organisers had said up to 400 people would attend, but farfewer did so. they were outnumbered by a large crowd of anti—nationalist p rotesto rs. the un security council has called for a credible and transparent inquiry into the killing of dozens of children in an air strike in yemen. the attack on thursday hit a school bus in an area held by houthi rebels. houthi officials say as many as a0 children died. turkey has pledged it will take action to calm the financial markets after its currency plunged to a new record low in asian trading. the lira has lost 20% of its value against the us dollar in the past week after a trade disagreemnt with washington. those are the latest bbc news headlines. now on bbc news, dateline london. hello and welcome to dateline,

the programme where some of the most prominentjournalists in the uk debate the week's events with foreign correspondents whose dateline is london. this week: donald trump chooses to put tariffs on turkey and sanctions on iran and is obliged to act against russia, but who loses? borisjohnson, britain's recently ex—foreign minister supports the freedom to cover your face but manages to insult the muslim women who do it. and how to make oscar popular again. with me to discuss those stories — abdel barry atwan, who writes on events in the arab world; portuguese journalist and academic eunice goes; henry chu, international editor with the us magazine, variety; and polly toynbee, columnist with the guardian newspaper. now, the ‘special relationship‘ is one of those phrases used so often by british ministers in governments of left and right that it must

have its own short cut on press officers' keyboards. so it was on wednesday when the us state department announced fresh sanctions against russia for the nerve agent attack in the english cathedral town of salisbury five months ago. the uk government duly lauded this as evidence of the strength of the special relationship. only it wasn't. it was actually the consequence of a law passed by congress when george bush senior was president more than a quarter of a century ago. no wonder moscow, currently being courted by president trump, complained about mixed signals. economic weapons are being wielded with increasing frequency by the trump administration — sanctions on iran at the start of the week and tariffs on turkey at the end. polly, there is an unanswerable logic is what happened on wednesday. it's the law and that is what they had to do. but it does carry risks, doesn't it, this extra round of sanctions against russia? i think most everything about the foreign policy coming out of the united states at the moment carries colossal risk.

none of it makes very much sense. you are getting inter—cut lines. it isn't clear that donald trump himself agrees with these sanctions at all. he has said nothing at all about putin. nothing about russia. absolute silence. so you have both houses of the senate and the congres strongly in favour of the santions and silence from the president. here you have russia implicated in interfering with elections in the west but particularly helping to get trump elected and are already working hard on the mid—term elections, interfering with american democracy. the president is silent on the subject. i find it very alarming indeed. nobody knows what trump's relationship with putin really is. he had that long meeting with nobody else there but the translators. i hope they get subpeoned to come forward and tell us what happened. we have no idea what the secret agreement may be

between the two men. and certainly america's constitutional congress has no idea either what the relationship is between their president and the russian president. this is scary. henry, the sanctions, these particular ones have only been enacted against north korea and syria previously. presumably the economic fallout with those two countries is no big deal as there wasn't much of a relationship anyway but it is a different magnitude with russia entirely. of course. this is not the first round of sanctions on russia. we've had sanctions on russia in place ready for a couple of years because of the incursion into ukraine and the annexation of crimea. so this is just adding on to that. i think polly is absolutely right about silence from this administration in the sense that the sanctions were supposed automatically go in force after 60 days of determination that russia used a nerve agent, used chemical weapons.

the us agreed with britain's assessment that russia was implacated in the salisbury poisoning, yet, the trump administration did nothing. it took a republican head of the foreign relations committee to chide the trump administration and say that these sanctions will automatically come into force. i think what will be even tougher will be that if russia does not then modify its behaviour or show that it is no longer using chemical weapons, even stronger sanctions come into force three months down the line and we will see what happens then. bari, the story of the end of the week was about the deteriorating relationship between the united states and turkey and the decision by the trump administration, this one, president trump was proud enough to be tweeting about, to impose tariffs on turkey, absolutely nailed the lira over the last couple days. what is happening to the economy? i believe this is economic war against erdogan and against turkey, to be honest. it will definitely be counter—productive. you cannot have a sanction against iran, a sanction against turkey, which is a member of nato since 1952.

actually, it is a full member of nato. it did a lot of good service to the west and united states in particular. you also have a sanction against syria. sanctions everywhere. this actually will be extremely counter—productive. it will unify the whole world against the united states. you have russia, china, iran, turkey, now even imran kahn, who justjoined as president of pakistan is saying that he won't oblige to these sanctions. he is creating a unified forum against the united states. for what? this is the question. turkey play a major role in syria under the order of the united states itself. they have also participated in the war in libya. now we are rewarding turkey by imposing sanctions? for what? this is about sending a message to the base.

this is a mid—term election period in the united states. only three months away from elections. exactly. this is about donald trump showing he is delivering on his promises, following america first foreign policy, defending american economic interest and american jobs, although very few are actually at risk from us sanctions. it is politically irresponsible. it is about electoral politics. i was struck, henry, by talking to journalists from bloomberg markets a couple days ago, saying they had done research and had found that the trump administration has used sanctions more than any other us administration. not only that but the treasury secretary, steven mnuchin,

says he spent half of his time on sanctions. i think it has increasingly, notjust with the trump administration, it was true with obama as well, sanctions become the off—the—shelf foreign policy go—to thing that they reach for when something happens they don't like. they do look effective when you look at iran, don't they? look at all the international countries saying they are going to pause their economic actions in iran because they're worried about being punished by the united states. in some cases they are warranted. when the western world came together with sanctions to try and pressure iran into sanctions over its nuclear programme, it worked. in south africa again it was a coalition and united front, except britain and america, of sanctions. russia is actually the subject of sanctions widely throughout the west. but in turkey it seems like a personal fight that trump is picking with erdogan. and also catering to the base of conservative christians that want turkey to release this particular american pastor who is in prison in turkey. that's right.

and of course the americans are not sending back to turkey an enemy of erdogan that he wants extradicted. fethullah gulen, who he accuses of being involved being in the coup. i do think that what we're seeing with america first is it turns out to be america alone. america is throwing hand grenades around the world to all international organisations, to all previous alliances. nato, explosive, his nato meeting. his attitudes towards europe, quite extraordinarily hostile. it is america with no friends which is a very peculiar way of being first. except saudi arabia and israel. so essentially really nasty regimes, the leaders of really terrible regimes that see themselves... i'm not sure the israeli government considers themself as nasty. i would not include israel. you're talking more about saudi arabia and the philippines. absolutely. these are the friends. and putin. about whom he has been silent, on sanctions. talking about special relatonship, i believe what britain gained

from this special relationship with the united states — a war in the iraq, a war in syria, a war in afganistan. now they are creating a rift with europe. we are heading towards another war. what is interesting is that europe has said to pay no attention to the iran sanctions, and there is trump tweeting that anyone who trades with iran will do no trade with the us. that is a real cause of tension. as you have said, we have seen the iran sanctions. lifting the sanctions was a real success. what matters most in the world is stopping nuclear programmes. what kind of messages does it send anyone else who wants nuclear weapons?

once you sign a document you have two respect your signature. if you are going to block us from exporting any aid, we will actually react. it will create more problems. what will happen to that world rate for example? what you are beginning to see for the first time is a distinct european foreign policy and that is a healthy thing. europe has been weak before on foreign policy and it has been forced now on having to identify itself. i hope, as a bastion of liberal world decent values and upholding un charters and human rights, and america are increasingly on the other side of that line. looking like letter boxes or bank robbers.

a journalistic flourish from a newspaper columnist about muslim women who wear the hijab, the veil that covers all of the face except the eyes. the author was borisjohnson, who was until a month ago the uk's foreign minister. his article was in defence of the freedom to dress in the hijab, or indeed the burqa, which completely conceals the wearer. he said that he was here to defend women and defend their right to dress as they like. because he was opposed to the bans that some other european countries, most recently denmark, have imposed. yet it has come out looking like he is their enemy. yes.

it is a very funny way of defending people, you start by insulting them and then you say you are free to do your silly — and whatever you want to do. borisjohnson is trying to essentially launch his bid for the leadership of the conservative party by targeting what he sees as a potential basis of support in the conservative party, people who are up in arms against multiculturalism and other religions and who will feel that british, western and christian values are in danger by mass immigration. it is very dangerous what he is trying to do. it is utterly irresponsible. he is an elected politician. he has to be far more cautious in the way that he speaks. words have meaning and people understood exactly what he was trying to do. he tried to be a bit liberal, "i think we have the rights to use it but i think it is outrageous." he was speaking to two audiences and he knew exactly what he was doing in the most irresponsible way. it is not a surprise because this has been his modus operandi

since he started professional life. he is talking about a minuscule proportion of this population. it is not even a wide ranging policy. it is a population that has found itself under threat in this country by those who don't like muslims and to fear them. if borisjohnson had said something equally insulting about ultraorthodoxjewish men and the clothes that they wear i think people would be up in arms about this. but about muslim women... i'll put a point that was made in a letter to the times by an actor that is known globally, rowan atkinson. he is known internationally for playing mr bean. he said you only have to apologise for a bad joke and the one about a letterbox, he thought, was a good joke. his point was we have to be able to laugh about religion and that is one of our basic values. he is not a stand—up comedian. it is a racistjoke. how many muslim women in this

country are wearing their hijab? 300 out of 4 million, perhaps. why is he using this language? he was supposed to be the head of the british diplomacy, or he was until a few weeks ago. he is supposed to be diplomatic and know the culture of other people and the culture of the arab world. why is he provoking these kind of things? is he going to be another donald trump, for example? is this the right way to be? it is awful to be honest. i will tell you, shanu, in islam there is no reference to the niqab, in the middle east the same debate is taking place. but using this language to insult certain people who choose to wear the niqab is not... the problem is the language he used which is really provoking. it all depends on who is doing the speaking. if you have a debate

between different groups of muslims, that's fine. but if you have the british foreign secretary untiljust a few weeks ago, going out of his way to make fun of a very vulnerable group, people who already tend to get spat at and abused in the street, then that is really offensive and dangerous and of course he is playing donald trump politics. it's not even a dog whistle, it is a foghorn. anybody who does not like muslims, vote for me. so that is pretty disgusting, but it is a trap for liberals. i'm a humanist. i am the vice president of the british humanist association. i very strongly dislike the sectarian religions that cut themselves off from everybody else. the very act of wearing a niqab

or making your wife wear one. i think you are saying that you are totally separate. i feel the same about those jewish orthodox people who wear extraordinary clothes. they cut themselves off from a way that makes it impossible for their children to integrate or anyone to integrate saying that our religion sets us apart from anyone else. i think liberals have an instinctive dislike of all of that. we tread a careful line. if we just say you can never be rude about religions, of course you can. of course you can criticise religions and of course you can criticise their illogicality and irrationality but you have to be very careful when attacking people who are already very vulnerable in a society or a minority. a lot of these women say we are strong and empowered and we are choosing this as a defiant gesture but a lot of them, we know, probably don't speak english, are very vulnerable, have no way of defending themselves at all and you're picking on the very weakest.

so this is a trap for liberals and we have to be careful not to fall onto either side. but neither would you think of legislating against it. of course not. there has to be a dialogue. when we live in diverse societies we live in different groups we have very different conceptions of what good life is. best way to be able to manage and live in peace is to have dialogue and understand each other. what i'm wearing causes this sentiment, maybe let me explain to you why i'm wearing this, maybe i need to rethink my own practices because i want to be understood in this particular way. but this is not happening, this kind of respectful discussion that is about understanding. this is not happening. i think you can make jokes as well but not politicians doing it for political malice...

comedians who are careful can do jokes about religions because they are very funny. of course we should be able to laugh at them but that is different to making vulnerable people even more likely to be targeted. he visited the middle east and several muslim countries and he knows this subject... what amazes me is why he doesn't apologise. why doesn't he have that courage and say, "yes, i made a mistake." because he didn't do it by mistake. he did it on purpose and i bet he will not apologise. but i will apologise because i talked about the hijab when i meant the niqab. now, how could they? the cry that goes up from admirers of cinema as an art form when they recall how the academy of motion picture arts and sciences — the people who award the oscars — didn't choose citizen kane as the outstanding motion picture 0f1941.

the award went instead to how green was my valley. look it up! nowadays, though, the problem seems to be the reverse — awards like best picture or best actor going to films many of us haven't seen. the solution, announced this week — a new oscar, for outstanding achievement in popular film. henry, you are the international editor of variety magazine, your publication is all there is to know about the oscars. the truth is this is not about the movies, it is about television audiences. we have discovered that the american network abc which as the oscars have been really concerned about the diving ratings of those who watch it and so they have leaned on the academy to try and come up with a way to solve that. the academy's idea is that if we somehow having a category where the stars of the avengers or guardians of the galaxy will be nominated and strut on the red carpet then we will be able to drive apart ratings. —— up our ratings.

another thing is what you said, there has been a disconnect in recent years between what movies are popular at the box office and which are the ones that they nominate. however, there should be no reason to have a separate category that has thrown everybody into confusion, which is the popularfilm. is it the one that has made the most money or the one that cost the most to make what is the criteria? the academy has to come up with that. they have already gone through this once when they expanded the best picture which has allowed ten nominations because a film didn't get in. it was the batman film, dark knight. they've expanded once already. it is very strange when you think that hollywood is essentially an industry that makes popular films. it is not art house films. these are not niche films, they are popular films from mass audiences. the idea that the films that when the oscars are not popular films is ludicrous. i remember we discussed this issue about two years ago when there was a huge uproar saying that it is racist that blacks have been completely excluded.

now, the oscars are going down by 40%. why shouldn't popular films be at the top of the oscars? the people should decide. in football, for example, there are supporter was, there are players awards, there are critics and expert awards. so why do the people have to go to films chosen by the oscars? very depressing and difficult to understand. i think there were very good films that deserved the oscar but there are some people that say this is a reaction of the academy over the success of black panther which of course had a black american cast. there is fear that perhaps that won't get nominated even though it has done over $1 billion at the box office.

there needs to be another category where we can make sure that black panther will be recognised. that is condescending to black panther. it almost puts a kids table oscar. one last thing i would like to say is you look at some of the top ten grossing films over the decade and you adjust for inflation, nine of those top ten films including gone with the wind, et and jaws were all nominated for oscars. this is something a bit more recent where it seems the oscars are dominated by small arthouse films. let's remember last year dunkirk was on there and so was get out. what has not been nominated that in your opinion should have got on there? a lot of people thought last year wonder woman should have got on there. terrible reviews. not in our house! there has also been the move in the hollywood industry

in the past two decades making films catering for teenagers or segments of the populations which are very cookie cutter approaches to the film industry. perhaps those films... i like barry's suggestion that we should all get to vote. people have oscar parties, sitting around, why can't we vote? there are already awards like that, the people's choice awards and that kind of thing. that exists. but genre films whether they are for young people science—fiction, there has been an outcry of some of these films being excluded. and shape of water from last year, beautifully done. another point about social media and youtube. they are doing extremely well to marginalise those people from hollywood. saying that there are different ways of entertainment.

either you listen to us and the new trends or you will be actually going to the drain. i think this is the message that social media and youtube and other forms of communication are trying to tell those people. nevertheless, everyone has been predicting for years the decline of hollywood, that the great days are over but that is one thing that really still continues to dominate. do you enjoy a good old blockbuster film? of course. absolutely. it goes all over the world and it is america's greatest ambassador. forget politics and wars, hollywood is it. polly, you are in the media, who will sit on a chair in front of the television watching three hours of the oscars. in terms of the power of hollywood's, the moving of the dates to the beginning

of february has caused ripples all over the world. the berlin film festival which is in the middle of february is worried about how that will affect them. the baftas which are always one or two weeks are saying they are going to move there is now. so it does have a ripple effect. thank you very much, that was terrific. that's it for dateline london for this week — we're back next week at the same time. goodbye. hello. a few heavy and thundery showers will continue to work eastwards and for monday, it is a day of sunny spells and showers ad if you catch them, they could be heavy and thundery. more sunshine on sunday with spells in northern ireland, outbreaks of rain easing from northern parts of scotland. once again the best of the sunshine for shetland. 18—19 the highest for scotland, 2a for ireland. there will still be showers lingering for eastern counties of england through monday evening and overnight into tuesday. further west, clearer skies with breaks of rain arrive in northern ireland. it will not be a cold night, between 11 and 15 celsius.

more cloud for scotland is bringing outbreaks of rain which is the thing through tuesday with this north—west, south—east split. north—western areas closer to these fronts have a brisk breeze and outbreaks of rain warmer south and south—east. the warmest and driest for south—east england, temperatures reaching 26 celsius. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is nkem ifejika. our top stories: tight security in washington, as anti—fascist demonstrators outnumber a handful of white supremacists who held a brief rally near the white house. grief and anger in yemen ahead of the funerals of children killed in a saudi air strike. the un calls for an independent investigation. turkey draws up a plan of action to stabilise its currency. the lira has been spiralling downwards for a week after a disagreement with the us. on its way to the sun.

nasa's space probe begins its ambitious, seven—year journey to reveal more about the solar atmosphere than ever before.