to ban devices which enable a rifle to shoot hundreds of rounds a minute. he says he wants to outlaw 'bump stoc " a gun fitted with the mechanism was used in last year's mass shooting in las vegas — that left 58 people dead. 250 people — including 50 children — are reported to have been killed in the rebel—held enclave of eastern ghouta as syrian government forces step up their bombardment. the un warns the situation is "spiralling out of control". activists say it's the worst violence in the region since 2013. oxfam is investigating 26 allegations of sexual misconduct —— which have been reported since allegations were made against some of its workers in haiti. the charity's leaders — were questioned in the parliament in the uk on tuesday. one of scotland's largest councils will provide free lunches to children from low—income households every day of the year. north la narkshire council say they'll use sports centres and other facilities to provide meals when schools are closed.

the pilot scheme will begin this spring — as our scotland editor sarah smith reports. yeah, there's all different food you can get. my favourite‘s chicken curry. it's tomato pasta. so this is your favourite meal you've got today? yeah. you get lettuce and you have tomato and you have all the pasta. when i was at school, school lunches were not something you looked forward to, but are they actually good here? yeah. really good. all the kids here do seem to really enjoy their school meals, and the teachers know that, for some of them, it's the best meal they're going to eat all day. when the schools close, quite a few of these kids do, sadly, go hungry. that's why north lanarkshire council are to pilot a scheme providing free lunches to kids who need them, notjust on school days, but every day. every so often, you can spot that somebody‘s hungrier than we would like them to be, after a weekend or after a holiday period in particular. it can be individual children, we know that food is an issue. if you're hungry, you won't learn

and you won't achieve. other councils in the uk provide meals during school holidays. north lanarkshire will be the first to make free lunches available 365 days a year, from primary one, up to the third year of secondary school. i know there are children out there that don't get a meal. some adults go without to give their kids during the holidays. the children get full meals at school, so in the holidays and that, you give them a piece for lunch, and they're, like, "where's my hot dinner?", ken? about 40% of these children qualify for free school meals, but the school works hard to make sure it's not obvious who, to avoid any stigma. for the same reasons, kids won't be coming into school at weekends and holidays, meals will be served in leisure centres or community halls. it will cost around £500,000 a year to feed kids who might not otherwise eat a proper meal over the weekend. we know that at holiday periods and at weekends some parents, sadly, find it difficult

to feed their children. we hope that this will give them the opportunity to do that. hungry children can't learn properly or achieve their full potential. north lanarkshire might be one of the most deprived areas in the uk, but they hope that doesn't mean that kids here have to go hungry. sarah smith, bbc news, wishaw. now on bbc news — our world. there are flashing images from the start. 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. 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 explode 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 way too often, that case of mistaken identity. sirens wail 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 on 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 going to 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 no money. she lost two sons within 60 days and that's where her motivation comes, to get out here. she's also out here 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're finished. 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 he 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 to 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 he said, in the room with a bunch of men. i'm gang banging! i'm in there looking 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. 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, just because 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 of our issues. that's just 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 car—jacking and gun possession. in december of 1999, he decided to try to turn his life around. i was significantly depressed, emotionally distraught, you know, i was suffering from a lot of the traumatic experiences i've suffered, you know.

you were thinking of killing yourself? definitely, i was thinking about killing myself. i mean, 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, ready to just end it all. he didn't. he went to see a preacher. he was basically saying, "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 you can make is to hear what i have to say "and make a change." you'll find 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 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've lost control of that. i appreciate your hard work, sir. our crime rates are below the rest of the county, for the most part. well, isn't that a great success! laughs. thank you. we're 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? yeah. 0k. do you have your driver's licence? as far as the violent crimes, it goes up and down. there are times where gangs,

they'll 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 why 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's 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're saving more and more lives. siren wails. why you filming me? 'cause 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 get 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, you know, 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, you know, 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, it helps us determine who we need to go talk to.

bye! can i get a cigarette? in order to survive, many families had to leave the city altogether. of course, 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. so 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 always tell my friends, i'm a nurse now, but i kinda think i seen more death as a child than 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," we probably got 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, "get in the car, got to get in the house!" it'd be like, all right. but 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, 'cause the thought occurs every now 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 and suffer, you know, and so it's 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. and 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. orthey injail for the rest of their life. the ones that ain't dead, they injail for the rest of their life. there's only a handful 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 all alone? yes. i don't ever remember not knowing what happened to my grandmother, because i remember my mother at the 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 so it gives me a level of compassion, respect and even insight and a perspective 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 for me. it's nice to be able to know where my family spent a lot of time growing up, but at the same time, it's a place of such despair for my family. it's 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. thanks forjoining me.

time we updated you on the weather prospects for the whole of the british isles over the next few days or so. fairly slow change, i would've thought, over the next few days, simply because we are developing an area of high pressure, which has rather strangled the life out of the old weather front, which provided quite a veil of cloud sometimes through eastern parts of the british isles through tuesday, but with the development of the high pressure close by to the british isles, that, as i say, has the effect of killing off that front. a veil of cloud, not much more than that. maybe the odd drib and drab of rain, but essentially, it's a dry pattern, and, increasingly, we will be talking about high pressure linked to the one over scandinavia as we go through the weekend

and indeed into next week. the veil of cloud doing its stuff to keep temperatures above freezing across england and wales for the most part. scotland and northern ireland, a different kettle of fish, someone's going to get to “i! or —5. so here we are on the new day. a little bit of mist and fog around, particularly in scotland and northern ireland, but that will soon pop away. essentially, it's a dry day. maybe the odd spot of rain passing by, maybe a shower coming in on the north—easterly breeze towards kent and essex. those temperatures, not too bad when you compare them to what's to come, and i'll show you those in just a second. here is thursday. just the first signs of us wanting to pick up something a little bit sort of continental in origin. certainly, that wind coming in from a pretty cool continent at the moment, and you'll feel the like of that in norwich, for example, 4 degrees only, and generally across the british isles, despite the fact there's a lot of sunshine around, variable amounts of cloud, temperatures just beginning to tick away from where we were at the start of the week. so as we move towards the tail end of the week, things beginning to settle down.

notice temperatures around the 5, 6, 7—degree mark or so. the forecast in edinburgh rather caught my eye. that's the second big fixture of saturday when we get round to the next round of the six nations rugby. i don't think the weather will get in the way in dublin or, indeed, in edinburgh. as i say, once we get towards the weekend, our high pressure begins to become amalgamated with a big area of high pressure over scandinavia. now, that's really quite important, because, if you follow the isobars around the eastern and southern flanks, then we begin to look away, up towards siberia, for the source of the air that comes towards us as we start the new week, and that's really quite crucial. we haven't seen that sort of setup for quite a while, but there's no doubt about it. next week, yes, there will be some sunshine, there will be some chilly nights around. a bitter wind in from the east and the chance of snow as temperatures tumble. welcome to bbc news — broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe.

my name is mike embley. our top stories: making a move towards gun control: president trump says he wants to ban bump stock devices "very soon". i signed a memorandum directing the attorney general to propose regulations to ban all devices that turn legal weapons into machine—guns. hundreds are killed in eastern ghouta as syrian government forces step up their bombardment. the un says the situation is "spiralling out of control". a breakthrough by scientists in the uk gives hope to thousands with a rare and sometimes life—threatening disorder. and a front row seat at london fashion week: the queen hello.