welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is nkem ifejika. our top stories: dealing with the opioid epidemic — president trump says traffickers should face the death penalty. police hunt a serial bomber wanted for the parcel explosions in austin, texas. uber suspends testing its driver—less cars, after an american woman is run down and killed. and president xijinping wraps up the national people's congress saying only socialism can solve china's problems. president trump has outlined plans to combat america's opioid epidemic, including introducing the death penalty for drug dealers in certain circumstances. over—prescription of opioid painkillers — such as morphine and codeine — has created a nationwide addiction

crisis, with patients turning to heroin and other street drugs when their prescriptions stop. our north america editor jon sopel reports. during the election campaign, donald trump called new hampshire a drug—infested den. today, he has gone back to the granite state to show his rock solid determination to deal with america's appalling opioid crisis and by using the most draconian measures possible. if we do not get tough on the drug dealers, we're wasting our time. remember that, we are wasting our time. that toughness includes the death penalty. applause. but it is notjust about the criminaljustice system. he wants opioid prescriptions cut by a third and the drugs companies held more accountable.

this crisis is hitting every community, rich and poor, black and white, young and old, urban and rural. the biggest cause of death is drug overdose amongst the under 50s in america. and two thirds of those deaths are caused by opioid abuse. that is $110 right there. america for decades has had a war on drugs and, yes, it has resulted in hundreds of thousands of mainly black and latinos men being incarcerated, but it has had zero success in reducing dependency or use of illegal drugs or prescription drugs. thank you, please be seated. this court in buffalo, new york state, looks unremarkable, but has become the first in america to deal with only one type of case, opioid addiction. i will release you today and i need you to report here tomorrow... the judge, himself once an addict, is determined to rethink the way america handles opioid abuse. i think we made a tremendous mistake in the 1960s and 70s and 80s and 90s of locking people up and we are not going to make that same mistake now, because we have the research and data to show that you cannot lock up an addiction. carly mayor had to be

resuscitated three times in one week at the height of her addiction to opioids. when someone cares about you, what your problems are, how we can help you, it remind you that deep inside there is a person, that needs and deserves love. much has been made of how polarised politics has become in the us. on this, though, there is broad agreement that simply locking people up is not enough, but finding the correct policy prescription, to deal with the abuse of prescription drugs is proving elusive. jon sopel, bbc news, washington. earlier we spoke to professor keith humphreys. he's from stanford university and a specialist on addiction. he was drug policy advisor in

the 0bama and bush administrations. i asked him how effective the death penalty would be to deter criminals. it would not be as effective at all. it is not exactly clear who the president is directing this at. like a lot of his speeches, there was not a lot of detail and we know from previous declarations that he often seems to change his mind orforget what he's said a few weeks before but if you are going after low—level people, they are very easily replaced and if you are going after high—level traffickers, they are not scared of the death penalty. people who will deal with afghan warlords and mexican cartels to ship hundreds of pounds of heroin into the united states clearly are not people scared of the risks. adding the very remote risk of a federal prosecution ending in capital punishment would be meaningless to to them. let's look at the broader picture. i suppose for people like you, it must be encouraging that this is now being seen as a health issue rather than a law enforcement issue. addiction is, in my view, a health issue and one of the good things that happened over the last 20 years or so is that has become a bipartisan agreement.

the president is actually a bit out of the mainstream by emphasising punishment, so much. most of the congress have people in both parties who really agree that treatment is essential for responding to addiction. 0k. here is another headline—grabbing statement that president trump made which is to go after big pharmaceutical companies who over—produce and over—prescribe or over—promote these opioids. in that, he is very much correct. the partisan speech which i found off—putting was blaming mexicans, blaming people from other countries for these problems when the truth is, these problems were started by white guys in business suits who live in connecticut and ran companies who over—promoted promoted these opioids. so if the president wants to put the federal government up against those companies

to help the states around the nation that are trying to do that, that would be a very good thing. we'll see if he has the political will to do that. not necessarily to speak in defence of big pharma, many of them would say they were acting within the law. but finally, do you think we have reached the bottom of this? unfortunately not. all the evidence shows that the deaths are accelerating and the best example of that is fentanyl. that is an opioid synthesised in the late 1960s. we didn't reach 10,000 fentanyl deaths in this country until 2015. we reached 20,00012 months later. so this is getting worse, not better. police in texas say a serial bomber is on the loose in the city of austin. three parcel bombs earlier this month killed two african—american men, and wounded a hispanic woman. in the latest attack on sunday, a bomb seriously injured two young white men. gary 0'donoghue reports. a neighbourhood emerging from a night—long locked down

after police were forced to wait for daylight before they could declare this part of the city safe. just nothing like that happens around here. well, you know, that kind of stuff just happens somewhere else. but here it is a block and a half away so it's scary. this was fourth bombing in 16 days. attacks that already killed two african—american men and seriously injured three other people. but this latest attack was different, not parcel bombs like the others, seemingly aimed at specific people, but a device left on the sidewalk and triggered by some kind of trip wire as two young men walked by. with this trip wire, this changes things. it's more sophisticated, it's not targeted to individuals. we are very concerned that with trip wires a child could be walking down a sidewalk and hit something. so it's very important that here in austin, if anyone sees anything suspicious, do not go near the package, immediately call law enforcement so we can get bomb techs out there to deal with the suspect package. the latest victims have

significant injuries but are stable in hospital. the police say so far they have no suspects. we are clearly dealing with what we think is a serial bomber at this point, based on the similarities between now what is the fourth device and again, as we look at this individual and the pattern and what we are looking at here, we will have to determine if we see a specific ideology behind this. the bomber‘s first two victims were black from prominent african—american families who knew one another, leading to speculation that these could be hate crimes at the indiscriminate nature of last night's attack where both victims were white, means that authorities simply don't know what kind of motivation they are dealing with. are some of the other stories of making the news. students in miami returning to class

after the spring break have held a campus—wide moment of silence for the six victims killed in a bridge collapse. the pedestrian bridge built on the florida international university campus came crashing down days after it was built. investigators are still looking into what led the bridge to collapse. a ukrainian military pilot blamed by russia for the downing of malaysian airlines flight mh17, has reportedly taken his own life. vladyslav voloshyn has always denied russian allegations that he was behind the tragedy. dutch investigators concluded that a russian missile fired from the ground destroyed the jet, killing 298 people in 2014. sex and the city star cynthia nixon has announced she is launching a bid for new york governor. nixon, who played miranda hobbs on the hbo show, plans to challenge incumbent andrew cuomo for the democratic party nomination. the 51—year—old liberal activist has never held elected office. china's president xijinping has delivered his closing speech

to the annual session of the national people's congress. it's been a significant people's congress with the presidential term limits being lifted — in effect making xijingping ‘president for life‘ —— should he choose to. 0ur correspondent stephen mcdonell has been following the people's congress for us in beijing. he says there has been one momentous political change at the meeting. the national people's congress finished with a major speech from president xijinping, an ever more powerful xijinping giving his big vision for china. at these national people's congresses in the past, we didn't hear from the president on the last day because this is all about the premier. for example, the premier's press conference is going on right now behind me. but this is the time of xi jinping and all the rules have changed. you mentioned that at this congress, he has become ever more strong and can stay on beyond a second term as the president of china and so he has used this speech

again to show, "i am in charge with the party in control". and xijinping ‘as the core‘, as they say. normally during these things, there is always a stress on what happens internally, the economy, et cetera, maintaining public order. but of course this time around, he was looking to the outside and the interests china has in the wider world. absolutely and one thing in his speech which was interesting, he got very big applause when he mentioned that not one inch of china would be carved off and that is obviously a bit of a reference to hong kong or tibet. he is appealing to a nationalist approach. he also said that the party is solidly in control of the military. again, it is a message going out to everybody

that i suppose at a time there were party institutions and government institutions but now it's the party well and truly in charge and nobody is doubting who is in control of the party and that is xijinping. the uk's information commissioner elizabeth denham says she will seek a warrant to look at the databases and servers used by the data mining company cambridge analytica. a former employee at the firm claims they were handed the personal data of 50 million facebook users which was then used to influence the 2016 us presidential election. facebook‘s shares finished nearly seven % down after a turbulent day on the new york stock exchange. both cambridge analytica and facebook deny any wrongdoing. here in the uk, an international team of chemical weapons experts has arrived in salisbury to examine the nerve agent used to poison the former russian spy, sergei skripal, and his daughter, yulia. the bbc understands british investigators have broadened their search to include a car that yulia skripal is believed

to have travelled in, as our diplomatic correspondent james landale reports. the focus today shifted to the village of durrington, ten miles north of salisbury, where investigators removed a car that was used to pick up yulia skripal from the airport the day before she and her father sergei were attacked with nerve agent. nearby, at the military research complex at porton down, inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog, the 0pcw, were due to start analysing the nerve agent that british experts believe came from russia. in brussels, the foreign secretary arrived to brief eu counterparts, saying russian denials were increasingly absurd. this is a classic russian strategy of trying to conceal the needle of truth in a haystack of lies and obfuscation. there is scarcely a country round the table here in brussels that has not been affected in recent years

by some kind of malign or disruptive russian behaviour. eu foreign ministers issued a statement expressing their unqualified solidarity with the uk, and taking its assessment that russia was to blame extremely seriously. the eu and nato speaking as one. what is absolutely clear is our full solidarity with the united kingdom, and oui’ extreme concern about what has happened. it is really unacceptable. all 29 nato allies stand united. we stand in solidarity with the united kingdom. and the uk is not alone. but in moscow, as president putin began his fourth term, the defiance continued. his foreign ministry dismissing the eu statement as an anti—russian reflex. as for russia's diplomats in london, well, some of these officials and their families will be heading home tomorrow, 23 in all,

with a similar number of british diplomats leaving moscow shortly. tomorrow, the national security council will meet to decide britain's next step. there is a live debate within government — should they retaliate and escalate, or simply do nothing? should they kick yet more russian diplomats out of the embassy here, or should they find new ways of penalising russia 7 the risk for britain is that a bilateral confrontation with russia might overshadow attempts to maintain international pressure. back in salisbury, the police tonight revealed the full scale of the investigation, with 250 counter—terrorism officers examining 4,000 hours of cctv, 800 exhibits and 400 witness statements. detectives said this could last many months. james landale, bbc news. stay with us on bbc news, still to come: how a statue of the virgin mary

stopped god—fearing fishermen from destroying coral reefs. today, we have closed the book on apartheid and that chapter. more than 3,000 subway passengers were affected. nausea, bleeding, headaches and the dimming of vision, all of this caused by an apparently organised attack. the trophy itself was on the pedestal in the middle of the cabinet here. now, this was an international trophy and we understand now that the search for it has become an international search. above all, this was a triumph for the christian democrats of the west, offering reunification

as quickly as possible, and that's what the voters wanted. this is bbc news. the latest headlines: president trump outlines his plans to deal with the opioid epidemic, saying traffickers should face the death penalty. residents in parts of australia hit by bushfires have been told it's still not safe to return home, after more than seventy properties were destroyed. officials say the fires in new south wales and neighbouring victoria are now being brought under control, but hundreds of cattle have been killed and over 100,000 acres of land burnt. for more on this deputy commissioner of the new south wales rural fire service, rob rogers, joined me a short time ago from sydney. there have been hundreds of people affected by this —

the town that was most impacted in new south wales where those 70 properties were lost, there's about 1800 people that live in the town itself and then there's a lot of people living in the surrounding area and obviously other people that have been dislocated by the actual road being dislocated and the likes so there's a lot of people been affected by it. from what we understand the the fire has been moving particularly fast — any reason for that, for the ferocity? 0n the day that this fire took out those properties, burnt those properties, we had very high temperatures — temperatures almost 40 degreescelsius, we had winds that were gusting up to 50 mph, so really awful conditions. that on the back of not a lot of rainfall in preceding months. there's been a lot of conditions coming together to make that fire move incredibly quick on that day. it went through that area very quick and burnt all those properties. apart from those homes, there's another 20 or 30 caravans

and cabins that were lost and in some cases they were people's homes. it has been very devastating for quite a small community in the south coast of new south wales. uber has suspended all tests of self—driving cars after a woman in arizona was killed in a collision. at the time of the accident, the vehicle was running in autonomous mode, with an operator at the wheel. it is the first time a pedestrian has died in an accident involving a self—driving car. uber described what happened as "incredibly sad" and said it was fully co—operating with local authorities. die wakabayashi is a technology reporterfor the new york reporter for the new york times. he joins us now from oakland, california. explain a little bit more about this circumstance is what happened?m took place on sunday night in an

uber autonomous vehicle driving on a pretty wide road on a clear night and struck a woman who was on the road pushing a bicycle. the woman later died. police said the car was moving at about 40 mph when it made in pak. there was no sign that the car had slowed down before striking the pedestrian which suggests that perhaps the car itself did not see her on the street. the human driver who was there as a backup in case of an emergency did not react quickly enough and basically woman was injured very badly. does that mean the woman might have appeared out of nowhere or was she fully visible

because normally, the technology is pretty good. it is still unclear and the investigation is ongoing. the case for self driving car, the visibility is much better than humans, they can feed further, around blindspots and so the theory, at least, is that self driving cars will be much safer but the reality we are seeing is there will be a period of adjustment were there is certain experimenting happening to see how reliable the technology is indifferent weather conditions, different times of day. u nfortu nately, different times of day. unfortunately, in this incident, the car probably did not see the woman andjump out. before

car probably did not see the woman and jump out. before we let you go, there are so many questions, ethical and legal questions, things like liability. who is liable for the accident. this is the mindful which makes driverless cars so complicated. certainly. ithink what is interesting about this case will be whether the local authorities are we discussing questions about if the company is liable whether the safety driver will be considered possibly charged here. ithink driver will be considered possibly charged here. i think this raises all sorts of interesting questions and troublesome questions about and who is really responsible for this technology. you know, this is all driven by artificial intelligence and it is not necessarily humans making the decisions but systems are learning from human behaviour all the time and it raises a lot of

questions. eight years ago a statue of the virgin mary was sunk off the coast of bohol in the philippines in an attempt to dissuade the god—fearing community there from dynamite fishing. the illegal practice causes huge damage to coral reefs, an essential ecosystem forfish breeding. now a group called the sea knights — who helped to put the statue in place — have returned to assess its success. howard johnson reports. dotted across the blue waters of the pacific ocean are the 7000 islands that make up the philippines. many of them hours away from the mainland, and that makes policing them incredibly difficult. joselito ca ba nsay knows that only too well. for years, he was a dynamite fisherman — an illegal practice that risks life and limb, but rewards with lucrative catches. translation: normal fishing is like earning a minimum wage salary compared to illegal fishing, that produces a large sum of fish. fishermen see it as a jackpot income. in 2010, dynamite fishing

was so widespread that the local authorities and a group of faith inspired divers, called the sea knights, decided to take action. they placed a statue of the virgin mary at a site where most of the explosions took place. it was hoped that the god—fearing fishing community would stop illegal activity in the presence of a religious icon. nearly ten years on, and the sea knights have returned to the statue. aside from paying their respects to the virgin mary today and laying flowers at her feet, biologists within the group will also be looking to assess the health of the coral down there, to see if it has improved since their last visit. as we descended towards the virgin mary,

it became clear that the statue's appearance had undergone a dramatic change. it is now entirely covered in coral. after praying, the sea knights cleaned the statue, removing barnacles and limpets. back on the surface, i spoke to the group's marine biologist. so around the statue, what was the state of the coral? they are also growing. so positive signs today? yeah, there was positive signs. the local authorities say the virgin mary has reduced the number of dynamite fishers from hundreds to just a handful but, with limited resources, it is unlikely that illegal fishing can be totally eradicated. hello there.

0ur weather's showing signs of catching up on the season, going from something that has felt a bit more like winter to something more springlike over the next few days. now, over the weekend, london temperatures barely got above freezing. we've had that heavy snow as well. there is a trend to seeing things warm up and by thursday, temperatures should reach double temperatures in the capital. of course, the big change has been this area of high pressure, which brought us the mini beast from the east. that same area of high pressure has now just sunk to the south—west of the uk. and so, we're dragging in some slightly less cold air. that will continue to be the case over the next couple of days. 0n the satellite picture, we're looking at an area of cloud sinking its way southwards at the moment and that cloud is just thick enough to bring us a few light showers, so for the early risers there is the potential of catching one or two showers across parts of the midlands, east anglia and south—east england. i wouldn't be surprised to see an odd flake falling from it, given that the temperatures for most of us are at or below freezing. and a particularly cold start to the day in scotland, where temperatures potentially down

as low as —8 in the coldest spots. for tuesday, we'll have a cloudy start to the day for most of england. should be fairly sunny across scotland. a decent amount of showers. with this cloud, one or two showers pushing on towards the midlands for a time during the day, but the cloud will tend to shrink and shrivel, with some sunshine either side of it as we go on through the afternoon. for many of us, a decent kind of day. those temperatures up to nine degrees in london. that was tuesday's weather. now, as we get towards wednesday, we start to drag in some milder air off the atlantic, but with that comes the threat of some rain. rain working its way into the north—west. before that arrives, it's going to be another fairly cold night, particularly across england and wales. the temperatures not as low in scotland and northern ireland, where we'll have that increasingly cloudy look to the weather, with outbreaks of rain skirting into northern ireland. the rain heavy at times and quite persistent across the western side of scotland. a few breaks in the cloud, the best of any sunshine probably across central and eastern parts of england. we are looking at highs of around nine degrees in london again, but the temperatures in scotland

and northern ireland are reaching double figures. ten or 11 degrees in the warmest spots, and that warming trend continues on into thursday. thursday, well, potentially a little bit of rain around, getting close to eastern england. so it could be quite wet for some. there will be some brighter spells. the weather going downhill further west, as the next band of rain works in. temperatures pretty much across the board will be reaching double figures. that's your latest weather. this is bbc news. the headlines — president trump has outlined plans to combat america's opioid epidemic, including introducing the death penalty for drug dealers in certain circumstances. 0ver—prescription of opioid painkillers such as morphine and codeine has created a nationwide addiction crisis. police in texas say a serial bomber is on the loose in the city of austin. three parcel bombs earlier this month killed two african—american

men and wounded an hispanic woman. two white men were injured in sunday's attack. officers say it's not clear if the attacks are hate crimes or terrorism. uber has suspended testing its driverless cars after an american woman was run down and killed. it's the first time a pedestrian has died in an accident involving a self—driving car. uber described what happened as incredibly sad and said it was fully cooperating with local authorities. now on bbc news, it's time for hardtalk.