hello, i'm kasia madera with bbc world news. our main story. more than 800 people have been killed by a tsunami and earthquake on the indonesian island of sulawesi. there are fears that thousands more have died, as whole towns were reduced to rubble. survivors are now struggling without food, water or power supplies. indonesia's president has promised to provide all the help they need. typhoon trami has made landfall in japan, injuring at least 80 people. osaka's international airport, which was crippled by another typhoon earlier this month, had to shut again. and these pictures are popular on our website. they are from the chinese city of shenzhen, where more than a million led lights were installed to mark china's national day. this year marks the 69th anniversary of the founding of the people's republic. many people will take the whole week off as holiday. that's all from me. stay with us here on bbc world news. new research shows that younger people experience loneliness more often and more intensely than any other age group. the nationwide survey found that 40% of 16 to 2a—year—olds feel

lonely often, or very often. james gallagher reports. it's just — you just feel empty. you just feel so alone, and so low. it's like you're completely isolated from everyone else, even though you might not be. it's horrible, it's a horrible feeling. hannah describes herself as confident and friendly, yet she also says she is lonely. the bbc survey shows that, like hannah, it is between the ages of 16 and 2a that we feel lonely more often and more intensely than at any other time in our lives. like, with working with older people, it's a little bit easier for them to admit that they're lonely. but for younger people, they're like, why are you lonely? you go to school every day, you're constantly surrounded by people. there's absolutely no need to be lonely. and i think that is — that's the stigma around it. and are there any good

sides to loneliness? well, in my experience, it's got me to where i am now, talking to you, ‘cause if you had met me back then, i would be hiding under the table. scientists at the university of manchester say the study reinforces that we can be alone in a crowd, and that being disconnected from the world around us is a major cause of loneliness. that might be why the young are most at risk. what you're doing is you're going out in the world, you're having to work out who you are, what groups you fit into, and it's a real point in your life of lots of changes. so there are — you're almost vulnerable to loneliness because of that. volunteering is one way hannah copes with her loneliness. she helps organise fast friends. it's a place for young people who are feeling lonely to find someone to talk to.

it's not really rocket science. i think you just have to talk to young people about how they feel, and try and get — blow that stigma out of the water, really. hannah may not be society's stereotype of loneliness, but if there's one thing this study shows, it's how loneliness can affect us at any stage of our lives. james gallagher, bbc news. and you can hear more about the findings of that report on monday at 8pm on all in the mind on bbc radio 4. now it's time for witness. hello and welcome to witness.

in this programme we will hear from five witnesses about their involvement in extraordinary moments in 20th century history. we are going to hear one woman's recollection of operation market garden, the allies‘ attempt to take holland using pa ratroopers at the end of the second world war. head to russia for a story about the soviet union's efforts to ban booze, find out about the murder of anti—apartheid campaigner steve biko, and hearfrom a former prisoner of war who helped build the bridge over the river kwai at the end of the second world war. but we start with an individual who created one of the world's most widely used fitness programmes, couch to 5k. in 1996, to get over a bad relationship break—up, josh clark started running. after a few weeks, having caught the bug, he decided to create a plan to help get other people running

and he put it on his website. little did he know where it would take him. you know, i'd never had particular success with fitness. i always thought it was for someone else, that when i would go to a gym or try running, i sort of was met with defeat. i guess that's not for me, i'm not that kind of person. in my early 20s, i had a bad break—up and in that moment i had a lot of excess energy and ijust started running. it was something i had never enjoyed and i didn't enjoy it then. you know, i remember putting on my shoes and going out the door and instantly thinking, why am i doing this? after running for a few weeks, the discomfort of it and the pain and the slowness all sort of faded away and i began to realise this was something that could actually feel really good and rewarding,

meditative even. part of what i created in that period was a schedule called couch to 5k, which was intended to help people who had never gone running before to start running. one of the things i really wanted to do was basically to figure out how do you avoid the painful, dreary, horrible ramp up that i went through, this idea that you have to go through a wall of discomfort in order to start running? i had a theory that maybe you could do it in a gentler way, and a way that you could see some of those rewards of running much sooner. and so i wrote couch to 5k with that in mind, how do you gradually startjogging from zero and become a runner in nine weeks? but i had what turned out to be a really lucky instinct about how this stuff works, with interval training,

where basically you run for 60 seconds and then walk for 90 seconds, sort of it turns out that is actually, there's a lot of science behind that to show how that works for introducing new kind of stress and ability into the body. at the same time, i was creating a website, so i was telling everybody. i was telling my friends, my family, strangers on the internet about how to run, the things i have learned about running and the benefits of it. but i have to say it wasn't until really the mid—2000s that suddenly the thing began to blow up. i created some community forums for this website and that started to grow people, so it wasn't necessarily the schedule that grew, it was the community that grew around the programme and that grew kind of outside of me. and i think it continues to,

at this point there are many, many communities of couch to 5k around the world. i don't have hard numbers for how many people use couch to 5k, but i estimate it has to be into the millions or tens of millions from nearly every country. anybody can run. we do it all the time as kids. we used to run untiljust the point of exhaustion, laughing the whole time. you can recapture that spirit. that ability is within almost all of us. i'm still trying to get my wife and our daughter to be runners, but i'm working on that. i'm working on it. our next film takes us back to 191m and the second world war. the allies wanted to speed up the end of the conflict through 0peration market garden. a paratroop drop into holland. the final objective was a bridge

in arnhem, where a young woman watched the parachute coming down. now in her 90s, she recalls those terrifying few days. it was to clear a corridor other the dutch river, that over 1000 troop carriers and 500 others took part in this, the greatest airborne operation ever undertaken. it looked like falling stars or something. all black, the things in the air. altogether, 4600 aircraft were involved in the action. altogether, 10,000 men of the first british airborne division, the red devils, landed west of arnhem.

we were excited of course. we thought we would be freed. i was 19 years old when the germans invaded. it was a very difficult time in the netherlands. we hated them, from the moment we saw them. my brother was taken prisoner by the germans and they took him to germany. my father had to go away and the germans wanted to take him too. we had not much food any more. they took our home, or normal life was absolutely devastated. the allied plan was that the paras would take the bridges in arnhem and the second army would come and help them, and so they would make another attack

on germany from arnhem. never before had troops landed openly so far behind enemy lines. never before had a daylight landing on this scale been attempted. we could hear the fighting, sometimes it was very near to us. you couldn't go out. there was too much shooting. thank god we had enough provision for six people. more in the cellar than upstairs, i must say. we were so hopeful that we would be freed. we started to worry after three days already, the noise and then the shooting went far away, far away. so something must have gone wrong, we thought. the second army failed to come over the river. everybody did their best but the germans fought like lions, i must say. of the 10,000 men who landed, more than 7500 were taken prisoner

or lost their lives. less than one quarter came back in safety over the river after nine of the most tragic, most gallant and most exhausting days of the war. after the fighting failed, we had to leave the city and we didn't know where to go. we had to take what we had with us, because on the signs they said leave arnhem and if you are still there at four o'clock in the afternoon, you will be shot. many years, i was too busy to think about that anymore. now i am living here all alone and there's more time to think, you know? i put all these happenings in a little book for my grandchildren, my great—grandchildren. it's good that my family

and all children in the world, i think, know how terrible it was, what we went through. an extraordinary moment in history. after nelson mandela was jailed, a man called steve biko emerged as one of the key leaders in the anti—apartheid movement in south africa. in 1977, biko was picked up by the police and thrown into jail. three weeks later, he was dead. in this moving film, his friend peterjones, who was arrested at the same time, looks back at the events surrounding his friends death. i miss my friend steve biko and i am forever in his debt. steve biko is one of the people that originated the new generation of young political minded black people. the black consciousness movement. we believe that in our country,

those people will have the same status before the law and they will have the same political rights before the law. the apartheid government ensured that there was no resistance against its doctrines and against its policies. there was a roadblock, and they then searched the car. they found an identity document, which was mine. they then said "who's peterjones?" i said "that's me." they said "oh, and who are you, big man?" "is that steve?" he said, "i am steve biko." we were then locked up together in one cell. the next morning we started getting an uneasy feeling because there were now more police, and in a convoy of three cars we sped towards port elizabeth. in port elizabeth was

the headquarters of the security police for that region. the building has been converted into a block of flats. steve biko was being brought to his death along this very corridor, and the man poised to fill the void left behind after mandela wasjailed. we were taken up to the fifth floor and we were manacled each to a separate window. one of the senior police, a major, came in and said, now i can confirm that you are officially being detained under section six of the terrorism act. that is the act in which you literally disappear. they separated us. i can only had a chance to shout steve's name and that was the last time i saw steve alive. three weeks and three days later i had just heard a lot of commotion. many, many people singing protest songs, the cell next to mine was being filled with many people.

then young men told me that they have just returned from the funeral of steve biko. and that was the first time i heard about the death of steve biko. i went to my mat that was my bed and i just sat there. with... to me it was like a huge hole in my soul, just an inconsolability which even today would make me weep at unexpected moments. the police said the leader of the black consciousness movement

had lost his life by accident when his head struck a wall when he was being restrained. steve biko's family believe he was thrown at the wall quite deliberately by the police officers. steve biko's death and the brutality of it highlighted like no other event at the time the extent to which the apartheid regime would go to protect itself. remember, you can watch witness every month on the bbc news channel or you can catch up on all our films along with more than 1000 radio programmes. just go to the online archive. now, a former british prisoner of war describes how he survived sickness, starvation and brutality as the japanese forced allied prisoners to build a railway bridge over the river kwai over the second world war.

it looks like an ordinary bridge but the past makes it a symbol of the suffering of human heroism. the japanese wanted to build this railway through thailand up 700 miles to jungle, through rocks and we were the means. we left civilisation and entered another world, for almost four years as it turned out in the end. at that time they hated the people that did that for them. in fact if you had a rifle you would have shot the lot. i was in place called tamacan where we built the bridge over the river kwai. we would be on these chanting,

japanese up to ten. you would do that all the time then. wacked with malaria and dysentery, tropical ulcers and dying of cholera, two starving prisoners dragged themselves each day from the camps to under the burning sun. if they fight for a moment there would be guards, for many death was happy release. i had dirt, splinters from these in my leg. the scar started to break down. it would turn into a big ulcer. major arthur moon of the australian medics put me on a bamboo table and without anaesthetic he cut up my leg and he pulled

out a great big tendon. and of course that saved my life. a man on the one next to me, he was covered with these ulcers, terrible he was. he was delirious and he was full of maggots. i remember him dying next to me. i can see the flies coming out of his mouth then. the whole length was built in the incredible time of only 14 months. every mile of the railway cost 400 human lives. every fourth sleeper represents the death of a man. of the allied prisoners more than 16,000 died, but the asians no one knows for certain but the estimate is nearly 100,000 dead.

you never give up because you want to survive, it was as simple as that. you always had in the back of your mind that sometime you would be free. for our final story we head to the soviet union in 1985. worried about the effects of alcoholism the communist authorities brought down restrictions on the sale of alcohol. however within a few years the soviet economy had begun to fall apart. and so had the alcohol ban. witness talks to alexander sutko, a former communist advisor. there used to be just one image of the soviet worker and this was it. young, efficient and above all sober. but now there is another. translation: a quarter

of all workers would have a glass of vodka before going to work. this was widespread among our working class. the russians call alcohol the green snake and opening time the hour of the wolf. but the two together and the results can be disastrous. translation: i saw clearly that in a country where a quarter of all workers are alcoholics this country survives by killing its own people. that was very clear to me. the state makes billions in alcohol tax as the state has ordered its people to sober up. translation: as someone who spoke to gorbachev often i can tell that he didn't understand what the ussr was about. of all the soviet freedoms,

only one was always there. the freedom to drink. all russians love vodka. for years ambulances have patrolled city streets taking people to special drying out centres. but medical facilities are now to be improved. the authorities say they will fight this ugly phenomenon in and remove it from soviet life. translation: as part of the campaign, alcohol sales were limited to the period from 2pm to 7pm. many wine shops were closed and most importantly only one bottle of vodka was sold per person. so if you had a birthday party you had to show your passport to prove that it was really your birthday. by about 1988, 1989, it became clear that the campaign was damaging. the soviet system simply collapsed.

millions of people lost theirjobs. in the soviet days, if a worker had a drink before going to work, at least there was some restraint on him in the workplace. with the collapse of the ussr there were no social structures any more and the alcoholic had nothing holding him back. gorbachev didn't understand that. 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 now, from me and the rest of the witness team, goodbye. hello there. with plenty of showers around across the northern half of the uk yesterday and south—west england, we had a number of rainbows spotted by our weather watchers. this was one of these, from devon. thanks to gazzledazzle for sending that in. a few more showers around, but there will be some sunshine. but it will be it. patchy frost in the countryside

for scotland and northern england over the next few hours. if you're heading out, wrap up warm. just two or three degrees there for newcastle and for edinburgh. so a ridge of high pressure with us first thing on monday, but we do have an approaching low. it will ultimately bring some rain from the north—west, so enjoy the sunshine first thing in the morning. they should be plenty of that to go around. it's probably going to be the sunniest day of the week ahead, to be honest. things will tend to cloud over from the north and west as the day goes by, and watch out for few showers continuing to feed into the irish sea coasts, perhaps into cheshire, greater manchester and merseyside, on and off through the day. we'll have more general rain pushing in the scotland and maybe northern ireland as we head through the afternoon, the winds picking up. relatively cool air with us, top temperatures about 15 degrees. but that cool air is moved away by this wodge of milder air as we go on to monday night and into tuesday. now, that's all associated with a warm sector, with the warmest of the air across england

and wales on tuesday. this is how tuesday starts, a very mild note. temperatures at 14 degrees, also, to start the day. there will be rain or drizzle, especially around western coasts and hills, where it may well stay quite damp. the cloud will break at times across these areas, to get some brighter or sunny spells. a warm day, actually, across south—east england, with highs of 20. we're still into the cool air in northern england, northern ireland and scotland. temperatures for these areas more particularly around 12—14 degrees. another warm front moves into the uk on wednesday, again bringing more rain to the north—west of scotland. could be quite heavy at times. a lot of cloud, you'll notice, on the charts. still quite mild in the south, little change further north, temperature around 12 or 13 celsius. what about thursday's weather prospect? well, again, a more active weather front moving into the north—western part of the country, so turning soggy for northern ireland and scotland, with some heavy rain. the winds picking up here. perhaps a little bit of rain getting across the hills of northern england and north wales. however, it should stay dry and bright in the south—east. highs of 19 in london.

still quite cool, then, for northern scotland, with 12 in stornoway. so looking at the weather for the rest of this week, it's often going to be pretty cloudy. there will be some rain at times, particularly in the north—west, and it'll be quite breezy at times, too. this is newsday on the bbc. more than 800 people have been killed by a tsunami and earthquake on the indonesian island of sulawesi. there are fears that thousands more have died. —— as aid supplies trickle in, many desperate residents resort to looting. translation: we need to eat, we don't have any other choice, we must get food. translation: we're in a crisis, we have nothing for our basic needs. food, water, we desperately need them. i'm kasia madera in london. also in the programme: switching on in style. spectacular celebrations commemorate the birth of modern china. and unlocking the secret life of the geisha: a new film lifts