mark selby has defended his china open title, comfortably beating fellow englishman barry hawkins in the final in beijing. the tournament is the last event before the season ending world championships in sheffield later this month, and the world number one looked in great form, finishing with a break of 132 to claim the title. that is all from us. we will have more throughout the evening. the american border with mexico has become, in the trump era, a political line in the sand. a new book called the line becomes a river, by francisco cantu, takes you there, into dangerous and unforgiving territory, where the author, a third—generation mexican—american, worked for the us border patrol in pursuit of gun runners, smugglers, and of course the people

who were simply trying to get across. a personal story and a lyrical account of the borderland which, for him, will always be heavy with ambiguity. what you are saying in this book, i think, is that borders, particularly this one, are never as simple as they seem. no, i mean, honestly... i think the core arguments of this book is that we are constantly being asked to see, in the united states and elsewhere, i think, the border as this simple black and white issue. but it is deeply complicated. your own immersion in that

complication is fascinating. you are third—generation mexican—american. your grandfather was the first to go to the us and you then served in the border patrol, so you are enforcing the laws of your country, or trying to make sure people didn't cross illegally. but in your heart you understood that this border had been porous for a very long time. my grandfather came to the united states fleeing violence during the mexican revolution, which is really what is causing a lot of people to come to the united states today. they are fleeing violence in their home countries. in a lot of ways, my grandfather's family came to the united states as refugees, really. people who are fleeing the wars of central america, they're refugees as well. yes, the border has been porous, and there is this idea now which i think sounds very appealing

to people who are not from the border or who have no real understanding of the physical landscape of the border, that you can build a wall and stop that. but of course it's really a ridiculous notion. it's a sort of mediaeval concept. let's go back to the book itself. what you do is, you describe first of all the territory. its physical presence, and its compelling presence, because it is a strange place. it's so rugged and so dangerous. it's like nowhere else. i grew up as the son of a park ranger. my mother worked for the united states park service. so as a boy, i was always out in the desert. actually, my very first memories are of the west texas landscape, very close to the border.

it's harsh and inhospitable but also very beautiful, a landscape as old as time. it's attractive, but as you say, very dangerous. a lot of the people who for one reason or another have come over, not talking about gun smuggling or drug smuggling, but people who just tried to get to the united states, the journeys they undertook were extremely harsh. i feel that in the united states and abroad, people have little conception of how vast a journey this is. most people, we sort of imagine there is a line in the sand and you step on to the other side of it and you are in the united states. that is not actually how this works at all. since the 1990s in the united states we have actually been building walls. we have been hiring more border patrol agents, enforcing the border in the cities.

that has forced the crossings further and further out into the most remote, dangerous, rugged parts of the desert. you have this situation now where people will be walking out for as much as a0 miles, 60 miles, to circumvent these roads and checkpoints and patrols. and many people lose their lives. hundreds of people die every year. what do you feel, to come to this contemporary point for a moment, what do you feel about those undocumented people in the united states, who come in illegally, who have no documentation, but who perhaps have been there for one or two generations, their kids have been to school, they have been paying taxes. what do you think should be done, if anything? you know, i don't have a policy solution. that's why i have chosen to be a writer and not a politician. but, you know, what i can say is that i think the way we talk about migrants in the united states

and probably globally is very problematic. and i think the language we use to talk about migrants dehumanises them. we quite often read headlines about a wave of migration or a tide of newcomers. or an uptick, as though these people's lives are something that can be plotted on a graph. when you look at the individual, you realise the individual has three us citizen children, has been living here for 30 years, left the country because their mother died. so, i think we have a moral obligation to people who have long been part of our society. the book ends — the last third of the book, really, is about what happens to you.

it's an incident you went through after you'd left the border patrol, enforcing the law, to do something else. you were drawn back by a personal involvement, by a story. tell us briefly what happened. so, after i left the border patrol, i tried to distance myself from that work in every way imaginable. i was working at a coffee shop. i was going to school, to college. i became friends with a man gradually, who worked at the coffee shop, and he was from mexico. he had lived in the united states for 30 years. he had three united states citizen children. he disappeared from work one day. you know, two years after we became friends. and i started to ask what had happened to him, and it turned out he had left because a family member had died in mexico. and we thought he would be back in a couple of weeks. and when he didn't come back, that's when we found out that he was actually undocumented.

that he had been arrested at the border. and because of my work, i was familiar with the system that he was stepping into, and so i began to sort of help his family figure out where he would be. so even having worked on the border, you hadn't seen it from that point of view? you were doing your duty, you were doing the best you could, in a humane way, to enforce the law. now you began to see it in a completely different light? yes, and i think i was seeing how inhumane the system is, really, from the other side. in america there is this sort of vast deportation industrial complex. which i was only a small part of. you know, private prisons, detention centres, courtrooms, all of that, that was really foreign to me. what i also saw was how the border would be thrust into people's lives,

like the lives ofjose, this man, and his children, who had never crossed the border in their lives, but the border was thrust into their lives. 0ne fact that i have learned since i have been in england is that the distance from lands end tojohn 0'groats is actually half the distance of the us—mexico border. so the argument to build a wall, it would be like saying, build a wall twice from lands end tojohn 0'groats. we will leave that one to hang in the air. francisco cantu, author of the line becomes a river, thank you very much. thank you for having me. quite the range of weather across the uk again today. wonderful weekend conditions for some of us.

get on that beach in cornwall underneath that blue sky! not eve ryo ne underneath that blue sky! not everyone was so underneath that blue sky! not everyone was so lucky. central and eastern parts of england, cloudy. some of us web as well. misty and murky. that soon of cloudy and damp weather will stay with his overnight. mild underneath this. elsewhere, clear spells. patchy fog will develop in parts of northern ireland, north—west england, south—west scotland. risk in some of it will be dense. away from the south—east, they could be a touch of frost in north—east scotland. monday, the rain will move further west across parts of the midlands, moving into east wales and part of south—west england. much of northern england away from yorkshire, scotla nd england away from yorkshire, scotland and northern ireland seeing some sunny scotland and northern ireland seeing some sunny spells. around io—iad.

this weather pattern will set up the week ahead. low pressure to the south of us and a rounded weather systems. an easterly flow coming in asa systems. an easterly flow coming in as a result of that. some rather mild looking colours coming our way. the origin of this area is towards eastern europe and eastern mediterranean. the butchers could be a little bit above average. it will be cold on the north sea coasts. rain at times but not all the times. not plenty of sunshine, i'm afraid, is the week goes on. tuesday, the speu is the week goes on. tuesday, the spell of rain will work out of england and wales and the parts of scotla nd england and wales and the parts of scotland and northern ireland during the day. south—eastern area should start to brighten up. that could be thundery showers heading into sutherland and, particularly the south—west of england and wales later in the day. the best of the sunshine to the south—east. the north—east seat post is where temperatures will be in single figures to the week ahead with that

wind coming in off quite cold sea at this time of year. plenty of low cloud and missed post of head west for the dry and occasionally bright weather. this is bbc news. the headlines. the un security council is expected to hold an emergency meeting tomorrow to discuss reports of a chemical attack in syria. medical sources say dozens of people died in the rebel—held town of douma. donald trump describes president assad as an "animal" and condemns syria's allies. the syrian government denies responsibility. ministers deny any link between falling police numbers and the rise in violence in london. labour accuse them of having their heads in the sand. the foreign secretary borisjohnson describes jeremy corbyn as "the kremlin's useful idiot". labour hits back

saying mrjohnson has "made a fool of himself" over russia. voting in the hungarian election continues, as queues still remain at some polling stations