thousands of people in florida have taken part in a rally to demand tighter gun controls in the united states. there was strong criticism of president trump, who has so far refused to consider new restrictions on guns. the mexican defence secretary, salvador cienfuegos, has apologised for a helicopter accident that killed 1a people on friday in the southern state of oaxaca. the military helicopter was carrying two senior mexican politicians to the area which had been hit by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake. the us national security advisor says it's time the world held the syrian government accountable for its use of chemical weapons. hr mcmaster says reports and photos clearly show such weapons are being deployed. the body of the opposition leader, morgan tsvangirai, has arrived back in zimbabwe following his death from cancer in south africa. hundreds of his supporters were at harare international airport to pay their respects. now on bbc news, inside out.

hello, iam hello, i am at the east anglian railway museum near colchester. a second film is about british rail. but first, there is something nasty on our roads that can cause serious problems. vehicles are being damaged and in some cases people are being seriously hurt. the cause of all this misery? the humble pothole. potholes are the bugbear of every road user. it seems there are more now than ever. they are the cause of a big spike in breaks pounds this time of year. it seems everyone who uses them has a story to tell. but how bad is it? i've come to northampton, i will meet someone who has made it his mission to allow roads of potholes. you can't make it out now,

but at this very spot five years ago there was a massive pothole in the road. tell me what happened here. it was a dangerous pothole on that bend. it was over four inches deep. if you hit it in a car you would hear the card. people were trying to avoid it, because obviously they did not want to damage their vehicles, but we have very good vehicles coming along here. i reported it to the council and nothing happened. i reported it to the police and it was repaired within two hours. i needed to make sure i could do everything i could to make sure no one was injured. that's what started your passion to rid the roads of potholes? i thought someone has to stand up. we spend an awful lot of money on our taxes and get a decreasing quality of roads, someone needed to make a stand so i started with a small social media campaign. mark has become an expert in road construction. he has been nicknamed mr pothole. mark reckons there are so many

potholes close to where he lives, it's almost an epidemic. inside out has come up with a challenge. we will find out how many potholes there are within a 15 minute drive from his house. i will be timing him. this is a lovely one you will go over. you really feel that. as we come round this bend, you see there are more. there is a massive cluster, you can feel them, day in, day out. i can really feel it in my seat. it's quite uncomfortable. this feels more like rallying. i'm going to avoid these ones because i don't want to damage my tire. everywhere you look

there are potholes? the of the road, there are some craters you could hit your car with if you went down. we will find out later how mark got on with his challenge. of course, car and lorry drivers aren't the only users of our roads. potholes might be a nuisance for motorists, but for cyclists they are much scarier and more dangerous hazard. these members of a local cycling club say they are always trying

to dodge and avoid potholes. they claim the roads in northamptonshire are some of the worst. it can be quite scary because there are so many potholes we spend so much time looking out for them that it does spoil the enjoyment of the cycle ride itself. have you yourself had any accidents? i have been sent off by a pothole on a roundabout in northampton, i was making a turn, my narrow front wheel got caught in the pothole, fetched me off. lots of traffic about. fortunately a man working on the road stopped the traffic so i could get up and get away. as a cyclist you must see potholes in the road all the time. do you report them? we do. they do not always get fixed. i feel aggrieved about that because having bothered to report it and give a location, we would expect some follow—up action. this is hawthorn road

in northampton. a pothole repair team busy at work. the plan is to do longer lasting repairs across the county, but only the worst potholes get filled. in northamptonshire we are not able to fix every pothole that is reported to us or picked up on our inspections. what constitutes a pothole is a whole that is 15 millimetres deep and about a foot wide and is really a risk to the public. if it is slightly less than that it won't get filled. it would not meet the criteria. we constantly monitor the network of roads and paths to look at these potholes and we will fix them if they are a safety defect. something smaller could be a hazard on the road even though it does not meet your criteria for size? we are unable to fill those at the moment. again it's about using our budget to the best of our ability. as is so often the case,

it boils down to money. there is just not enough to fix all the potholes. so who is responsible? the funding of roads is split between central and local government. basically the government pays for all motor ways and a roads, that's about 90% of the roads we use. they are the responsibility of local authorities. why do we see so many potholes on our roads? the simple answer is weather. we have had one of the harshest winters we have had for a long time,

~~a~ a; a; +:—: u ,v, ~- w“ ; zz; .. g 7 7 we are trying to maintain them at their current level, we are doing a rather good job of that. they won't deteriorate but they won't necessarily improve. we were asked mark to record a number of potholes

on a five—minute drive from his home. are you disappointed by what you found? yes, we need government to invest in our roads. it's all right putting in new infrastructure but we need to maintain the roads we use day in day out that drive this economy. mark has finished his 15 minute challenge, how did you get on, how many potholes did you find? 75? wow. i thought you would say 20 or 30. that's an incredible amount. were you surprised? not really. i can see how roads are deteriorating. it's notjust here, it's across the whole country. there are potholes everywhere. everywhere you can see, some had been left for such a long time, someone will get killed. they have some fantastic old trains

here, the east anglia and railway museum. 2018 is the 17th anniversary of the creation of british rail. last week the government said it may have to take back east coast service so is it time to turn the clock back and renationalise the network? our railways were originally private companies. then 70 years ago there were nationalised and became a british railways. in 1994, john major's government privatise them again. i am looking back at the history of rail to see what lessons we can learn for the east coast line today. this station closed to passengers in 1968, now the mid norfolk railway is a tourist attraction and proof that railways are still very popular. i am going to discover how our railways have been affected by nationalisation and

in turn privatisation. once there were 120 private lines, by the 1940s these have become four big companies which were nationalised. why were the railways nationalised in the first place? after the second world war, railways are hugely worn out. we don't have any money. there are big railway companies, great western, southern, lms and lner, two of them are particularly struggling, lms mostly, they will go bankrupt. one reason for nationalisation is to stop that happening. in 1994 it was all change again, and the government privatised british rail. but one line has struggled to make money for its owners and with price hikes and delays, have been the cause of misery for commuters. this line, the east coast main line which runs through peterborough has been in a state of change for years.

it's been run by several private companies and has been nationalised twice so far. are our railways still in a state of flux, and can they get back on track. cat hobbs runs a campaign calling for the renationalisation of the railways. the idea of having a market is that you have swashbuckling entrepreneurs who are taking risks. but we take all the risk and they ta ke but we take all the risk and they take all the profit. that does not really work if the private sector just takes all the profit and the public sector takes the risk. last week the transport secretary announced that the east coast franchise currently run by virgin and stagecoach has failed, and will end early. this is what you expect in a competitive franchise system, private businesses risk substantial amounts of their own capital and if they fail to live up to their targets they lose out,

not the taxpayer. this has happened before. in 2009, national express walked away from the same franchise, a government owned company stepped in, run by michael holden. we spend a lot of time investing in people and in systems, but also on the trains and stations themselves. if you can make these coast main line work, why couldn't the private sector? they were struggling for crash because there weren't generating enough revenue from the business to pay the premium due to the government. they did not have the money to do what is needed. it's the same story again this month. with the line be better run if it was nationalised? you can run railways successfully in either the public or private sector, you pay your money and take your choice. governments generally speaking not good at running things. my view is that the government ought to set the sense of direction and vision, if you like, for the industry, then leave it to professional people to get on and deliver that vision over

a period of 20 years or so. 20 years gives time for long—term investment and planning. the east coast has had four operators, including the government operator in the last 20 years since privatisation. before that, it ran for almost 50 years under british rail. once upon a time, british rail was the jewel in the crown of our national transport system. though there are some who don't remember it like that. charles swift spent his working life on the railways, based in peterborough. he started at lner when he was 15 years old. in 1945, three years before nationalisation. when it went from lner and it was one privately internationalisation, did it feel differently straightaway? no, it had to work its way. for several years after, when we were first nationalised, we still have ran the same, then we started getting a different type of management in.

people that started to tell you what you should be doing when they did not even know what the hell they were doing themselves. people then eventually, who loved the job, wanted to get off thejob. to be quite honest, i was quite happy to get away at the end of the day because there were not supervisors that had been railway drivers and things like that. you had someone coming from outside to do the job. people did get a bit peed off with the red tape and things like that. there is still a romantic view of the glory days of railways, partly because it was a way of life for the 600,000 people who worked on them. doreen foster worked at lner in peterborough in the 1940s. i love trains. 0fany kind. mostly steam trains, for granddad he was a driver. they used to go down to the loco shed, years ago. there was a job going at the lner savings bank, so i applied for it and got it. did you notice a real difference

in the way things had run? pre—nationalisation and post—nationalisation once everything became british rail? it did not seem the same. it wasn't the family atmosphere. even within the standard perspective, would anyone want to turn the clock back to the times when british rail was known forjokes about its sandwiches? no. we can't go back to the 1970s and i don't think we would want to. i think we need to learn the lesson about the past and make something fit for the modern time. british rail was underinvested in. where does the money come from? we don't have to buy back the tracks, we already have national rail. the rolling stock would be pretty expensive? that is least, it is owned by private companies, government can buy trains directly and that will be much more efficient.

right now railways are we blame game, everyone can blame everyone else. the dft, the train company, rolling stock companies, actually if you run the system as one integrated system, you would not have those problems. if push came to shove and we decided to buy back the franchises, do you think it's something we could afford or should afford? i think it would be a very bad idea and if the treasury was involved in the decision—making after the next election, i think they would say, do you want to spend as much money buying the trains back would you prefer to spend it on improving the nhs and i think it's obvious what the answer to that would be. giles's long history as a train driver has given him at strong views about re—nationalising the railways. they talk about putting the railways back under the government or nationalising them again, it's the biggest load of codswallop i've ever come across because it would not work.

there is not the affinity, railwaymen went to work. they went half an hour before the start of work and it would be half an hour after they finished when they would go home. they loved the job. of any lessons from history that the troubled east coast line can learn from today? we really do need to learn or decide if our railways are a service or there to make a profit. when it was british railways, people complained about the money being spent on it. now it's privatised, people complain about the amount of money they have to spend on a train ticket. people really need to make a proper decision about what we want from our railway system. it is now thought that 1% of the british population is gender nonconforming. more people every year are seeking treatment to change their gender. sophie has been to meet the parents

who are supporting their children who are desperate to change. so what colour are we going to do next? do you want to go a bit darker on the root next time? yeah. for cheerleading, can i have my hair in a ponytail then curled at the back? yeah, if you want to, darling. emma lives in bedfordshire with her three children. her eldest daughter is keira, who used to be a boy. keira was more, i want to dress up as a girl. she was practising with make up. wanting to grow her hair. i actually spoke to a sexual health officer, she said i think actually you know, you have got a little girl trapped in a boy's body. at the time, and thought it was a phase. but as the years went by, she realised it was than that. keira, when she was a boy and was lucas, she was very

quiet, very timid. looking back it's because she was so uncomfortable in herself as a boy. she did not want to go and face people and do anything. when she transitioned and became keira, something clicked overnight in her and she is more confident. she knows what she wants and she is sticking to her guns. and she is still only 13. is this your room? wow. wonderful. a year ago, keira ditched the boys clothes and went shopping for a whole new wardrobe. i said, you can choose what you like. she said, whatever i like? i said yeah, if you want girls close, go and use them and her whole where is the sparklyjacket? this. that's her favourite. that is really, really nice. do they do this in a size 12?! i want one.

from that day on, she wanted to be known to the world as keira. although keira looks like a girl, she won't be able to have surgery to change a physical form until she's an adult. until then, she will be offered medication to delay puberty. this will give her time to decide what she wants to do. do you ever worry about her future? of course, absolutely i do. we have things coming up like hormone blockers. puberty kicking in, what effect that will have on her mental health overall. that's what concerns me. a lot of transgender children do try to commit suicide and health self harm. that's due to lack of support from family or for how they feel about their bodies. although there are organisations that can help parents deal with the challenges of bringing up a transgender child, emma has decided to find

some local support. this woman lives 30 minutes away in hertfordshire. her son dexter is now seven. i think it was around two and a half, that he started to protest about wearing knickers and wearing girl's clothes. the terminology used is, i feel a boy. he would say that. "i feel a boy" and point to his heart. by five and a half, dexter had realised he was not meant to be a little girl. i'm not a girl. everywhere, i'm a boy. he came running in from the garden one day and said, "i've got it, mummy," and i said, "got what?" "i'm dexter, mummy. " "that's me, i'm dexter."

i said, "awesome, love that name." he ran back out into the garden and carried on playing. emma and keira have arrived in st albans. many parents feel quite alone when raising a transgender child. today, keira's mum and dexter's mum are meeting up to offer each other support. i really feel like i have grieved, i grieved for talia, and not because i'm unhappy with you i'm left with, i love dexter to bits. it is like a loss of somebody. what do you think is the hardest thing for parents like us with transgender children? what's the hardest thing to cope with? for me, the hardest thing is not being able to fix him, not being able to take his pain away and his anxiety away and not being able to, you know, when he's awake in the night and he says, mummy, why did you make me wrong?

mummy, why don't my privates match my brain and my heart? i can't make that better and as parents, that is all you want to do. to fix everything for your kids. my biggest fear is her being bullied or being discriminated against. or for her mental health being affected because at the minute it's not. i don't care what anyone thinks, ijust don't want anyone being mean to her. there is one place in the country within the nhs which deals with a child facing gender difficulties. based in london, the tavistock sees 2000 children a year and last year they took around 300 children from the east. it's a figure that is rising all the time. today is dexter's fourth visit and even though he's only seven, his mother is worried about puberty kicking in. she does not want to let him down. for us, the thing we needed confirmation from from tavistock

was, am i doing the right thing by being so accepting of him? sometimes you need the confirmation and reassurance from a professional. with dexter getting older, it's a race against time to get in the hormones he needs to blockers female puberty. and his mother wants to know if this practice will be safe. it's fair to say that the evidence base in this area is poor. but as far as we know, this is a fully reversible treatment. as far as we know, the long—term implications in terms of health seem to be positive. but as i say, we don't have full evidence. we must be realistic that at the moment, there is enormous interest in gender. we always have continued to work carefully to ensure young people and their families are fully aware of what they are undertaking and that there is time

to consider that. it's about not shutting doors and not making assumptions about how things will be in the future. the nhs advises time and space for a child who is questioning their gender. while mums like emma continue to learn what it means to be transgender, children like keira and dexter can work out their true identity. hello there, good morning.

it's going to be a bit chilly out there first thing this this morning. clearer skies in many areas. not as much sunshine today because all of the cloud that has been filling in the atlantic is slowly heading our way. we have already seen some of the cloud arriving across wales and the south—west. not as cold here. less reliable cloud elsewhere means a touch of frost, especially for scotland and down the eastern side of england. maybe patches of fog, too. some milder air eventually today. if not today, then tomorrow. this envelope of milder air coming in between the two weather fronts here and it is this first one we need to look out for today because it will eventually bring more rain and drizzle into western areas. most places will start the day dry. there may be some early sunshine across eastern parts of england. the best of the sunshine probably for north—east scotland. should be a lovely day here.

a lot more cloud spilling our way through the day and for the afternoon, the cloud will begin up to bring more rain and drizzle, particularly across northern ireland. temperatures around ten or 11 degrees. ironically, where it will be brighter, it will be cooler towards the north—east of the uk. into the evening and overnight, we find the rain and drizzle pushing eastwards, pretty much across the country, not much rain, there may well be some misty and murky weather over the hills and a lot of cloud overnight. as a result, it will be a much milder night, temperatures typically five or six degrees. no frost early on monday morning this time. instead, a different look to the weather for eastern scotland and down the eastern side of england where we will have misty and murky conditions and rain and drizzle. if there is any sunshine, maybe some of the western coasts, more rain coming into northern ireland later. maybe as high as 12 degrees or so.

the milder air getting squeezed a way, colder air will be spilling our way over the coming few days. whether it comes in from the east. we start our tuesday with thicker outbreaks of rain and for a time in eastern scotland. the rain tends to pick out. more sunshine for northern ireland and western coasts of england. that is the way temperatures will be going. it will be turning cooler. high pressure building in over the uk. whether it is this one from the atlantic or this one from scandinavia, not a great deal of breeze out there and where we have outbreaks of cloud, it may look work with frost in the outlook. after a mild start, it will gradually turn colder, the chance of easterly winds, it should be turning dry. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers

in north america and around the globe. my name is nkem ifejika. our top stories: tough words for some us leaders. students from the school targeted in a mass shooting, demand tighter gun controls. if all of the government and president can do is send "thoughts and prayers," then it is time for us to be the change we want to see. president trump's national security adviser accuses the syrian government of using chemical weapons and demands action from global leaders. thousands of people in florida, including survivors of wednesday's