that the people that they need to be responsible if they are feeding birds. we are not discouraging people from feeding birds, but if you put feed out that the birds, you should be very aware of your hygiene, about keeping feeders clea n, hygiene, about keeping feeders clean, and what signs of disease look like. if you see signs of disease, you should take action. this bird lover says it's worth taking the action to keep birds coming back to her garden. the necessity to clean them, the news about that is a bit of a shock, because i don't do it very often. it is rather a pain to do it. we will just have to bother. with populations of some garden birds in dramatic decline, more information will help safeguard the health of the birds we share our gardens with. helen briggs, bbc news. time for a look at the weather.

if you were out and about at the weekend, you would be forgiven for thinking it is spring. lots of sunshine, and high temperatures for some areas. but now it looks like we are going to be plunged back into winter. sunspots struggling to get higher than 5 degrees. today, we have a troublesome area of clouds swirling around, especially across england and wales. the odd heavy burst of showers this afternoon. brighter in western scotland and northern ireland. temperature is not as high as the weekend, but if you do get some brightness, and you get to around 10 degrees, not feeling too bad. this wet weather towards the south and the east will not be any hurry to clear away. sliding eastwards as we go through the night. but out west, skies begin to claire, and could be a touch of frost, mist and fog in these areas.

temperatures above freezing in most areas. tomorrow, likely to start off with a lot of cloud, especially central and eastern areas. where you don't see cloud, we are expecting spells of sunshine tomorrow, especially across the western half of england, wales, scotland and northern ireland. but a change for the middle of the week. this area of low pressure trying to squash its way in. the isobars are squeezing together, showing that the winds will be brisk, and could touch gale force wind western areas. but coming from the south, so mild air. wednesday the mildest day of the week. a bit of uncertainty as to how far east this wet weather will get. further east, a better chance of sunshine, and in that sunshine you could easily get up to 14 or 15 degrees. but that will not last.

starting to see a change through thursday and friday, particularly in the north. it will remain quite u nsettled, the north. it will remain quite unsettled, with some spells of rain at times. then we get to the weekend. it looks like high pressure will build its way down from scandinavia, forcing an easterly wind in ourdirection, scandinavia, forcing an easterly wind in our direction, a cold one as well. for the weekend, wind in our direction, a cold one as well. forthe weekend, chilly wind in our direction, a cold one as well. for the weekend, chilly with brisk winds, and the potential for some wintry showers. that's all from the bbc news at one, so it's goodbye from me — and on bbc one we nowjoin the bbc‘s news teams where you are. have a good afternoon. good afternoon. the trial of the england all—rounder ben stokes will begin on august the 6th at bristol crown court. it's expected to last between five to seven days which means he'll miss the second test against india at lord's. stokes has today pleaded not guilty

to a charge of affray after a man allegedly suffered a broken eye socket following an incident outside a bristol nightclub in september last year. the england and wales cricket board have announced a new scouting system, designed to simplify the process. director of cricket andrew strauss says it would allow them to watch county players more often and seek out specific skills suited to the different formats of the game. the scouts will report to a three—strong selection panel. it was a day to forget for great britain in pyeongchang as their snowboarders made their winter paralympics debut. all three britons were knocked out and the event was held up by technical problems, as our reporter kate grey explains. all sorts of problems here every snowboarding. first of all, the event was moved forward due to increasing temperatures, and around 18 celsius in the middle of the day so they had to move the event earlier. once it started, there were

problems with the start gates, which are not dropping down, and athletes we re are not dropping down, and athletes were falling over them. they could not fix the problem and replaced them with a rope, which was not idealfor a paralympic them with a rope, which was not ideal for a paralympic games. them with a rope, which was not idealfor a paralympic games. great britain had three athletes competing in the games, but none made it through to the final stages. when i spoke to one of them, he told me he was not happy with how the event had unfolded. there was talk of them cancelling it and doing it another day, and i thought, come on, we are at the paralympics. we want to race! it was really tough, and it was a shame that today has gone the way it has in general, because we wanted to put on a good show. no medals for great britain today, but the snowboarders will get another chance in the slalom later in the week. tomorrow it will be the turn of the alpine skiers, who are going in the super combined, so hopefully more medals to come. scotland have added five players to their squad for their final

six nations match against italy this weekend. head coach gregor townsend has called up the glasgow trio of scott cummings, matt fagerson and adam hastings, so there could be a debut in store for one of them. he's also named matt scott and richie vernon in the squad and retained tommy seemore, who missed saturday's defeat by ireland with a back problem. and there are six new names in the scotland football squad for this month's games against costa rica and hungary. manchester united midfielder scott mctominay‘s place is confirmed in alex mcleish's first selection of his second spell in charge of the national team. mctominay recently favoured playing for scotland despite being availbale for england. michael o'neil has handed first senior northern ireland call ups to norwich defenderjamal lewis and falkirk goalkeeper conor hazard. they've been named in the squad for this month's friendly against south korea at windsor park. that's all the sport for now. you can find more on all those stories on the bbc sport

website — bbc. co. uk/sport. i'll have more for you in the next hour. some news from the world of fashion, hubert de givenchy, the aristocratic french fashion designer, famous for the little black dress, and styling audrey hepburn and jackie kennedy, has sadly died at the age of 91. hubert de givenchy has died, we live m, hubert de givenchy has died, we live in, peacefully in his sleep, one of the great names of french fashion, perhaps best known, perhaps his best—known creation as i said, the little black dress for audrey hepburn in breakfast at tiffany's. came from an aristocratic family,

worked alongside various people like christian dior after the second world war, and employed by the avant—garde designer elsa schiaparelli. there are claims that up to 1,000 children may have been abused in the shropshire town of telford over a a0 year period, and mps are now calling foran inquiry. seven men have already been convicted, but it's thought others have escaped charges. it's thought the unfolding scandal in telford could be the worst the country has ever seen. kathleen hallisey is a lawyer specialising in child abuse. she thinks it's important a public inquiry does take place. i don't think that we can just end it here. we definitely need a public enquiry. the victims need justice. as was pointed out in the sunday mirror investigation,

many of these victims are not going to come forward and i am extremely concerned that there have been continued failings by police and social workers. and i think a broader enquiry needs to look in depth in those issues. and potentially what we need to be looking at is we need to be educating people in positions of authority of how to deal with these, and that victims should not be seen as criminals. almost two thirds of doctors in some parts of the uk say they feel patient safety has deteriorated over the past year, according to a new report. the royal college of physicians has found growing pressures on nhs staff. our health correspondent adina campbell reports. with the nhs coming out of one of the toughest winters on record, a new report by the royal college of physicians claims most areas of care have gotten worse over the last months. —— 12 months. more than 1,500 doctors in england, wales, and northern ireland replied to the same questions they were asked during a similar period a year ago.

64% said they felt patient care had deteriorated, 10% higher than last year. 93% said they had experienced staff shortages, up again by almost 10%. and 85% said they had experienced a rising demand for their service, 7% higher than 12 months ago. doctors crying on their way home, distressed calls to older patients because of substandard care or delays in social care — they were some of the anonymous stories reported to the royal college of physicians. the government says it is absolutely committed to making the nhs the safest healthcare system in the world, with nearly £3 billion of extra funding allocated towards it over the next two years. but some doctors say they often feel they are having to do more for less. adina campbell, bbc news. a group of homeless people in london have set up a squat

in an abandoned building where any homeless person is welcome. on wednesday, the group, calling themselves the sofia solidarity centre, will go to court to fight a possession orderfrom the landlord in a bid to stay. the victoria derbyshire programme had an exclusive report this morning. when something new comes in, we will treat them here. we ask them what they need, how they are, what the priority is, do they need to sleep, to eat? a kitchen down the end there, we provide hot nutritious food all the time. the coffee, we have some medical supplies, and some people who know how to look after people, so if somebody needs attention to wounds or infections, we can do that. we have been donated a huge amount of clothing, bedding,

so whatever people need and whatever their priorities are, we can look after them. we have got sleeping areas on the ground floor here and on the first floor. the results of the already on in the building, and the water as well. we just tidied up plumbing where there were leaks and so on. we have qualified opticians helping us, and reducing the checks every day making sure there are no ca bles to every day making sure there are no cables to trip over and everything is lit properly. we are keeping people safe. do you worry that he might attract the wrong kind of attention and people who don't necessarily need help might come here? it becomes quite obvious very quickly. and yes, it may happen. but that as a percentage of the whole of what we are doing, i think it is worth it. some people might argue that you guys aren't able to give the support that a lot of the people

coming through the doors need, that a shelter, a regular shelter, might be able to. al counter that with the fact that a lot of people, psychologists and mental health professionals, have went at from a book. —— learnt it from a book. we have learned that the highway, and we have all been there. —— learnt it the hard way. somebody comes in with an issue, there is somebody here who has already been through that. we can guide people through with empathy and listening, so we are better qualified than most people who are qualified. what about people who are qualified. what about people who say you have no business being here, you don't own the building, whatjuicy to here, you don't own the building, what juicy to them? here, you don't own the building, whatjuicy to them? —— what would you say? our brothers and sisters have no business being on the street, freezing, dying, and there are ten empty commercial buildings empty for every person registered as

sleeping on the streets. i'm sorry, what business model is that? yeah, no business being here? we have 100 people here eating, sleeping co mforta ble, people here eating, sleeping comfortable, we are saving lives here. i'm sorry, property? i have a disregard for that. when the building has been empty 15 years and we can save lives that, it is our moral duty to save those lives. in a moment a summary of the business news this hour, but first, the headlines on bbc news: a row in the labour party as a frontbencher is removed from her post. former footballer

frontbencher is removed from her post. formerfootballerjamie carragher has caught on camera spitting towards a 14—year—old girl. i'm jamie robertson — in the business news... the bid to take over the british engineering giant gkn has been ratcheted up. melrose industries, a company that specialises in taking over and restructuring businesses, has upped its offer to £8.1 billion pounds. this it says is a final offer. gkn makes parts for boeing 737 jets and black hawk helicopters, volkswagen and ford cars. record numbers of customers are switching electricity supplier. more than 660,000 people changed in february, the highest number yet. energy uk said the figure was 60% up on a year ago. over one million customers have switched so far this year. heathrow airport had a record 5.lim passengers in february, up 2.4% on last year. larger, fuller aircraft from south asia and latin america were behind the increase, with passenger traffic from south asia up 12.7%.

the airport also trumpeted a 19th consecutive month of cargo growth with trade value climbing 5%. uk consumers have been pulling back from spending on anything apart from food and entertainment over the last month. spending in shops was up1.6% yearon year, but there are some interesting things going on underneath that number. people are spending more on going out, the theatre, clubs and so on, and they're spending more on food, and essentials. but what's known as discretionary spending has been falling and is continuing to fall. joining us now is helen dickinson, chief executive of the british retail consortium. what exactly is discretionary spending and what is happening to it? when people's disposable income is under pressure, we put more of that budget into our essentials, and everything that is left over, more

discretionary, is what we tend to fall back on. so what we are seeing in these figures, in the brc‘s all in retail sales data, is people being particularly cautious, because wages are not growing faster than inflation. so the money that we have in our pockets is actually under that pressure. but people are spending more money on the theatre and going out, was thatjust last month? is that a blip or a general trend? we do see that very month on month, but there is an underlying trend of people spending more on experiences and less on physical goods and products. so what is going on and generally? is this just an economic story about people reacting to economic circumstances, or is there something else going on fundamentally due to the way we shop and spend our money? we are seeing the economic story is people's

personal finances, and incomes remain under pressure. but the bigger, more structural thing we are seeing play out is a changing in the way that we all shop, which means that more of our shopping is done online or influenced online, but physical shops still remain a key part. it is with the interplay between those two, and how that will play out in the future that is causing many retail businesses to really look at the number of shots they have on our high streets and in our town centres, and in some cases to pull away. —— shops. and to think about how they invest in delivering for what consumers want digitally today. is there an answer? if you we re today. is there an answer? if you were a retailer or you wanted to start upa were a retailer or you wanted to start up a retail operation, what is the thing would work in this kind of market? not specific to what you wa nt to market? not specific to what you want to sell, but what kind of structure and business would be to

the modern age? i think the great thing about retail is its diversity, so we have big businesses, small businesses, businesses thatjust have shops, businesses that are just online, businesses that makes the two. i do not think there is one a nswer to two. i do not think there is one answer to your question. the important thing for any retail businesses to understand and connect with their customers are and what it is that those customers are looking for. so whether that is great convenience, locality might be important, whether it is the price or value of what is being offered, or value of what is being offered, or the brand heritage that people wa nt to or the brand heritage that people want to attach the connect with, so it is kind of understanding the needs of what your particular customer faces looking for, that is the most important thing. a fascinating if difficult time to be a retailer. thanks very much. so melrose has increased

its final offerfor gkn from 7.3 billion pounds to 8.1 billion. the uk engineering giant — which employs more than 59,000 people, 6,000 in the uk alone — became a target of takeover speculation after it issued a profit warning late last year. it has since been trying hard to fend off the hostile bid from melrose, offering to give back £2.5bn to shareholders and agreeing to merge its car unit with us company dana. the takeover battle has even entered the political arena, with some mps calling for the bid to be blocked. earlier we spoke to russ mould, investment director at aj bell. melrose has a terrific track record of identifying companies it feels has underperformed, turned around and then sold them on for a week potential of returning cash to its investors.

its track record speaks very highly, which is why i thought the melrose bid would prevail initially. but what you have correctly identified is opposition to the bid from several sources. one is gkn itself, it says it can accelerate its own restructuring plans. secondly, you had political opposition with regards to national security and employment. and thirdly, even the pensions regulator has had a say. gkn has a £1.5 billion pension deficit, and wants to make sure that whoever owns the business will be able to find that obligation going forward. ——fund. lots of opposition to the deal, now a battle between gkn's offer ofjam tomorrow, and the melrose offer in terms of jam today and the bid. now it is down to the deadline on the 29th of march. just under 6% of gkn shareholders

have already agreed to the deal. gkn is still saying wait to see what we have got to say response. shares are down and not a huge amount, 0.5%. perhaps not an enormous amount of visitors and for the bid from melrose. jest eat is one of the big follows, due to worries about what is going on on the high street. —— one of the think fa lle rs. the high street. —— one of the think fallers. we know that have been summoning problems with high—street names such as toys r us recently. nowjust eat names such as toys r us recently. now just eat is names such as toys r us recently. nowjust eat is in the frame. that

is the businesses, i will be back in an hour. let's get more now on that study of garden birds, which has found that garden feeders can put wildlife at risk of disease. earlier my colleague joanna gosling spoke to one of the authors of the report, kate risely, who explaned more about their investigation. this is a large—scale study that we have been running in partnership with the zoological society of london and the rspb. it is called garden wildlife health, and we have asked people to tell us what birds they have seen in their gardens, but also if they have seen any sick or diseased birds. vets have been able to carry out postmortems on birds people have found in their gardens, so we have been able to identify some of the diseases they are suffering from and give advice on how to prevent the spread of those diseases. one of the main species affected at the moment is greenfinch, and actually people would probably have noticed that we are not seeing as many greenfinches on bird feeders as we used to. we have actually lost over half of our

british greenfinch population in the last ten years, it's a really staggering decline. we know due to our research that this is due to a common disease called trichomonosis that people might see at bird feeders, birds pass it to each other at the feeders. it can be passed on if hygiene is not very good. so we are urging people to be aware of the signs and symptoms of these diseases. so with trichomonosis, birds might look lethargic and sit on the feeders, they might have food stuck around their beaks, and it is quite obvious that they are not well. so it is just to be aware when you see something like that that you need to take action. it is obvious that if birds are gathering at the same spot, they are doing their business after eating at this spot, more birds come along and will be affected by the same things. how much would you say that concentration of birds in a particular area has had to that deterioration in the population of greenfinches you mentioned? it is hard to say what effect transmission

at feeders as opposed to other transmissions, such as adult birds giving it to chicks in the nest, it is hard to say what the feeders themselves has been. but we know that this disease is transmitted at bird feeders. we also know the population has declined due to disease. we want people to be aware of the disease. and in some cases, if you have disease in your garden, the best thing to do is to stop feeding for a little while because it means birds are not congregating at one spot, and then reintroduce feeding gradually later. time for a look at the weather forecast. looking pretty mixed this week, one

of the things that will change as the feel of the weather. temperatures in some places got to 15 celsius this weekend. but the end of this week, we might struggle to reach five celsius. winter looks like it is going to bite back. between now and then, plenty of whether to get through, and at the moment we have this swelling area of cloud, in no mood to clear away quickly. because we are going to continue to see some outbreaks of rain across england and wales through this afternoon and into the evening. only slowly sliding eastwards during the night, but then some clearer skies starts to spread across northern ireland and the far west of scotland, wales, south—west england, and underneath those skies, there could be a few misty patches. but most places will stay above freezing. into tomorrow, starting with a loss of cloud. some outbreaks very light and patchy rain edging

eastwards, but a decent amount of sunshine for more than ireland and west scotland. it won't be as warm and is the weekend, but it was told reach 11 celsius in some places. but it will change in the middle of the week, the low pressure moving in from the atlantic. the white lines squeezing together, the winds could touch gale force in some areas. mild air wafting across the country. on wednesday, some uncertainty about how far east the wet weather will get. certainly some blustery winds, but the further east yuan, a better chance of seeing some spells of sunshine. and if you get that, we could reach 15 celsius, but those temperatures are slowly but showery dipping away as we reach the end of the week, especially in the northern areas. it will remain unsettled,

often quite breezy as well, with some outbreaks of rain at times. and then the weekend, and we look like scenes high pressure coming down from scandinavia. that will have the effect of bringing as an easterly wind, quitea effect of bringing as an easterly wind, quite a brisk easterly wind, and a cold one. so to sun things up for the coming weekend, it looks like it'll be cold for a significant wind—chill, and the potentialfor the return of some wintry showers. that is all for now. hello, you're watching afternoon live. i'm simon mccoy. today at 2. theresa may will make a statement to the commons this afternoon about the nerve agent attack on an ex—russian double—agent and his daughter. how tickled i am by all this goodwill. what about you, mrs, have you been tickled by a goodwill? how tickled we were — tributes for the comedy legend sir ken dodd who's died at the age of 90 tv football pundit jamie carragher

will not appear on monday night football after spitting at a 14—year—old girl. and an icon of fashion — givenchy — most famous for his creation of the little black dress — has died at home in france. coming up on afternoon live all the sport. difficult to snowboard with no snow. great britain ‘s first paralympics snowboarders all missed