expressed a certain said the judge expressed a certain amount of dissatisfaction with the way donald trump has criticised a particular judge way donald trump has criticised a particularjudge who put his immigration order on hold and that dissatisfaction was confirmed by other republicans who were in the room, but this morning we saw, donald trump attacking senator blumenthal directly, talking about a pa rt blumenthal directly, talking about a part in his past when he made up his war record and be in an annexe at a rate dipped and saying that the remarks were taken out of context. we are seeing a lot of focus now on thejudge and we are seeing a lot of focus now on the judge and there will be calls from democrats for him to finally come forward and say exactly what he thinks about donald trump and his immigration order and what he said aboutjudges immigration order and what he said about judges and i'd immigration order and what he said aboutjudges and i'd say yes, i said that to a senator or no, i did not. that will affect the way democrats view him in his independence. judges are meant to be independent so how much damage if any with these comments do if he made in the way it

been suggested? a lot of it depends on donald trump. in the past, he has not taken kindly to criticism, particularly from people who were his allies or supporters. then again, this is an opportunity for him to distance himself a bit from trump, not only to keep his reputation intact, he will have decades worth of time to issue laws and decisions and opinions on laws, but also it could make him look better in the eyes of democrats because of fears willing to stand up to donald trump and show his independence, a few of them may come round to supporting him because the last thing they want is a donald trump nominee on the court who supports donald trump's priorities. thank you very much. an australian man has survived after spending hours struggling to keep his nose above water, after his digger toppled into a dam. daniel miller had been using the excavator at his remote

farm north of sydney, when the rim gave way, and he was pinned down by the three—tonne machine. he said he adopted a yoga pose and spent the whole time thinking about his wife and two young children until a neighbour heard his shouts. i went to a very rational place. i thought, i could just give up, there's no way, not letting my daughter... thinking about how they're going to find me face down in a dam, dead, that wasn't going to happen. not without a fight. then i went to a very almost robotic state ofjust count to 60. don't think about six hours, think about 60 seconds. two writers, one book. a novel not in prose but in free verse. we come apart was produced by sarah crossan and brian conaghan. writing separately and sending each other the chapters

using social media. it's probably the first novel created on whatsapp. they've both won awards for writing for young readers and this is a story about two youngsters, jess and nicu, who meet by chance when they are both in different kinds of trouble. she's from a violent home, he's a romanian immigrant who is the target of abuse in the streets here, but who is also facing the threat of an arranged marriage back home. they find common cause when their secret lives come together. welcome. sarah, how did this come about? i was writing another book at the time and i had met brian once. we'd met when we were both short listed for the carnegie medal,

and he sent me a direct message on twitter and said he was thinking about writing a verse novel which i thought was my thing. i thought, how dare you? and then he asked if i wanted to collaborate on a project with him. and it was as simple as that? it was as simple as that, and we didn't know each other so there was really nothing to lose. let me put this crudely, brian, did you want a helping hand when you thought of writing a verse novel and you knew sarah had done at? to put it crudely, yes. i had an idea that i wanted to write a verse novel. and i probably didn't have the confidence to attack it individually. had you written in free verse at all? written any poetry? i had, as an aspiring writer i had written a lot of bad poetry. but in the novel form i hadn't. and when you started, as i said at the beginning, you used whatsapp to communicate, the first whatsapp novel. how long did it take you to put this together? because it's a reasonably substantial book.

the first draft took about five or six weeks. that's quite quick. it's very quick and it began with me still working on an individual project and brian working on an individual project and sending a chapter a day, but then it became quite frenzied and just the excitement of it and having someone read your work so quickly. as i'm quite a private writer and i don't have that normally, so the first person to get my novel will be my agent and that will be after i think the book is completely polished. that's quite scary, then? it's quite scary, you write something, it takes an hour and within 20 minutes somebody else has read it, that was completely new for me. i didn't have any experience of collaborating with anyone so i think this experience, for me personally, i think it was a fantastic experience. and i think the benefit was that we didn't know each other so there was no relationship to destroy, so we could be brutal with each other and say that's not good enough. and to be clear brian, it's a story aboutjess and nicu, two teenagers who have, in different ways, troubled lives, who come together in an atmosphere of some frenzy and difficulty, and foreboding, really.

you wrote the boy's voice, nicu, and sarah, you wrote the girl's voice, jess, and that was the way it was throughout, you never swapped ? for the first draft it was the best way to approach it, that i would take on the nicu character and sarah would take on the jess character. but the first edit we took ownership of both characters and basically did a line edit ourselves. they are both very interesting characters, jess comes from a troubled background and she's got into trouble, nicu is an immigrant from remaining with all that entails, almost being shouted at in the street and all the rest of it, and there is the threat of him going home. so they really going through quite a crisis, both of them. do you think their friendship gets them through it? i suppose so. i think that their friendship is the only thing they have at the end. jess initially looks like she has a lot in her life,

she appears to have a family and friends at school but when that all starts to unravel and we see really what's going on withjess and nicu steps up to save her in some ways. i don't like the idea of a female character being saved by a male character, but she saves him, and he he saves her. in a way that really nobody else could have done. without going into the details of the ending, which would be very unfair to readers, the fears are still there, and the horrors are still there at the end, it's not as if everything is expunged in some wonderful blaze of light. i mean, that's just not realistic, it's not how life works. and i think although we wanted the novel to end in a hopeful way it still had to be realistic to what the situations were. somebody is not going to come out other family with domestic abuse and start skipping along wood green high road. you didn't want the story wrapped up in a nice pink ribbon at the end. itjust seemed like the natural way to end the book. there is a lot of hope in the end and that was important to us that we wanted to create that.

and in terms of creating a nice happy ending it would not have fitted in with the stories and characters. what do you think, because this is your first expedition into writing in free verse in a novel form, what do you think that form brought to these characters? what did it allow you to do in terms of giving them a voice? i think in the positive language that you've got with the form, i think that every word has to mean something, it has to have a significance. i think especially with these two characters, they don't have a voice in theirenvironment, they are marginalised in their environment. and i think they use this language with each other. and we're talking here about street language, some of it fairly rough, and of course nicu's english is very characterful in the sense that it is partial? i know what it's like to live in a place where you can't speak the language and you feel very isolated within that.

and the language, the tools that you have that you use are irrespective of right and wrong, it's all about communication. he is not necessarily interested in getting the finer details of the language. you've found out a lot about these two characters, sarah, by creating them yourselves, separately but together, if you follow me. you must have discovered a lot about each other as writers as well? i suppose so. i mean, the process was so interesting because we literally didn't have a conversation, it was all through whatsapp. so brian sent me the first chapter and then i sent him another chapter and we didn't have a discussion about where we were going to go with the work or what we were going to do. was that deliberate? that you didn't want to get into too much discussion, you wanted to do your own thing and have it protected anyway? i suppose to see how the characters allowed the story to develop rather than as having too much input and that made it really exciting. so there were moments in the story where there were things that i hadn't expected to happen and in my control and way, i thought, that's not how

the story is supposed to go. but i had to go with it because that was brian's decision. the obvious question, you are both very successful in your own rights, you are a multi—award—winning author, sarah, brian, you have just won the costa children's book award, are you going to do this collaboration again? it's a dangerous question. ithink, i mean, it's a question we asked ourselves. have you answered it yet? we are very busy at the moment. i mean, we have thrown a few ideas around and spoken about it but again it's finding the time. well, if you think this has worked, it would be hard not to do it again, wouldn't it? i think it would just be very different process. you might even talk to each other. might even have a conversation, yeah. of course, the thing is, without giving the ending away, you could take the story on. have you thought of that? only now. well, there you are. we could take the story on that for me personally, i don't know how sarah feels, if i was doing something i'd like to move away

from those characters. i think those characters, for me, have told me as much as they can tell me and i'm finished withjess, i think. for the moment, anyway. for the moment. sarah crossan and brian conaghan, thank you very much. thank you. at this time of year, the battle between winter and spring can bring contrasting weather conditions from one day to do next. that is what we have seen this week. cold in the east and that cold flow dragged in quite a lot of cloud further west through the course of thursday said is more subdued disappointing. we run the risk of that easterly breeze driving and showers to the night as well. rain to the coast, sleet and snow further inland. temperatures

will fall just below freezing snow further inland. temperatures will falljust below freezing in rural spots. a cold start, a touch of light frost on friday morning, the risk of a few showers and icy surfaces. as we go to the day, favourite spots of sunshine, scotland, northern ireland, south—west wales and south—west england. but it will not be warm. just like the last couple of days, that east anglian coast line, east yorkshire will feel cold, one or 2 degrees at the very best. sunshine to the isle of man into the lake district, northern ireland and the bulk of scotland. but clear skies by day allow those temperatures to fall away quite sharply through the night, those of —io away quite sharply through the night, those of —10 possible. and then, towards the end of the night, we pick up the potential for more enhanced snow showers, 2—3 centimetres to higher ground. do not

get too excited. that's snow will turn back the rain as we go to the day on saturday and again scotland and northern ireland, it might continue to see glimpses of sun. not much in the way of change, i am afraid. that great cool theme continues the many. temperatures just five or 6 degrees but a sign of change to come. the isobars will squeeze together as it drifts its way steadily north west and that will allow the winds the swing round south—easterly direction. it could be breezy but we could see sunshine and glimpses of snowdrops. however, it could lead to some night—time frost and fog. hello, i'm ros atkins. in this is outside source. this is outside source. one of donald trump's closest aides has been reprimanded according to the white house.

kellyanne conway promoted the clothing range of the president's daughter in a live interview, something federal ethics rules prohibit. meanwhile donald trump says these comments about his pick for the supreme court are untrue. and on and on and on and poor comments made by president trump about thejudiciary comments made by president trump about the judiciary —— he comments made by president trump about thejudiciary —— he is disheartened and do moralisedm about thejudiciary —— he is disheartened and do moralised by the comments president trump made about the judiciary. a colleague has confirmed that neil gorsuch made the comments, but he has yet to confirm himself.