regional leaders in catalonia say more than 2 million people, 90% of those who voted in a banned referendum, were in favour of independence from spain. the prime minister, mariano rajoy, has called the poll illegal. canadian police have arrested a somali refugee suspected of stabbing a police officer and injuring four pedestrians in edmonton, alberta. the police officer was controlling traffic at a canadian football league game when he was struck by a car at high speed and then attacked with a knife. two young women accused of using a nerve agent to murder kimjong—nam, the estranged half—brother of north korea's leader, have been taken to the high court in malaysia for the start of their trial. the british prime minister theresa may has announced changes to the repayment of tuition fees in england and help for young people to buy homes. it comes at the start

of her party's annual conference, with british politics still domionated by turmoil over brexit laura kuenssberg reports. tory, tory, tory. scum, scum, scum. the prime minister might find it hard to listen to that, let alone agree. the tory conference, a magnet for discontent and fury in some quarters. most of the protests peaceful, or noisy at least. but theresa may does think she needs to pay attention to the national mood. after labour courted votes promising to scrap university fees in england, they will be frozen there is a confirmation of a rethink too. when we set that policy what we expected was going to happen was there would be in range, diversity and the system, that we'd see universities perhaps offering shorter courses, that we'd see universities offering courses at fees under the maximum fee. that hasn't happened.

we've got to look at it again. but ambition is to change policy won't matter much. foreign secretary, do you accept you're causing trouble for the prime minister? no, he certainly doesn't. if the man most tory mps see as stirrer in chief and the prime minister and the rest of the cabinet can't pull together. should the foreign secretary be sacked ? all of them would deny, of course, they're trying to cause trouble. but the danger for the tories is they look like they're attacking each other rather than trying to deal with the public‘s concerns. and in the next few days they all need to do more than just hope for the best. i think this is a big opportunity for theresa may, perhaps a last opportunity for her to reset the way that people think and feel about her post that disastrous election. so, it's a big moment. if she doesn't deliver it then i think of course she'll be vulnerable. i don't know why everyone pretends you can just carry on after such a disastrous election result as if nothing has happened. there isn't any unity.

that's the problem. i mean, everybody keeps saying we're all united and we're all going to have a bigger and better future. that's what politicians have got to say. it is indeed what she feels she has to say, whatever the antics of the foreign secretary. is he unsackable? look... look, let's be very clear about what we have here in this government. we have a government that is determined to build a country that works for everyone. whether this conference works for her, well, that's a different question. theresa may knows she needs to win her authority back. but parties arguing among themselves don't inspire devotion and strong leaders. they know they ought to be able to close down internal fights. political parties can never completely stage—manage these conferences, as the prime minister's deputy found out this afternoon. but theresa may has been put on notice by her party. and to keep going, this week the prime minister needs

to do more than put on a brave face. laura kuenssberg, bbc news, manchester. now on bbc news, witness hello and welcome to witness, with me, tanya beckett. i am here at the british library to guide you through another five extraordinary moments from the recent past. we will meet a man who was the first to walk the entire length of the great wall of china, a scientist who sealed herself inside a giant greenhouse for an environmental experiment, and a cuban musician who remembers recording

one of the country's most successful albums. but first, in september, 1977, anti—apartheid activist, steve biko, leader of the black consciousness movement in south africa, died in police custody. weeks earlier, he had been arrested. witness has spoken to biko's friend, peterjones, who was arrested with him. i miss my friend, steve biko, and i am forever in his debt. steve biko is one of the people that originated the new generation of young political—minded black people — the black consciousness movement. we believe that in our country there shall be no minority, there shall be no majority, there shall be just the people. and those people will have the same status before the law and they will have the same rights before the law. the apartheid government ensured

there was no resistance against its doctrines and against its policies. there was a roadblock and they then searched the car. they found an identity document, which was mine, they then said, "who is peter jones? " and i said, "that's me". he said, "oh, and who are you, big man?" that's now steve. and steve said, "i am steve bantu biko." and we were then locked up together in one cell. the next morning we started getting an uneasy feeling because there were now more police and in a convoy of three cars we sped towards port elizabeth. in port elizabeth was the headquarters of the security police for that region. the building has been converted into a block of flats.

steve biko was being walked to his death, along this very corridor, a man poised to fill the void left behind after mandela was jailed. we got taken up to the fifth floor and we were manacled, each to a separate window. one of the senior police, a major, came in and said, "now i can confirm that you are officially being detained under section six of the terrorism act." that is the act in which you literally disappear. they separated us, i only had a chance to shout steve's name and that was the last time i saw steve alive. three weeks and three days later, i had just heard a lot of commotion, many, many people singing protest songs, the cell next to mine was being filled with many people.

then this young man told me that they have just returned from the funeral is steve biko, from the funeral of steve biko, and that was the first time that i heard about the death of steve bi ko. i went to my mat, that was my bed, and i then just sat there... with... to me, it was like a huge hole in my soul, just inconsolability which even today would make me weep at unexpected moments. the police said the leader of the black consciousness movement had lost his life by accident when his head struck a wall while he was being restrained.

steve biko's family believe he was thrown at the wall quite deliberately, by the police officers. steve biko's death and the brutality of it highlighted, like no other event at the time, the extent to which the apartheid regime would go to protect itself. peterjones remembering his friend, steve biko. in september, 1991, an ambitious environmental experiment was launched in the arizona desert. eight researchers aimed to prove that human beings could produce everything they needed to survive in an artificial environment — biosphere 2. botanist, linda leigh, was one of the eight who spent two years sealed inside a giant greenhouse. i was drawn to a group of people

who had a vision to build a biosphere and it was that magnetic pull of having a vision, working towards it no matter what, that pulled me into it. at dawn tomorrow, a unique experiment begins. biosphere 2, the prototype space colony in arizona, is being sealed up, with four men and four women inside. it is an attempt to discover whether human beings can design a completely artificial world and whether they can live in it. biosphere 2 was built to be a completely separate world from biosphere 1, which is the earth, and in making it separate, we have a glass covering that means that all of the air inside of the biosphere is created by what is inside of it. so we had a couple of acres where we had to grow all of our own food, we had to grow our own oxygen.

we had to get along with each other, do the research, keep the mechanical systems going. when we finally got in, closed the door, looked outside from inside, we all breathed a huge sigh of relief because we had done it. i was responsible for the health and the management and the research being done in the wilderness terrestrial biomes which were the savanna grassland, the desert and the rainforest. i think i had a lot of my own ego tied up in the wilderness systems that i was managing. in retrospect, i didn't like that person so much. the worst experience i would say is our relationships with each other and this became very strained during the latter half of the biosphere. it was kind of a microcosm of the earth

and that is one of the things that we all have to learn to do much, much, much better. even if we have really different opinions about something, being able to speak civilly with each other about that — we did not get to that point for biosphere 2. but there is hope for biosphere 1. the other thing that i learned personally which was so tangible was being actually a part of the system, not being apart from it. but being a part of it. just another part in addition to, you know, the plans and the animals and the soil microbes — there is linda, the human. their experiment is complete, the eight project members emerged a little thinner but all in good health after two years spent in an elaborate greenhouse. it was really the first time in two years, on that day, that i stepped out of the biosphere that i did not see the bars in my vision looking up into the sky.

and it felt infinite. if i look at the whole mission of biosphere 2, for those two years, i will say, yes, it was a success. we learnt a lot when we have problems, we learned why we had problems. i miss a lot of things about being inside the biosphere. i miss knowing where all my oxygen comes from, and being a part of growing the oxygen by growing the plants. i just miss it. period. i miss the lifestyle of going to work in the morning, knowing that i was creating a world that supported me and i supported it. it is a beautiful life. it was a very, very beautiful life. and linda still works in botany, down the road from the biosphere 2 site. during the second world war, tens of thousands of british women

and girls volunteered for farm work to produce vital food supplies. even with rationing, britain was in danger of running out of food because of blockades and bombardment. mona mcleod was just 17 years old when she joined the women's land army, in rural scotland. i can look back on the war and know that what i did was worth doing. creating food was essential and we didn't starve. which was what hitler hoped he'd do, make us starve. archive: down on the farm, the land girls are doing their bit and a bit more and you should see their curls. i was 17, i was studying, i thought, to go to cambridge and i knew nothing about the land army. my father appeared one day and said, "mona, i want to talk to you." and he said, "i believe i always have done about the importance

of the higher education of women but first we should concentrate on winning the war." and he said, "i had arranged that you should join the women's land army and work on the university farm at york, but i have discovered it is surrounded by the raf so perhaps it is not a good idea." didn't make clear to me why, but my father was a world expert on venereal disease. so, ijust said, "yes, daddy," and a week later or so, i had left school and was on a train for scotland. the war has taken most of the younger men away from scotland's farms, leaving the farmers without enough help to produce our vital food supplies. they treated me very nicely and it was a dairy farm, about 65 cows, and the first week

i was sent into the dairy and i was told to handle the difficult cows and, i'm sorry to say that, at the end of the week, they had all gone dry. and dairyman said he thought i ought to be sent to the stables. fortunately, i loved horses and the horses and i got on very much better. the work was very hard and we had no protective clothing and the uniform we had was absolutely useless for keeping you warm in winter so the first winter i had chilblains on my ears and my hands and my knees and my heels and my toes. the land girls i knew all worked quite separately on different farms, i never met a girl who worked in a gang. all the girls i got to know

were isolated, totally and absolutely, one girl on a farm and the nearest girl to me ever was four miles away. it was definitely lonely. women have proved themselves able to undertake the most skilled work. all thanks and honour to the land girls who are doing this magnificentjob. i neverfor one moment thought of giving up. i did not expect the war to go on for five years but the idea of stopping was unthinkable, you just went on. you went on and on. mona mcleod, at her home in edinburgh. remember, you can watch witness every month on the bbc news channel or you can catch up on all of ourfilms, along with more than 1000 radio programmes

in our online archive. just go to bbc.co.uk/witness. in september, 1985, three friends finished an epic trek along the great wall of china. they relied on local villagers for food and water as they documented every step of the wall, parts of which that had not been walked on the years. yaohui dong spoke to witness about their journey. translation: often when i touched the stones, i would have this feeling that i was having a conversation with people from ancient times, the people who carved the stone out of the mountain and placed it on the wall, it was very moving. we set off on may the 4th, 1984, from shanhai pass, which is on the seacoast in the east. it took us 508 days. we walked over some of china's

most famous mountains, like yan and taihang, and through many deserts, including the gobi. we walked across the whole northern part of the country. in the early 1980s, i was an electrician, installing high—voltage power lines. but in my spare time i was a writer, mostly poems and essays. you could see the wall from my house and i often worked near it, installing electricity lines. i found it really inspiring and i would always think, how did they actually build it? the oldest part of it is more than 2000 years old, and even the new parts are 500 or 600 years old. it was built to keep out invaders from the north. at the time, there were not too

many books written about it so i had the idea, if i could walk it and document every step, well, that would be a great contribution to our history. also the first complete set of footprints across the great wall would be mine — just thinking about it made my heart beat faster. so i got together with my best friend from school, wu deyu, and we planned our adventure. then another guy, zhang yuanhua, joined us. wu deyu was very poetic and had an artistic temperament. zhang yuanhua had been a soldier for many years and it was very obvious that had. i was somewhere in the middle. these differences between us led to quite a few arguments. every day we endured fatigue, thirst and, in winter, freezing temperatures.

but the biggest challenge was psychological. it was the same monotonous drill day after day. the real problem was water. we would have to go downhill to find it and carry as much back up again as we could, which would take several hours and a lot of energy so we drank as little as possible. there were quite a lot of villages along the great wall, they always supported us. even when they can not afford any meat, they would share the best food that they had with us. you couldn't rely on the map, in many places the terrain was extremely dangerous and only locals knew the safe routes. when we finally finished the expedition and arrived atjiayu pass, we were swamped by the press.

everyone was saying you are heroes, this is a great accomplishment. it felt pretty good at the time but we decided fame wasn't really consistent with our ideals. we wanted to keep our feet firmly on the ground. yaohui dong, who has dedicated his life to studying the history of the wall. 1996, a group of musicians gathered in havana for a unique recording session of traditional cuban songs. 0ur witness, musician, barbarito torres, remembers the recording sessions that resulted in that massive hit album, the buena vista social club. and, now, please welcome from havana, it's the buena vista social club. applause. and the album,

buena vista social club, went on to sell millions of copies worldwide. that's all from this edition of witness, here at the british library. we will be back next month for another five accounts of extraordinary moments in history. but, for now, from me and the rest of the witness team, goodbye. hello there.

the last few hours, we have seen winds strengthening. gusts of 50 miles an houraround winds strengthening. gusts of 50 miles an hour around the pennines. higher than that possibly into scotland, together with these heavy showers. the showers gradually ease. further south, it would be as windy, with sunshine before clouds in the afternoon. some rain in the south—west later on. it will feel colder, especially in the wind. the rain is not last long, scooting through the channel. pressure builds a little and we will have clear skies. it would be as windy overnight. another chilly night on the way. colder than we are seeing at the moment. the winds will not be as strong by tuesday, and showers will not be as frequent. but after a sunny start, we will see its build—up to the country. actually date with the temperatures are

little lower on monday. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. i'm duncan golestani. our top stories: the authorities in catalonia say 90% of those who voted backed independence from spain, after a day of violent clashes with police. police in canada arrest a somali refugee suspected of stabbing a police officer and injuring four pedestrians in edmonton, alberta. two women charged with killing the estranged half—brother of the north korean leader go on trial in malaysia. the uk's fifth largest airline, monarch, fights for its future in the holiday business after worries about its finances.