main bus station was an attempted terrorist attack. the suspected attacker is currently in police custody, and has been named as 27—year—old akayed ullah, who moved to the us from bangladesh. he suffered burns from the crude pipe—bomb strapped to his body. three women who accused president trump of sexual misconduct, alleging he groped, kissed and harassed them, have demanded a congressional inquiry. the white house says their claims are false. and this story is trending on bbc.com: the fairy—tale romance the shape of water leads nominations for the 2018 golden globe awards. it has picked up seven nominations. the ceremony next month could set the stage for the winners at the oscars in march. stay with bbc world news. now on bbc news, it is time for hardtalk welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur.

today i'm in oslo to meet the winners of the nobel peace prize and this year, the award goes to the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons. two women from very different generations who have worked tirelessly for nuclear disarmament. they believe they have embarked on a campaign which will ultimately lead to the elimination of all the world's nuclear weapons. but are they changemakers or wishful thinkers? beatrice fihn and setsuko thurlow, many congratulations on winning the nobel peace prize. of course, welcome to hardtalk.

i want to begin by asking both of you how you felt when you heard this news is that you had won the nobel peace prize. you are the executive director of ican, the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons. did you expect it? thank you for having me here. we did not expect it at all. we have been so preoccupied with the treaty and having it concluded in the summer. the treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons which got so many nations around the world to sign up to? exactly. so when i got the phone call, i was in complete shock, so honoured, i thought it was a prank at first. we were nervous. many powerful people don't like this treaty. i was a little bit paranoid. then we watched the live broadcast to make sure it was real. just such an incredible honour for the whole campaign, for all the people that have fought against nuclear weapons for so long. just wonderful.

as you say that, you look at setsuko. for you, this is the most extraordinary, personal story as well because you sit with me today as a survivor of hiroshima. you were there in 1916. for you, the news that the nobel committee had decided to recognise the work of the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons, what did it mean to you? i just couldn't believe it, that first moment. i was numb, i think. i pinched myself. is it real? but the people around me were screaming with joy. so it must be true. but it took me for days before i really felt like i actually won. i think we have to start this interview as it so remarkable for me to sit with you.

we have to start by having you reflect on the memories you hold of hiroshima 1945 because, in a sense, everything about the campaign today is about the reality of what nuclear weapons do. so if you would take me back to that day in the summer of ‘45. i was a 13—year—old grade 7 student in a girls school. i was at the army headquarters that morning instead of classroom because japan was losing fast in the war. and they utilised all the cheap labour. so i was at the army headquarters. and that was a monday morning and at 8 o'clock, we had the assembly and the major said, "this is the beginning of your work "and you demonstrate your patriotism to the nation

"and loyalty to the emperor." "yes, sir, we will!" at that moment, i assure the blueish white flash from the window and then ihad... was there a noise? no, nothing. they say there was a thunderous noise but people far away heard it. i didn't hear anything. so the moment i saw the flash, my body was thrown up in the air and i lost consciousness. when i regained consciousness, in total darkness and silence, then i thought, "this is it." i was faced with death. then i started hearing the faint voices of my classmates in the dark. "help me, mother, help me." then, all of a sudden, somebody started pushing my left shoulder. "don't give up, girl. "keep pushing, keep kicking.

"i'm trying to free you. "you see the sun coming through that opening? "crawl toward that." as clear as possible. and that's what i did in the total darkness. i don't know how many seconds i took but by the time i came out, the rubble was already on fire. there were about 30 girls who were with me in the same room, they were all burned to death alive. wow. how do you think you survived? it sounds like a miracle. yes, i think so it's like a miracle but i don't believe, some people say, well, god saved

you to do the job for disarmament. no, that's a nonsensical interpretation. god doesn't help you for that. it was sheer, sheer luck, i think. the people who were just half a metre away from me just incinerated. and it's so horrible to reflect on it but how many members of your extended family and your classmates did you lose? i lost 351 schoolmates who happened to be at another place in the centre part of the city. together with several thousand other students. all the kids from all the high schools who were brought to the centre and just above them, the detonation of atomic bomb took place. those young people just didn't have a chance. they simply vaporised, melted. and family?

i lost eight of my family, yes. and when i think of my hiroshima memory, the first person i think of is my nephew, li—year—old little boy, who kept asking for water because he was burned so badly. i saw him about twice or three times, just blood, condensed, and everybody was begging for water. 4,000 degrees celsius heat on that ground level. everybody was thirsty. anyway, i did see that day something i can neverforget. people looked like ghosts, not human beings, because of the skin and flesh was burned, blackened, swollen, melting, the hair was standing up. naked.

and some people were carrying their eyeballs. some people just collapsed onto the ground. they had their stomach burst open, intestines stretched out. so i had to learn to step over the dead bodies to escape. it is very hard to listen to you today and not feel utterly horrified by it all. and yet you are a survivor and you have become a committed campaigner through all your adult life against nuclear weapons and it's so interesting to me, beatrice, that setsuko‘s testimony has become such a central part of yourcampaign.

72 years on, why, in your opinion, is it so important to harness the real—life testimony of setsuko and a few other survivors that remain, are able to talk about it? well, this is what the weapons do. this is what they are. this is nuclear weapons. we like to think about them as abstract concepts of power. theories, war games. but this is what nuclear weapons are. if we keep nuclear weapons forever, they will be used again. this will happen. there is literally no preparedness to deal with this. there is nothing, relief agencies or national authorities can do to help people. we have, for example, the red cross do research on what they would do as a emergency relief actor in terms of helping survivors. they said they would pull their staff out.

they can't help. the un humanitarian agencies said the same thing. they say they are powerless, they can't do anything. but when you say this is the reality of nuclear weapons, it was the reality of the nuclear weapons that we used in 1945. i guess the point that so many strategists, thinkers on international security issues would make to you is that actually, the fact that the big world powers have maintained their nuclear weapons deterrent over the last seven decades has actually ensured that they have not been used and that actually we have not had major wars between those big powers since the second world war. i wouldn't agree with that. i think nuclear weapons, we have been very close to the use of nuclear weapons several times since the cold war. but isn't that the point of deterrence?

you can get close and have huge confrontation and have wars even by proxy but you cannot step over the line because of the theory of mutually assured destruction that comes with these weapons, for whom setsuko‘s testimony is the ultimate bearing witness. one day it will fail. we see now it is being threatened for use. we see world leaders talk about totally destroying not just a city, notjust a regime but the whole country, for example and that is really dangerous. we have multiple threats now. we have many more actors with nuclear weapons. we have terrorists, cyber security issues, we have so many accidents. a lot of research coming out now on how close to accidents we were during the cold war, misunderstandings. they thought a weather satellite was an incoming missile. one person in the soviet union said, "that doesn't feel right." he disregarded orders.

nuclear weapons have bought us to the brink so many times, now fuelling conflicts today. the war in iraq. that was based on this issue of weapons of mass destruction. we have a tense situation in iran. in kashmir, with india and pakistan. right now with north korea. nuclear weapons are not solving that problem. nuclear weapons are fuelling it. let's unpick a bit of the work you have done, the work that has led to you receiving this amazing prize here in oslo. i suppose more than anything else, you got the prize this year because you were in the ican, the international campaign, you were the driving force behind this international treaty which more than 120 countries have proved, which outlaws, which prohibits nuclear weapons. the big problem with that treaty is that it does not include the support of any of the nations that currently have nuclear weapons. and that surely discredits it

as a meaningful treaty? absolutely not. we see with other treaties, for example, that norms can be very powerful and influence behaviour, also with parties that are not a part of it. landmines, the big producers, even though they didn't sign a treaty, they have shifted their behaviours. the market for landmines has dropped. we have seen efforts to clean up landmines being done, saving people's lives continuously because of the treaty. 0ne practical question on how this treaty works, because its central to the work you do. you say when 50 countries have formally signed it, it will be international law. my question is, what does that really mean, if the united states, russia, china let alone countries like north korea — and we might talk about that more — if those nations do not accept this "international law", what meaning does it have?

it will still impact their behaviour and sort of shift their norms. how and why? for example, we can ask banks to divest from nuclear weapons production, and we've seen that for example with the cluster munitions convention, that the us did not participate or sign. but last year, textron, the last american producer of cluster munitions, stopped producing cluster munitions, saying there's a growing international stigma, it's bad business to keep investing in this weapon. and even if perhaps the trump administration now is trying to reverse some policies, the company have said "no, we are not going to do this." setsuko, i want to quote you something. canl... 0k, all right. well, i wanted to quote you something the nobel committee said in their citation in giving the award. they said this, "we live in a world today where the risk of nuclear weapons being used is greater than it has been for a very long time." that's right, that's right. do you think that's true? that's right.

two years scientific advances in place, there risk is far greater today than 75 years ago. i thought what i experienced in that city was a catastrophic disaster. but if anything like under the bomb is used, human suffering is not going to be that scale. the whole city, whole region, even half of the continent could be melting away. that kind of different situation from 72 years ago. and somehow, i think it is a madness to think that deterrence theory works, therefore we manage not to have the war past so many years. well, i'm not sure that deterrence theory seems so implausible if one considers the strategies of the united states, russia and china, but i do want to talk to you particularly about north korea because we have seen the north koreans develop their nuclear weapons programme in recent weeks and months.

we now know that they have quite an advanced capability, notjust to weaponise but also then to miniaturise so they can put it on an intercontinental ballistic missile. we have seen those tests. now, for you as a japanese citizen, albeit a woman who now lives in canada, surely that gives you pause. i mean, japan right now is protected by the american nuclear umbrella. are you suggesting to me that the japanese people would be happy to see the americans give up their nuclear weapons and forjapan to lose that protection? i think many serious japanese are thinking that maintaining that alliance, the relationship with the united states, which is ready to use nuclear weapons as a first strike weapon, and that makes japan more vulnerable. on a human level, what is your

reaction when you hear donald trump talk about fire and fury, the united states using...? i want to tell him he doesn't understand there are millions of human beings who could suffer from this, and i have seen so many hundred thousand people melt away, and howa human can we be? that's totally unacceptable moral behaviour. i will tell him that. and i will say the same to the north korean leader as well. they are behaving totally u na cce pta bly. there's a verification issue here as well. i mean, in the not—so—distant past, we saw iran tell lies about the nature of its nuclear programme. they were exposed ultimately the iaea and now iran is under a very strict monitoring programme,

but we know it is easy to disguise nuclear developments, including military developments. now, i'm just going to quote you the words of one expert in this field, a nuclear physicist, peter zimmerman. he says, "in the end, some hydrogen bombs are small enough to hide in a coat closet. verification of their destruction in the absence of a yet—to—be—determined mechanism..." because he says that nothing you talk about is specific. "..and in the absence of a strong international consensus, verification is impossible. " and with regard to north korea, for example, isn't that a truth that means the big powers cannot sacrifice their nuclear weapons? no, because as long as we... some countries keep nuclear weapons, you will incite proliferation. if a country like britain has spent the last 70 years arguing that nuclear weapons equal safety, of course a country like north korea is going to think the same, or iran. why wouldn't they?

i think that we are never going to be able to address the proliferation challenges until we start rejecting nuclear weapons as an acceptable means of protecting ourselves. threatening to mass murder civilians should not be a legitimate way of ensuring safety. it creates un—safety and creates a heightened risk for it. so when we address that, the verification, the technical challenges will be solved. it is the political will that needs to happen. well, it's interesting you both talk about changing the political will, but politics is also about, you know, politicians listening to and trying to appeal to publics around the world, in democracies at least. here's something very interesting that i just saw the other day, written by a political science professor, very respected international security expert at stamford university in the united states. now, he surveyed opinion in donald trump's america about us attitudes to using nuclear weapons, and he found 60% of americans today

would approve of killing 2 million, for example, iranian civilians, if that would prevent a military conflict in which 20,000 us soldiers might die. that's apparently the reality of us public opinion today. how are you going to shift that? we're going to do a lot of work. this is also what the treaty is for. it's not the end goal. the treaty‘s the tool to change perceptions. as i said, for 70 years, we have had this kind of acceptance of nuclear weapons and we face that all the time — people just say, "oh, you're never going to be able to change". so of course people are gonna say that right now. but we are changing it. but it's even just that we're never going to be able to change it. it's actually, the tide is against you.

donald trump is proposing to spend tens and tens of billions of dollars upgrading and improving america's nuclear weapons capability and you can bet that will lead to similar investments in russia and in china as well. so isn'tjust sort of coping with the status quo, the tide is running against you. but there is also a huge growing resistance to that. we have seen in the us senate that people are starting to be very concerned about who has control of these nuclear weapons. people are worried that someone irrational gets control, someone who can be very easily provoked — with a tweet, for example — will have control of the nuclear weapons. and i think that that's really the key — when people start questioning who should have these weapons and when people start being worried about kim jong—un or donald trump having control over nuclear weapons, i think you are actually worried about nuclear weapons because it means that you recognise that deterrence doesn't always work. are you suggesting to me that you in the campaign, in the ican campaign, see a very clear equivalence between donald trump

and kimjong—un, for example? i think we are focused on the weapons, not on who has control of them. there are no right hands for these weapons. setsuko, i want to give a final word to you. what did you want to say? as i listen to you, of course as an interviewer, you have to challenge us, so trying to be devil's advocate, i suppose. i don't — i hope you don't really believe what you're saying! i am trying to reflect on — i am trying to reflect on seven decades... it saddens me, as somebody who personally experienced, have seen an entire cityjust destroyed, obliterated, and hundreds of thousands of people simply scorched, carbonised. and we are talking about human beings in that condition, which it is totally unacceptable anywhere, any time. my final question to you, because we're almost out of time, you have lived through the most extraordinary period, you know, which... i have to say the whole thing we are talking about is madness! sheer madness!

but look... we've got... yes? my question is this. 0k. you've had time over your 80—some years to reflect on human nature. do you sit here today, as one of the most passionate advocates of nuclear disarmament, do you sit here today truly believing that we human beings are ever going to agree to give up the most potent weapon we have ever invented? do you believe in your heart we humans are capable of doing that? i do. if i don't, i cannot afford to be in the peace movement. i do. we have achieved a small goal and we are going to achieve many more before we get rid of all the nuclear weapons. so we are determined. and i guess the ultimate message is learn from history. yes. right. and take action based on your conviction. we have to end there, but setsuko thurlow and beatrice fihn, thank you both for being on hardtalk once again and congratulations once again

on winning the nobel peace prize. no wonder the snow has been making the headlines, exceptionally heavy across parts of england and wales. winter wonderland scenes like this, it can look beautiful but can be so disruptive like the snow on monday. the wintry weather continues through the overnight through eastern coastal areas and through southwest wales, into cornwall and devon. elsewhere, a bitterly cold night under clear skies. out in the countryside and where there is lying snow, easily minus double digit figures and we're going to see some freezing mist and fog as well to greet us for tuesday morning. so watch out for lying snow and ice, which could be widespread where we have got snow and where there has been snow melt. some treacherous conditions out there on untreated roads and pavements and cycle routes, you can see a cold, frosty start

across the border. a few wintry showers, saying to across south—west wales and cornwall and devon. up into the midlands and northern england, scotland and to some extrent northern ireland, a cold and crisp start, but at least dry and bright with plenty of sunshine. it's going to be a glorious day, light winds, lots of sunshine albeit very cold. a change across the west, the weather front pushing to northern ireland, western scotland and the far south—west lifting temperatures slowly, outbreaks of rain to see some outbreaks of snow across the higher ground. temperatures rising in the south—west but a very cold day in central and eastern areas. there is the change taking place on tuesday, the first of a succession of weather fronts that will move through and we will see another one moving on wednesday, behind it colder air once again. that first weather front

will clear from the south—east wednesday morning. a frost free start on most places, a little bit of sunshine before the next weather system moves in, likely to bring heavy bursts of rain to england and wales. some snow across parts of northern ireland and towards scotland. double—figure values in the south, colder in the north. into thursday, we'll continue to see a little bit of rain across the south, plenty of showers and quite windy across the board in the north and the west. a little bit colder as well and that cold air will start to pour southwards through the area of low pressure as it clears eastward, opening up the floodgates into the afternoon, a colder friday into the weekend. this is new stay on the bbc. i'm rico hizon in singapore. the headlines: a man is in police custody after an attempted terror attack at new york city's main bus terminal. three women call on the us congress to investigate their claims that they were sexually harassed by president trump. i'm babita sharma in london.

also in the programme: prisoners in their own homes. we find out how attempts to keep pakistan's minority hazara community safe from attack could be deepening divisions. hazaras are now living in ghettos, scared that if they step out of their own areas — this is where they'll end up. and the nominees are announced for the golden globes with movie the shape of water leading the contenders with seven nominations.