after seeking a new alliance in the country's devastating civil war. he died in a roadside attack by his former allies, the houthi rebels, as he fled the capital sanaa. saleh had previously ruled yemen for more than three decades. australian senators have revealed their foreign ties after the government ordered the country's first ever citizenship register. and this story is trending on bbc.com: the veteran indian actor, shashi kapoor, has died at the age of 79. mr kapoor, who was part of one of india's greatest acting families, appeared in more than 100 hindi—language films. that's all from me now. stay with bbc world news. now on bbc news, it's time for hardtalk with sarah montague. welcome to hardtalk.

i am sarah montague. there aren't many people who are recognisable only from their make—up, but mention a zig—zag of black flames around the eyes painted on a white face, and millions of people around the world will know you are talking about the frontman of the rock band, kiss. take away the makeup and you have gene simmons, a man so canny about business that he realised he could make more money from marketing the kiss brand than from selling records. his famously long tongue has also proved a loose one. he is frequently invited on chat shows and revels in scandalising his critics. but is that also all part of the act? gene simmons, welcome to hardtalk.

thank you. wonderful being here. is it all front with you, promoting an image and a brand through both your music and your opinions? well, i mean, i think it's fair to say we all wake up and stand in front of a mirror and try to see how the rest of the world sees us. if your own shakespeare says "the whole world's a stage" then we're alljust players. i mean, all of us to some effect, we're alljust trying to figure out what to wear, what to say, and how to act, in some ways it is all real. the only time we are as honest and purely innocent without trying to figure out what anyone thinks is perhaps when we are at home alone and there is nobody there tojudge us. but as soon as you leave your home, people have something to say, look at, think about, and so on. so, of course, everything is all an act in the same

way as you. you are a professional, but of course it's an act. ok, but as far as the music is concerned, there are people who say it was always about the front rather than the music. yeah, they don't care. i mean, take whatever you will from it... but for you, what was it? well, it's a combination of both. we wanted 44 years ago to put together a band no one ever saw on stage, to write the songs that we believed in, and so on, and to make, you know, quite honestly, a complete spectacle out of ourselves, because critics say that we are. and you're damn right we do. we believe in giving folks bang for their buck. and the idea ofjust getting up there cross—legged with some incense and an acoustic guitar and charging people 100 bucks for a ticket is anathema, which is a big word like "gymnasium," we won't go there. we give bang for the buck. but only recently, when you look at the critics of... can i react to the word "critics?" well, the guardian writer, one of the guardian addicts talked about your concert earlier this

year, he described it and all earlier concerts as "a masterclass in self—parody from day one." well, thank god the guardian thought that. no, listen... but perhaps it is something you agree with, though. perhaps you set out to say... no, not at all. not at all. look, i appreciate the good will and good—natured fun, but i have a few houses the critics have bought me. if those are bad reviews, please bring them on. but you have also been honest about how much is spectacle rather than the music. it is clearly both. i don't want to get up on stage with a band i am so proud of and just play the songs. i believe that would be a slap in the face of the audience. we also don't use backing tracks or anything fake. it is a legitimate hard—rock band that goes up on stage, and we prefer to give the audience something more than just incense. you said yourself

"i am not an artist." non, i think that's highly overused. it's not up to me to decide if i am. it's always up to the people. of the people, for the people, by the people. when someone goes up there and says "i am an artist," i would say, "who are you?" there are some people who write and sing because they feel driven to do it. is that the same with you? i don't want to tell you the facts of life about those sorts of things. those people will tell you what you want to hear, it's beautifully poetic. then privately they go back to their mansions and love it in the same way we do. and the attention and the attraction of this sex or the opposite sex, it's all part of the game. the real question is would anybody or everybody do this if they did not get a single penny? ok, but do you still write music? are you still moved to do so? i wrote a song two weeks ago called "your wish is my command." did you write it to make money? that is a good point.

so, the people who create stuff and write stuff are in the creative process and afterwards they want to make money. but there is absolutely nothing wrong with sitting down and being hired by somebody, because you are hired by the wonderful and iconic bbc, to sit here. you know full well what you are going to be doing, you are going to be paid money. what is bad about that? 0k. and foryou, i mean, as a band... you mean america's number one gold—record award—winning group of all time in all categories? it is hard wired into your dna, isn't it, to promote? well, you snooze you lose! if i will wait for the bbc or anyone else to tell the world how fantastic we are, we will lose. that is why early on you invented band merchandising. but you did not do teacups and coffee cups... "tea cu ps ! " how english! i love it. ..or t—shirts! haha! you went so much further! you have 5,000 different licensed items! yeah. anything from kiss condoms to kiss caskets. we'll get you coming, we'll get you going.

the latest, the box set that you're selling at the moment, is called "the vault." almost. it is called genesimmonsvault.com. that's actually the title. one of the most extraordinary things you're doing with it, is people can pay extra for this material and get you... well, let's go one step at a time... no, because i don't want you to list various options. fine. but you can pay extra to have you personally hand—deliver it to their house. yeah. that s because when i was a child elvis did not come to my door and say "hey, gene, check out my new album." i am very well—off and the fans gave me this opportunity, so i wanted to change the way things are done. the largest box set of all time is the box set i am putting on the website.

0k. but wait... it is three feet tall, 38 lbs, and spans 50 years of songs with bob dylan and van halen and many people. but i will hop on a plane at my own cost and hand deliver it around the world. i don't know how early sales have gone... huge! oh, so you are travelling a lot next year? i will start injanuary and be out there for 12 months. so you will not get tired and a little frustrated? i will, but so what? when you go run around hyde park, you get tired. for those struggling to think, you know, what is a kiss band? they may not remember. what planet did they come from? we have a clip. well, let's have a little listen. #everybody‘s got to rock and roll#! #shout it, shout it, shout it out loud#! do you notice how attractive i look?

that is from last year! in a way, the offering has not changed much in more than four decades. you are now approaching 70. 68 now. do you not get a bit tired? oh no. putting on the make—up, and... do you? but seriously? it is a privilege and an honour. it's more akin to warpaint, the idea... the entire... you know, the roar of the crowd, the smell of the grease paint, the whole process is so exciting. you are backstage and playing music and hanging with the guys and stuff like that and you start to hear the crowd. you know, that thing. there are very few things that get you excited during the course of the day. come on, you are looking forward to traffic... but to do it for five decades,

and you are still having to perform some of the early songs to keep the... of course, we are! and proudly so. of course. it's wonderful. what betterjob is there? we have more fun than the pope! ok, now when you first realised... you were formed in 1973... 1873. in 1973, it was a struggle to begin with, but there was a point when suddenly you started selling records. well, it wasn't about records. we started selling out stadiums within a year and a half of debuting. we sold out in anaheim stadium. we were headlining above bands around for decades. and something happened before records, voicemail, before anything, really, and itjust happened naturally. critics never gave us a quarter to get on a bus. and it happened because of the people! and we continue...

0ur strongest base, our strongest, you know, "at a boy" comes from the people. and that is our favourite thing. and for running up debts to get the band going, the money really started rolling in. 0h, big. i remember... my mother is from hungary and she continues to say "how is the orchestra?" she has this wonderful... she still has no clue who pays the money or who i work for. and she has been to one of your concerts? she goes all the time and she does my, you know, the hand gesture, and all that, says "i love you." initially she went up to paul, my bandmate, and did not realise i was on the other end of the room. my life is so amazing... but your life changed as a result of that and as a result of the fact that you were starting to make money, it must have just changed so dramatically. well, it dramatically changed because i moved to hollywood and i sold out. i became ensconced, which is a big word like "gymnasium" and "power and corruption," all that,

but never drugs, never booze, never alcohol. i have still never been high or drunk in my life. i don't care if anyone thinks i am making it up or believes it. "oh, that's a lie..." that is my choice and life and you can do whatever you want. i would never break my mother's heart. she was 1a years of age when she was in the concentration camps of nazi. i have no right to disappoint her in any way. my mother is proud of her son, i have done myjob. and it is because of your mother that you thought i will not do something that affects her health. you are her only son. it's not about health, it's about not breaking her heart. she is 92 and just kicking a. i am not supposed to say that word. she is up and she continues to be the inspiration that keeps me going straight, that prevents me from drifting off to the dark side, because, you know, the papers are littered with people

who self abuse... but including your bandmates, two of the original members of the band have written about their own problems with drugs, coke, and alcohol. peter chris said "i had a coke problem at the time, it was ‘the‘ thing." everyone was doing it. ineverdid... i was so stupid and naive about it, i went on to a recording studio and there was a mirror there, and artificial sweetener had just come out, and i had artificial sweetener in my coffee, i was watching my girlish figure. there was some there, and i thought someone had spilt some sweetener, but it was coke. i did not know what it was, and someone stopped me using it. i rapidly learned to stay away from losers. that is why you got rid of two of the original members of the band. three different times. they came around three different times and lost fortunes every time. peter, when writing about it, said it made him work harder,

it was fuel to him. oh, that's nonsense. everyone gets delusional with chemicals inside their body. "without it i would not be creative, that kind of..." it is an enabling device. the truth is you are born with everything you need. anything else you put in your body that numbs your body and mind, it is your enemy. what was it like within the band if you are alone are teetotal? paul was also a teetotaller. what was it like? there was huge tension. we had argument and fights and lawyers got involved. and of course, invariably, you had to get rid of them. because how can you imagine playing in a football team if you can not depend on them? you pass them the ball and they are too high to understand it and then you lose it. well, you don't lose, we all lose. you did not touch drink and drugs. the women, though, that sort of third element of the rock and roll life, you really went to town there. it's all true.

a800 women is supposedly your record, your tally. well, you know, one or two, that's all in the past. i'm married. i know. i love my wife, shannon, and i waited like a jackass... are you allowed to say that word? that's fine. i'm a jackass and i have been all my life, i'm a lonely child —— only child. and it's like living in a bakery and being on a diet, you're in a rock band and everything gets thrown in your face, the bad stuff, women, all that stuff. i didn't want to grow up, i was caught up, i was arrogant, self—engrossed and all that. it took forever, it took shannon, my wife, my two kids, nick and sophie, to kick me in the nuts and make me grow up and be a man. your wife made you burn the polaroids which were the proof of the 4,800. it was a public thing, it wasn't a secret. you put it all behind you but you have run

into difficulties very recently because of the things you said when he went into fox news, you were banned for life because you barged into a staff meeting... i didn't. you didn't? certainly not. the story is you barged in, you opened your shirt and you said, "chicks, sue me!" what is your first name? sarah. i go on social media right now and says sarah met me backstage and she said, and i can say whatever i want, it goes on social media and if it's at all... so what happened ? nothing. here's how i wear my shirt, someone there apparently had the goods in for me and called the daily beast or something and said whatever they said i did. i did nothing. i aways have people around me, like when i come here, i've got handlers and everyone sees what i'm doing. you can't go into a public area and do anything. but let me finish. the problem with social media today is nobody calls you and says, "do you have a comment?" the story was printed and of course everybody exploded. and fox, they're nice people, i like them a lot, but they're closed ranks and they're afraid

of getting sued by everybody. nothing happened, i stand by every word. nothing happened, but they banned you? that's right, that's exactly right. i stand by every word ijust said. you will know the hash tag #metoo, where women are calling out behaviour where they have suffered in the past sexual harassment at the hands of men and your name has appeared in a couple of tweets. why would i want to do anything... look, i'm not even going to hold up the hypothetical. nothing happened. all of a sudden, 44 years on in a rock band somebody‘s coming up and saying this guy's a bad guy, it's not true. i think the climate is horrifically, bad and yet at the same time empowering to the right women. there are some really bad guys out there, ijust happen not to be one of them. when you read what women are saying are happening to them, what do you think about the culture that you and in one sense everyone lived through?

the women who were going after the weinsteins of the world? yeah. they should go to the cops. the police are here and the court system is here for you to do what the women did with bill cosby. if you have a complaint, go to the cops. going through the court of public opinion on social media is maybe exactly happened the way it happened. why don't you get yourself a lawyer and do due diligence? isn't there a question of changing the culture, the kind of stuff you maybe don't go to the police over but you think, "i'm going to go and call this out because women don't have to accept it any longer." there is an organisation in england, i saw it yesterday on a chat show, the woman heads it, about the victims, the men who are committing suicide were wrongly convicted of all kinds of nonsense. what about them ? do you think it's gone too far? i'm not saying it's gone too far or not enough. i'm saying go to the cops. let's turn back to your mother. now i like you. the single most important person in your life. it should be the single most important person to everybodys life.

it's because of her background, she was a survivor of the holocaust, and also because when she arrived in america, she was with you, single mum, you were aged eight, and you remember that time and it seems to have had a huge effect on you throughout your life? well, our... my father... i fall back on our because it still hurts. my father abandoned me when i was about seven years old and my dear mother took on the reins and the responsibility the way so many millions of mothers around the world raise families as a single mother, whether they're married or not. we came to america when i was eight years old and i was totally unprepared for everything and my mother had language difficulties, she only spoke hungarian, i spoke hebrew, hungarian and one or two other languages, none of us could speak english. it was enormously hard for my mother and what i saw was the most empowering, inspirational human being i'd ever seen in movies, television, anything, and it was my mother, who would wake up at the crack

of dawn and go to work every day and make sure her son would turn out 0k. that's why i have a lifelong responsibility... you're going to get me choked up here so i'm going to stop now. 0k, go ahead. i wonder how it makes you feel about what's happening in america now about attempts to stop immigrants? i am an immigrant, i'm a legal immigrant, i don't know why anyone would care what a guy in a band thinks about immigration or politics, but you're asking so i'm going to give you one citizen's opinion. that is that legal immigration is the right thing because at least people know who you are, where you come from. some vetting, it's called due diligence in business, but you want to vet who comes and goes, and i give that power to the government. i willingly say i want you to know where i am if i'm pay taxes and so on, if i commit a crime, i want you to know where i am, here's my fingerprints, i'm all for that. there are 11—20 million illegal

immigrants in america. now, my heart goes out to anyone that comes to america or england for a better life and all that. i get it, i get it. emotionally and sympathetically i'm with you all the way. but unfortunately bad guys come under that as well. i just want to say the following, the pope, who i'm a big fan of, i think he's a good human being, he said walls around america are not a nice thing. maybe so, but the vatican has an enormous wall going around it. but your own daughter said, "we're a country built on immigrants and survivors..." legal immigrants. .."and what's happening right now when we're closing our doors on that is shocking to me because my family wouldn't be here. both my parents are immigrants." i love sophie, she's the rights holder of anybody, and when you're 20 and 25 years old, i did too, immigrants is all encompassing, it's not. when you're a legal immigrant there's a vetting process,

when you keep the doors open, i'm going to suggest in your country, let everyone in, without any vetting, are you for that? what about the children of illegal immigrants, the dreamers? it breaks my heart and i don't have the answer because if i was here illegally and i had a child, i'd say do whatever you want with me but please let my child have a better life. that's the emotion and romance of it. you have said about trump, "give him time." it's president trump, and i'll tell you why. i'll tell you why. i don't necessarily like ordislike him. did you vote for him? he was duly elected and i'll tell you why i won't answer that either, i may not have, but the reason your founding fathers, and in america they have those curtains when you vote, it's nobody‘s damn business who you voted for and when a citizen asks you that you're just going to get into an argument. i wonder, given the record that you've seen so far whether you'd be prepared to vote for him

for a second time? i know the man personally a little bit, i also know president clinton and president bush. you've worked with him as well, haven't you? yes. president trump doesn't really care how you think about him, he's really a lone guy. that's neither not good nor bad, it is what it is, he doesn't pretend to be a politician and he really doesn't care what you think about him. this is either going to turn out to be good or bad. i know he's hurt a lot of people by the things he's said, he's unfiltered, what you see is what you get, he's not an ideologue at all, he's neither republican or democrat. don't think for a second that because i'm saying this i'm for this or this. i don't trust politicians, neither side would have me, socially i'm very liberal. gay rights, lgbt community, if you want to worship a rock or be an atheist, i'm on your side, i will march right with you, don't tell me what kind of life to have.

but foreign policy, i'm as conservative as you would imagine. fiscally i'm very, very conservative. what does that make me, a member of the american party. let me ask you finally then about family. finally! i thought we were going to be for the whole day. you arrive with your mother, you're eight years old. you look at where you are now and how successful you have been, she feels proud of you? oh, yeah. my mother... wow. she'll take a book or magazine or something i have been in and she will start crying. from her perspective of being a concentration camp survivor and seeing her whole family to being in israel and then coming to america and seeing her son scale the heights and all that, she's taught me to be fearless and look bbc right in the face and say, "to thine own self be true." take it or leave it, i don't care how you feel about it, i'm clean inside and this is who i am and i learned that from my mother. gene simmons, thank you for coming on.

it was a pleasure to see me. hello there. weatherwise, this week has got off to a pretty quiet start, lots of dry weather on monday, most of us hopefully saw a glimmer or two of sunshine, but plenty of cloud around. tuesday, pretty similar story, quite a lot of cloud around, a lot of dry weather, some persistent rain for northern and western scotland by the end of the afternoon. after some early morning fog,

southern england should brighten quite nicely, hopefully we'll see some through the afternoon. across the midlands and east anglia too. some cloud and drizzle for wales and northern england. some bright spells. for the highland and northern isles, a wet end to the afternoon. that is the first signs of what is to come as we push into the middle of the week. wet and windy conditions extending across the isles. for much of england and wales a quiet night on tuesday, some cloud around the day on tuesday, many areas being fine over the afternoon where northern wales and the south—west will pick up some rain. windy for scotland and northern ireland. still some temperatures in the double figures. 0vernight wednesday into thursday, really starting to bring in some wet weather, this low is a savage affair, some strong winds and those will be with us on thursday, the weather front to the south

making for a wet start to the day on thursday and bright weather to follow from the north later on. notjust brighter, but colder. that is why you see it on the map behind me. snow showers and you can see the temperatures coming down across northern scotland, still in double figures for the south of the british isles through thursday afternoon but that warm air will be pushed away by another arctic plunge. that will be here by the time we get into friday. friday, a pretty good—looking day if you are in doors looking through the window, quite a lot of sunshine around the snow showers to the north and north—west, very strong cutting northerly winds. 0n the face of it, temperatures colder than the start of the week. “i! for newcastle come friday. here is a recap of your week. a pretty quiet start, a fine day to come on tuesday, wet and windy wednesday

night into thursday, thursday and friday becoming brighter and also turning down temperatures. i'm rico hizon in singapore, the headlines saudi bombs hit yemen again — hours after ex—president saleh is killed by his former allies. brexit talks remain stalled following disagreements over the irish border. i'm kasia madera in london. also in the programme... the philippines suspends use of a dengue fever vaccine — after evidence shows it could make the illness worse. and the veteran indian actor and producer shashi kapoor has died. he appeared in over a hundred films. live from our studios in singapore and london, this is bbc world news.