the headlines. officials across the caribbean have ordered people to prepare for one of the strongest storms ever recorded in the atlantic. hurricane irma is now an extremely dangerous category five storm, with winds of nearly 300 kilometres an hour. it's currently heading for the virgin islands and puerto rico. there have been protests in cities across america after donald trump scraped a scheme protecting undocumented child migrants from deportation. the president says he's hopeful the us congress will find the right long—term solution. his predecessor, barack obama, has called the decision "cruel and wrong." the united nations is warning of a humanitarian crisis in bangladesh after a dramatic increase in the number of rohingya muslims fleeing neighbouring myanmar. fighting in the state of rakhine has left hundreds dead. aid agencies say more than 35,000 refugees fled in a single day. nicola sturgeon has confirmed the

scottish government will lift the 1% gap on government sector pay next year. she was talking about a new education bill, a national investment bank, and getting rid of the new petrol and diesel cars by 2032. nicola sturgeon has her hands full. after a disappointing general election result, she needs to seize back the political initiative with this programme for government. we have ambition to make our country the best place in the world to grow up the best place in the world to grow up and be educated, to visit and do business, to be cared for in times of sickness, need, vulnerability and grow old. the first minister announced significant government investment in high—tech technology.

she was getting her own lesson today in digital skills. it is education which will be the biggest test for the snp. with falling standards in scottish schools, they want more choice for teachers. thousands of workers will get a higher pay rise next year. they are scrapping the 1% public sector pay gap. no details on how it will be paid for. there is a rumour that high taxes will follow. the opposition say the snp have to get back the trust of the scottish electorate. given what we know of the government, we wait to see if the government, we wait to see if the warm words today are backed up by action. after last year, it is on probation with the people of scotland. it is time to change and deliver. for most of this year, scottish politics have been dominated by a second referendum. now she needs to be seen to be

energetically attacking problems in schools and hospitals in scotland. that is why she came up with such a long list of new measures. the scottish parliament will certainly be busy. 60 new bills were announced, including the creation of announced, including the creation of a national bank for scotland, free national care for under 60 —— 65s, and others. the scottish government also want to go further and faster with electric cars. they plan to phase out new petrol vehicles by 2032, eight years ahead of the uk target. but as a minority government, they need the support of other parties to bring these forward. sarah smith, bbc news. now on bbc news, from 0ut on bbc news, from out of town.

for decades, our country has lived through the greatestjobs theft in the history of the world. you people know it better than anybody, in pennsylvania. 0ur factories were shuttered, our steel mills closed down, and ourjobs were stolen away and shipped far away. how did donald trump pull off his surprise victory? he did it partly by appealing to the feeling that, across the usa, small towns have taken a battering. main street. there is plenty of room here. room for the individual to expand, to plan for himself and his children. the small towns of america, where once life was good. the less densely populated the place you lived, the more likely you were to back trump for president. while they celebrated in our nation's capital, there was little to celebrate

for struggling families all across our land. washington versus real america, wall street versus main street. the small town has long been the home of sunny american innocence, while the big bad city was the source of all corruption. if only, trump seemed to say, the innocence of the small town could be recaptured, we could make america great again. it is still a powerful story, but was it ever really that simple? in the 1940s and ‘50s, big bad cities really came to dominate and overshadow america. and, as they did so, they inspired a whole new style of cinema. in film noir, the american city is dark, and anonymous, and frightening. people are not what they seem.

you can trust no—one. everyone is out for themselves. it is no place for the innocent. yes, i know, i'm... i'm being foolish. in doa, dead on arrival, frank bigelow makes the mistake of leaving his small home town and his girlfriend for a sneaky vacation in san francisco. within hours, he has been fatally poisoned, and is tearing around the city trying to find his killer. i'm adam smith, a historian of america, and in this programme, i'm going to investigate what film noir, and its sharp contrast between corrupt city

and innocent small town, can tell us about america today. after 1945, americans moved to the cities, and especially the booming suburbs, in huge numbers. many of them found what they were looking for, but there was also this sense that they had lost the sense of the community they had had in the small towns they'd left behind. so film noir is not only about the city. it also plays on the contrast with the small town. against this innocent background, the dodgy, sophisticated incomers from the cities stand out. in some film noirs, the small town is the place you run to to try to escape your past. and it is where your enemies from the city catch you running a gas station. that is what happens

to robert mitchum's character, jeff bailey, in out of the past. in the 1940s, america was becoming the land of the car, and that meant it was getting harder and harderfor small towns to be the isolated islands they had once been. if you wanted to avoid marauders from the cities, a gas station was about the last place in a small town to work. long time. hello, joe. wish it was nice to see you. everyone sure misses you, jeff. bailey discovers that, even hiding in the eternal innocence of bridgeport, his urban past will finally catch up with him. i had to find you. i owe you something. jeff bailey clearly hadn't watched burt lancaster in the killers, where more or less the same thing happens. hey, you! look at the oil, will you? driving into the small town

where he is hiding comes the man he really didn't want to meet again. in the killers, a man's big—city past comes to him in the shape of two hitmen hired by the man he once doublecrossed. they track him to that centre of small—town life, a diner, and the men don't exactly hide their opinion of the place their victim has run to. this is a hot town. what do you call it? brentwood. did you ever hear of brentwood? what do you do with your nights? they eat the dinner. they all come here and eat the big dinner. the killers go and kill burt lancaster's character, peter lund. but brentwood, newjersey can at least console itself that it remained unstained by this viciousness from the city. the way i look at it, this killing doesn't rightly concern brentwood at all. what concerns us is protecting the lives and integrity of our citizens. this man, lund, lives here. that's all. the killers came from out of town. it is part of an american attitude which says that, if you want a safe, secure,

comfortable life, live in somewhere like brentwood. and that notion persists to this day. and it's one of the great ideas and fallacies behind trump, that there's an america that is settled, rural or semirural, provincial, let's say, where life goes along at a leisurely but acceptable, regular pace, and people are good to one another. it is a myth, but it is a very prevalent myth. and it was very prevalent then. but sometimes the man who runs to the small town is secretly the bad guy, likejoseph cotton in alfred hitchcock's shadow of a doubt. uncle charlie appears quite briefly as an urban character, but in wonderfully telling ways. you see him lying on his bed in a mean room, in a mean building. you don't quite know

where you are, but it is urban. and there's a sense, i think, of whatever damage he's done, to others or to himself, that it has been an expression of that urban world. and he wants to get out, he wants to retreat. so he goes to santa rosa, in fact, and his niece, charlie, lives there with her family. and it's another america from that city that uncle charlie has come from, and it's an america that's really half—asleep. it's not thinking about anything very much. it's a conflict between that darkness that uncle charlie has seen and the brightness that niece charlie likes to believe is going to sustain america after the war. theresa wright plays a small—town girl who is over the moon when her urbane uncle charlie, who she reveres, comes to town. until, that is, she realises he is a serial killer. you're just an ordinary little girl, living in an ordinary little town. you wake up every morning of your life, you know perfectly well there's nothing in the world to trouble you. you go through your ordinary little day, and at night you sleep your untroubled little sleep filled with peaceful, stupid dreams. and i brought you nightmares. and really what that scene

in the diner is saying is, this girl has got to grow up, and probably her growing up could break her down. and then you sort of say to yourself, well, maybe uncle charlie was a nice guy once. whether the invader was a villain or a victim, these movies portray the small town as a land of innocence. and here in sierra madre, near los angeles, this place still has a lovely, small—town feel. there is a wonderful old theatre over there, some great cafes. it is a very pleasant, peaceful place. you can see why the small—town idyll still has its appeal. but, even as it was becoming a symbol of nostalgia, these films were already unsettling

the vision of the small town. for hitchcock, i think, it's a way of saying to that very secure, settled american attitude to itself, don't trust it. shadow of a doubt — what does that title mean? it doesn't really seem to spring out of the film, but a shadow of a doubt is what a smart viewer is going to feel about america when the film is over. in the stranger, another charming outsider brings a share of evil to a small town. orson welles is a teacher in harper, connecticut, and is about to cement his position in the little town by marrying loretta young. but then edward g robinson tracks into the town, and makes her confront who her new husband really is. surely you don't think... you might.

they look like other people. they act like other people. when it is to their benefit. a gas chamber. but if nice mr rankine is really a nazi, who can you trust, even in harper, connecticut? when he is exposed, the desperate kindler hides in the church bell tower and the people of the town come together to hunt him down. citizens of hopper have come after you. the ones you have been laughing at. you can't fool them anymore. if the target is an escaped nazi, that's one kind of story. but the smalltown mobs in these movies were not always quite like that. sometimes, noirs went a big step further.

instead of casting the small town as an innocent place to show up the evils of the big city, they turned the american heartland itself into a nightmarish landscape. in some film noirs, it's the small town itself which harbours corruption. and these films suggest the flipside to community and togetherness. the code of silence. the wall of hostility. i could punch him in the face, i'll tell you. you know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? they'd be carried out on a stretcher, folks. so perhaps that noir vision of the world also has something darker to tell us about trump's america. you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? seriously.

0k. just knock the hell... i promise you, i will pay for the legal fees — i promise. people coming together as a community can be a lovely thing, but not when they come together as a crowd against one outsider. spreading the violent propaganda of race hatred and violence... in the wake of world war ii, many on the left were worried about fascistic tendencies in america. ..taking root in many fanatical brains. like hitler's gang, they thrive on persecution, hatred and violence. if that boy isn't alive when the troops get here, you're gonna get hurt where it counts! and again and again, left—wing filmmakers expressed this through images of that most passionate version of a community coming together as one — the lynch mob. in trial, their target is a terrified hispanic boy wrongly branded a sex attacker.

heave! in the sound of fury, the mob do manage to kill the murderers they're after. if the media'sjob is to be honest and tell the truth, then i think we would all agree the media deserves a very, very big fat failing grade. looking back at these films today, it's striking to find the mob focused on one of donald trump's favourite targets — those interfering big—city outsiders, the media. warner bros' storm warning was an attack on the ku klux klan, portraying them as fanatically hostile to outsiders, as ginger rogers, a new york model visiting her sister in a small town, discovers. the victim, we soon find out,

is an undercover reporter who'd been investigating the klan. many times today on the streets, in the restaurant in the hotel, people have come up to us and asked us not to judge their whole town by their brutal criminal action of hoodlums last night. where's that cable? get off the line. bob? bob. these decent individuals sincerely upset by the... astonishingly, the filmmakers decided not to mention the klan‘s racism, at instead, the film explicitly connects far right extremism with smalltown hostility to outsiders, protected by a wall of silence. but looking out at the faces of the men and women here this afternoon at the courthouse, it isn't always easy to tell on which side they stand.

no wonder some people in small towns get fed up with the way hollywood and the media represent them. around this time, joseph losey directed in the lawless. a small town turns on another hispanic boy who was being wrongly accused of a sex attack. prevented from lynching the boy, the townsfolk instead turn on the newspaper which has defended him. it would be hard to find a more vivid image of mob hatred of the media. come on, where are you? but what's most striking is that the newspaper that gets destroyed is trying to be honest. the situation has been whipped up by another paper, peddling what you might call "fa ke news". now, a big hit, vicky. now, dear, try and remember just what happened. you went to the barn and he jumped out of the dark and grabbed you! losey was a very self—conscious, very...

very heart on his sleeve liberal who saw not just the chance, but the need almost to make a story about racism in smalltown communities, but also of about the general danger of a vigilante spirit taking law into its own hands. the lawless was written by daniel mannering who also wrote the film who helped set the template for the smalltown noir, out of the past. mannering grew up in a small town in northern california and though he was brilliant at evoking their particular atmosphere, he wasn't particularly sentimental about them. if you've never been tempted to take part in a lynch mob, perhaps you can take these films in your stride. but another film script of the 1950s, also written

by daniel mannering, shows the growth of a mob which is even more unsettling. in invasion of the body snatchers, a mix of noir and science fiction, directed by don siegel, the people of a small town in california are not scarily angry, but scarily blank. gradually, the town's doctor and his girlfriend realise that the townsfolk have been taken over by alien pods. step over to truck number one. that marvellous idea that i completely believe in is that the world is populated by pods, those are vegetables, and they have no emotions. they get up in the morning, they bathe, they eat, they go to work, they eat again and they go to sleep. they have no cultural aspirations. and the local psychiatrist thinks

the advent of total conformity is just what the town needs. suddenly, while you are asleep, they will absorb your minds, your memories and you're reborn into an untroubled world. where everyone's the same? exactly. i think what it's saying is the very things that we think of as precious in a free society, like education, like love, like differences of opinion, like sexual expression, they may be great threats to social control. so the conformist crowd turn on the two dissidents. but has the arrival of blank conformity come from out of town to ruin the innocent townspeople? is it like communism or consumerism, or is it their own community spirit that's made them obedient and conformist?

the invasion of the body snatchers gets under your skin because this crowd are trying to do the right thing. even the town's well—meaning policeman joins the chase. they went this way! the film refuses to tell you who to blame. are the townsfolk villains or victims? but today, the message coming out of the pass from those old film noirs is that there's no perfect place, not even in the would—be paradise of smalltown america. one way to keep america divided is for trump's opponents in the big cities to sneer at his supporters as losers left behind in flyover country. and another is to look back too

nostalgically at the smalltown life of the real america before the cities took over. this old dream risks hardening the divide between the big city and the small town. exactly the division that these old movies, more than 60 years ago, tried to dissolve. good morning. hot on the heels of hurricane harvey comes irma, and this has the potential to be a catastrophic hurricane. already a category 5, we have sustained winds of 185mph, potentially gusting to 220mph. you can see quite clearly the eye of the storm here on the satellite picture. it's notjust the strength of the winds and the volume of the rain, it's also a significant storm surge that's heading towards the leeward isles. the storm surge is where, underneath this area of low pressure, it literally lifts the surface of the sea by as much as 9—1! feet, descending across these caribbean islands. so certainly we'll need to keep

you updated on developments of that storm. back closer to home, things are a little quieter. we have got more of a westerly direction to the source of our air now, that means slightly fresher and it does mean that first thing in a morning we could actually see temperatures into single figures in more rural spots. so it will be a chilly start but potentially a dry one, with some sunshine coming through. there will be a scattering of showers into the far north—west with more of a significant breeze here. but the rest of the sheltered south—eastern area should see some sunshine and, as a consequence, we should get some warmth as well. highest values possibly up to 20 degrees, as opposed to 11! to 17 further north and west. now, as we move out of wednesday, into thursday, the winds will strengthen again, and we will see more significant rain. an area of low pressure will move in from the atlantic. it's going to bring heavy rain to scotland and northern ireland, eventually moving through the borders

into the north of england and north wales. further south of that, it's a drier story, but it does mean a pretty disappointing day on thursday afternoon in scotland. underneath the cloud, with wind and the rain, 13—15 degrees at the very best. some of the rain quite heavy close to the lake district, and stretching over the higher ground of wales. sheltered eastern areas should cling on to some sunshine and, if this happens, we could see 19—20 degrees perhaps across the southeast through london. then further west, with more of a fresher westerly breeze, a little more cloud and a slightly fresher feel. with that low pressure, with its front, sweeps south and east, during thursday night, into friday. it takes a spell of significant rain with it as well. wrapped around that low, there will be some squally showers. so some rain to come for england and wales, for a time. some of the showers heavy, with some hail and some thunder into the far north—west. and temperatures, again, pretty disappointing. i can offer you something a little better as we move into the start of the weekend. drier through england and wales with a scattering of showers into the far north—west. take care. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america

and around the globe. i'm mike embley. our top stories: it's now a record—breaking category five storm. the caribbean islands make final preparations before hurricane irma hits. growing protests as president trump scraps a scheme protecting undocumented child migrants from deportation. more than 35,000 rohingya refugees flee myanmar in a single day. the un warns of a humanitarian disaster in neighbouring bangladesh. a french celebrity magazine is ordered to pay damages to the duke and duchess of cambridge as they win their privacy battle over topless photos. my run will start in los angeles and go all the way through colorado. and meet the endurance runner aiming to become the fastest woman to run across america.