this is bbc news, the headlines... the us national security advisor says it is time the world held the syrian government accountable for its use of chemical weapons. hr mcmaster said that reports and photos show such weapons are being deployed. the russian foreign minister has dismissed charges of russian meddling in the us election. sergei lavrov says he will not comment on the indictment of 13 russians until he sees the facts. the body of the opposition leader morgan chang rae has arrived back in zimbabwe since his death from cancer. hundreds of supporters were at the international airport to pay their respects. 1a people have been killed after a helicopter travelling mexican politicians crashed on top of survivors of an earthquake. it crashed on top of two minibuses. at

ten o'clock, martine croxall will be here with a full round—up of today's news. now on bbc news — our world "we lived through a war." there are flashing images from the beginning of this film. we have a pursuit. sirens wail ..heading eastbound, about 70mph... it's a pursuit. they're on the freeway, they're coming east. the crime situation is high. it's very, very busy for law enforcement. but, again, it's a very small percentage of people that are causing the problems. all right, bad guyjust crashed. all right. i'm going to get us a little bit off because we have, like, 17 guns pointed

in this direction. over radio: ..they are starting to take the occupants into custody. a night patrol with the la sheriffs in the city of compton. two suspected members of the southside compton cripps gang are under arrest. it would be really unsafe for them to be in their rival‘s area and if they are there they are going to have to have protection, because it's almost expected for them to be armed. police estimate there are almost 4,000 gang members in compton. 0urarea, ourservice area, is ten square miles. fireworks sound

fireworks. ten square miles. so for every square mile we have six active gangs. 37 gangs compete for control in a city ofjust 100,000 people. it's always gang on gang, gang on gang. the violence is there, the major, major problem is when we have an innocent person who gets caught in the crossfire, or, and it happens too often, that case of mistaken identity. compton gained its grim reputation for gang violence during the ‘80s and ‘90s at the height of america's crack epidemic. this is a mad man gun.

a double barrel. a man's man gun. a man that goes and kills with this is really mad. out of that mix emerged west coast gangsta rap and one of the most influential groups of all time, nwa. 30 years on, the trauma of that era lives on. yeah, i grew up around here. this was my childhood home. born and raised right here in this house. i had a history of taking things that wasn't mine. if i saw it and liked it, i would take it. i would protect him by any means necessary. i would protect him the same way.

even if it means hurting someone else? pretty much. i mean, ultimately, if i had to hurt someone to keep him from being hurt, ultimately that would be my choice. compton's notorious street gangs, the cripps, the bloods and the pirus, were formed in the late 1960s. their clothes, their tattoos and even theirjewellery all marked which gang they belong to. wearing the wrong coloured shirt would have and still could get you killed. there'd be all different types of shootings happening in this street. willjoined the cripps when he was just nine years old. i went through this ally, i was going to the store to get some kool—aid and i saw the guy pass me and he looked at me and next thing i hear

is a whole bunch of gunfire. right here? yeah, right here, where we're standing. sirens wail trombone music today, compton is on the up. a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, butjobs are coming back and there's a sense that things are starting to turn around. will works as a community activist, trying to stop youngsters from ending up in gangs. i see you! you know i'm gonna come over there and give you a hug. i love you! i love you too, girl. keep up the good work! this is really nice!

i'ma definitely do that. i'm a mother who lost sons and when my kids got killed and other mothers' kids got killed, they came here and he helped us. i didn't have any money. she lost two sons within 60 days and that's where her motivation comes, to get out here. she's also out in the trenches with us. compton's youthful mayor aja brown has made it her mission to transform the image and the economy of the city. in 2013, early into her first term and after 16 killings injust four months, aja brown decided to hold a crisis meeting. she put a call out to the bloods and cripps to try to bring about a truce.

it was rocky at first. you know, we had a few people threatening to leave and i said, the ground rules are we have to stay until we finish. what gave you the confidence to do that? this is my community, i'm not afraid of my own people. it was just really interesting to hearfrom them. but they are very pragmatic. they talked about the need for employment opportunities that they can access, they talked about the barriers to their employment because of their criminal records. but i told them, it's not aboutjust what can i do for you, i told them i'm willing to work with you if you all can make a commitment as well. compton has switched from a majority black to a majority hispanic town. but half the gangs are still african—american and it was to these gangs that aja brown turned first. most of the time, like you said, we wouldn't be sitting at a table

together, but she did it. it was over... how many of us? 50, 60, 300 in a room together. so you were all there at the first meeting, when everybody got together? to be in there with 300 guys... that's disrespectful. ..that‘s terrible. terrible to sit down and listen. a lot of men wouldn't do it. why is she doing it? she came in the room and it was disarray when she came. and they got it in order and we got the business. did they listen to her, cynthia? yeah, they listened to her. they listened to her, yeah. because this is a first. this is a mayor where if it's the middle of the night and you need to call her, she'll say, what's wrong? what's going on? she's there. you don't get that, not even in other cities, from people that i spoke with. so you don't get that from a lot of mayors. and then, like i said,

in the room with a bunch of men. i'm gang bangin'! i'm in there lookin' at 'em sometimes, thinking, they crazy! don and fred are from rival gangs. don's a blood, fred's a cripp. fred, if you had come across don in the street ten or 15 years ago? well, there would have been a problem. what do you mean a problem? it would have been a fight or a stabbing or a shooting. one of the three. because you are on rival gangs? because, like i said, you know what i'm sayin‘, i was young and dumb. you know what i'm sayin‘, i didn't have an understanding of life or nothin‘ else. all i cared about was my gang and representing my gang to the fullest and didn't nothin‘ matter but my gang. so you would have hurt him? he'd have tried. yeah. he would have tried, you know? is it still the same today? no, it's not like it used to be. it's not...

no, it's watered down. it's not like it used to be, but it's crucial. the majority of these guys don't like the way they're living. they don't like having to watch their back, worry about getting shot, can't go here, can't go there. they don't like that lifestyle. they're in it because they're caught up in their comfort zone and they don't know how to go outside of the box. i remember when i was working custody, some of the gangsters, i would see them every day, i had a rapport with them, a lot of them were so, so afraid of the one thing that you and i love, and theirfear is being out here. one of them, who was a very, very important person when it came to the structure, he told me, "i have a son, i don't know how to be a father," and he goes further and tells me, "i wouldn't know how

to survive out there, i don't know how to have a job, i don't know how to be a regular person, all i know is violence and i promise you, if i get out of here, i'm going to hurt someone else, and i don't want to do that anymore, i'm tired of it." regardless of whom is in the white house, there is not going to be a helicopter that comes and descends into compton to fix all our issues. that is not happening. the height of the crack epidemic saw an explosion in violence as rival gangs fought for control of the drugs market.

87 people were murdered in 1991 alone. in 2017, that figure was 19. will served 12 years in prison for a string of offences, including carjacking and gun possession. in december of 1999, he decided to try to turn his life around. i was significantly depressed, emotionally distraught, i was suffering from a lot of the traumatic experiences i have suffered, you know. you were thinking of killing yourself? definitely, i was thinking about killing myself. that was the solution to the pollution. i'd decided i needed to go see my mom, it was two days after christmas, i decided i needed to go see her at least one more time, before i came back and did

what i felt i needed to do. i sat right on the street around the corner, with an ak—47 to just end it all. he didn't. he went to see a preacher. he basically said, you're not the first one who's felt this way, and you're not the first one who are going through what you're going through. but the difference is that you can make, is to hear what i have to say and make a change. you will find that a lot of the kids are looking for something when theyjoin gangs, there's something missing. and the gangs have learned to cater to those things that are missing. the steady fall in crime since the 90s is partly due

to smarter policing. more significantly, as drug markets stabilised, there were fewer turf wars between the gangs. but there are worrying signs. hi captain thatcher! how are you? i'm doing great, how are you? have a seat. 30% less gang shootings this year than we had last year... oh wow, that is significant. a lot of your older gang members now, or people who had gang membership in the past, are having a hard time directing the activities of the younger gang members. it's not like it used to be. so they consider the younger gang mebers lawless. so they consider the younger gang members lawless. we had an understanding with the gang members as to what was and wasn't within boundaries as to how we treated each other, and we have lost control of that. i appreciate your hard work, sir.

crime rates are below the rest of the county, for the most part. well isn't that a great success! laughs. thank you. we are getting an emergency call, it's a vehicle collision with injuries. siren wails. who was driving? i was driving. you were driving, are you 0k, just a little shaken up? ok. do you have your driver's licence? as far as the violent crimes, it goes up and down. there are times when gangs will have a truce and they will kind of settle down, and then out of nowhere, like if someone turns on a light switch, they are at it again. the reason the homicide rate has dropped, it is not because the violence has gone away, someone didn'tjust sprinkle fairy dust on the city and it's gone — it is there, the reason why the homicide rate has dropped significantly is because of the advancements

in medical science, doctors right now more than ever, more than five years ago, they are saving more and more lives. siren wails. why you filming me? cos you in trouble, that's why. this is handy‘s, i've been coming to this store since i was going to that elementary over there. all this has changed, we got a lot of homeboys getting killed up here, just hanging out, because this was almost a shared store between two rival gangs, and so in the process of that, a lot of people lost their lives up here, a lot of shooting, a lot

of drive—bys would happen here. will now spends most of his nights out on the streets, trying to stop conflicts from happening or getting out of control. we just all hitting corner to corner, communicating with those that are always out, a lot of times we need that ourselves, so we can understand what's going on in the communities. because they out here, sometimes they see stuff we don't see, they help us determine who we need to go talk to. in order to survive, many families had to leave

the city altogether. this is my mom, my beautiful mother deborah... when will's mum saw things getting out of control, she uprooted her family and fled to nearby san bernardino. my uncle lester, he was killed, in 1987. woman: in compton. in compton. shot in his face. we've been victims of the violence too, you know. i think this was our family's first experience of the violence in compton. i'm willing to bet you, there's not a family in compton that didn't lose somebody or someone nearand dearto them. to gang violence. in some shape, form or fashion. we lived through a war.

it was a war. it was like a war zone. i seen a lot, and it's weird because, i tell my friends, i'm a nurse now, but i kinda think i seen more death as a child that i have as an adult. there were plenty of days where i'd be playing outside, and we knew, "oh, that car don't look familiar," and we probably had about two seconds to get into the backyard and sure enough, by the time we get in the backyard and lay down, bang, bang, bang. come out, and here come my mama, driving down the street, "in the car, gotta go in the house!" it'd be like, all right. it became a way of life. itjust became... it was not normal, but then it was normal, you know what i mean? i know as a young kid i didn't show that as much, but i always loved my mom and it hurts, that i know she went through that, to know that she had to suffer, that we put more on her table then she should have had on her table. that's something i have to live with, because the thought occurs every now and then and it makes me cry, it hurts me, even though i been living like this for 20 years, good, doing good work, great work, it still hurts me

to know that 20—something years ago i took my mom through what she had to go through, you know, it is something i will have to live with the rest of my life because i can't change that. but it hurts, it hurts, you know? the whole neighbourhood is totally different. it's sad when you see, because you know, that dude used to live over there but he's dead. 0r next door, they all died. it'sjust sad. 0rthey injailfor the rest of their life. the boys who ain't dead, they injail. there's only a few that made it out. it's sad. it's really sad. down this quiet street in compton is aja brown's former family home. my grandmother was a registered

nurse, so she worked overnight and her schedule was a bit different, and there was a home intrusion and someone raped and murdered her. no one else was home when this happened? no, just my grandmother. she was alone? yes. i don't ever remember not knowing what happened to my grandmother, because i remember my mother at holiday time being really sad, and i would ask her, "mommy, why are you so sad?", and she would just say, "i miss my mother." no one was ever brought to justice and the case remains open. the loss of a life is not a moment in time, the loss is for a lifetime, and there are holes that are created that can never be filled, and it gives me a level of compassion, respect and even insight into what most people are dealing with in my community. when you look at this house in this street, what does it make you feel? it's bittersweet to me.

it is nice to be able to know where my family spent a lot of time growing up, but at the same time it is a place of such despair for my family. it is a solemn place, i would say. the mayor's story isn't uncommon. there's a level of post—traumatic stress in this town that comes from decades of extreme violence. but maybe it's that shared experience that could also drive people to end the violence. hello. a bit of a battle going on at the moment between milder air in the atla ntic the moment between milder air in the atlantic and something called a further east. in the next few days it looks like it is the mild air that will win through, shown with yellow colours extending across the uk. they do not hang around for long, three next week blue colours,

cold air further east, it pushes back westwards. more on that in a moment that here and now, for many, saturday was sunny. more cloud around, in northern and central parts of england, some rain for a time, it faded, then a different sort of day. tomorrow, this warm weather front pushes towards the uk. then some mild air. then it is a cold and frosty start. you hold onto dry weather for cold and frosty start. you hold onto dry weatherfor much cold and frosty start. you hold onto dry weather for much of the day, cloud increases from the west, it brings outbreaks of rain into northern ireland, western scotland, north—west england and south—west england. tomorrow, 11 degrees, feeling milder than it has done. slow progress eastwards to my evening, then there will be outbreaks of some rain. it doesn't go faron outbreaks of some rain. it doesn't go far on monday, grinding to a halt in eastern areas. cloud across the country, mist and fog, murky

conditions, outbreaks of rain, lingering for some time in east anglia and south—east england. highs of 11-12d. anglia and south—east england. highs of 11—12d. in parts of scotland, much milder than recently. brighter weather further west. these weather fronts will not go anywhere fast, into tuesday, areas of high pressure on both sides. it stores on tuesday, a lot of cloud with outbreaks of rain. dry and bright with the best of the sunshine in northern ireland and scotland. temperatures coming down, especially in eastern counties, holding onto something milder further west. easterly winds developing as we go through wednesday. this high—pressure world stage dry, there will be some cloud around, but generally a quiet day and after a cold and frosty start, spells of sunshine. temperatures

struggle to recover. 5—7d on wednesday. back into the cold air. 0n wednesday. back into the cold air. on thursday, much of the country is dry, sunshine and a frosty start, this band of rain will affect north—western parts of scotland. northern ireland later in the day on thursday. a battle between colder air further east, thursday. a battle between colder airfurther east, and thursday. a battle between colder air further east, and something milder further west. at the end of the week, that colder air is going to win through. some discussion among the models as to where this high—pressure across scandinavia is going to be. and how cold it could get. it looks like daytime temperatures won't go further above six or 7 degrees before the end of the week. dry and settled. although milderair is the week. dry and settled. although milder air is neverfar away, it looks like the colder air and those easterly winds will continue to affect the country. what does that mean further ahead? milder fulsome time, especially for scotland and

northern ireland but we can hang on to easterly winds for most and it will be turning much colder. that's all for me, the forecast for you tomorrow. goodbye. this is bbc news. the headlines at 10pm: team gb celebrate its most successful day in winter olympic history as lizzie yarnold retains her gold in the women's skeleton. her team—mate laura dees takes bronze and izzy atkin comes third in the women's ski slopestyle. ukip prepare to look for a new leader after sacking henry bolton less than six months in thejob. theresa may sets out the case for a new security treaty with the eu after brexit. at 10.30 we'll be taking a look at tomorrow's front pages in our paper review.