in england after being exposed to an mystery substance. sergei skripal has been living in the uk since a prisoner swap between russian and the us in 2010. he's being treated in salisbury in the south of england. delegates from south korea are meeting officials in the north for talks, partly aimed at restarting dialogue between the north and the us. the north korean leader kimjong—un, who's hosting the visit, says it's his "firm will" to write a new history of national reunification with south korea. a united nation convoy in eastern ghouta has cut short its mission to bring humanitarian aid to the besieged syrian enclave after repeated shelling. earlier, the red cross said nine hours‘ worth of deliveries had eased some people's suffering, though one convoy wasn't enough. after the big freeze has come the big thaw, and it's causing problems with thousands of people losing their water supply because of burst pipes.

water companies in london, the midlands and south wales are urging people to use as little as possible to conserve supplies. bottled water has been distributed to people in parts of the capital. but in cumbria, remote households remain cut off by snow and helicopters have been making drops of food and firewood as danny savage reports. getting to the cut—off communities of the pennines can only be done on foot or quad bike. the ‘farmy army‘ are still doing their bit. the snow was up to the top of the door here, with the window. we had snow all over the front windows. just stuck, it was like living in an igloo. gill and her husband have been cut off for a week. so this raf chinook over their home was a welcome sight. it's been doing the rounds in cumbria today, going from isolated hamlets to cut off farms, offering help. they've run out of heating oil here,

so a delivery of logs for the burner was very welcome. what is their reaction when you drop in? i think they're quite surprised, but i think they're pleased to see us. we're here to assure them that help is on its way. obviously, working with the police and the mountain rescue and they're doing their bit as well. a few minutes later, they were away to their next cut off location. further south, rising temperatures have seen a sudden spike in burst water pipes. supplies have been cut off in london, kent, scotland and wales. in carmarthenshire, darren has been without running water since thursday. getting rainwaterfrom outside and from my neighbour, so it's not impossible. but i would say the worst thing is not being able to keep the washing up in the kitchen clean and also keep myself clean, having a shower every day. just a very basic wash in a basin with cold water. as people queued for bottled water in south london, frustration grew at the lack of a basic service.

7:30 in the morning, they sent me a message that the water's fixed. nothing was fixed. i think this is absolutely appalling. it is shocking that there is such poor... well, zero communication. in the midlands, big companies like jaguar, land rover and cadbury halted production so severn trent could sustain supplies to households. the cold weather devastated wildlife too. the storms killed millions of sea creatures. in east yorkshire, they've been rescuing lobsters and reviving them in salt water at fish markets. i think the industry will be fine, but from a natural perspective, it's quite shocking what mother nature can do. back in the hills of northern england, people living beyond the snowdrifts hope to be reached by road rather than air over the next couple of days. danny savage, bbc news, cumbria. now on bbc news, extra time.

welcome to extra time. i'm rob bonnet. following the recent death of sir roger bannister, we thought you might like to see, maybe for a second time, a special interview he gave the programme in may 200a. it was recorded on the 50th anniversary of the day when he became the first man to run a sub a—minute mile. and we met on the very same track in oxford where this historic achievement took place. welcome to the special edition of extra time. and here we are... just like may 6, 1954 — high wind, cold. we just need a bit more rain, that's all. it really is very similar, is it, the conditions? absolutely. i mean, it's england, early may. equinoctial upsets in weather, you know, and a really stupid time to try to break a record. i mean, but there we are. john landy was on the way to finland, and wes santee...

this was your great rival. two great rivals at the time — wes santee and john landy. we santee was american confidence, he was called the ‘kansas cowboy', and he said, "i'm going to do it, you know, don't worry," and so on. but you beat him to it, and, of course, you also beatjohn landy to this record. butjust before we get to talking specifically about that may 6 day here, all those 50 years ago, just put the 4—minute mile into a context for me. it was described by landy, wasn't it, as a kind of concrete wall — something that was impossible to do. yes, like a cement wall, yes, because he'd done 4.2 actually on six occasions and there's only 15 yards, and so he just didn't seem to be able to get through that. but he was talking about it being a physical barrier, but i couldn't see that. 4:2, you can — under better conditions,

you know, better paced judgement, you can break 4 minutes. so it was a psychological barrier. but it was a barrier, also, that galvanised not only the british public, but athletics fans around the world, didn't it, really? well, they'd been talking about it for almost 100 years. and then paavo nurmi, you know, did 4:10. and so everything was moving in that direction, inevitably. and it was clear that somebody was going to do it. well, the swedes did 4 minutes 1.4. this is hagg and andersson. hagg and andersson — they weren't involved in the war, 1943. ‘42—‘45 — they broke it, i think they flip—flopped between each other six times. and so they had the crucial ingredient to break records, which was several of them, all of a comparable calibre. i was going to say, it was the era of trying to recognise achievement, wasn't it? that was the point. i think so. britain wasn't dead as a country, and, of course, i did try to do it in ‘53.

i thought that would be rather nice. but the pacejudgement, you know, was not fast enough for the — the three—quarters was 3:05, and you can't do a 54 last lap. so it all had to wait then until everything was ready for may ‘54. yes, and you came to it, in a sense, off a very disappointing 0lympics, didn't you, in ‘52? well, that was why i did it, really, because why i went on racing — i had, in my innocence, planned to win the olympic gold medal in helsinki, 1,500 metres, and my medical studies were getting more and more demanding and so i had planned to retire, you know, end of story. but i did so badly and everyone was so disappointed the press said, "you should've done this and that, if only you'd listened to us, you'd have won it." although, of course, the chances of winning an olympic title are always against you.

you know, john landy didn't win in melbourne, ron delany came through. so, well, i suppose that's why sport is fascinating. what you expect to happen doesn't happen. so you kind of hatched a plan, didn't you, with your chums, chataway and and brasher? yes, i mean, we had runforyears together and the secret was to do the three—quarter mile in 3 minutes flat, and chris brasher was training to be a steeplechaser, so he didn't have the speed to go further than half a mile, and the first lap, i got a bit impatient and i shouted, "faster, faster!" but you were going too fast already, too fast already! because i wanted to hear about the plans that you hatched. well, the plan was very simple. i mean, it couldn't have been simpler. that chris brasher would run a half mile and then chris chataway would take over and he'd go on as long as he could and then i'd overtake him. so it was all about pacing. and as far as the preparation was concerned, on the day,

i mean, when you look at how professional athletes get themselves ready now for major championships, with all due respect, your preparations were pretty... primitive, weren't they? i went in to the medical school. i couldn't, i didn't feel much like doing much work, the library or whatever, so i sharpened up my spikes, because we ran on very loose cinder. 0n cinder — nothing like what we have here now. i think they think the cinders were about... he ran on both about four seconds slower. so there we are. and rubbed a bit of graphite on the spikes so they would come in and out neatly, without collecting cinder and ash. this was your medical school down in london, wasn't it? yes, st marys medical school. and then got a train, and as it happened, i hadn't said when i was going, and actually, franz stampfl, who, of course, was coach first of all to chris brasher, then to chris chataway and then ijoined the trio, so...

you bumped into him on the train? that's right! i said, "look, the weather's hopeless" and i reckoned, at that time, it wasn't worth attempting, because even if i'd exhausted myself in the impossible weather and done 4:1, you know, everyone would be disappointed and, "oh, he's failed" and so on. are you saying this was your one and only opportunity then? well, it was the first opportunity that year, and john landy had just arrived in finland. he'd finished the australian summer, our winter, and the finns had said, you know, they knew he was knocking at the door, and they said, "come to finland and we'll give you the pasting you need" — there was a chap there who was very good, and there were perfect tracks and the finns were also absolutely obsessed almost with running, had been since nurmi, so it had to be done very quickly, and that was why one wouldn't normally think of trying to break a record on a windy, wet,

cold english may day. so you arrived at oxford station with your coach, you then went and had lunch with a friend... yeah, i went to see people i'd stayed with when i was earlier studying here — i'd by then, of course, left 0xford — and i had lunch with the children and i just tried to allow my mind to... the waiting is one of the worst parts of athletics. perhaps any sport. anticipation, the fear... yes, and you vow that you'll never go through this again, you say, it absolutely isn't worth this agony. and then the thought was, "well, will i get another chance? will landy do it first? would you forgive yourself if you missed this possible opportunity?" and eventually, i reckon about half an hour before, i was looking at a flag on that church steeple,

which — the flags was broken, but it'll be here on the 6th — and i used that as a wind gauge. and what was it telling you? well, it was telling me about half an hour before, that things were beginning to slacken and get a bit less windy. so i thought, "well, let's do it." i mean, i hope the wind stays down, you know, a gentle four — about five minutes, and then chris brasher did a false start, which was a bit of a waste of time. i know! you must have been furious then. well, furious...but it's not usual to make false starts in the mile, you know! so then brasher leads off... brasher leads off and i think he's going too slowly because i suppose i've had a rest for several days from running, and so i shout, "faster, faster," and he takes no notice whatsoever. he said, "well, a, ithought

i was probably doing it at the right speed," he said, "and, b, i couldn't go any faster anyway." so he does a good first lap, 58, ‘cause you run the first 15 yards faster, you sprint until you get a good position. and the times were being called out, weren‘t they, on the public address as well? everybody could hear the time. so there we are, that was fine. and then you settled down to what is a 4—minute mile pace, as closely as you can, 60 seconds, and they did the next lap in 60 seconds, so it was a 1:58 half mile. you knew you were on course at that point. we were absolutely on course. and then he felt he were slowing and i think, i said, you know, whatever i did say to him, "chris, come up," you know, chris chataway, and he then took over. and it‘s inevitable that the third lap slows, you know, itjust happens in pretty well all races.

and chris chataway took me through the three—quarter mile in 3:05. so we‘d slowed, the third lap was 62, and so i had to do the last lap in 59, and i was really trying to decide what moment to overtake him. because it was a help, while he was ahead, going at the right speed, and if i‘d overtaken him on the next to last bend, i would‘ve had to run wide and that would‘ve been a bit of total extra distance and i didn‘t want to run more than 1,760 yards. so i waited until he was reallyjust coming into the straight and then i could overtake him without running any extra distance. and then i had to... the last 70, 100 yards or so. well, the whole of the last corner,

bend, and the finishing straight, i just didn‘t know whether my legs were getting slower, although my brain was telling them to very to much keep going. we are about 10 yards or so now from the line. we are near the line now. so, as you reach this point, i mean, what were your feelings is that moment? you are about to... well, my feelings were that i was so close, that i couldn‘t really believe i‘d failed, but the stopwatches held the answer and i had to wait, i couldn‘t move because everybody was around, and what you do — your blood pressure falls because blood vessels are all dilated... and you more or less collapsed over the line. collapsed, yes. and then i think about the time i was recovering, i heard norris mcwhirter making his great announcement, which he said he‘d

rehearsed in the bath the night before, and you know what it was. well, it was that he started with 3 minutes, and at that point, nobody else heard anything... 1,200 people there... well, it wasn‘t that he started with three minutes, it was the preamble, you know, everybody was waiting, and he said, "the result over number6 is number41... rg bannister of exeter and merton colleges in a time, which, subject to ratification, will be track record, english record, english native record, british allcomers record, european record, world record and then three..." that was it. in the immediate aftermath, the sense of achievement, your parents were here as well, won‘t they? well, i didn‘t ask them. they were brought

without my knowledge. no, i suppose that we went off to london, the bbc‘s sportsnight had just been started and so i was on that, and then we went off and had dinner, friends, partners, and then we thought, well, we might as well wait and see what the newspapers say. so we went into a nightclub until about 2:00 in the morning and we thought, well, you know, it does seem to be causing quite a kerfuffle. i hear you put on a bit of a cabaret in the nightclub, is that right? i don‘t think i did. they say i sung something, but it‘s inconceivable, impossible. sir roger, we left you, if i remember rightly, singing time on your hands in a nightclub on the following day. you‘ve claimed that, but i could not possibly comment. well, you certainly celebrated the achievement. you had about two hours sleep, as i understand it, that night. the following day, busy again, in london, up 0xford, back to london, and the press by now were of course pursuing you. the three of us did have a bit

of time together and we climbed harrow hill — not much of a hill — and we looked out that evening over london, because you can see the lights and so on, and i remember a conversation with them — they may not remember it — "what shall we do now?" and, of course, we weren‘tjust thinking about athletics, which of course, was coming to an end in one way or another, the others went on longer, but what you do? and for me, it was straightforward. i would go on and do medicine. let me take you now forward six weeks to mid june, and finland, when and landy suddenly, but perhaps not unexpectedly, breaks your record. i knew he would do it, it was a question of we did it here before he did because we had shown that he was physically capable,

probably stronger i was and he just needed to have a decent pace in the early part of the race. he didn‘tjust break it. he shattered it really. yes, that is another 12 or whatever. as far as that was concerned, your contacts with landy were not especially frequent, but he sent congratulations after your record and you sent him. you just wonder whether there might not have been some kind of professional jealousy. i was much more friendly with him and actually got to know him after the race in vancouver. i think before you race against a major opponent, jealousy is not the word, it‘s just you are a bit circumspect about... you are supposed to be racing against them. they are, in a metaphorical sense, the enemy. but afterwards it didn‘t matter at all and we have kept in touch,

we see one another every year and he has married an english girl and he‘s now governor of victoria and on his way to england now. you have mentioned vancouver, why don‘t we go there now? this was another six weeks, it was the empire games and you arrived some two weeks before the final and you met landy as soon as you arrived and it then didn‘t see him again basically, until the race. no, we were not seeking each other out but we really happened to coincide in ourtraining. i did most of my training away from the track, he did those of his on the track. were you being secretive? well no, i ran on grass because by then i could work as hard as i would on the track and it was so much easier and less strain on the muscles, so i didn‘t regard track running as important. this was clearly a big deal.

it was more important than the four minute mile and this is the race i was aiming at. and notjust because it was the centrepiece of the empire games but in the end because athletics is about beating opponents and not setting records. yes, and if landy had beaten me, i don‘t think the four minute mile would have mattered, but he would have been the best miler. talk us through that race. well, it was a very hot day, quite different from the day in may. conditions were good and landy led off immediately. likea train. yes. and at the half mile i thought he is too fast, he will either break the world record by five seconds or he will slow down, in which case i will have the advantage. i decided that as the early part of the race was so fast,

instead of starting a sprint at 200 or something, i had to leave it late and that was the moment when i put the burst in. that was the strength of your game, a strong finish. he led from the front. as you crossed the line, i ask you in a sense to recapture the moment, this was bigger than the four—minute mile. they were both four minute miles. that was the first time that two people had done it. i would say the feeling was really, relief. it could have gone badly and in a sense it rather made up forfailure in helsinki and i only got one more race to go before retiring and that race was the european race and i think by then i was feeling fairly confident that i could handle that one. relief, you know, career over and as i said in the diary as i wrote, finis — under that was time of the european race. let me conclude by asking

you a personal question. what is your philosophy of running? i put it in the new edition of the book which i wrote 50 years ago, which i didn‘t expect to return to. saying that they were something about my description of my early life which sort of rather inspired them try to do things. so the way i had put it, i reflected on rereading this book, that however ordinary each of us may seem, we are all in somewhere special and can do that are extraordinary, perhap until then, thought of as impossible. and when the broad sweep of life is viewed,

sport, instinctive and physical, illustrates a universal truth that most of us find effort and struggle deeply satisfying, harnessing an almost primaeval instinct to fight and to survive. i think that is what i would say, but i don‘t believe that running was really more than a metaphor for other struggles and everybody is trying to balloon over the atlantic and walk north to south poles and dive at 400 feet, everybody has wanted to do this and it is fine if you don‘t risk your life doing it and you don‘t risk other people‘s lives trying to, when you haven‘t done it. you have talked and written also that the freedom that running gives you. yes. freedom of choice. when i was chairman of the sports council i believed that every person, nearly everybody, had some kind of psychological link which made them attuned to a certain activity, team or solitary, climbing mountains, potholing or playing cricket.

this range should be explored by the young because at the age of 13, 14, you don‘t know what you are going to be best at. your body shape can change. i believe if a choice of activities were wide enough, you find something irresistible and get involved in it and about five years later you probably achieve quite a lot of success and you find you have grown up, you have learnt a lot. that is what i would like to give as a message. sir roger bannister, thank you very much forjoining us on this addition of extra time. hello there.

temperatures continue to gradually rise, that means any snow confined to the high ground in scotland and communities that have been hard hit by the severe fall of snow continue to dig out as the snow gradually melts away. but it is going to be a long road. looking at the weather picture for the next few days. the jet stream is well to the south of the uk and that means is there‘s nothing to move this area of low pressure along, so instead it will set, spinning around over the top of the uk and there will be some fronts around the low, bringing spells of rain and hill snow. for the early risers, tuesday morning, it will be a wintry start of the day across higher parts of scotland. you can see some white here on the charts as the rain moves into the high ground and turns to snow. quite a chilly start to the day as well, some pockets of frost out and about, so prepare yourself for a futures of ice first thing in the morning. looking at the weather on tuesday,

the most severe weather will be a cross higher parts of scotland, if we zoom in and focused on this area, we are looking at around a 200 metre elevation for the worst, we could get around 5—10 centimetres but that means some of the higher scottish routes will be affected and could well be disruptive due to the weather. towards the coast and low down as well, it is rain that will be falling, but the rain combined with melting snow could bring a problem of some surface water flooding across low—levels of eastern scotland as well. elsewhere the weather is quite quiet, a few showers across western areas, spells in the south—east where temperatures reached 12 degrees but snow still coming down on the high ground in scotland. most of the snow will tend to ease off as we go into tuesday night into wednesday, but another front will sneak across the english channel and curling back along south—east england and east anglia, so on wednesday morning it looks like it could be a wet start to the day. the rain will ease and we will see

some brighter skies working in, again and number of showers across the west and showers still wintry across the highest parts of scotland but the temperatures recovering, looking at highs of six in edinburgh. a quiet day for most areas on thursday, a few mist and fog patches and an area of rain not far from the south coast of england, some wet weather here but otherwise, many areas will stay largely dry with some bright or sunny spells at temperatures between six and nine degrees celsius. things will stay on the cool side on the whole of a northern half of the uk but it will be relatively mild in the south in the run—up to the weekend. that is your weather. this is the briefing. i‘m sally bundock. our top story, fighting for his life — a former russian spy is critically ill in a british hospital, apparently overcome by a mystery substance. multiple agencies are investigating. delegates from south korea meet officials in the north as kim jong—un says he wants to write a new history of national reunification.

six months after hurricane irma damaged or destroyed more than 80% of the buildings on the british virgin islands. we see how the recovery is going. will president trump‘s proposed tariffs slam the brakes on europe‘s mighty car industry? that‘s the main concern as the geneva motor show gets on the road.