diplomatic struggle. we'll hear from the security minister. and did jeremy corbyn judge it right in his response? some of his own mps don't think so. the shadow security minister will explain labour's position. brexit secretary david davis has been travelling the continent today — and seeming to make brexit concessions to the europeans, exclusively to nick watt. i'm not bothered too much about the question of whether it's christmas 2020 all easter 2021. so if it means christmas 2020, you'd go for that? i'd go for that. also tonight, we're with stephen hawking's famous collaborator, the mathematician sir roger penrose. and angela merkel has been sworn in for her fourth term in office — but germany now has to contemplate political life without her. gabriel gatehouse is in the rhineland. hello.

the british response came today — ten days after sergei skripal, his daughter and detective sergeant nick bailey were so badly poisoned by novichok nerve agent. 23 russian diplomats are to be expelled, there's a vow to freeze russian assets that pose a threat here, a suspension of high level contacts, and a downgrading of britain's attendance at the world cup. britain has had some international support this evening — the us ambassador to the un, nikki haley, said it was the russians that did it. the french have been mildly more circumspect. but the russians themselves? they said it's absolutely unacceptable and unworthy of the british to seek to aggravate relations in pursuit of "unseemly political ends". at the un tonight, they demanded material proof of the allegedly found russian trace. lots to talk about — let's hear from mark urban first, on the british approach. so the spy expulsions are on. nearly two dozen regarded as intelligence operatives under diplomatic cover have been told

to pack their bags and be out within a week. this is only one of a number of measures the british government is taking, many of them likely not to be announced publicly and many of them likely to be what president eisenhower used to call quiet military measures that your adversary would see and understand, but the public wouldn't necessarily see. along with the decision to expel 23 russian diplomats, there will be more checks on private flights, customs and freight. there will be asset freezes for russians who've threatened uk nationals. british officials will boycott the world cup. high—level contacts such as a planned visit by the russian foreign minister will be suspended, and there will be new laws against hostile state activity. a long list, but maybe a little short on specifics. and underlying a tentative approach is some tentative language.

the government is hesitant to pin this unequivocally on russia. they have treated the use of a military grade nerve agent in europe with sarcasm, contempt and defiance. so, mr speaker, there is no alternative conclusion other than that the russian state was culpable for the attempted murder of mr skripal and his daughter. and even in its letter yesterday to the international chemical weapons body, the opcw, the uk has said of the novichok agents: "russia has previously produced this agent and would still be capable of doing so". it does not say that the origin of the salisbury novichok can be proven. i think the dilemma probably is that there is very strong circumstantial evidence. the russians were given the chance to respond and reacted dismissively. but there is no suspect, and therefore there wasn't a criminal level of proof yet. but the government has been under

great pressure to come forward with an initial set of measures. they have now done that, and this is the first stage of what will, i guess, now develop into a more general discussion at the security council in nato and the eu about what is behind it and how countries should now regard russia in terms of, are they a responsible and serious member of the international community? so the government has not yet been able to tie russian—made novichok by its molecular fingerprint to the salisbury poisoning — not publicly, anyway. its decision to involve the opcw watchdog in analysing samples from the incident will take the crisis onto an international plane. i think that is both a confidence—building measure, and also plays to one of our great strengths in the west, right? our great contrasting strengths to the russians are transparency,

allies and international institutions. russians on the panel? well, that would be the opcw's choice. my sense is that the russians ought to be present to see what is happening, but that neither the russians nor the british should be on the panel. the government's tentative language may reflect that they still haven't identified the precise origin of the nerve agent, and they don't seem to have any suspects in planting it. but it may also be part of a strategy to leave some ambiguity to let the russians find an off—ramp. in the coming days, though, the language is likely to firm up. today's spy expulsion could be the start of a long path of crisis, move and countermove. and all the while, the lives of two desperately ill people in salisbury hang in the balance. earlier today, i spoke to the security minister,

ben wallace. i began by asking him what measures the government had announced following moscow's refusal to co—operate in the case. we've taken a step today that we think is proportionate, and sends a message to the russians that this is not acceptable, and that things need to change, but also that downgrades operationally their ability of intelligence officers in london to prosecute espionage against us, both economically and in the security space, and at the same time we've talked about progressing this through starting the process of internationalising the response, and that's why the prime minister talked about a un... a discussion at the un security council, and she has spoken to world leaders such as donald trump and president macron as well. and one of the areas that has been much talked about are financial measures to sanction probably named individuals who we suspect are putin cronies and friends, and have significant assets in london. should we be embarrassed, really,

that there are these people in london, that we have allowed ourselves to get into the position where bad people have felt london is a place, a comfortable place, to park money and do business? i think we should all collectively, in the body politics, have to take responsibility for that. that, you know, we have allowed the city of london's reputation as a centre for world finance to be exploited by some pretty nasty individuals, who have used illicit money flows from around the world to come here, either to harbour it or to clean it, or tojust move it around, or invest it. let's be clear. if you are a foreign oligarch or kleptocrat bringing money to london, the party is over. that london industry is now going to close. that is what we want the message to be, and we are going to do steps to take the money off you if we can't get you as well, and only last week, evan,

britain went up in the rankings of least corrupt countries. we are now eighth in the world. i would like to see that go higher. it does say, by the way, the chemical weapons convention, it does back up one russian point on all of this — it is article nine, paragraph two, for all it matters. where a complaint is made, the country against whom it's made has ten days to respond. should we have given them the ten days? should we have stuck to the form of the letter of the law, just so no one can mock us or laugh at us on the basis that we haven't stuck to that? i think we've already gone a long way. we took our time and we've done a thorough job, and that is... and the reason for that is, you know, consequences flow from it. i wanted the public to realise that we are not cooking this up. it's not some dodgy dossier. this is a genuine appraisal of the facts, the motives, the responses of russia, and have taken the view that we are certain the evidence points to russia deploying this. you know, you say we could have

given them ten days. i think within minutes out of the trap, they said, "we are not responding to british demands." so i think once they said that, i think it's pretty certain that we can be in a space that russia's denials — which are pretty legendary in litvinenko — are going to remain, and we are not going to tolerate it. removing 23 intelligence officers from london is... i think actually some of the public will be wondering why we didn't remove them before. why didn't you do it before, given everything we've known about russia and crimea and litvinenko and other assassinations and all sorts of things? i think because when you decide to assert yourself, there's a cost for that. there could be reprisals. could we contain the threat they were posing and all that? that would have been an operational decision at time. the allies have given some encouragement, haven't they? the french, the germans, even president trump has given some encouragement — "we are on your side, britain, we hear what's happened."

do you fear that that's as far as they're going to go? no, no, idon‘t. this is the time that a government earns its money. ministers will be out talking to ambassadors. leaders will be ringing leaders, and we will be developing and helping design a response that deters russia, and also downgrades their operational ability. let's remember, russia doesn't just spy on britain, it spies on lots of our friends and allies. it prosecutes cyber crime against our allies. we've already named, helped identify and name, an number of cyber attacks by russia on european allies and other countries, so we... you know, they're not stupid. they know what's going on, and i think i'm optimistic we are going to get a good response. well, here with me now to discuss the international reaction to all this is nina schick.

she's from the think tank rasmussen global and joins me now from brussels. a very good evening to you. nina, you heard what the security minister said. he is optimistic there will be more than rhetoric in support of the uk. is that your expectation, particularly from the europeans? the first thing to point out is that this attack on the uk is an attack on all western european democracies. i work at rasmussen global, and rasmussen was the former general secretary of nato. we believe there should be a strong western response to this, because this is just the latest in russia's hybrid war against the west. theresa may has done all she can do domestically, but to send russia a tough message, she needs to get a coalition behind her. ironically, theresa may has more recourse via the eu right now than perhaps via the us or nato,

and what she can hope for is... she will be raising it at the european council summit on friday, and what she will be hoping for is to ask the eu to extend sanctions which are already in place since 2014's invasion of ukraine by russia. that will be difficult because some members of the eu are dragging their feet on that. but because of the nature of this attack, a very serious one, she will have a lot of sympathetic leaders listening to her in the eu. we have already seen as very strong response from european leaders. it's interesting you say that. the french were slightly circumspect. they say they want firm proof. last time, after litvinenko, the british ambassador to moscow at the time said he was talking to eu leaders at that time

about getting support, this is tony brenton, and he said they were pretty hopeless — i'm paraphrasing — and nowhere to be seen. absolutely, it isn't going to be easy. further complicated by the fact that the uk is out of the eu. there are many baltic states who will be sympathetic to the uk's position, because of their own experiences with russia. the best we can hope for is an extension of those sanctions which were due to be extended injune for a period of 12 months rather than six, but still that is doing something that is the most effective body of sanctions on russia right now. long—term, to address the question of russian meddling in the western transatlantic alliance, there has to be a more robust effort across the transatlantic,

with the us, the eu and britain. the uk faces a very difficult challenge because it's two traditional pillars of foreign security, one being europe and one being the us, are tenuous at the moment. thank you very much indeed. now — after the prime minister's statement today, jeremy corbyn gave a response. this has turned into quite a big issue: many — including labour mps — felt it was too easy on the russians, and too harsh on the uk. here's a taste. the attack in salisbury was an appalling act of violence. nerve agents are abominable if used in any war. it is utterly reckless to use them in a civilian environment. how has she responded to the russian government's request for a sample of the agent used in the salisbury attack to run its own tests? has high resolution trace analysis been run on a sample of the nerve agent, and has that revealed any evidence as to the location of its production or the identity of its perpetrators?

now, a subsequent press briefing in defence ofjeremy corbyn by his spokesman seamus milne seemed to compound things. he's reported to have said: "there is a history between wmds and intelligence which is problematic to put it mildly — drawing comparison to the flawed intelligence in the run up to the iraq war". well, i'm joined by nick thomas—symonds, labour's shadow security minister. do you think there is any comparison to be drawn between the flawed intelligence in the run—up to iraq and we have here? no. i don't think it's about flawed intelligence. we have great confidence in the work of the security services. it is obviously a distinction between the interpretations politicians make of the intelligence and the

intelligence itself. but this isn't an intelligence case, it is a forensic laboratory result that found a chemical weapon which the world knows was developed in the soviet union by the russians. so it was a stupid comparison, would you say? i am not going to accept that interpretation. we need to shift from what may or may not have been said to the actual position. there has been a very serious incident on british soil. the evidence points towards russia and there are two possible explanation is that the prime minister gave, either that russia was primarily and deliberately responsible, or it is negligently responsible in the sense that it lost control of its nerve agent. that is the way the evidence is pointing. and given the failure to respond from the russians this week, the measures the prime minister has proposed are proportionate. i was trying to get you to be harsh on seamus milne, but you don't want to do that. do you agree at least that his briefing was a distraction from the message that the labour party is trying to put out?

evan, in terms of the relationship between what the press say whether things are taken out of context. michael i don't think he was taken out of context. i have your transcript of it with the comparison to wmd, which seems strange. there was no wmd and there obviously is a toxic poison. there is obviously an issue as to how politicians interpret intelligence, but my point is that we have a very serious situation and in these circumstances, we are looking at the evidence, backing the work that has been done on the ground, whether it is the army, the security services or the police. detective sergeant nick bailey is of course ill and we are the king of him and mr skripal, his daughter and others who have been affected by this and we condemn the actions taken. in terms of who you think did it, the russians is your most likely culprit?

the evidence is certainly pointing in that direction. we see this from the point that has been made by the spokesperson for the french government in recent days. we want to build the widest possible international coalition to be able to tackle this issue and to seek to ensure, asjeremy corbyn said clearly in the commons today, that we do not want this kind of incident happening on british soil again. to do that, the better the standard of proof we can have is surely better in building an international coalition. jeremy corbyn didn't condemn the russians for the chemical weapon use on british soil today. did he not condemn them because he thought it was too soon to condemn them, because he doesn't think it is them, orjust because he had other things to say? firstly, i don't accept that interpretation of jeremy.

i was sat on the common spent as i heard it. he quoted the prime minister verbatim on the two explanations, and afterwards made clear that we should have a decisive and proportional response based on the evidence. no one would argue with that. that is a reasonable position for the leader of the opposition to take. but in a funny way, in order to have the license to make those points, a lot of the public will want to know that he feels the same kind of outrage over this happening on our soil that a lot of other people think, and he didn't express that outrage. he said, we must speak out against the abuse of human rights by the putin government and their supporters, but he didn't seem to show the anger at what we think the russians have done in salisbury. i wonder whether in retrospect, that was the wrong way to go. i don't accept that. what he said as a matter of interpretation for the listener. at the start of the speech, he made clear his abhorrent that the use of a nerve agent like this on a civilian population in the way that it has been.

towards the end of the speech, he also set out his abhorrent is from russia's human rights record, which we unequivocally condemn. thanks. if it sometimes feels as if the brexit negotiation is britain making one concession after another, it seems we've made another one today. we'd wanted a transition or implementation phase of around two years. the eu had said 21 months — not a big difference, but brexit secretary david davis has told newsnight today that he's willing to yield to the eu view — although he's also extracted an agreement that a special committee will be established to guarantee a "duty of good faith" by both sides during that transition. david davis was talking to our political editor nick watt while on a trip to prague and copenhagen today. nick hitched a ride. in the air, on the road and yes, into another european chancellery. for months, david davis has embarked on an odyssey around our neighbouring continent to build

support for his vision of brexit. it's wednesday, so that must mean a morning raf plane to shuttle the brexit secretary to two eu capitals encompassing what was once dubbed old and new europe. first up is copenhagen. so you are used to exercising real power? david davis is now settling in for the first meeting of the day with an samuelsen, the danish foreign minister. he will be hoping for a reasonably friendly reception. denmark is traditionally on the more eurosceptic side in the eu, rather than the federalist side. and of course, denmark joined the eec on the same day as the uk in 1973. we talked about some of the issues where we agree and somewhere they are not so sure, what we do about

product standards, what we do about customs. they were interested in northern ireland and all that sort of thing. and that is part for the course. this is probably country number 17 or 18 of this tour, and that is what we are getting everywhere. what is it exactly we are going to do? said it has been david davis‘ life for the last few months, spurning the chance of a comfy pad in brussels, he has been touring eu capitals to try and find a chink in the surprisingly united eu front on brexit. britain believes that the final brexit deal will be done in the last hours and minutes of the brexit negotiations, and while it will be done in brussels, at that point the uk will need allies and friends

amongst eu leaders who will ultimately call the shots. we have now swapped the 19705 functionalism of copenhagen for the early baroque splendour of the czech foreign ministry. the czech republic's membership of the eu realise their dream of david davis‘ great heroine, margaret thatcher, spread the eu east and diluted federalism. he is now meeting the czech foreign minister, no doubt hoping for a reward. the role of great britain is far as foreign security is concerned is crucialfor europe. as i said to your minister, by brexit, the british channel is not wide. so here we are in prague, not in brussels. your friend michel barnier has been complaining that you are not in brussels. are you going to answer his call and turn up

there? on all of these, we started discussions with the commission and kicked things off in downing street about four weeks ago. we talked through it all. since then, my team have been working flat out, principally in brussels, and they have continued through this weekend and i shalljoin them on sunday and we will have another meeting with him on monday. but that is just one strand. it is the council that make the decision on what our future partnership will be. the council is made up of the member states. i will be talking to them all and listening to their concerns, explaining what we have in mind, what we aim to do, understanding their interests and concerns so that we can incorporate them and make sure we get the right decision next week. one of the big crunch issues on the implementation period is that the eu says it should end of the end of december 2020. the uk says it should be two years, which would be march 2021. are you going to compromise on that?

more important that that is that we get the implementation period agreed in march. it will not be legally signed until the autumn, but agreed in march. that is more important to me than a few months either way. i am not bothered too much of the question of whether it is christmas 2020 or easter 2021. so if it means chris was 2020, you could live with that? —— christmas. i would live with that. we are still in the middle of negotiation, but frankly, i would not delay the decision in order to get a month 01’ two more. so on the implementation period, can you reassure some of your colleagues at westminster who are concerned that the uk willjust be a vassal state? will the uk be able to stick up for itself? we want to have in place a joint committee which will oversee any issues like this that come up, and a duty of good faith on

both sides, so neither side is disadvantaged. we will not fall under mr rees mogg's interesting definition of our position! for now, this european odyssey is winding down as david davis turned his attention back to brussels. nick watt and david davis on the european tour. "we are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. but we can understand the universe. that makes us something very special." so said stephen hawking, who died in the early hours of this morning. he certainly understood the universe better than anyone. an undisputed national treasure, internationally admired, he was notjust a great physicist, he was a man who could frame the most brilliant and pithiest of quotes — a quality perhaps born of the necessity to be economical with words. we'll talk to his great scientific collaborator,

sir roger penrose, in a moment. but first, we thought we'd get our technology editor david grossman to explain the physics for which stephen hawking will be remembered. all: 0h! stephen hawking! the world's smartest man! stephen hawking's place in popular culture is unrivalled. 0h! i think you are being pedantic. astounding. to think the lord created all this in just seven days! incorrect. it took 13.8 billion years. like einstein, on whose birthday he died, he came to epitomise the public‘s idea of a scientist. but how did the scientist stephen hawking measure up to the popular icon? how far did he push forward the boundaries of human knowledge? where should we place him in the pantheon of great scientists? if you look, for example, at one measure, winners of nobel prizes, hawking doesn't feature. it's very hard to rank scientists and put them one after the other in a list, but he would certainly number

amongst the very top scientists that we've seen in the last few decades. i think it's particularly hard if you're a pure theoretical physicist, which is what stephen hawking was, where you are working right at the forefront of what we know, on ideas that are going to be very hard to test for the foreseeable future, and i think there's a danger, when you choose to do that, that it's much harder for people to actually identify, yes, there's a particular prediction that we can test right now, and check that your ideas are correct. stephen hawking's most significant work was on black holes. he suggested that since they collapse matter into an infinitely dense point, a singularity, they act like a big bang in reverse, and therefore may hold clues to the origins of the universe.

and he also proved that one of the previously accepted defining characteristics of a black hole may in fact be false. i discovered that black holes are not that black after all. they give off what has been called hawking radiation. because of this emission, black holes will lose mass and eventually evaporate completely. hawking's theories were fiercely contested among his peers. i think at first there is always resistance to new ideas, and these were really new. in fact, even the very first time stephen hawking wrote about some of his ideas about black holes, he called the paper black hole explosions? , with a question mark at the end, suggesting that even he was a little bit concerned about the really radical ideas he was coming up with. no one can accuse stephen hawking of not being ambitious. in trying to unify the seemingly contradictory theories of physics into one, unified, grand theory, he was working at the very edges of human understanding. the fact that he did so in a way that excited and inspired those who knew nothing about

physics is a measure of an extraordinary mind. david grossman there. joining me now in the studio is sir roger penrose. he worked with stephen hawking for over a0 years, co—authoring the bestselling book "the nature of space and time". back in 1988 he and hawking won the wolf prize for their work in "greatly enlarging our understanding of the origin and possible fate of the universe". good evening to you. so your main collaboration was around 1970. how different were things at that time in his condition and his ability to work? he was a lot more able, and he could talk. when i first met him i didn't notice anything wrong at all. it was very early stages. and i could see gradually over the years getting successively worse. but the work we did together was largely before that. the paper we roped together

in the royals fight —— wrote together in the royal society on the singularity question was something which he had difficulty in speaking, at that time. most of the collaboration, curiously enough, was done over the telephone. there was only one meeting when he came to where i was working. i interviewed him once. i had no idea how much harder it was to communicate than had been let on by the media. when it was broadcast at the interview, it was a fluent interview, i asked the question and there came an answer. but the answers took a long time to prepare. and the curious thing, when i conversed with him when he could talk, i could get on quite well as long as it was an science or mathematics. then there was the odd point when he would say something i couldn't understand at all. it was either a joke or an invitation to dinner.

it was quite curious than... that the scientific communication was much easier. you collaborated for ages, but then you drifted apart. we did. the main difference was to do with quantum mechanics. although there was a slight moment, to do with his discoveries about the black hole evaporation and all that, and the implications of that, and the questions of whether black holes actually swallow information, which is what he said originally, and i agree with. but later on, he came to the conclusion that because of the general principles of quantum mechanics, it can't swallow information. so he went over to a different camp. he went over to the other side! the early stephen hawking with your collaborator. we still got on very well. help us out on how great a physicist he was, and how he will be remembered by physicists.

we know that the public are very taken with the man and the story. we have to separate the remarkable fact of what he did with the physical condition he had. it is astounding, no doubt about that. you cannot compare him with einstein, who created theories which encompassed huge areas of physics, which were different to theories that existed before. he didn't do that. he worked within theories that were accepted at the time, and then he combined work with general activity on quantum mechanics with the one major thing that nobody disputes was due to him, which was this black hole evaporation. you told me earlier that you did see him a couple of months ago at a lecture. idid indeed. thank you so much for coming in. thank you. the german general election seems like an age ago now,

it was back on the 24th september last year. and today, almost six months later, angela merkel was sworn in for herfourth term as chancellor. it was the obvious outcome of that election, but boy, it took a long time coming. the german president, frank—walter steinmeier, formally appointed merkel‘s new cabinet and said "it is good that the time of uncertainty is over, "these are testing years for democracy". he was talking about the world in general — and we know what he means. but it's certainly been a testing few months for germany, as it has confronted the idea that merkel may not be forever. gabriel gatehouse has been to a small town in south west germany to test the mood there. here's his report. welcome to hassloch — the most average town in germany. in fact, this little place, population 21,400, is so ordinary that market researchers use it to test out products. but are they buying their new

coalition government? in terms of democratics and political leanings, hassloch is a mirror of germany as a whole, and under the surface, all is not well. hassloch‘s main attraction is its holiday park, closed now for the winter. during the warmer months, residents have free access to the rides. it's something that brings the townsfolk together. they collect their passes from rosa tischenko at the citizens‘ office, who‘s worked here for nearly two decades. in truth, no one in hassloch seemed

particularly excited by angela merkel‘s reanointment as chancellor this morning. she‘s got her fourth term thanks to another coalition deal between her conservatives and the centre—left spd. angela merkel‘s new coalition promises a new dynamism, a new cohesion for germany. in reality, though, these are the same two parties that have run this country for eight out of the past 12 years, and now germans can look forward to four more years of the same old faces.

the spd initially resisted another coalition, but the pull of merkel and the logic of germany‘s consensus politics led inexorably back to the status quo. as in the rest of germany, so in hassloch, at the last election, the two main traditional parties won their smallest share of the vote since the war, losing out to the right wing, nationalist afd. it‘s the development of the refugees in germany. that‘s the main reason? it‘s the main reason, i think, and you have to find these answers.

did angela merkel mishandle the refugee crisis? i don‘t think... from the human side, she has to do this. you don‘t see many refugees on the streets of hassloch, but it‘s not hard to find people who are worried about them. we were invited into the home of a local policeman. he once voted cdu, but the refugee crisis prompted him to join the afd. his book shelf, at first glance, looks alarming. oh, bloody hell! i thought this was banned in germany. no. this only commentary. it turns out to be the legally sanctioned, academically annotated version of mein kampf. the policeman says he has no time for nazis, but he‘s also lost patience with mainstream politics. a few streets away,

but on the opposite end of the political spectrum, we meet a local pastor. in his spare time, he fixes old bicycles to give away to refugees who, he says, are welcome in germany. but on one subject he and the policeman agree. under merkel, politics is stagnated. yes, because it‘s the same, the same people. the same people? the same people. it‘s merkel, it‘s spd, and i have no hope that anything changes with her. germany has to wait for a new government after her. like manchester united! but in hassloch that an average town, political differences are very much alive and kicking. in the evening, peter the policeman invites us

to his local football club. hello. how are you? we go! what‘s going on? it‘s not a friend of afd. 0h, 0k. you want not to remain? you make decision... we go. we go in. all right. thank you very much. some political disagreement, i think. in this time we have problem. right. in the club. because 50% want not afd. right. and the other want afd. i see. so are you losing friends? yes, maybe. and this is you here, is it? yes. looking at your phone? looking at the wrong place? peter split with merkel over the refugee crisis, but his views on this subject are in fact less radical

than you might expect. right, so you think you should let in people from syria, from iraq, from afghanistan? the issue of refugees has become a totemic dividing line. to many germans, yet another coalition government feels like going round in circles. and here‘s the paradox. the more the mainstream cultivates consensus, the more society seems polarised. you that‘s all we have time for — good night. hello there. it has been a windy day

today but mild, temperatures of 1a degrees in london, contrasted with 40 degrees in london, contrasted with a0 millimetres of rain in northern ireland. not quite so wet here in cornwall and devon where the rain is just beginning to clear away now. still raining in northern ireland. rain has come on that weather front there. that moves very slowly northwards and eastwards through the tonight. while we see a drying off on the far south—west, still have some heavy rain through the west country, sliding towards the london area, still continuing across wales and much of northern ireland overnight. north of that there will bea overnight. north of that there will be a few breaks in the cloud that it is not as cold as it was last night because it is windy. ahead of the rain, this is where we still have strong wind like we had earlier on. is moving into the rush—hour and we

still have some rain creeping northwards so moving northwards to the north of london, into the midlands, still some rain in wales, heading up towards the north—west of england and south yorkshire. still some rain for northern ireland, the rain to come here. getting its nose into the far south—west of scotland. that wet weather continues to track northwards and eastwards so it should clear away from northern ireland eventually. clearing away from wales, the midlands, hanging on across parts of north—east anglia, england and up into scotland where we will see snow on the mountains. will find some such in the milder air but it could be heavy and thundery. underneath the rain it will feel quite cold as well. moving into tomorrow evening and tomorrow night there will still be sleet and snow developing over the high ground in scotland. that will still be around on friday. the wet weather is not just the scotland around on friday. the wet weather is notjust the scotland north—east of england, a band of heavy shower running into the back of that and thunderstorms possible towards the south where we have sunshine. attem pted south where we have sunshine. atte m pted to south where we have sunshine. attempted to contrast is still there either side of that band of wet

weather. that stops that wet weather and then slides southwards again. things are getting blocked off by that area of high pressure coming to us that area of high pressure coming to us from scandinavia. that means around the edge of it we will pick up around the edge of it we will pick up an easterly wind. that will feel significantly colder this weekend in the wind and then there may be some snow showers around as well. these are more likely to be across england and wales but bear in mind across southern parts of the uk grow over the next few days it could 12 or 13 degrees. we may find temperatures no better than one or two celsius and will not be any warmer across the more northern parts of the uk. a blast of cold air, some snow showers and uncertainties about how much snow, most of it perhaps coming saturday night. this is newsday on the bbc. i am

rico hizon in singapore. the headlines: 23 russian diplomats will be expelled after britain fails to get an explanation for the chemical attack against a former russian spy on the streets of england. they have treated the use of a military grade nerve agent in europe with sarcasm, contempt and defiance. president putin is on a re—election campaign trail. his ambassador at the un again denies russian involvement in the attack. translation: we demand that material proved to be provided allegedly found russian trays in this