with the sunday telegraph, ufos do exist, says the pentagon's x—files j. exist, says the pentagon's x—files j. who is he really? —— x—files chief. they have described him as the real x—files programme, he says the real x—files programme, he says the case of objects travelling at hypersonic speeds which are inexplicable, has been proved beyond reasonable doubt, so this is interesting, aliens and christmas. -- it interesting, aliens and christmas. - - it says interesting, aliens and christmas. -- it says items that were made yellow macro by any nation or any company. if they are so far away that you can't see them properly, how do you know? he's also resigning, this is his resignation letter and his point is, you have not been paying more attention and you should have given us more money for the projects, but he said it is classified as to whether there are any ufos over the uk. freedom of

information request needs to go in. the mail on sunday, the army is being used the be the best slogan for some time but they are getting rid of it. —— has been used to stop a p pa re ntly rid of it. —— has been used to stop apparently it is seen as yellow macro “ apparently it is seen as yellow macro -- apparently it is seen as non—inclusive and elitist, and this will cost £1.5 million. they have done a focus group? yes, market research, and it is being removed from everything, completely dropped. it has been their slogan since 1983, they have a little extract wyatt has been written off, saying it didn't not resonate with many of their key audiences —— little in stack terrain

-- little audiences —— little in stack terrain — — little extract audiences —— little in stack terrain —— little extract which explains why it has been written. we don't know what by going to replace it with. do we? it doesn't say. be the second best. the average. that is not what you want. they must know that this is putting people off. they must do, but when gavin williamson is facing open rebellion at suggestions that the army will be slashed below 70,000 personnel and the army will be slashed below 70 , 000 personnel and backbenchers are up in arms and he has been accused of not trying to push this into the budget enough, you wouldn't think this was a top priority, even if it's not. having trouble keeping funding to keep people, attracting people for the but they always need to. people leave and then they need fresh recruits. that's right. they need to get young people. exactly.

the sunday express, eat drink and be merry, because an anti—fatjab is on the way. has someone -- as someone who has already eaten mince pies this is great news. there was a tin of sweets alongside you outside. yes, that's right. not yourself out. this is a university in israel that has discovered a drug while researching its use in treating obesity and i think watch this space because hopefully what the drug does, it says here, ajab, it transforms cells which normally store fat into cells which burn it and that sounds like a dream. there was a researcher recently who said if you lose a decent amount of weight you can get type two diabetes back under control, as well. that

would be against that suggestion of eating whatever you like but we will a nyway eating whatever you like but we will anyway because it is christmas. we never learn. that's it for the papers this hour. thank you to my guests. they'll both be back at 1130 for another look at the stories making the news tomorrow. now it's time for meet the author. vera stanhope rides again. the seagulll is the eighth book by ann cleeves featuring her slightly scruffy, determined but very warm detective inspector, who's drawn into a mystery touching rather uncomfortably on the story of her own father and his dodgy friends on tyneside. it's been an immensely successful series from a writer who's been high in the league table of british crime writers for many years. her other detective inspector, jimmy perez, for example, having become a favourite tv cop in shetland. welcome.

when you get a character — invent a character — that you really like, like vera stanhope, you like to stick with them, don't you? i do, and i think that's one of the joys of writing crime fiction. there are very few other genres where you can follow a character through a number of books. there's some literary fiction, but crime, it's expected that we're going to write a series, and it's great to be able to develop a character that grows. that's an interesting phrase — "it's expected". you know that you're writing, not for a specific audience, but for a general audience that likes this kind of story. you must feel that you now know them quite well? yes, because i go out and meet them. i love doing library events and book shop events and meeting readers.

and i'm a reader, i'm a fan as well. i read crime fiction, so i love that sense of getting to know a character very well, and watching him grow or her grow. i think crime writers as a breed are like that, aren't they? i mean, they all read each other‘s work... yeah. ..even though maybe they don't like to admit it? yeah, i think we're a very jolly bunch. we're so used to people looking down their noses at us, because we're genre fiction, that we come together and we fight back. those days have gone, haven't they? i think there's still a little bit of that. you think there's a wee bit of snobbishness about? yeah, still a bit of that. but you all enjoy paddling around in gore, and all these dark deeds,

and actually you're like sort of, i don't know, anybody who works in a kind of profession or trade, where they're facing death all the time, they're actually quite full of fun and stories. yeah, i think so. i'm not really into the gore. i'm more into using that as a framework to develop characters and to look at the things that really interest me, so... well, we don't want to talk about the plot in great detail, because obviously that would spoil it for people who haven't read the book yet. but we can say that vera stanhope, your detective inspector in this series, the eighth book in the series, is taken, by chance — she doesn't really expect it — into her own past, and this rather dodgy ne'er—do—well father of hers, who had been sort of slightly grand, but then shall we say, fell into bad company? yeah. it's classic fictional material, isn't it? i think it is, and i love that idea of looking at the relationship between the daughter and the father, and that theme, i think, goes through the book — there are other daughters and other fathers. and she is a character who is, you know, a bit scruffy and very determined and sometimes quite rough with people. but the essential thing, it strikes me about her, is her fundamental warmth. i mean, she's a good person? 0h, she is a good person —

in the tradition of classic crime, i think. that the detectives are flawed, they appear brusque, but they are good, because at the end, i think that's why, especially now in times of trouble and uncertainty, people are going back to classic crime, because there is at the end a sense of order restored, of good triumphing — and we need that sense at a time of confusion, that things will be well. well, that's good that you define, or interesting, that you define classic crime as order being restored. somehow, you know, people may not all be happy, but at least the fundamentals have been revealed to be still there. yeah. so, there's a reassurance involved. i think so, and i think that's why it's so popular at the minute, why the british library crime classics are doing amazingly, the between—the—wars books, that are selling fanta... yes. because people like that sense of, as i say, in a time of confusion, that in the end, justice prevails. and we know where we are. we know where we are,

and we know the difference between good and evil, and even if there are ambiguities in all the characters, and confusions, which there have to be, otherwise it's a pretty boring story, we find at the end with a sigh, that it's ok — somebody may have come to a sticky end, a good person may have been brought down, but something remains. yes, and the end of the seagull is quite ambiguous, and you're not quite sure that the killer has been unmasked, but there is that sense ofjustice prevailing, i think. it's quite good, at the same time, isn't it, to have people wondering about the alternative explanations to an ending — to say, "ok, order has been restored, but i wonder how it happened?" yeah. no, i think that's... because you want the book to live on after the reader's finished it. that's interesting, yes. because everybody sees the book in a different way, that's why book clubs

are so interesting, as you know. yes. people have different ideas, they see different pictures in their heads when they read. you have a way of creating an atmosphere, and i'm thinking, for example, of the shetland books, which, of course, made it to the small screen very, very successfully. and what was it about that atmosphere, there, the bleakness and bareness of shetland — which is very beautiful as well — that gave you the spark? i suppose i first went there a0... more than a0 years ago, because i dropped out of university and just by chance i got the job working in the bird observatory in fair isle. and since then, i've been going back, but i haven't really been there in midwinter. i went in midwinter and there was snow, and it is very bare, because there are no trees, really, in shetland. no trees.

and so it's that contrast, i think, between the... you can see for miles, but then the contrast between that and any possible secrets. and the warmth of the domestic scenes within the croft houses, that attracted me first. yes, the fact that even on a bare landscape, all kinds of things can be concealed. yes. you've also got the feeling in shetland of stepping away from the world, haven't you? i'm not saying that pejoratively about what goes on in shetland. but it is distant. it is. it is the edge of our known universe in the uk. it's 11; hours by boat from aberdeen, so it's a long way. and it does feel separate, and it feels... and they're very self—reliant, shetlanders, so they do things their own way. do you write, you know, in a continuous stream, really, or are their big gaps? i alternate between... i wouldn't just want to write vera, because... at the end, i've had enough and i want to go off and try something new. you want a break. yes, so i've been alternating with shetland. so, i've just finished the very last shetland book, just now, so... the very last, the end of the series. the end of the series. did you come to the end just because you thought, well, that it, time to close the covers on this, it's done, i am not

going to keep it, give it artificial resuscitation? i'd said all that i can about the place, and about the characters that i've created, i think. and i don't want to be bored by them — and i certainly don't want the readers to be bored by them. so, better end while i'm still enjoying it. do you find writing, which you've been doing for a long time, very successfully, and with great dedication, do you find it a kind of therapy as well? oh, it's an escape, isn't it? we lose ourselves in a different world when we're writing, just as when we're reading. so, certainly it's an escape. but you need to be there living as well, otherwise you run out of things to write about, so it's a good balance. but when you're in full flow in a story, and it's working, the rest of the world doesn't exist? no, there's nothing like it. it's an amazing feeling. ann cleeves, author of the seagulll, thank you very much. thank you. good evening, the cloud is

thickening, bringing more persistent rain across the west of scotland and the process will continue through the process will continue through the night, and under the cloudy skies it will be for most of us a very mild die, although it might turn a bit cold in the far north of scotla nd turn a bit cold in the far north of scotland later —— mild night. we have some low—level fog potentially in several areas as we sorted today, but otherwise, christmas day begins with a grey cloudy night. it looks as if we will see fewer across scotla nd as if we will see fewer across scotland and northern ireland where the rain takes hold, and it will sink south for a time, something a bit brighter to the north, but another mild day and another clouded over most of us and then to christmas day, the rain band is heading a bit further south, so there will be heavy rain for wales and the north west and a bit colder but mild again for most. this is bbc news.

i'm martine croxall. the headlines at 11:00: nearly 200 people are known to have died after a tropical storm triggers flash floods and landslides in the southern philippines. a man has appeared at york magistrates court charged with the murder ofjodie willsher at an aldi supermarket in skipton. london zoo is to re—open tomorrow, after a majorfire in which an aardvark and four meerkats are thought to have died. theresa may pays tribute to british troops at home and abroad in a christmas message. and in california, the deadly wildfire that has destroyed hundreds of homes is now the largest in state history. the thomas blaze has scorched an area greater than new york city, brussels and paris combined. and leon bernicoff, star of the tv show gogglebox, dies at the age of 83.