this is bbc world news, the headlines. reports from iran say more anti—government protests have broken out in at least five cities. earlier, president hassan rouhani sought to play down the protests, saying they were not a threat. the north korean leader kimjong—un has warned that he is always within reach of the nuclear button. it comes after months of escalating tensions over his country's weapons programme. california has become the largest us state to legalise recreational cannabis use. adults aged over 21 can now possess up to 28 grams of the drug, and can grow up to six marijuana plants at home. china has banned the import of many types of foreign rubbish. beijing will no longer recycle 2a categories of overseas waste — including plastic. china had become the world's biggest market for waste, but many of the materials it imports are hazardous. at 10pm reeta chakra barti will be here with a full round up of the days news.

first, one of the highlights of the year from our award—winning documentary series, our world. angus crawford follows the path of madagascar‘s poor — who flock to the country's remote forests to illegally mine for sapphires — and reports on how the wealth they seek comes at a price. a handful of raw sapphires. beautiful and valuable. but they also pose a threat to this, the indri lemur, one of the rarest animals on earth. poor people in their thousands have invaded the animal's home, seeking their fortune in the remote forests of madagascar. are you rich? no, not yet. not yet?

laughs. not yet rich! they mine the land, but for little reward. very hard, the life here. in the rush for sapphires, there's a price to be paid. in ocotober 2016 in eastern madagascar, there was a chance discovery of sapphires, sparking a gem rush. tens of thousands of people flocked to the area. and we are now following the route they carved out. when the road ends, we walk. about one hour in, six to go, and i'm carrying half

the weight these guys are. but in these hills there are hidden dangers. disease, bandits. and everyjourney to the mine has its risks. time to visit the vatto mesina, sacred stones. an offering to ancestors ensures safe passage and good fortune. after this the going gets tougher. a once narrow forest path churned to mud by thousands of feet. as we walk, the trees close in on us. and then we hear them. lemurs calling.

indri, right above us. the mining trail leads directly through their territory. naturally timid, we have to go to a national park to get this close. the indris live on the fourth—biggest island on the planet, 500km off the coast of east africa. the wildlife is spectacular and rare. many species live here and only here. it is a privilege to see them in their natural habitat, but for how much longer? this has taken more than nine hours of walking, but we are finally here. we are right at the centre of what is the latest sapphire rush, the biggest sapphire rush.

for at least 20 years, and still they come, men, women and children. building homes of wood and plastic, creating a makeshift town in the heart of the forest. there are shops, and bars... ..but no hospital, school or police station. no—one wants to be here long. but they will stay as long as it takes to get lucky.

and the bluer the sapphires, the more money they're worth. these are poor men, working hard, hoping to get rich. tens of thousands of people have moved here to clear the land and dig for gemstones. this was once virgin rainforest. but now look. mineshafts and spoil heaps scar the landscape. there are thousands of men right across this valley working all day, every day, down these pits, digging out hundreds of bags of sand, and all of them are looking for something no bigger than the size of my fingernail.

and this is what they are after. a handful of stones. it took bruno and his team many days to dig them out. he comes from the other side of the island, more than ioookm away. he has invested all his money on this. every morning, the work takes him down into the dark. the pit is deep. very deep. the job is cramped, backbreaking and dangerous. none of these men are locals.

they have travelled from all over the island, because there isn't any work at home. so they come here, hoping to find a sapphire that makes their fortune. this one took days to find, but is worth only about $200, split between a team of four. what does it feel like when you find a sapphire? but it's always a gamble. stephane has been here for months and has nothing to show for it. university—educated,

now he works these pits to support his family. the future, i don't know. do you want to be here? for this moment. i am here. but when i don't have money to live here, maybe i will go back to my home. do you have family, children, a wife? yeah, i have a wife, one daughter, and three sons. yeah. and you come all the way here to help them? yeah, that's why i came here. what do you want for them, your children? i want them to have a good life. it is not greed which drives men here, but poverty.

madagascar is one of the poorest countries on earth. 80% of the population lives on less than $1 a day. there are fewjobs for men like these. keen eyes sieve and search, a promise of wealth in every handful. have you found any sapphires? many, but not very good. so are you rich? no, not yet, not yet rich. but the wealth they seek comes at a cost. the mines eat away at the forest.

the villages that spring up pollute the water, and threaten the habitat of the indri lemur. lemurs calling. can you hear that? that's the sound of indris singing. they are on that side of the valley and are singing to the indris on this side. they are critically endangered and they only live in a very small area of madagascar. they cannot survive in captivity. so when they're gone from here, they're gone for good. we travelled to mitsinjo, a conservation project where the indri are able to thrive. the biggest of all the lemurs, they spend most of their lives in the trees, eating and sleeping in the branches. they produce few young, only breeding every two or three years.

this is extraordinary. these indris come down from the forest canopy. they live in small family groups. this is a group of five, two adults and three juveniles. they eat nothing but leaves and seeds. they need a bigger range, a large territory to live in. so as the forests are cut around them, they have to retreat to smaller and smaller areas. but when those forests are gone, they will die out. in this park, our guide is one of the world's most foremost authorities on lemurs. that's really sad. he's horrified by what we show him. you can see the scale. yeah. it's huge. oh, yeah.

and make no mistake, this is all illegal. on paper, the land is protected. but the authorities seem unwilling or unable to stop it. here in madagascar, there are fortunes to be won or lost. the miners who dig up sapphires sell them on to dealers. they call this man ‘the president'. he holds court, waiting for the sapphires to be brought to him so he can inspect them and offer a price. notice the torch — every dealer needs one — and the rings — you'd have thought business was good. but far from it. but getting a good price

for sapphires means keeping them safe first. this man stores them in his mouth because, he says, he has no pockets. translation: it's calm here but beneath the surface, there's fear too. he said they need security because when you walk from the city, from town to here, there are some people who attack you. bandits? yeah, bandit. is he scared? yes, yes, we are afraid of that. sapphires are sold in england, in france, for rings... yeah. ..necklaces. uh-huh. do you think those rich people understand your life here? i think they, yeah, they understand the life

here but they don't care, maybe. when i talk about the government, the government in madagascar, you know, they don't care about us. deep in the forest, a day's walk from the nearest road, the authorities can seem remote, indifferent, and powerless. vibrant, polluted, and poor — antananarivo, madagascar‘s capital city. from here, the country's elite monitor the sapphire rush with great interest. the sapphire trade is a sensitive issue here. the government really doesn't like to talk about it, and somejournalists have been arrested for trying to expose the nepotism and corruption at its heart. the authorities claim they are trying to regulate the industry. but still, the illegal mining goes on.

in recent months, ministers have talked of reform, to tighten the law and control small—scale mining. but ngos working in conservation say what really stops effective policing is a lack of money. officials on the ground can't even buy fuel for their vehicles. these are in national parks, often, where it's happening. the authorities seem powerless. yes. u nfortu nately, most of the sapphires, gems, even gold rushes that we've had have been in protected areas, sometimes national parks. and it's all illegal, of course, but then, there is very little capacity to enforce legislation generally in madagascar —

especially in very, also remote areas, because you have, i mean, they are usually remote areas so it's even more difficult to enforce the law in this case. do you think the government wants to enforce the law? i wouldn't dismiss also that there is maybe a lack of willingness to act. which means gems from illegal mines continue to flow to the capital and on into backstreet workshops. here, skilled hands and sharp eyes work to unlock the value of the gems. stones will go through several pairs of hands before they reach the capital antananarivo and a place like this, where they're cut and polished for export. a stone sold by a miner for £25 will be sold by a dealer like this for £250,

and when it is in the us or in bangkok or in dubai, will go for more than £5,000. shaolin is happy to show this stock. the mining may be against the law but the trade isn't. this is his favourite, sold in the us for more than $2 million. some sapphires are mined legally in madagascar but how can a buyer know? the truth is, they probably cannot. most big dealers come from sri lanka or thailand. in shaolin‘s view, they buy up malagash sapphires to pass off as their own. but now, there are calls for greater transparency,

demands that each gem be traceable to the mine it came from — a worldwide agreement to reform the trade. there could be some kind of international regulations on the trustability of gems. so that, at the retailer's side, you can know where this came from and how it was produced, whether it was in a sustainable way. so you would call for some kind of international accord, rather like that which regulates the trade in diamonds? yes, yes — and we have started this discussion with the malagasy authorities. it has just started, so i think that with also international support and pressure,

this discussion could move forward more quickly. how urgent is that need? that would be urgent because we are not protected from the next rush. it can happen anytime, anywhere in madagascar. and so, it would be urgent to act, it would also help us in the future. that sounds like a good place to start. but for jonah ratsimbazafy, the lemur expert, real change can't wait. we're almost out of time. there are valuable gems

beneath this red soil. unique wildlife in the trees above. the question for the people of madagascar is how do they profit from one without destroying the other? and for those who buy sapphires, it's impossible to know the real origin, or the true cost of the gems they wear. hello there.

some much colder weather is set to arrive by the end of this coming weekend. but, the big question is, how long will it last? we'll try and answer that a little later. but, before then, everything is coming in from the atlantic. while we get some dips in the temperature, on the whole it's wet and windy air that is heading our way. this area of low pressure bringing in that weather from there, which is this band of rain, which briefly falls as snow over the top of the pennines and hills in scotland, but it doesn't last that long. then the winds pick up from the south west during the afternoon, but draw in some brighter conditions, eventually those temperatures tend to rise, but only ahead of some wet and windy weather that's just poking into northern ireland by the end of the afternoon. and it's this deepening area of low pressure we need to keep an eye on, actually. because uncertainty about the exact track of it, but there are currently warnings of 60 and 70 mile per hour gusts across southern scotland, northern ireland and northern england overnight. the worst of it should be gone as that low pressure is out in the north sea by wednesday morning. but, we're left with widespread

gales really across much of england and wales on wednesday. a windy day here, not as windy further north, but there will be a mixture of sunshine and showers. some heavy showers across many northern and western areas of the uk, maybe with some hail and thunder in that, too. temperatures 7—10 degrees, fairly typically, decent enough temperatures. probably gets a bit chilly overnight, though, as those strong gale force winds tend to ease down slowly but surely, as that low pressure runs away and ahead of the next one coming in from the atlantic. so, we start off chilly and bright in most areas, a lot of the showers should be gone by this stage. but only because we've got this cloud coming in from the south—west to give some outbreaks of rain. again, how quickly the rain comes in from the south—west, some uncertainty about that. it does draw in milder air, but you can see the contrast in temperatures, south—west to north—east across the uk. and then the position of the low could be driven more across ireland into england and wales, keeping scotland in some slightly colder air, it will feel cold in the wind as well. whereas just across northern

england, with got some heavy rain, maybe some snow over the pennines, and these showers wrapping in further south, together with some gale force winds. so it's a windy few days, and when the rain comes along, it's more likely to be heavy. but, things will start to change as we head into the weekend. higher pressure coming down from iceland will push away the low pressure into the near continent. but it's a slow process. we've still got some relatively mild air across the south on saturday. we've still got some outbreaks of rain, but a north to north—easterly wind starting to cut in behind that, dropping the temperatures, making it feel cold and bringing in some showers. around that area of high pressure, that high—pressure looks as if it's going to build down slowly across the uk as we head into the second half of the weekend. and perhaps into the beginning of the next week. so, with that high—pressure around, we're drawing down some colder air, it is going to be turning colder. for a while ahead of it there'll be

some gale force winds making it feel cold, drawing in some wintry showers. but, we could see a spell of dryer but colder conditions. now, how long is it going to last? if we look back out in the atlantic, we've got a strengthening jet that is propagating across the atlantic, and it's meeting that block with that area of high pressure. the signs are that as we head into next week we may push that high pressure away, draw in atlantic air and bring for a while some snow. this is bbc news. i'm reeta chakrabarti. the headlines at ten: police in iran say one of their officers has been shot dead, as anti—government protests continue for a fifth night. tributes are paid to a british family of five killed in a seaplane crash in sydney. the youngest victim was 11 years old. police are investigating the overnight deaths of four young men in unrelated knife attacks

across london. also this hour — up to i6—hundred vehicles are destroyed in a blaze in a liverpool car park on new year's eve. the fire, believed to have been started accidentally, engulfed a multi—storey car park next to the liverpool echo arena. in a new year's day speech, north korea's leader warns donald trump that he has a nuclear button on his desk — and is ready to use it.