up to change president trump's mind about the iran nuclear deal. sir kim darroch says work is under way on proposals to reassure mr trump about the deal. the us president has been scathingly critical of the agreement, and he may announce that he's scrapping it later this week. pakistan's interior minister ahsan iqbal has been shot and wounded in a suspected assassination attempt. he was hit by a bullet in his arm but officials say he is out of danger. and this story is trending on bbc.com. egyptian archaeologists say they've found no evidence of a secret chamber in the walls of the tomb of the boy king, tutankhamen. a study three years ago suggested there could be such a cavity — triggering rumours that a majorfind was imminent. that's all from me now. stay with bbc world news. it's been a glorious day on the weather front, with more sunshine to come on monday. retailers are hoping shoppers will be tempted,

after the washout that was the easter bank holiday weekend. our business correspondent joe lynam reports. this is how some garden centres looked last month. easter was a financial and meteorological wash—out for many retailers. what a difference a month makes. sunshine tends to bring out the shoppers, and part—time gardeners. we've just moved back from living abroad for 20 years. we've got a garden that needs reinvigorating and some new plants. this is an opportunity, on a day like this, you're outside, but you're also doing something. and what will they be buying? why, busy lizzie plants, of course. they're back this weekend, and expected to fly off the shelves. retailers certainly need a good weekend, after a quarter in which a slew of high—profile shops and restaurants shut some stores or closed down entirely. i don't think one long bank holiday weekend of nice weather is going to make up for all of the problems that have taken place in the retail sector.

it will go some way, and it will be a good weekend. but it's not going to change the structural changes that are going on, and a bad easter — and it was a particularly bad easter — is not going to be offset by one bank holiday weekend. but this month is unusual. it has two bank holidays, a tour de yorkshire, champions league and fa cup finals and the small matter of a royal wedding. they won't be repeated any time soon. with the weather considerably drier and warmer than it was on the last bank holiday weekend in easter, retailers will certainly be hoping to make hay while the sun shines. even if that means selling products that as consumers might not ordinarily consider. joe lynam, bbc news. now on bbc news it's time for witness. hello, and welcome to witness with me tanya beckett.

i'm here at the british library to guide you through more extraordinary moments from recent history. —_——7 resulting in the first—ever peace agreement between the two sides. we'll talk to one of the canadian war brides who sailed across the atlantic after world war ii in a mass emigration programme. and we'll hear from a survivor of a brutal campaign of repression by zimbabwean soldiers in 1983. but we start with the incredible story of a child survivor of belsen, a nazi concentration camp. hetty verolme was interviewed by the bbc at the time of her liberation in april 1943, and now she's shared her memories with witness.

i passed through the barrier and found myself in the world of a nightmare. the living lay with their heads against the corpses, and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people. this is what the germans did. if you gave up hope, then within two days you were dead. you get used to a lot of things which you think you couldn't get used to. we always were hungry. half a slice of bread in the morning, and half a slice of bread in the night. 90% of the people were sick with typhus, and that's why we had so many dead. the dead bodies, in the end we didn't see them any more, and we didn't smell them any more.

we werejewish, that's why we were brought here. when my mother was taken away my two brothers cried terribly and wouldn't let her go, but i had to be strong for my brothers. we knew the significance of staying alive. if there was danger, if you said "shh", they were quiet. they didn't make a sound. when the british came on sunday 15th of april, we were very, very happy. we couldn't believe it. they said with a loudspeaker that we would get food, and it was the next day in the morning they delivered hot

tea with sugar in. it was the first decent thing we had for weeks. a few days after the liberation, i was interviewed by patrick gordon walker, and he was from the bbc. they speak german. how old are you? 15 years. and how long have you been in this camp, belsen? 1a months. did your parents come with you? yes. and are they still with you? no. this is the area i was interviewed. i was happy to tell him the story, and i wanted to know where my parents were. they didn't know.

so, can you read what it says here? "here rest 2500." many children died in the war, in the second world war. i hope they rest in peace. we were very lucky, my father and mother and my two brothers and i came back from three different concentration camps. i'm sometimes surprised at young people. they don't know what the holocaust is. you have to explain it to them. when i'm not there any more, i hope that somebody will, like you, will remind the world that it did happen. it did happen. it doesn't matter if things are bad and very dark,

you must believe that tomorrow will be a better day. the remarkable hetty verolme, a child survivor of belsen, a nazi concentration camp. next we are off to oslo where, in the early 1990s, two norwegian diplomats played a vital role in secret peace negotiations between the israelis and the palestinians. mona juul tells us about her part in the oslo peace accords of 1993. the once unthinkable moment had arrived, and two of the world's bitterest enemies have become allies. it was a very, very special moment, and very emotional. we were completely exhausted, so it was all of us having been involved working day and night for almost a year. a husband and wife team succeeded in unlocking the israel palestinian impasse by working

behind—the—scenes, away from the media circus in the united states. the fact that we could offer them to come to peaceful norway, far away from the conflict. we told them we can facilitate secrecy, which was an absolute condition for them, and they relaxed in our company. nobody sitting there and making judgement, "no, you should do this, no, this is not possible." we left it 100% up to them. in the tranquil setting of the norwegian fjords, for the past nine months a secret channel forged the way to peace. the israel and the palestinian chief negotiators hit it off extremely well, and between the two of them, and i think among all of them that

were involved, there was so much talk about their families, their upbringing. it turned out that both the two negotiators had daughters called maya. there were so many times that i felt that this was not going anywhere. like i think it is in most negotiations, it is a roller—coaster. it goes ups and downs. humour played an important part in these negotiations. suddenly they came out and they told me "this is over, we can't do it." "very sorry." "you did a lot of good work," they told me, "but this is impossible". and i thought, "oh, my god". and everything sort of... and then suddenly they burst out in laughter, "joking!" "we have a deal!"

it made it... it humanised the whole conflict. by august 19, when shimon peres arrived in oslo for a prearranged official visit, the deal was virtually done. any peace agreement is a compromise. i feel extremely privileged to have been able to watch truly arch enemies coming together, with a little help from us. i want to express my congratulations and praise for the courage and the vision displayed by the israeli and palestinian leadership, and for the crucially helpful role played by norway. i mean, we have to remember that this was life and death for them. but, in order to do that, you have to have strong leadership, and i still maintain that you had

that on both sides at the time. in oslo, private celebrations for the couple who helped bring about today's historic middle east accord. i'm a true believer in passionate diplomacy. it is never wrong to bring people together. norwegian diplomat mona juul, who tried to bring peace to the middle east. next to kenya, and the story of the late dame daphne sheldrick, the pioneering conservationist who, in the 1980s, became the first person to rear successfully orphaned baby african elephants. in 2016, she spoke to witness. we know them almost as well as our own children,

and we love them equally, because an elephant can read your heart. and you're not going to be successful unless you love that animal. i was born in kenya, in nakuru, and i have lived here all my life. i fell in love with david sheldrick and married david in 1960. he was very well—known as the pioneer warden of tsavo national park. i have raised nearly all species of african wildlife orphans. buffaloes, rhinos, giraffes, but the elephants have been the greatest challenge. poaching was a problem, a huge problem. it still is a huge problem. we had orphaned elephants that came in older, aged three and four, you know, their mothers had died during the drought or been shot by poachers, but we never managed to keep an infant elephant alive. david died in 1977,

and that is when we set up the david sheldrick wildlife trust to try and carry on his work. the big leap was the infant elephants. nobody had managed to do that. the first two orphaned elephants we managed to raise from early infancy was in 1987. the first elephant that came in, we did not even have a stable. it slept in my daughter's bedroom, and it sort of grew from that. but in infancy, they are very, very difficult to raise. they are exceedingly fragile. an elephant as an infant is milk dependent for the first three yea rs of life. it needs milk up until the age of five. they cannot tolerate the fat in cows' milk, that kills them straightaway.

they get diarrhoea and you lose them overnight. they dehydrate very quickly. then i went around trying to find baby formulas that had mainly vegetable fat. and that worked. you know, with difficulty, it was not ideal, it is not mother's milk. and over the years we have managed to raise over 200 through the nursery, but we have probably lost almost that number as well. when they lose their elephant family there is a lot of stress involved, grief. i mean, they mourn and grieve the elephant familyjust as we do, and during that time you can have a lot of problems. you have to calm them down, you can only do that with a lot of tender loving care, and with the input of the other elephants. we have got a wonderful team

of keepers, people that really care about elephants, and love what they are doing. they are my kids, yes. they all have different personalities, but i love them all. the best part of it, they never forget those guys who took care of them when they were young, so they do come back from time to time. we always want to reintegrate it and return it back where it belongs, and if the animal loves you enough, it will come back to you. you see that with our ex—orphans. when they have their wild—born babies, they bring them back to share with the keepers that raised them themselves through childhood. the best gift you can give a wild animal is to set it free. dame daphne sheldrick, who sadly died in april 2018. remember, you can watch witness every month on the bbc news channel, or you can catch up on all of our films along with more

than a thousand radio programmes in our online archive. just go to bbc.co.uk/witness. next, we go to zimbabwe. in 1983, after the war of independence, robert mugabe sent troops to matabeleland in the west of the country to put down opposition supporters. and a warning, this report contains distressing material. thousands of zimbabweans have been killed by the soldiers of mr mugabe's fifth brigade. the gukurahundi, the whirlwind. well done. robert mugabe, he was a power—monger. they were taking people, slaughtering them all over. my family was shot by the army, with my grandfather and his two sons. did they question them

before they shot them? no. they just walked into the village and shot them? yes. innocent people, they were being killed by the mugabe regime. mugabe's zanu party draws most of its support from the majority shona tribe. in matabeleland, support for nkomo's zapu comes from the minority ndebele. joshua nkomo, grand old man of african nationalism. to these people, he is king of matabeleland. it is the rivalry between these two men that threatens zimbabwe with tribal conflict. zanu is the people's party, and all those who stand outside it must come into the zanu family or else they are rejected by the people. the beatings, the killings, the torture, it is unbelievable, unbelievable.

people are being taken daily, at night, and they disappear forever. i heard a knock. i opened the door. they took me to the cell where i spent three solid weeks being beaten day and night, tortured. they were using bayonets. others who were pregnant, they were opening their stomach. "you are carrying the son or a child of a dissident." i still remember, my uncle was killed with castration. a human being. really? i will never forget it. there has been all kinds of propaganda made against the fifth brigade. trained by the north koreans, mugabe's praetorian guard. they told all kinds of stories, but they failed to prove them. he is a liar.

a big liar. they should have to go to court. how many bodies do you think are buried here in this pit? over50 bodies, maybe, inside here. they are just shut in, with the trees and so forth. all these years, there was fear to talk about it. now i am brave to say about it. the world needs to see all these things. mr s ncube recalling the harrowing massacres in matabeleland. he still lives in bulawayo with his family. our next film is about canadian war brides who sailed from the uk to canada to join the husbands they married during world war ii. betty hawkins was one of them. since 1939, some 211,000 british girls have married canadians.

3,000 of them already have been sent to canada by the department of immigration. we left our families and our relatives, ourfriends, for this one man that we were in love with. it was a marvellous thing the canadian government did, and i mean, they moved 117,000 women and over 22,000 children. this canadian soldier who became my husband was a very nice looking guy. i was 18 or 19 years old when i met him. it was a case of being young, being in love, he asked me to marry him, i asked my mother. she seemed to think it was a good idea. more wives and kiddies

of canadian servicemen are off on their adventurous trip to the land of opportunity across the sea. it was a one—way trip. we did not know these men very well, and we agreed to marry them. on arrival at the port, everybody was safely stowed aboard the ship which would take them on their long journey. we sailed over. it took ten days. we wondered what it was going to be like, of course. canada is proud of her 18,000 adopted daughters who have been able

to learn about canadian life through pamphlets and classes. we did not know a thing, except canada was vast. all we could see was snow. when i first came to this house, there was no running water, there was no electricity, there was no bathroom. we did not have a lot of money. ken had to work away quite a lot. i think that, i will admit, that is probably why i had eight children. when husbands have to work away, you're glad to see them when they come back. a lot of us were very brave, or else rather silly, i do not know which. but it was, let's say, an adventure. betty hawkins, reminiscing about her post—warjourney to canada and her life with her husband there. that is all from witness this month here at the british library. we will be back next month with more first—hand accounts of extraordinary moments in history.

but for now, from me, and the rest of the team, goodbye. from next week onwards we will try to identify the trends. what has affected us so far, many dry, fine and sunny conditions of. towards the bank holiday, looking to 1999 lost on this or 26.3dc and that is the current record this monday,

somewhere in the south—east we suggest it is getting closer to 27 degrees. a new record is almost certain. where is the heat coming from? in the continent. this area of high—pressure and flooding that heat the channel to most parts of the british isles. the exceptions are one 01’ british isles. the exceptions are one or two spots on the east coast exposed on the onshore breeze, temperatures around 12— 13 degrees. this finger of low cloud and fog has been there for a couple of days now. many inland areas at least on into the mid— 20s or so. still, clout and some rain across northern and western pa rt of some rain across northern and western part of the not british isles. that quits only to make more room for another set of front on the start the tuesday across western parts. it will be a mild start to the day on tuesday. that little weather front there doesn't look very much but it is the first signs of somewhat cooler conditions trying

to get into the western side of the british isles. tuesday is a cooler, damper asset with that front, some heavy bursts of rain across the high ground of western scotland and into the cumbrian. in a bit, that is earliest got the last of the holiday weekend heat. i say it is a fairly wea k weekend heat. i say it is a fairly weak front and it is only weaken the context of not having much rain as it to the eastern side but as it makes progress on the atlantic it introduces the atlantic influence, rather than anything from the continent which is what many of us enjoyed over the course of the weekend. there goes that weather front and then there is a lull in receiving this and obvious on that scale that there is another set of front. come wednesday, likely to spread clout wind and rain across the department scotland, northern ireland and the western side of england and wales too. ahead of it, it is still dry but it is the 26 at

47 any more, much closer to 19 or 20. just a fresh feel. into the other parts of the week, the low pressure the dominant feature, way towards the north—west to the british isles. we get rid of weather fronts and that leaves us on thursday for the northern half of the british isles with a mixture of sun and showers, what of dry weather to be had. temperatures not bad for the time of year, nowhere near the sort of heights that we have seen over the past couple of days but thatis over the past couple of days but that is rather short lived, that dry speu that is rather short lived, that dry speuin that is rather short lived, that dry spell in the south because eventually as you get towards the weekend have got this area of low pressure still throwing weather fronts across us. that will be the dominant feature in the first part of the weekend. don't forget the high pressure behind me because the weekend starts cool and unsettled, rather windy, then as that puts away towards the mediterranean, high pressure builds in an becomes a good deal more settled but things begin to improve. this holiday weekend,

dry, warm and sunny for many of us. i'm rico hizon in singapore. the headlines: the diplomatic push is on. britain's ambassador to the us says efforts are ramping up to change president trump's mind about the iran nuclear deal. we think we're making progress, we haven't got there yet. we have a few days left to see if we can find a way through. pakistan's interior minister survives an assassination attempt. ahsan iqbal was shot in the arm at a political rally. i'm kasia madera in london. also in the programme: the extraordinary comeback. malaysia's 92—year—old former prime minister returns to contest the country's general election. some of football's biggest names show their support for manchester united's sir alex ferguson, who is recovering