive for the opening gala. the show must go on. applause. places for act one! 00:22:04,332 > 2147483051:47:46,881 romeo &juliet, 2147483051:47:46,881 > 4294966103:13:29,430 dance of the knights.
this is bbc news. the headlines. the family of george floyd, the black man who was killed while being restrained by police in the us city of minneapolis last week, are joining tens of thousands of people on a march in his hometown, houston. the us democratic presidential candidatejoe biden said black communities were being victimised, and their cries of anger were being ignored. he accused president trump of fanning the flames of hatred. here in the uk, a report confirms that black, asian, and minority ethnic people are more likely to die of coronavirus than their white counterparts. the health secretary matt hancock said it was still unclear why this was the case but that the government would get to the bottom of it. clashes have broken out in paris between riot police and protesters demonstrating over the death of a black man in police custody four years ago. now on bbc news, it s hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i m stephen sackur. the coronavirus pandemic has hit europe hard, but now that most eu member states have curbed the rate of infection and begun to ease their lockdowns, does the eu have a coherent recovery strategy? well, my guest today is mario centeno, finance minister of portugal and head of the eurogroup of ministers. has this pandemic exposed the eu s greatest weakness, economic divergence? mario centeno in lisbon, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. thank you, stephen, thank you for having me. we saw deep divisions within the european union at the beginning of the covid 19 pandemic. have those divisions been healed? well, if you look back, you may see that these divisions have played a role in all the debate. but at the end of the day, we were able to act fast in a very flexible way. and for me, as president of the eurogroup, which is very important in a very pragmatic way, we had a few goals to achieve, to react quickly in a sizeable way and in a way that prevents further fragmentation of the european union and especially in the eurozone. but, minister, if i may, you didn t really react quickly, did you? we saw the chinese government offer medical assistance to italy long before other member states of the european union. and we saw some of the members, like the dutch, for example, criticising southern european countries for the weakness of their public finances rather than focusing on offering help. your own prime minister described that as repugnant and small minded . now, people don t forget these things, minister. they do not forget, indeed. but the fact is, in the economic front, we took ten days in eurogroup to approve the three backstops representing 540 billion euros of support for sovereigns, for firms and for workers. the ecb also took only a few days to raise to the occasion and come forward with a new package of help for banks and for the economic fabric of the european union and the eurozone. but what we saw and maybe what we still see in the european union is that politicians across the member states first and foremost think of the self interest, the national interest of their own countries. and at a time of crisis like that, it means the european union finds it very difficult to function collectively. well, as president of the eurogroup, i cannot deny that i would prefer domestic policy to be a little bit. ..on the back of our arguments when we are taking decisions for the european union as a whole, or the eurozone, which is the same for that matter. but in fact, the several trillion euros in measures that were taken at the national and at european level speak probably louder than a few altercations that we may have seen in this process. i know you re dying to talk to me about the, as you put it, the more than trillion euro package that the european commission wants to put together and push through as a recovery and rescue package for europe, and we will talk about it, i promise you. but before we get there, i just want to focus a bit more on the fact that different nation states, member states of the eu, are pursuing different policies. right now, we see it in terms of the easing of the lockdown, where if you visit different countries, from austria to germany to france to sweden, all of them are operating their own particular form of post total lockdown strategy. in the case of sweden, they never even had a lockdown. they re also operating in different ways in terms of their opening up of borders to each other. now, you re a european union, but this doesn t sound unified at all. we are in the middle of a very severe and unique sanitary crisis. this is a matter for many people of life or death, and the personal sentiments are very sensitive at this moment. compare us with the us you have the same sort of debate across us states. you have the house of representatives making proposals to the senate then the senate rejecting them. the debate in the uk parliament is not much easier than that. and even across regions in the uk, you see the same sort of scenes. people become very, very sensitive when we talk about issues like life and death. i m afraid that we have also to take that into consideration. fair point. fair point, and i understand that. but, as you know much better than me, freedom of movement, for example, is one of the key pillars of the european union. because this time it was not only about the economic and monetary union, it was about the single market, it was about precisely the free movement of people, of workers across europe. people at this time in different countries and governments, they need to understand that it was very much the basics of our economies that were at stake and, of course, all of our societies, as well. the single market is a pillar for european integration as much as the euro, and both things this time were injeopardy. but explain this to me. i mean, you re the finance minister of portugal. your economy is deeply dependent on summer tourism, so your government has sent the message that tourists are welcome from all over and, we are opening up. other european countries aren t sending the same message. we have some internal disputes where, for example, the danes and the finns are telling swedes that they re not welcome as tourists because sweden has a high rate of infection. we have britain, which admittedly is not any more in the european union but a very close neighbour, saying that all visitors will be quarantined for two weeks, if they arrive. so it looks like a european mess, and it is an important part of your economy, this notion of tourism and travel within the european union. how are you going to sort it out? this is a sanitary crisis, and people are very much afraid of their health. and we have to overcome this and we need to make this with a great deal of confidence and safety. i think most of those measures are measures that governments will take at the beginning of the de confinement period, in the exit strategy of the lockdown, in order to understand better how the society and pandemic reacts to this slow movement of openness. and i expect governments to lift these restrictions as soon as we are confident enough with them. but let me ask you bluntly, minister, if i may, do you accept that you in portugal have put economic priority above public health priority when you ve opened up your country to travellers from overseas because you are so desperate to save your tourism industry? that s an economic decision which could raise serious risk in terms of public health. it is true, but take the uk, take the uk example, and then i can give you also the same sort of examples for portugal. scotland and northern ireland, if i understand correctly, are not going as fast as other parts of the country, right, in terms of exiting the lockdown? the same thing is true for portugal. the area around lisbon is a little bit backwards compared with other parts of the country. ican, for example, tell you that algarve, which is where most of the people from the uk go for holidays, do not have a single case of covid i9 in the last couple of weeks already. so things are going very well there. so if you want to go to algarve, you can feel safe, and please visit as soon as you can. i am also very much eager to visit london in a couple of weeks if it s possible without the lockdown, as soon as you guys in the uk feel confident with opening up your borders again. well, as you say, the situation fluctuates from area to area. i do get that. let s take a big picture look, though, at the european economy, the state of health of the european economy. we have the imf predicting that the economy could shrink by 10% to 12% overall this year. the ecb, the european central bank, says that it could go as much as 12% reduction of european gdp. these are absolutely disastrous numbers christine lagarde calling it the biggest economic crisis certainly since the second world war. and we see the debt levels in countries like italy projected to rise to something like i60%, possibly 170% of national income. how on earth does the eurozone and the wider eu get out of this economic mess? well, pretty much as all other economies will. this is a temporary thing. this is very, very serious. i agree with all the numbers you gave. they are a very good description of the hardship we will experience in the coming months, but we really need to make this a temporary crisis. it does not come as the regular and usual crises in economics do. interest rates are low. we were following a very long probably the longest path of economic growth in recent history. unemployment rate was very, very low at the beginning of this sanitary crisis. one of the champions is the uk, but you have other examples in europe and worldwide. so. i understand that, minister. but the problem i m getting to is that what you have in the midst of this public health crisis is an economic crisis which is exacerbating the fundamental flaws in the european economic system. and that is all about divergence, because while you have italy, italy, with a national debt of i60% of gdp, you have the dutch and the danes and the swedes with loads of fiscal headroom. they can do whatever they need to do to manage this economic crisis. the italians have no headroom at all. you, as president of the eurogroup, are on top of a system which is incoherent, such is the deep divergence. we learned a lesson from the past, and we could not afford to have this sanitary crisis to morph into a financial crisis. so we really took the measures that and that s my expectation allow us to evolve through the crisis without creating further fragmentation in the eurozone and the european union. the measures we took are meant to a specific goal, which is to level the playing field of our political response at a national level so that we can somehow reduce the asymmetries that you are pointing out. we are all going to get out of this crisis with a larger amount of that, and we needed, we really needed, to find a common instrument in the form in this case of common debt issuance to spread the cost of this crisis in a way that we never did before. this is a very important step towards integration. here, if i may say so, minister, we get to the very heart of the problem. you ve just used this phrase, common debt issuance , which many people might find a bit baffling. but the truth is, what you re talking about is burden sharing, debt sharing. you want now the european union as an institution through the commission to go to the financial markets, raise vast amounts of money and pump it into those parts of the union that have been most badly affected by the pandemic. now, i understand all of that, but it is in essence a form of debt mutualisation, and that is a concept which many europeans in the prosperous north, these countries won t accept debt mutualisation. you ve got a very big problem on your hands. the negotiation is under way. i think all countries, including the so called frugal four , understand the importance of the single market. you know that the netherlands exports 60% of its gdp and the vast majority of their exports are to the single market, to the european union. so it would be a very significant change in economic model for each of our small open economies if we cannot preserve this vast single market. and what we are doing is precisely taking steps that we never thought we were able to travel before. for example, this common debt issuance was an avenue that was basically a dead hand before. but hang on. we ve had several weeks now of. first it was merkel and macron, and then we ve had ursula von der leyen, the president of the commission, outlining how this massive recovery plan is going to work. and it involves, as you said, in the end, over a trillion euros and it involves long term borrowing and it involves adapting the eu budget for years to come. i understand all of that. but when you tell me everybody has to realise this is vital for the future of the union, the truth is these frugal four , the netherlands, sweden, austria, denmark, these countries have listened to your arguments and they re not accepting them. i mean, i can quote to you the swedish prime minister saying, sweden has all along pushed for the fund to focus on loans, we will not accept grants. we ve got the austrian chancellor saying, we re only ready to approve a rescue front that gives out loans. they re not prepared to support your plan. well, i don t want to enter into each of the countries you ve mentioned in terms of domestic policy. but i can only say to you that unions in sweden and denmark play a very important role and they don t have such a clear idea on these issues. also, the greens in austria, they do have a quite different perspective, and they are part of the coalition government. what i want to portray is that, yes, this is a debate, yes, this is quite important to all of us and please judge us by the final agreement. i just want to reassure you that we won t give up in the first difficulty we have. well, you re going to have difficulties. and give me brief answers to brief questions. number one, is there going to be conditionality to the giving out of these grants, huge amounts of money to countries like italy? will there be a demand tied to the grant that italy must restructure, must make some fundamental economic reforms? there will be no conditionality attached other than what is typical in the european union budget. but this weekend, officials in italy already referred to the very strong commitment of italy to put the country in a sustainable path. well, we ve heard promises like that before, minister. and on another level, what if you re wrong? you say that this scheme is going to work because the economic recovery post covid i9 will be very quick. what if you re wrong? what if it s not quick? and what if the debt mountain continues to rise? at some point, this is going to be unsustainable. all forecasts point in different directions. but if you want a picture, i can give you one. think of this as a long, a long, a very long sunday and we are about to enter monday. and as you know, gdp collapses on sundays for our own pleasure and picks up very strongly on mondays when, unfortunately, we have to go back to our offices and factories to work. so this is precisely what we all want. well, one can only hope the virus recognises the difference between a sunday and a monday, minister. i m not sure that that s going to work. but is this an existential moment for the eu? i think emmanuel macron warned a few days ago that the collapse of the eu as a political project was possible if this recovery plan doesn t get pushed through and doesn t work. you know, unfortunately, the eu is quite often at the verge of an existential collapse! that has been the way many, many commentators describe all challenges to the eu for quite some time. but the resilience of the project, the fact that it is the biggest source of peace and prosperity in europe in the last 70 years. ah, minister, we hear that phrase all the time. but what do you say to those italians, two thirds of italians, who now say.? ..because the counterfactual is very negative. yeah, the italians now, two thirds of them say that being in the eu is a disadvantage for their country. and at the same time, polls in holland, in the netherlands, say that the dutch will be deeply unhappy if the eu promises to mutualise the debt of a country like italy. so wherever you look at it, north or south, there is a profound problem. what i can say is that the support for the euro is at the highest level ever in history. 76% of euro area citizens approve very strongly the euro. we are providing this network of support to all member states and to all citizens. i am sure that even in the more sceptical regions, they do understand that. take the numbers of the netherlands 60% of their gdp is made of exports, and the vast majority of those exports are for european countries. this is a very, very strong mutualisation of the economic model of the netherlands and denmark. well. ..of sweden, of portugal, spain. yeah. you have to hope you re right and that scepticism doesn t rise, because we see where scepticism can take a nation it can take a nation like the united kingdom out of the european union. let me end with just a brief question about the state of play in the negotiations between the eu and britain on a future trade agreement. as you know, if there is no agreement to extend the talks, to have an extension to the transition by the end ofjune, they must end by the end of the year. and we get the noises from the eu chief negotiator, michel barnier, and the british side that no progress is being made. how worried are you that there won t be an agreement to extend the talks and the talks will fail and that at the end of this year, the uk will be left trading with the eu on what is called world trade organization terms, which will, frankly, not be good for either side? well, michel is negotiating this for the european union as a whole, so i think we show that we are more united than ever. we need to understand, of course, the reasons of the uk. but, for me, the crucial thing is still to avoid an exit from the uk. so this is very important for both sides around the table and we need to keep focus on having a deal that serves both the uk and the european union. but to quote one british minister, he says, i think the covid crisis in some respects will concentrate the minds of eu negotiators, reinforcing the vital importance of reaching a deal. has this pandemic put more pressure on your side, the eu, to make some compromises with britain? britain, for example, not prepared to accept this idea of a level playing field as part of a preferential trade deal. well, we have been concentrating from the beginning on getting a deal. i mean, at face value, the argument seems to be a little bit absurd. we need to focus on all aspects of the challenges we have in front of us. and for sure, covid i9 is one of the most important, but we need to also get the other issues done, and i hope we can do that to the benefit of the uk people and the eu people, as well, so that again, going back in a much nicer tone, for you to come to visit us and to have your summer vacations here back and done in portugal. and i think it s very important to have all these issues clarified. i look forward to that prospect. thank you very much indeed forjoining me. minister mario centeno, in lisbon, thank you very much. thank you, stephen. thank you for this opportunity. hello there. the temperature reached 27 celsius in hampshire on tuesday but that was the last of the very warm days for probably quite some time. the next few days at least will be feeling much cooler thanks to a northerly wind, more cloud, and some wet weather around as well. and that rain certainly arrived in scotland during tuesday knocking the temperatures back as well. and the cloudier weather together with the rain is continuing to push its way southwards overnight. many areas by the end of the night will have had some rain. the exceptions really being towards the south east and east anglia where it is going to be a little chilly in the countryside. and probably drying off later in the night for northern ireland and western scotland. but some cloudy skies for wednesday in england and wales. and some outbreaks of rain, too could be a little heavy at times. across northern ireland, largely dry with a little bit of sunshine and missing most of the showers across western scotland where temperatures may make 18 degrees in glasgow, much cooler with the showers in eastern scotland and across the rest of the uk, temperatures quite a bit lower than they were yesterday. and continuing that cooler theme through the rest of the week because pressure is lower across scandinavia where we once had high pressure. instead, we got high pressure retreating out to the atlantic. it s not close enough to the uk and it means we are drawing down a northerly wind which will feed in that cooler air. and continue to feed in some showers. perhaps some longer spells of rain to clear away from the south east of england early on thursday morning, and then a little bit of sunshine but on the whole pretty cloudy skies and further showers which could be heavy at times as well. and if anything in that northerly wind, temperatures may be even lower on thursday. typically 14 15 degrees or so and quite a bit cooler than it should be this time of year. so this weather is quite a change to what we ve seen for a long time, and those cooler northerly winds pick up again on friday. we will blow down some heavy showers from the north, temperatures across southern england, south wales may get up to 16 or 17 degrees but for northern scotland, we are struggling to make double figures. and as we head into the weekend, we no longer have got high pressure close to the uk. instead we re dominated by low pressure and it s quite a deep one as well. it could bring some unusually windy weather to some northern and western parts of the uk at least for a while on saturday. there is the risk of some gales. even without the strong winds, it will feel cool in the cloud and with showers or longer spells of rain.
a very warm welcome to bbc news, with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. my name s mike embley. a president under pressure protesters gather outside the white house, and criticism continues for donald trump s handling of the continuing unrest. these are live pictures from the us capital. violent clashes between police and protesters have continued in cities countrywide after the death of a black man being detained by police. but the president issued this warning. ifa if a city or state refuses to ta ke if a city or state refuses to take the actions necessary to defend the life and property of their residents than i will deploy the united states military and quickly solve the problem for
the united states, britain, canada and australia have issued a joint statement warning that china s national security law in hong kong would curtail individual liberties there. they said it raised the prospect of people being convicted of political crimes and would make existing tensions worse. president trump has signed an executive order targeting social media companies, after being angered by twitter tagging two of his posts as potentially misleading. the measure limits the legal immunity the companies have against being held liable for what people post on their platforms. legal challenges are expected. the national guard has been called in to help restore order in the american city of minneapolis, following two nights of unrest. crowds have been protesting against the killing of an african american man at the hands of the police. unarmed african american man, george floyd, at the hands of the police. the state governor said he took the decision following widespread rioting on wednesday. now on bbc news, it s time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i m stephen sackur. the covid 19 pandemic has plunged the world economy into a deep recession. how long will it last and what kind of recovery can we expect? well, in large part, that depends on what governments do next. will they pile up a mountain of future debt in order to cope with today s crisis? my guest is the former governor of india s reserve bank, raghuram rajan. do the old rules of fiscal discipline no longer apply? raghuram rajan, in chicago, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. let s begin with a simple proposition that the covid 19 pandemic has been very damaging to the world economy. the question is, just how bad is it going to get? what s your answer? well, it depends on this very big imponderable how successful are we to be in arresting the spread of the pandemic? we have dealt with the first phase in industrial countries. we have brought it down, we have brought the reproduction rate down below one and these countries are opening up. is there a second phase? of course, it is still rampant in the emerging markets, brazil, russia, india, and of course in africa, it is starting to grow in a number of places, so i think we still have to wait and see how bad it will get. it is already very, very bad. you recently wrote, i m in the camp which has grown progressively more and more pessimistic about the outlook. is that because of your focus on some of the emerging markets or because of what you may perceive as mismanagement of the problem in some of the developed, richer countries? i think it is a bit of everything, right? what we have seen in industrial countries is different countries have had different degrees of success. that is also true of emerging markets. vietnam is struggling to prevent its first death from the virus. on the other hand, brazil has had tens of thousands of deaths already and it isjust expanding. so, management has been variable but also we do not really know how bad this can get, whether we have a second wave. we spent an enormous amount of money already on cushioning the effects of the first wave. there is not a lot left in the kitty for the second wave, if that actually comes. what president trump wants to see is a v shaped recovery, that is a steep plunge down at the beginning the crisis, followed by a rapid ascent back to some sort of economic normality as people and the lid has been put on the spread of the pandemic. as people believe. do you believe in this concept of a v shaped recovery? well, it is possible to get a rapid recovery in some areas, for example, manufacturing, if you can get the supply chains working and if demand starts picking up. these are all big ifs. on the other hand, who is going to venture into a restaurant? even in china with all the tracking they are doing, you still see that many restaurants are half or three quarters empty still. people are not confident enough to go into places which are very crowded. so, my sense is that any recovery is going to take place over time, especially in the high contact service sectors, hospitality, travel, et cetera, but even in manufacturing, getting the supply chain synchronised and making sure your supplier in mexico also has his plant running and that your buyer in europe is willing to accept delivery. this is also going to take time. so, i think this v shape is looking a lot more optimistic, even if we do not have fresh outbreaks of the virus. what is interesting about your analysis there is that it is not just about controlling and curbing the spread of the virus, it is also about addressing public perception, confidence, attitude because, as you point out, in many sectors, important sectors of the us and wider global economy, i m thinking aviation, all of those sectors that rely on public confidence in being in open spaces with other people, whether it be entertainment, restaurants, many leisure activities, there is now a profound confidence problem, isn t there? there is, right? in some sense, the only answer to this is either knowledge that everybody has been vaccinated or that everybody has been tested recently and don t actually carry the virus, otherwise, you ll always be worried there is somebody coming here who is a carrier, and what will that do to me? let s get into the detail of economic policy making across the world and tap into your experience as both a former governor of the indian reserve bank and also chief economist at the imf. you have a lot of experience to bring to the table, particularly with the nature of fiscal policy and the use of debt. what we see in the united states and many other countries is vast, expansion of borrowing, of debt, to finance economic recovery packages, to help people in the here and now. you, traditionally, have been very cautious about the use of debt to fuel economic recovery and growth. are you just as cautious today? well, i think the immediate reaction when the virus hit was appropriate. the sense was this would be only a couple of months. that the policy objective was to put the economy in a coma, protect people, protect theirjobs, protect firms, and two months later, with the swish of the wand, the economy would wake up and we would be back to normal. that was the v shape recovery, the sense that this was all easily tackled. now, as we see, it is going to take much longer and there is a real now, as we see, it is going to take much longer, there is a real question about whether the economy should be transformed in this process, whether it is enough to put it to sleep or whether we need a new economy to take care of all of the concerns about proximity, as well as the ability to now work at a distance that far more people realised they have. so, there will be transformations. and are we keeping the economy from transforming? we are also discovering it is extremely costly to keep people at home, extremely costly to keep these lockdowns. the us has issued $3 trillion worth of debt this quarter. and a trillion here, a trillion there, it becomes real money very, very quickly. the reality is now we have to make hard choices, pick and choose. what do we protect? clearly, people have to be protected but do we protect theirjobs? perhaps they need new jobs elsewhere? we need to make sure that happens. we need to provide credit at that time, but do we have to keep a restaurant alive for the next year while it is closed? if i understand you correctly then, mr rajan, you seem to be saying that policymakers need to be a little bit more brutal, a bit more cold blooded and hard eyed about the current situation rather than popping up, as you put it, restaurants or maybe even airlines, which you may believe do not have a long term future in their current form? are you saying those businesses should be allowed to go bust and not to allow them to go bust is economically, deeply inefficient and unsustainable? well, we certainly need to start taking advantage of bankruptcy procedures and restructuring. some of these airlines will have to shed planes, some of them will have to downsize somewhat, given that air travel might be more constrained over the next few years. so, i think, now that we have steadied the economy a little bit, before the advent of new challenges, perhaps we should let the natural processes take over, market processes, like bankruptcy and restructuring. some entities will obviously survive but they may need much less debt then they have. piling on more debt is probably a bad option at this point. ithink. right. isn t it time for some reassessment of your aversion to debt? let me quote to you another respected economic, i know you know him well, ken rogoff, who has written a lot about the nature of the debt curve and how dangerous the national debt can be to economic growth. he says, any sensible policy right now is going to have us racking up the deficit for a long time. and, he says, if we go up another $10 trillion, i would not even blink at that right now. so, he is saying this is a very special, unprecedented situation and our responses need to be unprecedented, too. we have to be careful in two ways. one, of course, is i do think we will require much more money to be spent but it may not be in propping entities up and trying to make sure nothing changes. but it might be in ensuring there is a substantial stimulus so that the massive unemployment we have starts being brought down relatively quickly, going forward. this may take the form, for example, of a massive infrastructure package in the us, but what i am saying is we need to start shifting because we will need resources for that also down the line. of course, the post covid world will require stronger worker protections, better healthcare. that will also require money. so, let s make sure we are not doing the wrong thing at this point, which is keeping unviable entities alive at enormous cost to our finances. that is one. we have to be very careful. i understand your point about the need for transformation but i want to get specific on the question of how much debt is too much debt? traditionally, economists like you have worried a great deal if nation states take on debt that represents more than 100% of their national income, their gdp, but we now look at a country like italy, which has been hurt badly by covid i9, its economy, frankly, in ruins. it looks as though their national debt in the next year or two will spiral beyond 160% or more of gdp. are you saying that that is simply unsustainable and italy is going to have to completely rethink its national economy? no, what has changed is the level of interest rates. they have come down a lot and higher levels of debt are affordable at these levels of interest rate. however, if you have an enormous amount of debt, it prevents you from doing some things, especially at times like this. take italy again, italy has not had the massive spending packages that germany has had precisely because its debt is so high and it fears rolling the financial markets by taking on a whole lot more debt. its stimulus has been in single digits, compared to the double digits that have been there in most northern european countries. that is one very, very important concern. the second concern in europe is you will have a two stage europe. you have southern europe, with debt to gdp in the 130%, 140% of gdp, and in italy s case even higher, and you have a northern europe which is tootling along at 60% and 70%. a 50 percentage point difference. that s going to create a whole lot of angst over the crisis, which is one reason why this common european budget that they are planning makes sense because these disparities get alarming in a single currency. that is a fascinating take and i want to push you further then on the world s various reactions to the emergency, starting with europe. you seem to be suggesting that unless europe gets serious about fiscal integration, a much deeper economic union, then, the eurozone, as it is currently constituted, could collapse. is that what you are saying? because the divergences between northern europe and the south have become so stark, so pronounced, they are not sustainable in the current form? that s broadly what i m trying to say. europe is really an idealistic project. northern europe has to ask whether it is idealistic enough about it to make some of the transfers that may be required going forward. you can t look at it purely in the sense of euros and cents. it has to be about the longer term goal and how we feel about it as europeans rather than individuals and nations. of course, a lot of stuff goes into that, how much sovereignty are you willing to give up, how much common rules do you want? different folks have different takes on that, but i would say that is an existential question for europe right now. existential questions for europe, we have talked about donald trump and his determination, as he would see it, to make that a v shape recovery in the us but who do you see emerging from this covid i9 pandemic in the best economic shape? the latest imf analysis suggests that while europe and the us will see steep contractions by the end of this year, maybe 6% of gdp contraction, china will eke out growth of perhaps i% or maximum 1.5% or 2%. india was still be growing, but only about i%. do you think this is going to hasten the shift in the balance of economic power in the world to the east, to china and, to some extent, india as well? well, first, i think these numbers will have to be revised, given more recent data. china may well eke out a 0% growth, but i think india will not do as well, probably 3%, 4%, maybe more, and of course brazil and russia have also experienced significant rises in cases and worry about their economic performance. the reality is this is actually going to be as crushing a blow for the emerging markets, with the exception of a few like vietnam, south korea and china that have managed to contain the pandemic, and the problem for many emerging markets and developing countries, especially in africa, is that they re so dependent on a few commodities, on trade, for recovery, that even if they managed to contain the virus and prevent the extensive damage that is likely, given they have few resources to bail out firms and people, there is the problem of what happens after? how does the recovery take place? and they simply don t have the resources for a substantial stimulus. so, their stimulus depends on the industrial countries growing strongly and buying their stuff, and, you know, with all the constraints on trade we saw before the virus, and now the massive fight that seems to be brewing between the us and china, i really hope the world post covid comes together becomes because we really can t afford a trade war, especially in a number of the poorest countries in the world. it s interesting you say that, because all of the indications are that rising economic nationalism and protectionism is exactly what we are going to see, and i m very mindful that you wrote a book last year called the third pillar, in which you looked at the relationship between capitalism and democracy. and you wrote, if people lose their faith in the ability to compete in the marketplace, if their communities continue to decline, if they feel the elite has appropriated all opportunity for itself, popular resentment can turn to rage. surely the covid i9 pandemic and the spiral of economic misery you ve just outlined is going to, is it not, lead to that popular resentment leading to more rage? almost surely, yes. so, what sort of hope is there? my hope is that we sort of see that this cannot go on. something which is unsustainable has to stop. you can t have periodic crises, huge levels of inequality, massive spending, and then repeat every ten years. we need to start tackling the problems that afflict capitalism and we need to start thinking how do we fix this inequality, which is problematic. and which is creating, according to some people, the weakness of demand that causes us to have these massive massively stimulating monetary policies that lead to the debt build up and all the conservatism in me that you ve talked about. so we need to start thinking about the real economy how do we make it fairer? but mr rajan, you re a very well connected economist. you point to me one global leader right now who is taking on that difficult task of talking genuine economic transformation, for this being a moment of opportunity to rethink capitalism. name me one. so i do think the us presidential election will offer some semblance of that choice, that is the democrats are certainly putting forward an alternative view. i think perhaps under bernie sanders and elizabeth warren, it was a little extreme, but i do think thatjoe biden has been moved a little more towards that camp. i do think the debates that it will create or it will engender will be very important, because it talks about the sustainability of society going forward. to my mind, this us presidential election is one of the most well, like every us presidential election but this one in particular, about resetting the tone, both for the dialogue within the united states, but perhaps across the world. sorry, i m trying to read between the lines. are you saying four more years of donald trump would be disastrous not just for the us economy, but the global economy? ah, you can read between the lines. let me say again i think this is an election which offers an important choice to the american people. let s talk about the country from which yourfamily hails, india. you were obviously, as i said, the governor of the reserve bank of india, very senior adviser to the governments of mr modi and his predecessors. you fell out, i think it s fair to say, with mr modi and his party over economic policy making, and some in his party said that you, in the end, proved that you were not a true indian because you didn t take care of, for example, the small business people who wanted access to credit that you wouldn t give them. so, the question is mr modi, despite the fact that infection rates are, at the moment, rising in india, is extraordinarily popular and his brand of hindu nationalism appears more popular than ever. do you look at india and believe that modi has a sustainable project and programme for his country, or not? well, i think if you look at india over the last few years, unfortunately, economic growth has been declining and we ve seen the budget deficits grow. we ve seen a rise in bad debts in the system, partly as a result of the easy credit that you said i was opposed to, and as a result, india enters this crisis in a somewhat different situation than other countries. it still has a substantial amount of foreign exchange reserves and it still is a big country with enormous resources, but they have to be used well. now, so far, if you look at the overall infections, as well as the death rates, they re relatively small compared to the population. the worry is they re still growing after a substantial period of lockdown and, in fact, some of the management of this crisis whereby a number of migrants left the cities for their villages, may in fact have caused the virus to expand in those areas. so, india is in a difficult situation today. it does need to find the reforms that will enable it to grow, but it also needs to spend more money in stimulating the economy back to growth. well, i think indians will be fascinated to hear you, mr rajan, saying the government needs to spend more money, but let s ask you one specific question to end about globalisation. here s a dramatic quote from the current world bank chief economist, carmen reinhart. i think covid i9 is the nail in the coffin of globalisation. you ve referred your fears for an all out us china trade war. is globalisation dead? it can t be dead, and that s the problem, right? we have a growing an elderly population growing in industrial countries. demand is going to slow down. we have a young population in the emerging markets, and africa is really, really very young. so, if you look at the economic opportunities going forward, they re so big and fostering a genuine globalisation, which works for everyone. my argument has been the democratic backing for globalisation has been wanting in part because we haven t made sure the people left behind, especially in industrial country communities, but also in emerging markets, that they haven t had a fair shot. and that s why you see a growing resistance. and my belief is if we rethink this, and this goes back to new leadership to rethink this process and to put in place policies that will lead to a better globalisation for all, both for the industrial countries and the developing and emerging markets. now, for that, i really think we really need to rethink our whole system. but in a word, and we must end now, but in a word, you seem to be saying without new and different and more ambitious leadership in the world, we are in for years of misery and possibly worse. it s the commodity in shortest supply today, and we really need that. as you said, things can get much worse. but hopefully we can turn this world around. i mean, there s so many big global challenges, climate change for example, that we need to deal with. and for that, you need global cooperation. but for that, you need leaders. and notjust in the us, in china, elsewhere, who are willing to work together to create that new world. so, iam hopeful that disaster brings rethinking, and rethinking then creates the possibility of a better tomorrow. but that s hopeful me. well, we ll stick with hopeful you at least for now. raghuram rajan, it s been a pleasure having you on hardtalk. thanks forjoining me from chicago. thank you. hello. we know this spring has been warm. it s been very dry in some spots. and now news aboutjust how sunny it s been, with the met office saying provisionalfigures indicate that it s been the uk s sunniest spring on record. and with high pressure close by for friday into the weekend, most will stay sunny and dry, warm, very warm, even hot in some spots. in fact, friday, the flow of air around this high pressure as it moves north across the uk will favour parts of scotland to see the uk s high temperature of the day, close to 28 celsius. now, we start the day with temperatures for some in single figures, though they will rise quickly in the sunshine. any low cloud across parts of eastern coastal england will disappear, along with any misty low cloud around the murray firth in scotland. orkney brightening up, shetland staying mainly cloudy. but for most of the uk, it s sunshine all the way. it is now a prevailing east southeastly breeze. and that means that east facing coasts will see temperatures towards the teens rather than the low to mid 20s across the bulk of the uk, and, again, nudging the upper 20s in the hottest parts of scotland. temperature not the only thing high. uv levels as well. strong may sunshine. do take care if you re outside for any period of time. and pollen, moderate to high for many of us, as grass pollen levels are on the increase. now, friday looks like a fine evening, plenty of sunshine to end the day. again, temperatures will head down overnight, so if you do try to cool the house down overnight, we re expecting some spots, again, tojust dip down into single figures. and a largely sunny start to saturday morning. and again, just to show you the big picture, it s high pressure maybejust pushing out towards scandinavia, but it is still blocking weather fronts that would give us some rain otherwise from getting to us from the atlantic. so, on saturday, there may be a bit of patchy cloud developing here and there, the sun may turn hazy in some spots, but for most, it s a sunny story, a brighter one in shetland as well. still the breeze keeping some eastern coastal parts cooler than elsewhere. again, we re talking widely in the low to mid 20s. and then on sunday, again, some patchy cloud developing here and there, but for most places, it will be sunny, it will be dry, it will be very warm. just a hint of something cooler at the end of next week.
welcome to bbc news. i m lewis vaughan jones. our top stories: the national guard is called in to pacify protests in the us city of minneapolis, following two nights of unrest. protestors call for justice as police officers are of george floyd, an unarmed black man. they terrorised, they murder oui’ they terrorised, they murder our children. we have done nothing. western countries condemn china s planned new hong kong security law, saying it threatens basic freedoms. and targeting twitter president trump signs an executive order aimed at social media companies. easing the lockdown in england and scotland. from monday, people can gather in groups while keeping their distance.
this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. british airways treatment of staff during the coronavirus crisis is a national disgrace according to a group of prominent uk politicians they say ba has used the pandemic to cut thousands ofjobs. virus deaths surge in brazil it now has the second highest toll in the world. london s top police officer tells those planning to join anti racism protests today to stay off the streets amid a warning that far right groups could try to disrupt events. please express your voice in a different way, and don t come physically to the streets of london. in an interview with the bbc, the dalai lama, the leader of tibetan buddhism says he s been inspired by the compassions shown during the coronavirus crisis. no footguards, no carriage ride and no flypast how the queen s official birthday will be a socially distanced celebration at windsor castle this year. 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. in the uk, a cross party group of mps has described british airways treatment of its staff during the pandemic as a ‘national disgrace . a report by the commons transport committee accuses the airline of attempting to use the crisis to cut thousands ofjobs and weaken the employment conditions of thos that remain. ba says it needs to find ways to survive the crisis. in other news, brazil has now recorded the second highest number of deaths from covid i9 after the united states. it means brazil has overtaken the uk, with more than 41,800 deaths. meanwhile, in china, eleven districts in the capital beijing have been locked down over fears of renewed clusters of coronavirus. 45 people tested positive for the virus at a wholesale market in the south east of the city. here in the uk, research carried out by the bbc has found that hundreds of doctors from black and ethnic minority backgrounds are still waiting for a risk assessment for coronavirus despite official guidance that they should have one. and in england, from today adults who live alone or single parents who live with children aged under 18 can form a support bubble with one other household of any size. with more on ba, here s our international business correspondent, theo leggett. british airways is a company in crisis. it is struggling to cope with the huge financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic and embroiled in a bitter row with its unions. now, mps have weighed in. the airline is planning a major cost cutting drive which could lead to as many as 12,000 redundancies, out of a total of 42,000 employees. some remaining staff could also see big cuts to their pay. i don t live an expensive champagne lifestyle, i live within my means. and what could happen means that i m going to get a 50% or 60% pay cut, so i could lose my home. that s the long and short of it. after hearing from british airways employees and questioning the chief executive of its parent company, mps have described the airline s behaviour as a national disgrace. they claim the company s been taking advantage of the pandemic to push through job cuts and undermine the pay and conditions of staff who remain. ba rejects the claims. it says it needs to find ways to survive during the deepest crisis ever faced by the airline industry, and says mps should focus on the facts. and ba is certainly not alone. ryanair plans to cut 3000 jobs. easyjet says it could make a500 staff redundant. and virgin wants to close 3000 posts. airlines are very welcoming of the support that has been put in place so far by the chancellor, the furlough scheme has been widely picked up by the airline sector and it s very welcome indeed. but we are facing a future with an aviation sector that s going to be very much smaller than what we ve got currently. it s going to take several years to get back to pre crisis levels, and therefore difficult decisions will have to be taken. the mps report also criticises the new quarantine rules which came into effect on monday. they now force anyone arriving in the uk to go into isolation for two weeks, in order to prevent new cases of coronavirus being brought in from abroad. but the committee says the policy will cause further damage to the aviation industry and the wider economy. huw merriman, who chairs the transport select committee, spoke to the bbc a little earlier. of course it has to look at its bottom line, it would be unrealistic and our report makes it clear that redundancies are inevitable, but ba is the only airline that is looking at this pandemic as the time to downgrade the terms and conditions of staff, rather than just rely on redundancy. brazil has now recorded the second highest number of deaths from covid 19 after the united states, overtaking the uk. the brazilian health ministry says more than 900 people died from the virus in the past 2a hours, bringing the total to over 111,800. president jair bolsonaro has consistently downplayed the severity of the crisis. densely populated cities like sao paulo and rio dejaneiro have begun lifting restrictions, even though many brazilians fear the worst is yet to come. professor anthony pereira, who is director of the brazil institute at kings college london, says that the situation is very worrying for brazilians. it is sad, because the numbers are still going up in brazil, even as lockdown is being eased in a lot of places, so we don t know where it would end. it is possible that brazil could exceed the number of deaths in the united states byjuly 01’ deaths in the united states byjuly or august and it comes amid a political battle between the branches and levels of government. we know about the fights between the president and the governors. yesterday a supreme courtjustice said the army couldn t be a moderating power. the president tweeted a response, saying that the army would not obey senseless orders from the other powers. in digging in and perceiving that he is losing popularity, jair bolsonaro, he is trying to reemphasise his control over the armed forces. it is a very troubling moment for brazil s democracy as well as its public health. people planning to take part in protests in london today have been told that they must be off the streets by five o clock this afternoon. the metropolitan police said several protests are scheduled in the capital, including a black lives matter protest and another by right wing groups. senior officers have again urged people to stay away while coronavirus rules remain in place. sean dilley reports. london s metropolitan police is gearing up for more protests on the streets of the capital today, two and a half weeks after the death of george floyd in police custody in minneapolis. britain s most senior police officer is urging people to stay at home. i think people should stay away from these protests. it s clear that we re in the middle of a public health crisis, so it s not safe for them, it s not safe for the people around them. secondly, we do have information that people are intent on coming to cause violence and confrontation. of course, we will do everything we can to prevent violence and disorder. senior officers have authorised special powers to restrict the locations of protests. all gatherings must end at 5:00pm. the measures come a week after tens of thousands gathered around the uk. a minority turned violent. shouting. in london, 27 police officers were hurt. statues were targeted in bristol and in the capital. this weekend, the cenotaph and a statue of britain s wartime prime minister were hidden from view. what s happened with these demonstrations is that a tiny minority or actually, a growing minority, unfortunately have hijacked them. and they are using them as a pretext to attack the police, to cause violence, and to cause damage to public property. police say they understand the depth of feeling ahead of planned protests but they say people should, on public health grounds, find other ways to make their voice heard. sean dilley, bbc news. from today in england and northern ireland, people who live by themselves can expand their support network to include one other household of any size. these new support bubbles allow qualifying people to meet indoors or out, be less than two metres apart and stay overnight. in england, the rule also applies to single parents with children under 18. an outbreak of the coronavirus emanating from a large wholesale market in beijing has led to fears of a second wave of infections in the chinese capital. the market is now shut, along with some others in china s capital. an outbreak of the coronavirus emanating from a large wholesale market in beijing has led to fears of a second wave of infections in the chinese capital. the market is now shut, along with some others in china s capital. 0ur china correspondent, steve mcdonell, has more from beijing. we are getting used to not having any cases in beijing, more than 50 days without a new case and all of a sudden at a large wholesale markets, dozens sudden at a large wholesale markets, d oze ns of sudden at a large wholesale markets, dozens of positive cases, most are asymptomatic. now they are testing 10,000 staff at the market and this isa 10,000 staff at the market and this is a massive wholesale market, that supplies 80% of beijing s meat and vegetables. so a lot of concern there. the people running that market are saying they have been going around trying to test where it could have come from, or how it s spread, but they re saying they have tested traces of the coronavirus on a chopping board used for imported salmon. i don t know if that necessarily means it has come off the salmon, or the person chopping the salmon, or the person chopping the fish. but large ramifications. we have seen hundreds of military police pouring into that market. the market has been shut down and neighbourhoods around the market shut down, schools, shops around the market also closed. hundreds of black and minority ethnic doctors in the uk have told the bbc they are still waiting for a coronavirus risk assessment. guidance issued by nhs england at the end of april recommended that staff who are at greater risk should be assessed. 94% of doctors who have died with coronavirus have come from non white backgrounds. joining me now from north london is the bma s council chair, dr chaand nagpaul. thank you forjoining us. how concerned are you by these figures and do they accord with what your hear something yes, the figures are disturbing, 94% of all doctors who have died from covid 19 have come from a bame background. this figure cannot be explained on stat isical variation. so it is clear that the nhs hasa variation. so it is clear that the nhs has a duty of care to protect its workforce and risk assessments are key. they re the same as we do for the population, that certain members of population should be shielded, certain are vulnerable. what we know is that bame health ca re what we know is that bame health care workers who have a high risks, those who may be older, who may have diabetes or a heart condition, should they be in contact with the virus and become infected, that could seriously damage the health and cause death. it is right they should be risk assessed. without that, you basically have a situation where health care workers are putting themselves in harm s way and these statistics, it is a call for action. so we had guidance from nhs england to all nhs providers for the staff to be risk assessed and yet about 40% of doctors have told us they re not even aware of the ability to be risk assessed and of those that have been risk assessed, more bame doctors are telling us they re not satisfied. this is a time where we must protect our workforce and those who are most at risk. and i want to make sure that no one feels that doctors are not going to be on the front line. this means that doctors can be redeployed to do work that is safe for them and patients and there is plenty of work, with the lack log, to do work thatis work, with the lack log, to do work that is not covid facing. we should redeploy staff in a way that is right for them and patients. are some staff taking matters into their own hands and risk assessing themselves if they have underlying conditions and they know that because of their ethnicity they re at greater risk, can they say i m stepping back, whether you re going to risk assessment me or not, i ve done my own? one of the worrying statistics is that bame doctors are less likely to challenge authority and complain, because they feel there may be repurr cushions. repercussions. so i have written to all doctors advising them they re entitled to a risk assessment and they should be challenging if they feel they re at risk and they have not been assessed. there are some tools available that give employers and we have advised our members of these stools tools so they can see if they fall into a high risk category and if they do, remember doctors and health care workers are seeing patients at close proximity. if they re at risk of serious ill health it can t be right they re put into that position. we are encouraging doctors to feel out if they feel they re being put in harm s way when they should be protected. thank you forjoining us. worth saying that nhs england have said they know that covid 19 has put a spotlight on health inequalities and saying that they re prioritising risk assessment for ethnic minority staff. the dalai lama has said he s been inspired by the compassion so many have shown during the coronavirus crisis. the tibetan buddhist spiritual leader told the bbc the pandemic had helped people recognise they were part of one global community. 0ur correspondent justin rowlatt reports. when i met the dalai lama in 2017, the world was very different. then the world was very different. then the leader of tibetan buddhism could even tap me on the head. that is for educated people. how are you, your holliness. in the age of coronavirus we meet by video. he admits being locked down in a palace is pretty curby. i personally stay here peacefully. he recognise it is pandemic has been a terrible burden for many, but he says there has been much to inspire and celebrate. many people don t care about their own sort of safety, but helping. wonderful. in a way it has revealed something positive about humanity and about us all. negative things, sometimes helpful one way frustration, anger and one way when you re on a member of your own community suffer, then there are a sense of concern, more compassionate feeling. his hope is that the coronavirus crisis will help foster international co operation. coronavirus crisis will help foster international co-operation. in the past, there has been too much emphasis my continent, my nation, my religion. now that thinking is out dated. we should think humanity, seven billion human beings. one of the key concerns for the buddhist leader i was the environment. is the environment. the current dalai lama was born in a remote village and exiled in 1959. the god king travels. that is when the tibetan people rose up against the chinese occupation. the dalai lama says he has seen dramatic changes in the environment within his own lifetime. 1960 i came here. that winter, a lot of snow. then each year less and less and less. so we must think very seriously global warming. now to a more delicate subject, his own death. he has said he may not be reincarnated and could be the last dalai lama. dalai lama institution now a few centuries now and with this. great dalai lama! are you saying you are the last dalai lama? the concerned people should discuss about the future of the dalai lama. they should decide. i have no idea. my they should decide. i have no idea. my main concern is my own life spent something useful. it hasn t finished! four years. the dalai lama has been an extraordinarily effective ambassador people since the chinese invasion 70 years ago. he may say he is not interested in what happens when he is gone, but his passing will raise major political and religious issues. a government scheme providing grants for businesses supports fewer firms in areas with higher property prices, according to a new report by researchers from the institute for fiscal studies. just a one pound difference in a property s rateable value can lead to the amount of support differing by up to nearly £25,000. there has also been a significant variation in how quickly councils have been able to pay out grants to companies. let s get more on this from david phillips, one of the authors of the report. thank you forjoining us. so what are these grants and business rebates and how know how do they work. the government put in place two schemes to support businesses with not just labour two schemes to support businesses with notjust labour costs, two schemes to support businesses with not just labour costs, but other costs. so most businesses in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors, many which are closed town, most businesses are getting a waiver of their business rates this year and those occupying small properties, or the vast majority of them, are entitled to grants of up to £25,000 to help pay their rent or with other costs. some other businesses in the office sector are also entitled to grants if they re in particularly small properties. it is support over £22 billion of support, mostly to the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors, but that doesn t mean there are not issues with the design that could be addressed if the schemes were extended. explain what the problems are, why you think there injustice is and how they can be quickly fixed? the figures issue is that the way the schemes are designed means there are quite big cliff edges in there are quite big cliff edges in the support businesses get. you mentioned that a one pound difference in the value of a property can lead to a doubling or a halving in the amount of support they get, because they become eligible for bigger grants or lose eligibility for grants. that could bea eligibility for grants. that could be a £25,000 difference. that unfair and it could cause distortion to competition and some businesses want to survive and continue and others just because of that one pound difference in the value of property. also. tell us what how this can be fixed. there are two ways, one is that the schemes could be changed so that the schemes could be changed so that rather than having the big cliff edges in support, support gets tapered away and that is how it often works with these schemes, the other issue that could be changed is that rather than have national thresholds who define who is eligible for grants, so if you re in london, over 20% of properties are above the threshold, regional thresholds could be set to reflect the differences in property values, to make sure the schemes are more fairly providing support to different parts of country where values are different. we will have to eleven it, because we have a busy morning. thank you for explaining that clearly. the queen s official birthday will be marked with a ceremony instead of the annual trooping the colour parade, as the coronavirus lockdown continues. it is only the second time in her 68 year reign that the parade in london has not gone ahead. instead, windsor castle will host a ceremony with a small number of welsh guardsmen and military musicians. social distancing rules will be in place for those who are marching. joining us now from windsor castle is our royal correspondent, sarah campbell. tell us more. well, the build up to the ceremony is beginning. i can hearin the ceremony is beginning. i can hear in the distance behind the castle walls, i can hear the massed band. and behind the gate, the guardsmen are lining up to make that march up the hill to the quadrangle. the doors are closed, because there will be no public viewpoint, no van ta ij will be no public viewpoint, no van taij point vantage point. social distancing is the order of the day and trooping the colour cancelled for only the second time in the queen s reign. there are soldiers trooping up the mall towards buckingham palace for that photo opportunity. none of that can happen this year, due to the coronavirus and instead location wise it has moved from london to here to windsor castle where the queen and the duke of edinburgh have been during lockdown. there will be a short military ceremony. roughly 20 minutes. it has been especially designed. normally the guards men are shoulder to shoulder and of course that can t happen and they have developed a ceremony that means they will be exactly 2.2 metres apart at all times. the queen will ta ke apart at all times. the queen will take the royal salute and go back into the castle and the welsh guards will go back on duty. no public vantage points in windsor. the ceremony will be shown on bbc1. thank you. as we ve been hearing from today in england and northern ireland, people living alone, or single parents with children under the age of 18, can choose to pair up with another household in a so called ‘support bubble . for many, the chance to visit, and even stay the night with loved ones, is a welcome change to the strict lockdown measures introduced almost three months ago. (read 0n) introduced almost three months ago. samantha sloane is a single mum with a two year old daughter she s reuniting with her parents today. i can talk to her now, with her dad duncan. what does it mean to you, it is your birth day, i m glad you have the t shirt. birth day, i m glad you have the t-shirt. it is. congratulations. thank you. how does it feel to be in a bubble at last and not entirely on your own with your two year old. a bubble at last and not entirely on your own with your two-year-old. for me it is an amazing thing, it has come at st right time, it is my birthday and it is a welcome pirt day present. my two year old broke herfoot day present. my two year old broke her foot a couple of weeks ago and that was challenging on my own, i m due to move house on monday and could do with some child care support and i found could do with some child care support and ifound out my could do with some child care support and i found out my dad s due open heart surgery. it is amazing to be able to see him again and hopefully have a takeaway and have a sunday dinner tomorrow, so all very exciting for us. duncan, sorry to hear about your heart surgery and good luck with that. thank you. on the question of the bubble, what does it mean to you to actually see your daughter and your grand child again after these three months? that is great. we have seen each other over videos and things, but to actually physically come in the house is brilliant. what have been, i don t know if either of you is prepared to go there with full candour, but what have been the ha rd est candour, but what have been the hardest moments? probably hit six weeks and i hit a really low point and got quite epressed and emotional depressed and emotional and found out the news about my father and being alone and not hug him and having my daughter with a broken foot and no support. so it has been emotional but there has been some good times with my me and my daughter. i m glad it is mixed and there have been some up things, sorry about the six week difficult moment, duncan, what have been the ha rd est moment, duncan, what have been the hardest things for you? it is helping out more, having the chance, you see your daughter or and your grand daughter in difficulties and there are problems arise and you can t help them. you know it is frustrating and it has been frustrating, but now you knowjust to come around and be able tojust sit here and help. it is lovely to talk to you both. all the best with moving on monday. duncan all the best with the child care on monday and all of you have a wonderful birthday today and feel free to have a big hug for all of us. thank you. thank you. now time for a quick look at the weather with helen. hello. there will be further heavy and thundery showers this weekend, but with spells of sunshine in between it will feel warmer. the showers will be quite slow moving into the afternoon, perhaps parts of wales, the midlands and north west england sing active storms, lots of lightning, large hail, squally winds. rain across northern england and northern ireland is edging its way northwards into scotland, but drier to the north and east, but the sea haar and fret will keep things quite a grey and cool. showers are obviously congregating a lot near centre of low pressure in the southend west, but will tend to ease a little through the night. another warm night, the low cloud will return, slow to clear tomorrow, otherwise further spells of sunshine and some heavy and thundery showers. hello. this is bbc news with carrie gracie. the headlines: british airways treatment of staff during the coronavirus crisis is a national disgrace according to a group of prominent uk politicians they say ba has used the pandemic to cut thousands of jobs.
this is bbc news. the headlines: the national guard has been called in to help restore order in the american city of minneapolis which has now seeen its third night of violence and unrest. crowds have been protesting against the killing of an african american man at the hands of the police. the state governor said he took the decision following widespread rioting on wednesday. the united states, britain, canada and australia have issued a joint statement warning that china s national security law in hong kong would curtail individual liberties there. they said it raised the prospect of people being convicted of political crimes and would make existing tensions worse. president trump has signed an executive order targeting social media companies, after being angered by twitter tagging two of his posts as potentially misleading. the measures limit the legal immunity the companies have against being held liable for what people post on their platforms. for two and a half months, streets across the uk have been filled with the sound of applause every thursday night as the nation comes out to thank the carers and key workers of the pandemic. tonight was the 10th week in a row but now the woman who came up with the idea says she thinks it should be the last. here s our special correspondent allan little. every week it has been a moment of intense and noisy solidarity. an anxious, grateful public seeking a way to say thank you to health workers at first and then to all those on whom we have relied. often those previouslyjudged low skilled and consequently low paid. we know now how valuable they are. but the woman who created it all has said tonight should be the last. everybody who wants to continue should continue, but i think its is good to do it while we still have such a positive impact with this moment to stop now and then also we are now in a different part of the crisis. what have they made of it, the health care workers risking their own health to protect ours? it s been very emotional and pleased that everyone has come together. it sjust been really nice to see everybody get together and we ve been able to thank each other. nine weeks ago, we put on our winter coats and clapped in the dark all over the uk. theyjoined in from an antarctic research station. and north sea oil platforms. the prime minister, visibly ill, from downing street. what has it meant this outpouring of shared sentiment? it places at the heart of public esteem a health service whose resources in recent years have not kept pace with the demands made upon it. this weekly expression of affection is notjust for a service the public clearly treasures but, for the values on which it is founded of fair access for all, regardless of the ability to pay. healthcare workers wonder whether this public mood will translate itself into actual policy. what is important is that for years to come, ministers should still hear that ringing in their ears and do what s right by those services and by nursing staff. most nhs staff don t think of themselves as heroic. we are not angels, one nurse told me, we are professional people with a job to do. but the weekly clap for carers illustrates the enormous burden of public faith they carry and the esteem in which they re held. # dancing in the streets. will it end tonight? i hope we will still come out on a thursday and i think folk will still want something to focus on. don t underestimate the public need to say thank you. alan little, bbc news. and let mejust and let me just show you the darkness in minneapolis as violence is still just occurring darkness in minneapolis as violence is stilljust occurring on the streets there. this following the death of george floyd at the hands of police in minneapolis. you can just see a fire is burning there, piercing the blackness. we are keeping right across what is happening there in the us for you here on bbc news. now on bbc news, the world is buying more sneakers or trainers than ever before, with more styles becoming collectables and more brands releasing limited editions. reporting for newsbeat, lynnie zonzolo travels to new york to see how the industry has tripled in size in a decade and what the impact is on the environment. a lot of people don t get this opportunity. but you guys came a long ways. we did indeed. you guys crossed the pond. ok, i m ready. i m going to let you go inside the million dollar shoe case. you are too kind! holy! this is nuts, nuts, nuts. this is like the closest i ll ever get to holding $20,000 $30,000 in my hand. i feel you! wow! it smells of fresh leather, it feels like christmas, you know, there is something aboutjordan ones when they re fresh out of the box. yeah. i will sniff them like no other, like, it s the best smell in the world. yeah. i can relate to that. oh, my lord, i never thought i would see these! yeah, look at that. classic. absolutely classic. welcome, welcome, welcome. this beautiful bad boy is the nike back to the future, if you want to buy it s $100,000, 0k? and if you are a size 12, it s $112,000. my first love of sneakers i guess first came about when i was ten. it was my birthday, i got some friends over, i got some money, and pretty much went tojd sports that next day. i really liked popping colours and aesthetically giving me that old school buzz. my uncle, he had a crazy range of sneakers. and i was like, man, one day all of need those. one day ijust need all of these old school classics. ok, so, we re pretty much in the hallway, right. and like i said, extra shoes, extra pairs of shoes, more shoes. about $30,000-$40,000 worth of kicks. i need some help. i do, i do. if i was on a train and i saw some by the window and they had gold nike blazers, i knew they were cool! you know? it s ingrained in you. these things are made to bring uncalculable joy. if you haven t got a pair of these, you are not walking in the right way. being in new york is mind blowing. just being in new york is mind blowing. i m excited, it s christmas for me right now. it s christmas. i ve come to the birthplace of sneaker culture to find out how it became such a phenomenon. the sneaker industry has tripled in the last ten years. it s now almost half of global footwear sales. i own 80 pairs myself, and i m not gonna lie i still want more. but why? 2019 and 2020, we re living in the greatest era of sneaker culture, period. there s a huge sneaker community out there and it s global. in 1991 dj bobbito garcia wrote confessions of a sneaker addict, considered the first major piece of sneakerjournalism. so let me break it down like this: there s two pockets of why shoes are cool. on one side, they re really functional. they re comforatble to wear, they look cool, they re an extension of your individuality. you can become creative with them, you can paint them, customise them, you can own them, right? so that is one pocket. the other pocket is that sneakers in and of themselves have been placed in the same way that people approach art. you ve got auction houses during sneaker exhibitions and selling shoes that are highly, highly collectible in the same way that one sells art. we grew up with rules of originality. so the phrase was no biting. what does that mean? so that means, don t talk like me, don t dress like me, don t say what i say, don t dance the way i dance. everything was that expression of originality. if we go out, i show up with my suede pullman s on and you have the same, you ve got to change. you either change the laces, paint the stripes do something to the midsole, that s what we live by. this sort of like, disposition of wanting to be unique, is something that was very prevalent in new york and multiple communities and multiple cultures. we are the people who put nike on the map because everyone was wearing converse and pro keds. we were the ones who put a chance on this new brand. and by the 80s there was nike, reebok, puma, pro keds, and it is, pony, you know, converse. by the late 80s and 90s there was a shift and people started really being fed marketing and advertising and buying into that. and a lot of that determine what they want to wear. one of the first shoes to go big was the nike air force one, which came out in 1982. the shoe that really change the game came three years later when nike teamed up with basketball legend michael jordan. the airjordan 0ne netted $75 million in a month. brands realise the power of teaming up with a celebrity, especially if you combine that with creating a unique design in a limited edition quantity. people started to see sneakers as real collectables. there were even riots over big releases, and worse. rap‘s influence grew. reebok and jay z signed deals, as did wu tang. and now kanye west s yeezys. for some people, owning a rare pair has become the ultimate status symbol. i guess sneaker culture, like you see right now, they are repeat sneakers. ifeel personally i m getting duped. you know, having bought these same sneakers three, four, five times already, not just for yourself or little brother or your son, how many times can you keep buying the same thing, you know what i mean? first time in new york? an absolute dream come true. it s amazing, i love it so much. new yorkers love their sneakers. the numbers are just astronomical, adidas publish their figures and produced 109 million pairs of sneakers last year. i think it was a 60% increase since 2013. wow! i didn t know that. they re cranking out lots of shoes. “119811, the sneaker industry was already about $2 billion. by 2000, but had shot up to almost $14 billion, and in the last ten years it has just exploded. sneakers have taken over the world. the other thing that has really taken off is collecting. i mean, serious collecting. and they know how to keep you buying, they put out limited editions to keep up demand. a limited drop will cost more right out of the gate. but things get really crazy on the resale market. resellers will bulk buy limited sneakers and sell them for a higher price. they can cost thousands more than a regular version of the same issue. reselling has gotten so big the market is worth about $6 billion, and it is predicted to hit as much a $17 billion in the next three years. there is a lot of money to be made. as the industry evolved over the years, they weren t thinking as much it seems about what is going to happen down the line. yeah. eventually, all have to go somewhere. where is it going to go? mostly it is going to go to landfills. we can t really do a lot with it, we can t recycle a lot of sneakers. it is one of those things companies are working on now. adidas being the big example. according to nike, the average carbon footprint of their product is over 700 kilograms, about the same as a ten mile drive. so what does that mean for the planet? well, it would take one tree nearly two years to remove the carbon dioxide from one pair of shoes. with over1 billion sneakers sold every year, that tree would need two billion years offset their emissions. to have two or three sneakers, my parents thought i was crazy. i didn t have the money to buy a lot of pairs of sneakers, so the care that we took to our shoes was again, unprecedented. when i started painting my sneakers, it wasn t just for aesthetics, it was to elongate the potential use of the shoe. i basically had an extra three months of shoes just by painting them. i was born in 1994, so learning the sneaker culture of the 70s, 80s and 90s, gave me goose bumps because there was a lot of effort and love into it. having a toothbrush and cleaning your shoes, like, it s crazy. it shows there was a genuine love for that and i don t sense that anymore. i want to say the hype is always good, because it obviously brings more attention and things like that, but the love for the sneaker world is kind of lost, for sure. i don t care where the sneakers are. if i have heard that they are out there i am going to find out. if i ve got to go on the internet or something like that it s no fun for me. i d rather fly there. how did things change so much? i think there s a blurred line between what gets attributed to sneakers and what gets called high culture. for the sake of camping out to get something, that s a deeer rooted issue for people who want to do that. 0k. i ve had over 4,000 sneakers in this lifetime. i ve never camped double one. stop it. not one. hey, thomas. hi, how are you doing? i m very well, how are you? i m very well. welcome. the sneaker glorified. look how protected they are. i know. we ve got to protect them. i would happily starve in it. sneakers for me. then when you were wearing them you wouldn t look so good. laughter. that s true. you ve got a point there. you ve got a point. what do you think about limited editions? i think they re pretty ridiculous. it seems to me that it s a way of hyping it up and kind of creating, it s sort of a way of stimulating design, is making you buy because you worry. you re getting up in the morning because you are worried that you re not going to be able to get it. call it fom0, fear of missing out. trainer fom0. i have that sometimes. it s nagging away in your stomach thinking if they don t get these now i won t have them. that is artificially created by them saying we re only to produce, i don t know, like whatever number they are going to produce. whereas they could quite easily, you know, produce as many as people wa nt and keep producing it. i m guessing that you ve got more than one pair of trainers. yeah. yeah, yeah, yeah. so you ve got more than one pair. you re probably buying multiple pairs, new pairs before the old pair is worn out. wow. so the question you have to ask yourself is, and i m guilty of this is anybody, i ve got a mountain of these things, so you ask yourself to a really need to keep buying them? i feel like low key i m kind of moving towards the i don t need them. of course you don t need them. i don t need them. i know that for a fact. i don t want to look at somebody‘s shoes and know that i had the opportunity to get it but they didn t. that s how they re getting you. is there is only a business? of course it s only business. of course it s a business. it s about selling shoes. but this passion and outcome of this posting creating, this posting creating, dispassionate design, and this passion in creating, dispassionate design, and is based on buying. it s like anything. it s like the fashion industry. it s about creativity, it s about design, it s about innovation, it s about new technology, it s about sports, it s about performance, but, ultimately, it s about selling shoes. i ve spent about £30,000 £40,000 on speakers. was that money well spent? i don t know. it was my choice. maybe if i hadn t spent it on loads of sneakers maybe if i hadn t spent it on loads of sneakers i could have got a car, bought a flat, but this isn t just about me. over a billion pairs of sneakers produced every year and you can t produce that much of anything without having an impact on the planet, especially something which has as much plastic in it as sneakers do. so i am in germany today heading to the adidas headquarters. i am so excited. so i want to find out more. i just wanted to show you a couple of things. from the past and what we re doing these days. this year we have got the introduction of this new fabric. it uses part of the ocean plastic. and we ll use twice as much ocean plastic this year as we as used last year. this was the first prototype we actually developed. almost 100% of shoes in the sports industry are glued. the uppers are glued to the bottom. and gle is basically poison for recycling. it s a contaminant. so the real innovation here is that the upper andy barr of are made out of what material, every single piece on here is the same type of plastic, tpu, the shoes are 100% recyclable. the loop is a 100% recyclable shoe. but it s only one shoe. why aren t adidas making all their shoes like this? you can only do it if you can manage to do without losing your business if everybodyjust stopped buying product that doesn t work, because the definition of sustainability is that it works for the environment, it works on people, and it works the economy. just had a great chat with james. it really, really made me look into myself, you know, as far as a consumer and how i can help the environment. and going back to london is going to make me think more about my choices. nike, reebok, and puma are all bringing out sustainable shoes too. but the truth is they re just a tiny slice of the multibillion dollar sneaker market. i decided to go see if maybe recycling our shoes could help. morning. good morning. how are you? nice to see you. welcome. we used the idea of trying to shred the shoes into bits and pieces, which i m going to ask you to do with your sneakers ina minute. laughter. no way! basically what we do is we put the whole shoe into some sort of a shredder, in this case granulator, and it will come into small particles and we will put it through a number of processes which i will show you in a minute to be able to separate it into individual materials and then we can use those materials to make more shoes or other things. so these were sneakers once upon a time? these were sneakers. it makes me so sad. think about it this time. this is so much better than sending them into a landfill, then there is no use out of this material. this way we can separated and make something out of it. ok, that s fair. so sorry! unfortunately, sneaker recycling is impossible for most people yet. the technology just isn t advanced enough. in the short term, until our process is significantly improved in terms of how we make rings and how we recycle it, the concept of consuming less and using a product for longest, in terms of environmental benefit, has got the biggest potential. ok, so i should basically buy less until technology has improved ? um, i ve given you all the information. the decision about buying less. i would like to get your take. for example, how many shoes do you have? i have two pairs of trainers, one is for indoor activities, one is for outdoor activities. it is weird to hear that. two shoes and, yeah, two shoes. maybe the secret is returning to the roots of the scene, owning few issues and treasuring them more. so i am literallyjust outside of lead, a meeting young man and he is very much into his customisation and restoration and he has a really good point when it comes to talking about the environment. so i m looking forward to it. hi. nice to meet you, lynnie. thank you so much. i literally got into trainers just from watching football and the process of obviously going to be put all is wearing nice shoes. it all just started off from france. theyjust started cleaning shoes and re dying them and it has moved to this fully customisation work and this is where it is that at the moment. there are not many people really sending old shoes to me. but when they do i tend to want to revamp them fully, so a add new tongue tabs to them, add text to them. i got into it because when it was younger remember my dad buying brand new shoes and binning them constantly, he would wear them for a few months, they would get ruined output all, and he was just in them. these are getting re dyed so they will get a custom colour created for the corner and bottom it will get repainted local of that. my reason for it is mainlyjust because i want to keep my trainers in good stead. if i am buying a good shoe i want to keep it strong. some people don t have the brain to keep their shoe to a decent state. if i can restore nine pairs of shoes in my house, that is not shoes that go to the landfill. it is worse with the toxins in the shoes that leach into the soil, the rubber doesn t degrade. if everyone can just think for a minute before thinking let us bin these shoes, i m not saying come to my business, but i am saying if you can bring your shoes to me and i can restore them that is one less pair for landfill. he is just one of so many customers and refurbishes who have started up in recent years. it s interesting because they seem closer to the way things were back on the day with making your sneakers last. they love the idea of it, you know, just having a view pairs that matter and customising them to keep them in shape, rather than buying new ones constantly. do i need all the sneakers i have? probably not. hello. we know this spring has been warm. it s been very dry in some spots. and now news aboutjust how sunny it s been, with the met office saying provisionalfigures indicate that it s been the uk s sunniest spring on record. and with high pressure close by for friday into the weekend, most will stay sunny and dry, warm, very warm, even hot in some spots. in fact, friday, the flow of air around this high pressure as it moves north across the uk will favour parts of scotland to see the uk s high temperature of the day, close to 28 celsius. now, we start the day with temperatures for some in single figures, though they will rise quickly in the sunshine. any low cloud across parts of eastern coastal england will disappear, along with any misty low cloud around the murray firth in scotland. 0rkney brightening up, shetland staying mainly cloudy. but for most of the uk, it s sunshine all the way. it is now a prevailing east southeastly breeze. and that means that east facing coasts will see temperatures towards the teens rather than the low to mid 20s across the bulk of the uk, and, again, nudging the upper 20s in the hottest parts of scotland. temperature not the only thing high. uv levels as well. strong may sunshine. do take care if you re outside for any period of time. and pollen, moderate to high for many of us, as grass pollen levels are on the increase. now, friday looks like a fine evening, plenty of sunshine to end the day. again, temperatures will head down overnight, so if you do try to cool the house down overnight, we re expecting some spots, again, tojust dip down into single figures. and a largely sunny start to saturday morning. and again, just to show you the big picture, it s high pressure maybe just pushing out towards scandinavia, but it is still blocking weather fronts that would give us some rain otherwise from getting to us from the atlantic. so, on saturday, there may be a bit of patchy cloud developing here and there, the sun may turn hazy in some spots, but for most, it s a sunny story, a brighter one in shetland as well. still the breeze keeping some eastern coastal parts cooler than elsewhere. again, we re talking widely in the low to mid 20s. and then on sunday, again, some patchy cloud developing here and there, but for most places, it will be sunny, it will be dry, it will be very warm. just a hint of something cooler at the end of next week.
this is bbc news. welcome if you re watching here in the uk, on pbs in america or around the globe. i m lewis vaughn jones. our top stories: rioting in the us city of minneapolis. these are live pictures of the unrest triggered by the police killing of an african american man. the daughter of martin luther king says it s the result of deep seated problems. they terrorise, they murder our children, and we have done nothing. when you do not deal with these conditions of adequacy and white supremacy in the nation, these are the kind of things that happen. people riot. that is their language, that is their frustration. targeting twitter: president trump signs an executive order aimed at social media companies. western countries condemn china s planned new hong kong security law, saying it threatens basic freedoms. and france announces a re opening of bars and restaurants.