"get ready russia because they'll be coming! nice and new and smart". it sounds rather like the way social media is said to have amplified gang conflict in london, apparently contributing to the rise in knife attacks. except this is russia and america. it was only back in 2009 that a then new president obama wanted to press the reset button on the relationship with russia. then president trump promised "we're going to have a great relationship with putin and russia." well, not quite. all news leads to russia: the skripals, facebook and fake news, and above all, syria. and it's syria which is forcing a choice on the us and its allies, on how to deal with putin and his. mark urban is with me. mark, on syria, where are we this evening? well we had that tweet this morning, get ready, russia, the missiles on the way. civilian targets, we assume he meant. the white house press briefing this evening, doubt has been cast the president is still looking at options, it was implied these might not even include a missile attack. you might say, they are trying

to reintroduce an element of strategic uncertainty or wrong—foot the potential opponents. or you might say this is just a white house all over the place in terms of its messaging. when it comes to the americans and british as well, timing, what is the horizon we are talking about? some were suggesting this would happen tonight, but now we see interesting indications from downing street. firstly, downing street appears ready tojoin in. we don't know exactly by what methods, to support possible military action. there will be a special cabinet meeting tomorrow so we don't think that will happen tonight, therefore. we have the white house saying the president is still looking at options. a report in the telegraph tonight suggesting nuclear submarines, british ones, would have to get into place. and be there within range by tomorrow evening. american ships are american ships are setting sail, heading across the atlantic. but events, it seems, may not allow them sufficient time

to get to the eastern med. instead, it looks tonight like military action with the assets already in place. so what do we think is in position now? there's a couple of warships, including the french aquitaine and uss cook, both equipped with cruise missiles. there's another couple of destroyers and perhaps a submarine that could join in firing those. the americans could also use stealth aircraft, like the f22 and bz bomber, to add to the mix. and today, several flight refuelling tankers moved to the eastern mediterranean as a possible prelude to that. the british might and support, intelligence gathering, and perhaps bombing also too from their base in cyprus. if you want more firepower, that still a few days‘ sail away in the shape of the truman carrier group, still out in the atlantic. what all this suggests is a desire to hurt syria more than last year's raids, but not so much that the russians become casualties. so how to make sure of that?

possibly the russians might even be warned. president trump has telegraphed pretty clearly his intentions to do something. but, again, russia might choose, in this case, to refuse to pull its personnel back, and to say, no, we are not going to just let you do this strike, in effect. we're going to keep our personnel here, and if you really want to go ahead with this, you'll have to risk going through us. so i think the options for deconfliction depend very much on how much russia is willing to stand aside. so what about targeting? clearly, the americans don't want to touch the major russian facilities at tartous naval base and him and himeimin airfield. the us could prioritise syrian airfields, like these two near damascus, one of which is home to helicopters that may have been used to drop chlorine cylinders. further afield, you have t—a and shayrat, both airbases that have been hit before. key chemical weapons and regime bases in the mount qasioun area might also be struck.

for the military planners, targeting that does more damage than at sharrat airfield last year, but not so much that russians are killed in some of these bases is the aim, and having telegraphed their intentions so clearly in advance, they may well find that some of the key syrian assets have been moved before they strike. i'm joined now by conservative mp chris philp and former us ambassador to the un zalmay khalilzad. very good evening to you both. if i may start with zalmay, should there be punishment for the chemical attack on saturday? well, there has got to be not only punishment but deterrent so these sorts of attacks using chemical weapons do not occur again. and therefore the challenge is how robust should the strike be, how protracted should the strikes be, to have the deterrent effect without escalating the situation in which the us gets dragged

into the syrian civil war? or into a confrontation. military confrontation, with russia. give us the answer to that, what is the right level of deterrence, what gives you deterrent without escalation? that's what i think the message that the president, i think, meant to send to vladimir putin. that we are coming, but we are coming for syria. he was inviting them to stay out of what the us is going to do. i believe that what would be required would be a series of strikes that hurts the regime of bashar al—assad substantially, so that he would calculate that going to use chemical weapons again would be too risky. it will have to be considerably more

than what we did one year ago. let me put that to chris philp. where are you on the deterrence without escalation? i agree with the former ambassador's analysis, my starting point is that an atrocity has been committed and having heard the world health organisation's views today that their partners on the ground do believe chemical weapons were used that killed 43 people, the west has to act. we can't allow women and children to be murdered with chemical weapons and stand aside and do nothing. i agree with the ambassador's analysis, we need to be carefully targeted in how we take that action to avoid escalation by pinpointing the syrian military assets that either manufacture or deliver these agents, by being very precise we can avoid the risk of escalation.

would you tell the russians? one option is to say this is where we are going to strike, get your planes and people out of the way so you don't get caught in it. i'm not sure i would go that far, if we striking chemical weapons facilities the russians would be well advised to stay away from those. the important point to make is this is not about retribution punishment, it's about degrading the syrian government's ability to manufacture and deliver these weapons. secondly, it's about deterrence. it's very noticeable after we failed to act in september 2013 there was a period of years when assad did use chemical weapons but about a year ago the americans took limited action and 412 months, the last 12 months but there were no chemical weapons attacks. this deterrent point is incredibly important. zalmay khalilzad, are you scared of escalation and a bigger cold war with hot flash points between russia and the us? do you think we should be scared of that now? there are quite a lot of fronts on which there is conflict

between these two. i think that one has to be concerned about the potential for escalation. and therefore one has to go the extra mile to make it clear to vladimir putin that the objective of strikes in degradation and deterrence, as the member of parliament said. the us did not intend to get involved otherwise in syria. and does not want to challenge the position of russia in syria. that puts the burden on russia on putin. does he want to risk conflict the united states? given what the us message is. that the purpose is deterrence of use of chemical weapons. the russians and the syrians are unlikely to be deterred, aren't they. for the syrians this

is sexist and shall. the russians are not going to see it as a serious strike against them personally. in the end it isn't going to deter. i don't know whether the strikes the us will carry out, if it is focused on deterrence, would be existential, the balance of power in syria has changed significantly in favour of the regime. the russian position is relatively strong, given it also has the iranians' support. president trump has played a game of chicken with mr putin, he has thrown at the steering wheel out, saying, we're coming. now it's to escalate, or to stay out. he's staying out. the message is, we're not going to change — we're not going to change

the situation on the ground dramatically. and we're not going to come after you. there is a way it could work. of course syria is the most complex. there is a risk things can get out of control. the last point to a chris philp. it looks like the british are on board for this. i don't recollect there being a vote in parliament to sign up to that. we have to wait to see the decisions the french, americans and uk government take in the coming hours and days. this idea about a vote in parliament is clearly desirable that parliament has a chance to vote. sometimes events on the ground move fast and it simply isn't possible. the idea we have a vote for action is relatively recent, it happened with iraqi in 2003 and in 2013 and 15.

we haven't had vote historically, we declared war on germany in 1939 without a vote in parliament. if there is a fast—moving military or diplomatic situation you wouldn't want to circumscribe the government ability to manoeuvre by requiring a vote. i wonder whether you would win the vote, the dup voted against action in 2013 and they hold the balance of power at the moment. it's true they did but andrew percy, a conservative mp, has made clear that although they voted against before they would now. many labour backbenchers who voted for action in 2015 have indicated they would be open to supporting it. i wouldn't make assumptions about the vote. chris philp and zalmay khalilzad, thank you very much. well we've talked about syria and our response to russia's involvement there. but let's look inside russia itself now. we associate the country with its president, but there's a potentially complicating factor here. there are different factions around president putin and much of what happens mightjust be reflecting the playing out of tensions between them.

gabriel gatehouse explains in a film that contains some flashing images. prison system of power is much more ofa prison system of power is much more of a bosanquet in court that a relationship where the lead at dictates to his subordinate stash rack byza ntian. putin dictates to his subordinate stash rack byzantian. putin has always played a role as a powerbroker between the different groupings all vying for power. when we talk about the kremlin, what we are really talking about is a patchwork of factions, with putin as its centre. one way of dividing the clans is between the powerful security services, known as the siloviki on the one hand, and a loose grouping of elites on the other, including technocrats and putin loyalists.

both sides have their own politicians and oligarchs. the system functions thanks to a fragile balance of power. tensions between the factions can have deadly consequences. the killing of boris nemtsov is a case in point. the prominent opposition politician was shot dead in 2015, gunned down right in front of the kremlin. five chechens were convicted of the killing, but who gave the order? in the west, many blamed putin himself, but in russia, nemtsov‘s supporters believed he was killed because of an internal battle within the security establishment, involving the fsb and the chechen leader, ramzan kadyrov. even many of boris nemtsov‘s supporters, and vladimir putin's harshest critics, believe that the russian president didn't know about the murder until after it happened, and interestingly, just a few days after the killing, putin disappeared from public view for more than a week. the assumption was he was trying to restore order amongst the clans.

let's go back to our map of kremlin influence. the elites can be further subdivided into two groups, the liberal reformists, and those who favour stronger state control of the economy. the security services can also be divided into camps. the fsb, and other rivals, like the interior ministry, and military and foreign intelligence. the kremlin‘s factions are in flux. conflicts are usually played out behind closed doors, but occasionally they break out into the open. late last year, alexey ulyukaev, putin's former economy minister, was sentenced to eight years in a penal colony. the case hinged on a sting operation by the security services, involving igor sechin, a close confidant of putin, ceo of the russian oil giant, rosneft, and one of the most powerful men in russia. in a country where institutions are weak, the kremlin‘s clans centre around individuals.

igor sechin is widely regarded as a leader of the siloviki, or one of them, and he's also an advocate of greater state control. ulyukaev, the economy minister, belonged to the liberal reformists. his conviction was a victory for the statists. the idea of putin's power is that he himself controls only some sectors of power, of what he wants to be manageable, and of course it's law enforcement structures, it's energy structures, foreign policy, military and industrial confilcts. that's it. and so to salisbury. if we assume that russia was behind the attack, onrthe '§kff§§l:§idfl'5€afi'§€t ,, , or he didn't, and if he didn't, then was it part of the ongoing

battle for power between the clans? there could be a scenario in which one of the security services that are fighting with another part of the security services are interested to see russia moving more again into more confrontational relationship with the west, and are using that incident in salisbury to be able to influence the cause of where russian policy is going after the elections. as russia and the west come close to direct confrontation in syria... he speaks russian. dealing with a man who is willing to tear up the international rule book to achieve his goals is one thing. dealing with a man who might be losing control to powerful warring factions is quite another. well, let's get a view of all of that and relations with russia from someone who has been an insider there. a former spy for the soviets,

vladimir yakunin got to know mr putin before he was famous, and rose to be the head of the russian railways for ten years. he is one of those named as having sanctions against him by the us. but not the uk. he is currently the chairman of dialogue of civilisations group, and he's published a memoir here, the treacherous path. very good evening to you. just on the subject of gabriel's piece, do you think president putin is in strong control over everything that is happening in russia, or do you think the competing factions may... there are to structures of the state, presidential republic and parliamentary republic. russia is a presidential republic, where the head is president. from this point of view, we should consider what is going on. it is simplification to sayjust one person can dictate and control everything all over the world.

it's not possible. who do you think ordered the killing of alexander litvinenko? listen, i have no idea about that, and as you know, after all this research is, after all this investigations, the final answer wasn't given officially. you can almost take that one as a lie detector test. we know who killed alexander litvinenko. the british asked for those responsible to be extradited. president putin has given one of them a medal for services to the motherland. how can we have a conversation, any dialogue, when such a basic, known fact, which was traced to the polonium trail left by the perpetrators all over london and the plane,

how can we have the conversation if we can't get him to even address the most basic, known issues? first of all, we both agree that until the court's decision was delivered, there is no basic facts. that is only for the court to decide. i suppose, from both sides, if you are talking about russia and europe, if you are talking about the big west and russia, i suppose this is a high time to try to calm down, to stop, and to think. i think a lot of people would love to, but they can't get over the very basic gap in communications. i agree with you. let's go on to the skripals. what do you think happened to them? do you accept the british

government's data, or do you think they had bad fish or something like that? what do you think happened to them? i suppose we should deal only with the facts. the phrase is that it seemed to be all, or there is a lot of evidence, this is not for the serious people. in this field, the field of secret services, intelligence, there is a special code of behaviour. those detained agents that were exchanged with the others never are the subject for further persecution. if russia didn't do it... if i was a country who was falsely accused of doing it, i would take it quite seriously, and say, i've never used it for political association. instead we've had a lot of sneering, sarcasticjokes from the russian embassy, we've had items on russian state

television about traitors dying in odd circumstances... you havejust mentioned dialogue. even if we are talking the same language, with the russian, for one part it is not native, but the mentality is different. i am positive, the ambassador was not meaning to be sarcastic. believe me, he totally means to be sarcastic. his english is fantastic. but the embassy tweet... i don't want to discuss him. you asked my opinion. my opinion is we should have done better in terms of explanations, but on the other side, it was not directed to anybody. we don't have time to go through all of these, so let's focus on syria. you heard the two gentleman on earlier saying that we need

deterrence and there must be escalation. —— must not be escalation. what is your opinion? i am very much here to tell the truth. what the ambassador said, we will strike, but we do not expect that the situation will deteriorate, that is something naive. it is not possible. if we are talking about cold war, i suppose now the world is standing you think putin, if he sees retaliation against syria, will feel he needs to retaliate against the retaliation? again, again, we are living in a world of information fakes. i'm not saying that is exactly everywhere, but we live in a strange world.

we are. we are living in a world where russia says there hasn't been a chemical attack. they said the same last year. they have vetoed the idea of an independent investigation. an independent investigation that happened last year found that there was a chemical attack them, and that it was assad. there was an assumption... saying the military capabilities of mass destruction, and finally there is nothing of... no one is predicating the correctness of western policy on this against the correctness of western policy on that. the west, the uk, has had the most massive amount of investigations into the mistakes made on the run—up to the iraq war. independent investigations have now found that what russia said about the attacks last year are... you asked for my opinion. if there is any proof of real attack, i will be the first to condemn this.

i am condemning the attempt to assassinate people here, skripal and his daughter, but i cannot buy everything which i am reading and seeing now just because. .. you know, experts said that it was russian to produce, it was russian—made, but final experts, british experts, said, no way, we cannot detect it. it isn't possible. why were politicians using that to address society? it isn't correct. no one is saying that all sides don't make some mistakes. the question is, can you have a sensible conversation with russia on these issues when they are throwing so much disinformation out? in a way, our picture of russia is one of a sort of thuggish capitalism, of a kleptocracy where people, an elite, are taking the resources for themselves.

your book misses out on all sorts of interesting things. there are great accounts of running the railways, but you are one of the problems, are due? under your watch, the contracts for railways, they were finding tens of contracts given to companies who were shell companies, no—one knew who owned them, the two companies look to linked to each other, reuters were finding transactions passing through a bank that was run by an old acquaintance of yours, who said he understands banking well, and no railway services were being delivered. this is gross corruption, ripping off the russian people, and this is why we are where we are.

firstly, yes, i was part of the establishment. you are correct. all other things, those assumptions, don't carry, because never, ever, any checking found out that the money was paid in russian railways, but the services were not delivered. never. it is a false assumption. this is not true. it is not correct. as far as the system, as far as the way to do business, whether i like it or not... if there is a company which, in accordance with russian law, is getting the contract, they should fulfil it. never, in my memory, we signed a contract and a service was not delivered. never. can i ask, do you think russian tax payers and railway users got value for money out of contracts

you awarded, or were awarded under your watch, to shell companies? there is no public ownership, and they appear to be linked companies with only two bidders, forcing contracts between a whole bunch of years, actually. forget about it. listen, never, ever was it the case, when the railway monies were paid and the service was not delivered. we know you are very wealthy. second. may i finish? we were the company which was given all the rights and orders to construct olympic games infrastructure. we made it two years before the mandatory period. unbelievable.

my partners, my friends who were western railways, they praised this fact. that was the answer. we see you are a very wealthy man, your son is a very wealthy man who has british citizenship, he lives here. do you understand why there is western suspicion, when we look at skripals, syria, do you understand why the west has so many suspicions of putin's russia ? yes, because i'm professionally dealing with aspects of relations between different civilisations. you know, i can answer your question, it will take a lot of time. but to make it short, listen, the suspicions between nations, between west and east, was not born yesterday, it was not born even ten years ago.

that is the historical precedent we are living through. but now i'm positive they will develop to such a scale that we should consider what will be the future for our kids and that is a very good reason to stop, whether you like it or not, to stop, to think, and to deal with the objective facts. a very good note to end on, thank you very much, vladimir yakunin, and the book the treacherous path. the borough of ealing in west london has taken an important step that may set a pattern elsewhere. councillors there have voted unanimously to impose a public space protection order around a marie stopes abortion clinic, the order designed to prevent anti—abortion vigils right outside the clinic. in future, any protest will have to be at least 100 metres away. it has met objections

from anti—abortion campaigners — but the argument is not about abortion per se, it's about the right to protest — and to directly approach the women walking into the clinic. i am joined now from manchester by beth who went to a clinic as a student and was made uncomfortable by the presence of pro—life campaigners, and in the studio by alina who was approached by pro—life campaigners and decided to keep her child and nowjoins anti—abortion vigils outside the ealing clinic. let me start with you, beth. take us through the experience outside the clinic and what you didn't like about it. so when i went to the clinic it was in essex. as i approached the clinic, bear in mind i don't know where i'm going, the only reason i probably knew it was a clinic because of google maps on my phone and the fact these people were outside protesting. there were two men, one woman, a table, some fold up chairs. and as i got closer i realised

there were lots of tiny model doll foetuses lots of different sizes, which as a person going in you automatically think that's what's inside you, which is not true at all. incredibly misleading. they have leaflets they hand to you, which on one side show incredibly gory pictures of bloody dead babies. on the other side they have a really nice cute picture of a newborn baby and a really happy mum. did you feel it was harassment as you went in or could you just have said not today thank you and walk past them and ignore them? obviously that's what i did do and what the majority of people do. i don't think it necessarily mean it's ok they stood there. i think women who are accessing abortion clinics, a lot of the time, especially in my position,

i was a first—year student, didn't really have any friends at university. you are incredibly vulnerable. at a vulnerable point. your experience is very different, alina. you were persuaded ? definitely not, never. i've made my decision. but it was at the steps of the clinic, this is the one in ealing, the subject but margaret know, i was not in ealing, i was in central london. in ealing ijust attend vigils. did the vigils work on you? you were intending to have an abortion when you went there. definitely, it wasn't planned, to have a child, it wasn't my best moment in life, because of my circumstances, i had been sacked by my employer, i didn't have my financial situation very good, i didn't have anyone to take responsibility for me, i just felt abandoned. i was literally abandoned. beth said it felt like harassment as these people were showing

pictures of foetuses and you felt it was helpful when they approached you? it was no harassment because ijust want to say, when i was pregnant, five weeks and a half, i had been having myself a scan at nhs and definitely the baby had a heartbeat. then i had my second child scan at seven weeks, and definitely it was a baby. my third baby i had a scan, at ten weeks, and definitely is a baby, it isn't nothing else. you are now attending some of these vigils. yes i do. how often do you succeed in persuading somebody who goes through? i'm not persuading anyone, i'm just offering a leaflet, and if they want to accept help, they are most welcome to come with us. beth, what do you make of what alina is saying? i think there are people who are paid to do that inside the abortion clinic itself, that is what the nurses who work

in these clinics do, there is no need to try and persuade a woman on the way in by someone who has no training, someone who clearly has a biased opinion about what is going on, a complete stranger who has no idea what is going on in that person's life. it's not unreasonable to say you should be confronted with the choice you are making, and the seriousness of the choice you are making, if it means people are standing... that is what the workers in the clinics do, one in five people who use marie stopes clinics actually choose not to go through with the abortion. when you are in there, you are provided with all the options, given all the support you need. you are allowed to be at the clinic, you just have to be 100 yards away so women can choose whether they want to talk to you... when i call myself to marie stopes they only offered me abortion, i told them my situation

and they said they could offer only abortion, no other choice i had. they give me all the choice. we need to leave it there, it's a long discussion, thank you both very much. a bit of history now. do you know the konigsberg bridge problem? it's an old puzzle — if you like puzzles — this is one where you have to cross all the bridges and end up where you started. but you can only cross them once. it goes like this. you start with early 19th century konigsburg — a bavarian city of islands and bridges. the challenge is how — or whether — you can cross all the bridges once

and make it back to your starting point. you could easily notch up your 10,000 steps a day trying to walk through a route that works, because no—one has found one, which led to the conclusion it was impossible. you can redraw the picture in simplerform here — and the logic of this goes that if the number of bridges coming from an island is even you can go back and forth and finish where you started; but if it is an odd number — as in the case of konigsburg, then you are doomed to fail in the bridge crossing challenge! well, this is where the nineteenth century mathematician ada lovelace comes in. a new book about her is published next week, and the writers have unearthed some of her work on this famous bridge problem and its impossibility. here it is — a newly discovered scribble from the 1840s, apparently drawn in a conversation between ada lovelace and charles babbage — who is seen as the nineteenth century father of computing. as you might be able to see here — they were playing with the bridge problem.

sketching it out. and they were working on the rules. 1,3,5 bridges here, versus two oi’ foui’. now the contention of the new book on ada lovelace is that this was an example of algorithmic thinking. an algorithm simply being a sequence of rules. and because algorithms are the basis of computer programmes, the book is called ada lovelace: the making of a computer scientist. one of the authors is ursula martin, a computer scientist and a professor in the maths institute at oxford, and the person who discovered the early victorian doodles in the bodleian library at oxford. very good evening to you. the connection between those scribbles and computing, modern computing, what is that connection? well what they're doing in those scribbles is they're trying to find a pattern in a network. and the way they are trying to find, to solve the problem, is not by puzzling just over konigsberg, they are doing what computer scientists today do, abstract in the problem, playing with different bridges and islands. konigsberg has four islands and seven bridges but then you start thinking about bigger networks and you get all the way up to facebook, that has 2 billion islands of people. and 300 billion bridges. it would keep you busy drawing it. the extraordinary thing

is that the principles are the same. the principles they are playing with on that piece of paper are the same as the principles of people today trying to write algorithms to crack massive problems. charles babbage was thinking about machines that would do this analysis and ada lovelace was thinking about the algorithms. how much ambition could they foretell? they probably wouldn't have foreseen cambridge analytica but how much could they envisage computers doing? that's where the idea of obstruction becomes very important, because what they were saying... they called their computer the analytical engine, it did analysis, it analysed problems. and they were thinking about how impossible and engine like that could analyse any problem you chucked at it.

because they were thinking of the problems in mathematical terms, mathematics has no end, so the machine would have no end. they called it an analytical engine, didn't they. tell us a little bit about ada. she didn't have formal schooling as such. she didn't, she was born in 1815. women of her generation and class didn't go to school, certainly weren't let into universities. but she was posh, so she had access to tutors, to books. she was able more or less to write to anyone she wondered unsafe would you give me a maths lesson? by that way she learned all sorts of contemporary mathematics of the day. we see she was actually pretty talented. pretty good at it. and very well connected, too. she knew charles babbage and charles dickens and quite a few others, michael faraday.

yes she was, she was very well—connected and that is why, you know, people play around with the idea of the lone genius. if you look at the lone genius, they were not lone geniuses, there was a whole crew of mid—19th century scientists, poets, talking to each other. they were connected, it gets you back to the bridges. they were networked. thanks for talking to us. that's almost it for tonight. kirsty is here tomorrow. from me, a very good night. but before we go, we learned tonight of the passing of gillian ayres, good evening. we have had a lot of cloud around over the last couple of days. generally things have been quite disappointing but slowly but

surely that is going to change over the next few days. the cloud will tend to melt away. we will see a bit more brightness and temperatures will rise as well. but it is a slow old process, so for tomorrow expect a lot of cloud to hang around in most places. the satellite picture shows all these areas of cloud being flung around an area of low pressure. this particular cluster of slightly thicker cloud is currently producing some slightly thicker outbreaks of patchy rain and drizzle which will edge further northwards and east as we go through the rest of the night and into tomorrow. tomorrow dawns grey and cloudy and a little bit murky places, some spots of drizzle around. many places will stay cloudy but for the north—west of scotla nd stay cloudy but for the north—west of scotland we will see some sunshine. other western fringe jurors of england and wales and sheltered spots in northern ireland will start to brighten up a little bit with some sunshine. people feel disappointingly chilly close the north sea coasts where it stays cloudy and murky. during tomorrow night into the early hours of friday we are likely to see some showers pushing up from the south. some of

these could be heavy, possibly even thundery. it will be another cloudy and murky night, so another mild one. temperatures dipping no lower than five or six degrees as we start of friday morning. similar whether to what we have had so far this week, high agut across scandinavia, low pressure down to the south, throwing frontal systems in our direction. this front here is going to bring showery rain across parts of northern england and scotland as we go on into friday. to the south of that thing is drying up but it will stay cloudy, i suspect. maybe something a little bit right showing its hand close to the far south of england during the day, but that in itself could spark off the odd hefty shower. temperatures, though, just beginning to climb subtly. 15 degrees in london, for example. that isa sign degrees in london, for example. that is a sign of what is to come. the weekend will continue that subtle rise in temperatures. could get to i7, rise in temperatures. could get to 17, maybe 18 degrees in the south. there will be some spells of sunshine, equally some showery rain at times. we can sum weekend like

this. the chance of one or two showers, but let me show you what happens as we go into next week. we are going to start to bring in this southerly wind, and that will bring rising temperatures. in fact, we could well get up to the low to possibly mid 20s as we go through next week. so after some slightly disappointing weather recently, some spring warmth could well be on the way. i'm sharanjit leyl in singapore. the headlines: president trump warns russia to ‘get ready‘ for missile strikes against syria, in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on civilians. an algerian military plane crashes near the capital killing 257 people on board. i'm babita sharma in london. also in the programme: the boss of facebook, mark zuckerberg, admits to us lawmakers that his own personal data was compromised in the cambridge analytica breach. despite strict new rules

it's still happening — we report on the illegal trade of blood in china. live from our studios in singapore and london, this is bbc world news. it's newsday.