the bbc has also reported on the spate of violent crime in london, with more than 50 killings in the capital this year, one victim of a drive—by shooting on monday was 17—year—old tanesha melbourne whose death was covered by a dealer campbell. —— adina campbell. speaking exclusively to the bbc tanesha's brother says the family are devastated. i'd just come up from university, like, i didn't have a clue. tanesha, she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, i don't have a clue, man. when did you get to see her afterwards? i saw her today. ray cornish was watching and have this reaction.

and susan bates found the item "disgusting". she wrote: now, it has long been the case that you are more likely to see or hear a man interviewed on a news programme and a woman. —— than a woman. news editors might argue that most senior politicians and business leaders, for instance, are male, but when choosing contributors because of their knowledge and experience rather than their position, there is a wider pool to draw on.

so why did recent city university research find there were more male than female experts on programmes? things have changed since all male discussion panels were the norm, but audiences still detect a lack of balance when a special edition of newsnight recalled that a problem there was a panel with only three women on a panel of 17 people. outside source, shown daily on bbc world news has for more than a year been monitoring the gender of those featured on its programme. it has since been seen to have achieved an equal balance. problems including the one show and the news at ten is now taking part in what the bbc are calling the 50—50 challenge. and this week the corporation

announced its aim to achieve an equal gender split in what it called "expert voices" by next year. some members of the audience applauded the move, with one writing on twitter, "the bbc has a gender equity problem, change is overdue." others had reservations, several along these lines. or as this twitter user put it: this is the presenter of outside source, ros atkins. welcome to newswatch. how difficult was this when you started doing it? that was back in 2016. back in 2016 i was looking at what you have alluded to, that there are more men in news programmes than women. i should say the bbc doesn't particularly have a gender problem,

news media more broadly has an issue it needs to take on. my challenge was before talking about other programmes i needed to prove this was possible so i said to the team who make outside source, why don't we try to do this? and the core idea of the proposal, to them, was that we would measure the people coming on to our programme every day, immediately after broadcast, we would share that data, and i was convinced that seeing that data would inform us better about the challenge, it would engage us better about the issue and it would increase motivation which in turn would help our approach to it. and to my immense excitement we went from 39% of women injanuary and by april the next year we reached 51% of women. how difficult was that to do? quite difficult, part of it was a mindset where we went from sometimes thinking about the issue to everyday thinking about it, that made a difference. we also studied the subject areas

where we found we always spoke to men. so for instance outside source covers iraq and syria most days and almost always we have been turning to men so we sat down and went, there are many brilliant women offering an analysis in these countries, let's contact them and see when they would be available, let's involve them in our coverage. if you watch outside source now and see us cover iraq and syria more times than not you'll see a woman. so there was work in terms of diversified our contacts but i wouldn't say the hike in workload tough. the benefit of diversifying your contacts is that you don'tjust benefit on that day when you find someone new, you go back to them time after time. so you did get to 50—50 quite quickly. the idea is now being rolled out across bbc news and some high profile programmes including the one show. how will it work? how it works is, i've been having lots of conversations with programmes saying, look, we've got a system based around

collection which is effective. why don't you try it? we don't count the presenters because the networks control them and we don't count people connected to that day's story. so if i run a clip of theresa may on the programme we don't count it because we have no control over who the prime minister is. beyond that we have seen the numbers of women going on to the numbers of programmes on this 50—50 project changing markedly and that change is real, just because we not counting the small number of people over whom the bbc has no control, like an eyewitness, a police spokesperson, prime minister, the bulk of these programmes are made up of experts and reporters, and all those people are being counted, so when we say there are shifts, these are real shifts. some viewers say there is an obsession with numbers, there could be a compromise.

the golden rule is that the best guest always goes on air. so there's no compromise on quality. and if on any given day the best guest means that there were 65% men, that's fine. we have no issue with that. there's no pressure to hit a quota. it's not a quota. we say is, we will measure across one month, reasonably long time, allowing for the ebb and flow of news and the availability of guests, and we say it is reasonable, over a month, for a lot of programmes to reach a balance of men and women. because surely we're not saying that there are more men informed in the world than women, that there are more men expert in things than women. i don't think we accept that. across a reasonably long period like a month, it's a reasonable expectation to aspire to have an equally or reasonably equally close number of men and women. ros atkins, thank you.

finally last sunday's newspaper review on breakfast included this. a great story about how you can choose your emerging post—brexit. the british bulldog is on one side and the eu flag with starry eyes, what did you make of this? i love this story, the minute i saw this i thought we have to do this. i loved it that at the end of the story it says government sources indicated the gibraltar—based company go ahead with the launch the government might look at imposing a post—brexit tariff on emojis. a few minutes later a slightly sheepish rogerjohnson returned to the subject. a couple of people have pointed this out that today is of course the 1st of april. this story in the observer about the emojis that we were discussing, as someone said "very enthusiastically" here, is written by, if you come across here, thejournalist who wrote it is called shirzo primavera which means of spring.‘

why did we not get that! a number of viewers asked that question but mark had a more sympathetic response: thank you for all your comments. to share your opinions on bbc news and current affairs or appear on the programme, called us, or e—mail us. find us on twitter and look at our website, the address is bbc.co.uk/newswatch. we'll be back to hear your thoughts about bbc news coverage once more next week. goodbye. hello. thoughts on the weekend in just a second but first of all i think we should mark the fact that on friday here in the heart of london the temperatures reached in excess of 17 degrees celsius, the warmest day of the year so far.

not far behind in the sunshine stakes, this was south wales. somebody had to have all the cloud and rain and initially it was there in northern ireland and then moved on to scotland and it was captured beautifully by graham in the heart of sterling. the weekend, cloudy, damp and mild. there will be dry weather. this is how friday shaped up. the reason why we had the brightness down towards the south—east and the warmth was because the frontal system never actually made it down into the south—east and into the first part of saturday, the rain still drifting its way slowly towards the northern half of scotland and then it arcs back from the north sea down to a new area of cloud and rain towards the south—west. cloud means that the weekend will not start on a particularly cold note. that frontal system that i have drawn there as a straight line will wave all over, particularly in the central and eastern parts of the british isles for a good part of the weekend. to the east there is some relatively mild air to be had. as i say, we already had the temperature up to 17 and we will not be far off that mark —

if we get a little bit of brightness, perhaps, across east anglia and the south—east. further west, close to weather front, perhaps, the rain can be quite heavy for a time and as you see it drifts very slowly further north. it could eventually end up in northern ireland could reach the scottish borders and eventually clear from the south. a bit of brightness here and that is where it could hit 16 or 17 so some nice dry weather across the north of scotland. and from saturday and into sunday, same weather front. a little wave on it there. a zone of cloud rather than a thin band of cloud. and, again, at its thickest it could produce rain. at this distance my money is on the fact that there could be cloud and rain across east anglia and the south—east. elsewhere, this one is for the optimists, lots of dry weather around and there may be sunshine that could even as far north as edinburgh, be boosting the temperatures to around 13 degrees. just a sneak peek at the start of next week when you thought it was this atlantic front coming in to dominate the weather, in fact it is a low pressure over france which eventually churns cloud and rain in from the east and south—east across a good part

of england and wales. the best of the dry weather further north. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america on pbs and around the globe. i'm nkem ifejika. our top stories: brazil's former president lula is negotiating his surrender hours after a police deadline expired. doctors say sergei skripal, the former russian spy poisoned with a nerve agent, is making a rapid recovery. russia warns of a tough response as president putin's inner circle is implicated in new sanctions from the us. police in new york charge martial arts fighter conor mcgregor with assault and criminal mischief. hello and welcome to the programme.