people with irritable bowel syndrome and ciliac disease. as well as cooking and writing in my own style. lots of things i would love to do. is it a bit frustrating sometimes when you talk to patients about their diet and you think, why are they eating this? you know, diets are a big topic and frustration aside, we want to help all of our patients. no, frustration isn't the word that would come to mind. let me ask you about your menu, then. i have to say, i haven't eaten properly yet this morning and maybe it did start my stomach rumbling reading about the venison kebabs. what is the salad? it is a traditional indian, pakistani salad with lots of lemon juice and chilli and herbs and lots of salad leaves cut very finely. it is a very traditional salad. i am sure your son and husband will be glad to have you back after all these months of additional hard work. thank you, i am glad that everybody has enjoyed

the show and it is just wonderful to have all of this support. i really thank everybody for it. that is the winner of masterchef, 2017. now we can see what the weather forecast is holding for us. i'm so looking forward to my salad, you have no idea. i will still be hungry afterwards. we have a mixed bag of weather, we have some low cloud and damp conditions across northern ireland, but the sunshine has been developing more widely. in the south—west and across wales. the sunshine will move into england and wales. the rain is transferring north through northern ireland into scotla nd north through northern ireland into scotland where we have a few showers and the wet weather will move north

through scotland. some thundery showers possible in the highlands. cool and damp to enter the afternoon, but improving in northern england. across northern ireland it will brighten up briefly and left those temperatures ahead of the showers which arrive in the evening. that is knocking on the door of cornwall. ahead of that, a few showers, and that is all it is. more sunshine, as well. it will feel pleasa ntly sunshine, as well. it will feel pleasantly warm. decent weather on the way for the women's fa cup final where it is likely to be dry although there might be a breeze. rain into western areas in the evening and the rain runs into the east later in the night. heavy bursts possible. 11—12 in eastern areas. it could churn briefly chilly in rural areas of northern ireland.

the rain will not last for long in the north of england, but it will last longer in the north of scotland. maybe a line of persistent showers running from the south towards the home counties but temperatures similar to today. around 20 in the south—east. as we head into the beginning of the week, some major changes. every of low pressure approaching from the south, coming from a long way south, with the warm air there is the potential for more rain. strong to gale force winds and some heavy rain pushing into some parts of the uk. with the warm air, temperatures of 16—18. it signals a rather mixed picture. it could be warm for a while. every chance of some rain, as well. hello.

this is bbc news. the headlines: the home secretary amber rudd will chair a cobra meeting this afternoon, to discuss the global cyber attack. nhs computer systems have been hit by software which demands a ransom payment. the european police agency, europol, has described the scale of the attack as unprecedented. thousands of computers in up to 100 countries were infected by the malicious software. this lunchtime car maker nissan's sunderland plant said it too has been affected. labour's deputy leader, tom watson, has warned of a "margaret thatcher—style landslide" for the conservatives unless his party improves its poll ratings before the general election next month. pope francis has declared two portuguese children as saints, on the spot where they reported seeing the virgin mary a hundred years ago. tens of thousands of pilgrims have gathered for the ceremony in the town of fatima. it's 20 years since we last won the eurovision song contest, so what are our chances

this time round? the uk hopeful luciejones will be hoping to lead her country to victory. in a few minutes it's meet the author but first it's time for newswatch. hello and welcome to newswatch with me, samira ahmed. she won't take part in a televised leaders debate. and if she won't, then he won't. could the bbc do more to make a head—to—head happen? and are the green party being given a fair share of airtime on the bbc‘s special election programmes? there has been a bit of a phoney war feel to the election campaign so far. before the parties began publishing their manifestos. many questions had been fobbed off with this answer, given to laura kuenssberg byjeremy corbyn on tuesday. well, you will have to wait

for the manifesto for the details. you were expecting that answer. those manifestos will be officially unveiled next week, but on wednesday night we got a sneak preview of what labour's might contain. somehow, an earlier version had ended up in the hands of chris mason. i can't claim i've read it all, but here it is. stamped right through the middle of the document, about 20,000 words in total, draft, confidential. in other words, they hadn't quite anticipated me waving it around on the telly. but i can do, because we've received this leaked draft. well, he could wave it around on the telly, but should he have done? tim grant was among several newswatch viewers who thought not, asking, if it's got confidential written on it, is it right to paste it all over the news? and david gregory elaborated on that. one report explained how the word draft was on every page and that this report was not meant for public viewing. why, then, do the bbc not take

the opportunity to make a moral stand here and not report on what was in the manifesto? this is, in effect, a stolen document, and therefore should have not been used in the way that it was. we didn't discover much about the conservative party's policy plans on tuesday night's one show, but we did get a few insights into the personalities and marriage of mr and mrs may. i get to decide when i take the bins out. not if i take the bins out. there's boyjobs and girljobs, you see. eurovision. now, we're not leaving that as well, are we? no. i'm tempted to say in current circumstances i'm not sure how many votes we'll get. alison norcross found that a stomach—churning interview, it made uncomfortable viewing on many fronts, not the least of which is the absolute obsequiousness of the presenters. and one twitter user wondered, how can this propaganda be allowed when may runs from a face—to—face debate?

ah, yes, the television debates. the format in which senior politicians appear in the set piece election programmes only started in 2010, but has since become a battle ground with broadcasters. in 2015 david cameron refused to follow the example of his predecessor as prime minister, gordon brown, and take part in a head—to—head discussion on the bbc with other party leaders. five of whom appeared without him in a so—called challengers debate. theresa may has followed his example and jeremy corbyn has said he won't take part in such a programme either, if she doesn't. so this time round we were told this week the bbc will be showing a debate featuring senior representatives from labour, the conservatives, the liberal democrats, the snp, plaid cymru, ukip and the green party. the press release also announced question time specials and election questions programmes featuring separately the leaders of six of those parties, but not the green party, to the annoyance of many viewers,

including christopher corey. i understand that the bbc in their forthcoming election specials have invited ukip to take part and have excluded the green party. i think this is unfair and ludicrous, to be honest. i am not a green party supporter, and i am certainly not a ukip supporter, however, i do think that the green party should qualify far above ukip to have their voice heard in these election specials. other viewers were annoyed about the absence of a televised debate between the two main candidates to lead the next government. some comparing it to the long established tradition of american presidential hopefuls squaring up to each other, a debate in march between the two leading candidates to become prime minister of the netherlands, and the tv

discussions before the recent presidential election in france. if those countries can do it, wondered terry pearson, why should our potential leaders avoid that sort of scrutiny? isn't it about time the bbc took on the clearly prepared conservative strategy of not letting may face searching political questions? the one show, "who takes out the bins?", does not count. i still don't understand why we will not see may versus corbyn in a tv debate. if the bbc had seriously threatened to empty chair her, she would have had little choice. well, let's discuss some of those issues with the bbc‘s head of news gathering, jonathan monroe. jonathan, let's start with whether the bbc should have done more to try to get theresa may to take part in a leaders debate by threatening to go ahead with her seat empty. well, we're really disappointed the prime minister's not doing a leaders debate, we would have liked to have done a leaders debate featuring the party leaders themselves. the day after the easter weekend the prime minister announced basically two things. number one, there would be a general election. and number two, she would not take

part in television debates. and ourjudgment was that wasn't a negotiating position, she wasn't going to change her mind. so threatening to empty chair would have led to an empty chair. ultimately, the viewer doesn't learn anything from an empty chair. she has paid no price for refusing the leaders debate. in fact, there she is on the one show sofa, and viewers have said, whatever you say, they feel that's wrong, and maybe she would have given in. but she hasn't paid a price for saying no. we don't know she's not paid a price. some viewers may decide that they're going to change their vote as a result of the strategy of the leaders of the election. so that's not really ourjudgment. but it doesn't help anybody to say that because the prime minister isn't going to appear in one format she can't therefore appear in other programmes, whether it's question time or election questions or andrew neil interviews. or the one show orjeremy vine or any of the other programmes that are interviewing the prime minister. it's only since 2010 that we've actually had leader debates, and people thought we were going to get them every time. what has happened since then? why is it proving so difficult? it's a shame that we're not getting them.

basically what happened in 2010 is that all the main party leaders at the time, by which i mean just three of them, we didn't include the seven in 2010, they all felt, for whatever reason, it was in their interest, it was the right moment to say yes to these invitations. that changed by 2015 with, as you say, david cameron not accepting a head—to—head. a very complicated negotiation then followed about exposure of parties relative to their size. we didn't have nick clegg in the bbc debate either. and it has changed again this time round with the prime minister deciding she's not going to do it. let's hope we can get them back again in future elections. the bbc is going to run these special question time format programmes with individual party leaders and a studio audience. at the start of this week the bbc said the greens wouldn't be part of this. a lot of viewers complained to newswatch. why? and they complained to us, too, and i've heard the comments your viewers have made about the greens. let me explain the formula we use, not in too much detail. we are obliged by our regulations to take into account the electoral

support over two election cycles, that means two general elections, in other words back to 2010, and all the elections that happened in the meantime. lots of local elections in that time, obviously, and some european elections. if you take all those figures, the ukip support over that period is significantly greater than the greens. the greens have been stable but very low. ukip have been up and down. we saw, as you know, a week or so ago, they didn't do so well in the local elections. but over the seven—year period we are obliged to count, there is a big, big difference. but when you apply that format to the schedule, the programmes we are actually going to make, we do think in retrospect, actually, that the gap between what ukip is getting and what the greens are getting is too great, so we're going to make a change and we've invited the green party in the last 2a hours to take part in an extra programme in the elections questions format in the last weekend of the campaign, onjune the 4th. they've accepted that and we're really pleased to have that extra programme going into the bbc one schedule. so you've either caved

in to pressure or you got it wrong. we've not caved in to pressure. we're not going to cave in to pressure from political parties. we looked at the schedule in retrospect, what we'd lined up, and the differences between the parties. there were two differences, effectively, that the greens were not included in. one was the question time elections questions programmes, which go out on the last weekend. the other was the series of andrew neil interviews, which are going out the week after next on bbc one. so what we've done is we said to the green party, we think the gaps too great at the moment, but you can't have equivalence to the other parties because of that electoral support issue. so we've given them, we hope, a good compromise and an offer i'm really pleased to say they've accepted. jonathan monroe, thank you. away from the election, shockwaves were created this week by president trump's sacking of the fbi directorjames comey. the white house has said he was fired because he'd mishandled the investigation into hillary clinton's e—mail server. here'sjon sopel on wednesday night's news at ten. but if it really is all about the way the fbi conducted

the hillary clinton investigation, why sack him now? why this intervention? why not do it when donald trump first came to office? and how do you reconcile it with the praise that was heaped upon james comey? roger witt from poole felt there was a lack of balance in the reporting of mr comey‘s sacking. finally, alexander blackman, known as marine a, was freed two weeks ago after serving three years in prison for killing a wounded taliban insurgent in afghanistan. an incident recorded on a helmet camera.