loophole that the secretary of state can see, because these are lawyer, then remind have a good result. two more quick stories in the sunday times. try january all year. more quick stories in the sunday times. tryjanuary all year. people buy like the side —— sign of that. and it is going to be veganuary as well. the government are going to try and post calorie caps on fast food restaurants so these massive calorie laden dishes that the british will enjoy, there will be a big sign on them saying this is 1800 calories, best not to eat it. not a bad idea. mr trump may enjoy this dish but perhaps it is not the best wing for you. but a bad idea. it is the sort of nanny state thing. wing for you. but a bad idea. it is the sort of nanny state thingm wing for you. but a bad idea. it is the sort of nanny state thing. if we are ina the sort of nanny state thing. if we are in a situation where... i live in soho and i see people in their 20s eating in mcdonald's but when

you get to be faulty, it is not a good thing and it puts a strain on the hs cos we are in an obesity epidemic. these four guys have not been eating. they have been burning offa been eating. they have been burning off a lot of calories, breaking the wreck of four rowing across the atlantic. extraordinary. the strain on relationships. there are four of you, you've really got to get on to keep on rowing across the atlantic so keep on rowing across the atlantic so you can't let any kind of thrift 01’ so you can't let any kind of thrift or anything arrive in the racial ship. and they look like people that, the way the government would like us all to look. their hearts must be in great shape. in great shape. that's it for the papers this hour. thank you, bonnie and anne. you'll both be back at 11.30pm for another look at the stories making the news tomorrow. coming up next, it is meet the author. mary lynn bracht‘s first novel is an emotionaljourney

into her korean heritage. it is the stories of two sisters separated cruelly in the second world war in a country for which they hold lives has been occupied by japan. white chrysanthemum takes its title from the additional flower of morning in korea. and the book, which moves from wartime to her own century and back again, is an evocative picture of loss, and also an account of how one of the deepest human bonds can survive almost anything. welcome. for your first venture into fiction, you chose to go back to the country of your mother's birth to a period long before you were born. to what extent was it, for you personally, a voyage of discovery?

for me, it was very much a voyage of discovery. i had to do a lot of research into history that i had never heard of. i grew up in america, so our history of korea is very minimal. so i kind of start with stories that my mother had told me, that my grandfather had mentioned, and i went from there. you see, i think many people picking up the book in this country will be startled to realise that anyone going into the second world war as a korean had been living under what we might calljapanese occupation for 25 years? yes, definitely. my grandfather was a boy during japanese occupation, so he grew up speaking japanese. he had ajapanese name. he couldn't express anything in korean. he had to hide that. so the two sisters at the centre of this book who live by the sea and dive and do all the things that

you do to keep yourself going, to find things that can be sold and create a living, they're, in a sense, holding on to a culture which they feel, i suppose inside themselves, is permanently under threat? well, it actually was. they were really the only divers on the island. and the japanese actually prized them. so they would take a lot of them and transport them to japan to dive over there as well. so to stay in the little small area that they were, they were very lucky and to be able to do it for themselves. well, lucky but we have to say that what happened to them in this story cannot be described as very lucky. they undergo appalling deprivation, they are taken to what is effectively a brothel forjapanese soldiers, we see what happens to one of them there, it is a very searing experience, of course, for effectively a young girl. but your whole theme is that the relationship between these two can triumph

over even disaster? yes. i feel like the bonds between hannah and emmy, hannah being the one who is taken to the brothel, kind of keeps her going — keeps her alive and gives her hope. but for her sister, emmy being left behind, having to go out into the korean war, without her sister, gave her a lot of survivor's guilt. that winds the story together. and emmy, the sister of whom you speak, we meet in the 21st century, looking back on this experience, and i'm thinking about it but reflecting on it, although it is tragic story with some elements of hope? i hope so. i'm glad that you say that. because i mean the comfort woman's story is very, very dark. a lot of these women didn't survive. there are 200,000 that they think were sent away to these brothels. which is a story that most people here won't know.

you didn't even know? i didn't know. i was in my 20s by the time i heard this story. i was very confused about it. i spoke to my mother and asked her, "why didn't you ever tell me about this?" so effectively, a couple of hundred thousand women were abused as sex slaves? yes, and didn't make it back home. so in the ‘90s, when they came forward, there were about 250 registered out of that large number. it is curious timing, that this book is emerging at a moment when people are trying to find out more about the korean peninsula for obvious reasons that have to do with contemporary politics. it is a curious accident of timing that the words korean and korea are on more people's lips now more than they have been for a long time. which for me is great. i grew up in a small suburb in texas, when somebody saw me walking down the street, they thought japanese, chinese, never korean.

so, i always thought one day i'm going to write about korea, people are going to know where korea is, and who looks korean. also, it's a historical truth that occurred that there is still some question about. you know, for me, it is very important to remember these women. they are in their 80s. they are a forgotten tribe, almost? yes, they're not in history books, we don't read about them. i think before the last one passes away, it would be wonderful if all of the history books in korea, japan, and america had them in there. you talk about your mother being born just at the end of the korean war, it ended in the early ‘505 — how much did she know and where did she know it about what had happened before she was born? it is nothing she ever talked about. really? when i found out about them, i asked her, she said everyone knows about it, it's not news. but it was known, not spoken of? hushed, yes. under the dictatorships,

they were not allowed to speak of the wars or the atrocities of the past, whether it was the second world war or the korean war. you were not allowed to mention it? it was frowned upon. you could get thrown into jail. it was in the ‘80s in the democracy when women started coming out. the families of many of these women must have known. they had to imagine, it is very cruel but they must have had to picture what had happened to their children for example but without really knowing? yes. and a lot of them also had to ignore it. they couldn't think about it. it was so taboo. it was so bad. yes. what sort of journey was it for you yourself? we spoke about the exploration into korean history, which it represents in the 20th century but what about the emotional feeling.

when you had written this story, when you had tried to imagine how emmy felt in the 21st century looking back to innocent days with her sister and then what had happened, emotionally, what did it do for you? it was a bit of a roller—coaster. it was up and down. there are happy moments when you remember your childhood. but there is also that melancholy and sadness, that you don't get it back, that it's gone. so as a writer, i have to pretend i'm living through it in order to put that down. i suppose there is the question of potential guilt, feeling, "i've never had to experience anything like this, how can "i presume to picture the emotional state of people who have gone through something that i can't even imagine?" that is quite a tricky thing to do when doing it for the first time? very much so. i was in a unique position where my mother and all of her friends had

tragic lives in korea. it is why they are in america. i got to listen to them to tell their stories, to see how they reacted, how they felt, and the emotions that they went through telling their stories. and that's my entire childhood. and we should say that the title of the book, white chrysanthemum, is a reference to the traditional flower of mourning in korea? yes. so if you see a funeral they always have a picture of the deceased and they will bring the chrysanthemums and put them next to the picture. that is an appropriate thing to have on the cover of this book. yes. mary lynn bracht, author of white chrysanthemums, thank you very much. thank you. i suspect your impression of the day

will be the tainted by with these dents in the far west of the british isles where it really did look as gloomy as that for the great part of the day or whether you have the good fortune to be a bit further north and east. elsewhere, cloudy but at least it was dry, relative to those who have to enjoy that weather front which really didn't go very far rain will happen. they have been heavy bursts of rain. overnight, not particular the cold if your cloud does break through, you might end up with a touch of frost. sunday morning, less in the way of rain across western areas, generally speaking a lot of cloud around, the best of the breaks towards the west, temperatures down a fraction on where we have seen them over the past few days and later on in the

afternoon, we will find the next belt of whether moving in from the atla ntic belt of whether moving in from the atlantic accompanied by some very strong winds, that's up to 60 or 70 miles an hour, the frontal system tracking the combination of wet and windy weather down towards the eastern quarter. it will introduce a much colder regime across all parts of the british isles as we get into the start of next week. for a time, wet and windy weather lurking within tent through the east midlands and the south—east and once that clears, we are into something much colder. add in the strength of the wind, not a feature we have seen much of the past week, well that it will feel much colder than of late tom and there will be plenty of wintry showers across northern and western parts of the british isles, even as far as wednesday, look at the number

of isobars then, a little low pressure tracking across the southern counties of england and wales. we think that on the northern flank that could be of period of snow because of weak will be colder and windy, certainly, and there will be some snow in the forecast. this is bbc news. i'm vicki young. the headlines at 11. officials from across government are holding talks this weekend to discuss the future of the troubled construction firm carillion. all personnel take shelter immediately. the governor of hawaii apologises after officials mistakenly issued

an alert warning residents of an imminent ballistic missile attack. warnings of a tooth decay crisis amongst children in england — a record 43,000 operations to remove rotting teeth were carried out last year. also in the next hour we'll have another look at the sunday papers. joining me are anne ashworth, associate editor at the times, and the playwright and writer at the new european, bonnie greer.