this is bbc news. i'm lukwesa burak. the headlines at 6pm. leicester city players and fans observe a minute's silence to honour the club's chairman, and four others, who died in a helicopter crash a week ago. he always took the time. even if it was just a smile and a thumbs up, he always acknowledged us as the fans that had taken the trouble to go. in bangkok, a week—long buddhist funeral is under way at a royal temple, to honour the billionaire businessman and owner of leicester city football club, vichai srivaddhanaprabha broadcaster paul gambaccini receives a pay—out from the crown prosecution service — over its handling of unfounded sexual assault allegations against him. fears for the safety of a christian woman in pakistan, whose acquittal for blasphemy sparked days of violent protests across the country. and in the united states. president trump is on the

campaign trailagain meanwhile twitter removes thousands of automated accounts discouraging people from voting, ahead of next week's midterm elections. coming up on sports day — england hold on to beat south africa at twickenham in a nail biting first match of the autumn internationals. good evening and welcome to bbc news. a minute's silence has been held at football matches around the country, in memory of the five people who died in a helicopter crash near leicester city's stadium last saturday. today saw the first game for leicester in the premier league since the accident, playing cardiff, and members of the squad will soon head to thailand for the funeral

of the club's chairman, who was among those killed. from cardiff, here's our sports correspondentjoe wilson. saturday afternoon, going to the game. nothing could appear so normal, except for leicester city right now, nothing is normal. there is consolation in a familiar routine, familiar faces. but everywhere still was the image and the memory of the man whose investment made leicester champions. all our thoughts are still with the family, the funeral is today. we have just come to support the boys because i think leicester has been through a tough week and we just want to show our love and support for leicester and the leicester team. applause the coach bringing the leicester team to cardiff stadium this afternoon was applauded by supporters from both sides. what happened last weekend in leicester has touched football as a sport, as a community. in cardiff's match day programme, a tribute to vichai srivaddhanaprabha.

around the ground, supporters voicing their own. the outpouring of grief, the support for him, leicester city, and everybody connected with it, this is no ordinary football match. of course it is there to win, but i think, going back to his memory. do you know what? he became one of us. inside the stadium, all those who died were honoured, and every travelling member of leicester city's staff and squad joined the minute's silence. these expressions don't need words. for the same man, a different ritual was unfolding in thailand. a royal temple for the funeral of vichai srivaddhanaprabha. an elaborate ceremony. in his home country he may have been perceived differently, as a skilled businessman, but a private person,

successful at making political connections. the rituals there will continue and leicester players will attend. two very different cultures, connected by football. many leicester fans in wales talked to me today about their owner's legacy. a legacy which belongs in football grounds near and far. well eleanor roper is still in cardiff, where leicester beat cardiff city, what's the atmosphere been like there today? it has been a really emotional afternoon here in cardiff. it was a goal in the 55th minute from great to ta ke goal in the 55th minute from great to take leicester city up. he removed his shirt to reveal a t—shirt that said that for vichai srivaddhanaprabha. the survey one minute silence to pay tribute to

their chairman. and jamie vardy said as of this match their asked if they wa nted as of this match their asked if they wanted to do game to go ahead and they said yes they did and felt it was really important to come here today and pay tribute to their chairman menopause heading to thailand where they will travel to bangkok and attend the various rural services over the next two days. ahead of their next premier league match they'll be at home to burley. the radio presenter, paul gambaccini, has received a pay—out from the crown prosecution service, over the way it handled unfounded historical sex abuse allegations against him. he was arrested in 2013 after claims he sexually assaulted two teenage boys in the early 1980s. he's always denied the allegations, calling them completely fictitious, and spent a year on bail before the case was dropped. here's frankie mccamley. arriving at the bbc studios

in central london this morning to host his radio 2 show pick of the pops, paul gambaccini had nothing to say. the veteran broadcaster, known as the professor of pop, has been paid an undisclosed sum by the crown prosecution service over unfounded allegations of historic sex offences. in a statement, a cps spokesperson said. we have reached an agreement without admission of liability. the 69—year—old, in an interview with the daily mail, talked about how his life had been turned upside down following his arrest, claiming all these organisations i'd supported just ghosted me, and praised his husband, saying he saved my life. i don't want to imagine what it would have been like not having a loving spouse through all of this. mr gambaccini was arrested following allegations he had sexually abused two boys in the 1970s and 80s — claims he said were fictitious. the cps dropped the case

and wrongly suggested his accusers were under age. mr gambaccini began legal action whilst calling for changes in the law. if we are to have a just society, we must have anonymity before charge. because what we had during this recent five years was anybody could make an accusation against anybody, whether they knew them or not, and would get publicised. since the cps announcement, the bbc has released a statement to say paul is valued and appreciated. that is why he presents two much—loved shows. frankie mccamley, bbc news. the lawyer representing a christian woman in pakistan who was cleared of blasphemy charges after eight years on death row, has fled the country in fear for his life. saif mulook said he had to leave so he could continue to represent asia bibi, who was convicted in 2010 of insulting the prophet muhammad, but acquitted by the supreme court earlier this week. violent protests by hardline

islamists followed the ruling, but the government has since reached a deal with them, barring ms bibi from leaving pakistan. a little earlier, i spoke to 0mar waraich, who's deputy regional director for south asia at amnesty international. he strongly criticised the deal and said it undermines the rule of law. it's a shameful capitulation. just a couple of days after the prime minister went on television saying that the government upholds the verdict of the supreme court's warning the mobs from rampaging across the streets and carrying out destruction, laying siege to major cities and today have surrendered. they have effectively said that the rule of law is negotiable if you have the muscle to bring the government to you. i understand asia has been put on ecl or the exit control list. what does that mean?

that means she would not be able to leave the country. this is usually a measure to stop people who are at risk of flights. principally in criminal cases and in this case you have the strainer a situation of someone that has been acquitted by the supreme court possibly being stopped from leaving and the condition is that she not be allowed to leave the country until a review of the supreme court ruling goes through. not to be a real legal challenges to this and there's no guarantee that this goes through and if she's unable to leave the country and the supreme court is forced to review the verdict then i fear for her life. what is the state of religious freedoms in pakistan according to amnesty? what are you seeing?

well, it has been a dismal situation for several years. the long—suffering minorities have been targeted by armed groups, subject to discrimination leaving them ensnared in these blasphemy laws that are brought vague and coercive. 0n the basis of little evidence that we have seen this particular case someone can be ensnared into a justice system that will not protect them. the onus, they cannot factually defend themselves, and even as we are seeing, even when the highest court in the country rules that someone is in a sense that the evidence is insufficient they can still be persecuted in this most horrific way. what would you like to see happen next, or does amnesty ever need plans to act on behalf of asia and what about these reforms? boot: the government to go about back to their original

position that when to uphold with the supreme court ruling was which undid and reversed in a year—long miscarriage ofjustice, to ensure that people are protected to a religious minorities, that mobs cannot hold the state hostage in this way and to prosecute the people making these threats and these are very serious threats made not just against the supreme courtjudges lives but also against members of the government including the prime minister and even the army chief. this sort of behaviour would not be tolerated by anyone else if it was anyone else. so it's really quite surprising that an armed and violent mob of this kind can get the government to submit to their demands. the state has to rediscover their authority and is sure the ruling holds a meeting that cannot be defined at will by the forces of bigotry and it will be there to protect the most marginalised and we to rely on it.

the businessman aaron banks has returned to the uk, as he faces allegations that multi—million pound donations he made to groups backing brexit, may have broken electoral law. the co—founder of leave—dot—eu has been referred to the national crime agency by the elections watchdog, over claims the donations had come from impermissible sources. mr banks denies any wrongdoing, and insists the money was his, and didn't come from anyone else. well, it just hasn't. the money came from me. we are going to co—operate with the nca, and they will have visibility into our accounts, won't they? the irish prime minister has warned that brexit is undermining 20 years of peace in northern ireland, and is fraying relationships with britain. in an interview with the broadcaster rte, leo varadkar said brexit was also pulling britain and ireland apart. brexit negotiations have

stalled over how to avoid the return of a hard border between the republic of ireland and northern ireland. more than 70 business people have written to the sunday times demanding another referendum on brexit. the letter has been coordinated by the people's vote campaign, which is pressing for the public to be given a say on whether to accept the terms of the uk's departure from the european union. 0ur political correspondent, chris mason is with me. you have seen this letter? is appearing in the sunday times tomorrow and so i am familiar with this. a kind of letter that we have been seeing for the best for the last three years. from both sides writing to paper is setting out their arguments and the chief executive of waterstone. the chief executive of waterstone. the chief executive of waterstone. the chief

executive of sainsbury and richard reid. the founder of last—minute .com. the essence of their argument is they say the idea behind brexit was that there would be fresh in this trade with the european union. that that was what was promised and they said in the letter to quote a couple of lines despite the best ever is the proposals being discussed by the government and the european commission for this are falling well short and not nearly as good as the current deal we haven't said the eu and the uncertainty over the past two years have led to a spotin the past two years have led to a spot in investment which will make oui’ spot in investment which will make our country poorer. so they have joined this border campaigned for a people's vote as the campaign describes it. the the terms of brexit given the option to remain as a possibility as well. and they say let's give the people i say what prime minister comes back with a deal. this is in the context of that big demonstration we saw in central

london a couple of weeks ago. worth emphasizing government is absolutely of the view that talk of another is for the birds and it will not happen. they have commissioned a survey in the poll. yes, another bit of their argument from this weekend was the opinion poll they requested this weekend and looking at the views of people in labor held constituencies around the idea of having another referendum. this survey suggests a decent number of people in those seats that are in favour of another referendum. what's tricky with these opinion polls when he speak to the pollsters didn't get different results depending on the exact question you ask whether or not you're talking about a people's vote application you can rerun the referendum now that the campaign argue it's not about rerunning the referendum but a different question. sceptics say yes but ultimately you're asking whether or not people wa nt to you're asking whether or not people want to remain in the eu or accept

brexit which is every framing of pretty much the same question. what you are seeing from this campaign group is an awareness that the window for making this argument about another referendum is closing because obviously brexit is curtly scheduled to happen in five months' time. they are stepping up that campaign. there will be plenty on the leave the side of the argument that will say it's the same old people moaning and that's afraid they would use to describe the business leaders and talking down the british economy and the rest of it. whitby to economist and then make the argument that the economy has not grown as fast as it might have done had the uk voted to remain. i'vejust been have done had the uk voted to remain. i've just been chatting to james to one of the signatories of this letter describing brexit and he described it as an atrocious idea which makes us all poorer. intrigued when asked about the specific impact

on his industry he said all of the paper in our books written on is imported and we rely on efforts to bring seven to the country and there are multiple uncertainties that he says are already putting people off spending money that they made otherwise not suspect. thank you very much for that. the headlines on bbc news. leicester city players and fans observe a minute's silence to honour the club's chairman, and four others, who died in a helicopter crash a week ago. broadcaster paul gambaccini receives a pay—out from the crown prosecution service — over its handling of unfounded sexual assault allegations against him. fears for the safety of a christian woman in pakistan, whose acquittal for blasphemy sparked days of violent protests across the country. police are investigating

after a drive—by shooting in which two teenagers were injured in birmingham. it happened in the handsworth area of the city shortly after eight o'clock last night. lindsay doyle reports. the painstaking search for clues to help find those responsible for shooting two teenage boys. a 15—year—old was shot in the back in the victoria road in handsworth at about 8:15pm last night. he was taken to hospital where he is described as being in a serious but stable condition. a second boy, who was just 14, suffered an injury to his arm which is not thought to be serious. the shots are thought to have been fired from a car which then sped off. this is getting too much. really too much. i mean, come on! our only street at night time, there is nobody here. you can't really bring kids into this kind of area if this is happening. it is not good at all.

investigating officers are currently examining cctv in the area. this morning police issued a statement appealing for witnesses. they said they will not tolerate anyone being shot, especially teenagers. they added that they are determined to find who is responsible for this. anyone who has any information is asked to contact the police immediately, if someone wishes to remain anonymous they can contact crimestoppers. with just days before crucial midterm elections in the us, two presidents — past and present — have been dominating the campaign trail. on friday the former president, barack 0bama, launched a scathing attack on donald trump, accusing his successor of fear—mongering over a caravan of migrants travelling towards the united states, and calling the current president, a liar. what we have not seen, at least in my lifetime, is an approach in which folks in the highest levels of office,

folks who we thought our children should be looking up to, will just blatantly, repeatedly, boldly, shamelessly, lie. just make stuff up. just say things that they know are not true. and theyjust keep on doing it. president trump has also been on the attack. while he acknowledged that the democrats could take the house of representatives, he sharply criticised the 0bama years and defended his own record. we don't want to go back to the

0bama days of low wages, high unemployment, rising crime, open borders the far leftjudges, oppressive regulations, horrible, horrible, horrible trade deals. disaster foreign—policy and look at the mess in north korea and look how well doing now. meanwhile, twitter has removed around 10,000 automated accounts that discouraged people from voting in tuesday's us midterms. most of the accounts were posing as democrats, the social media company said. a little earlier i spoke to sam woolley, director of the thinktank — digital intelligence lab, who gave us his analysis of the story. there's been all sorts of different kinds of messages from what we call political bot accounts — some of them tell people not to vote. they are trying to disenfranchise voters. some of them are harassing. they try to attack people in different social groups or issue—voting groups and some of them are just spam that are meant to block the lines of communication

on a site like twitter. is there any evidence that these messages, these accounts have had an effect on social opinion? what we see is that often times the bots aren't targeting people. they are actually being built to target the algorithm, the trending algorithm on a site like twitter in order to manufacture fake trends. when they do target people however, what they are being used to do is either harass them in order to get them off—line or to create a chilling effect among journalists and journalists don't report certain stories. do we know how quickly twitter has responded to this? twitter seems to be doing a lot to try to get rid of bots on its platform but these things have existed on twitter since twitter went public several years ago. and there have been numerous instances across the world where political bots have been used to manipulate public opinion. and twitter has really failed to do

as much as it really could've up until 2016 what was in their backyard, so to speak. so why this change in its actions, why was it so important that it is seen to be taking swift action? i think that the reason is that there has been a tremendous amount of pressure within the united states upon twitter both from the government and civil society but as well as users. and so if twitter wants to retain its legitimacy, it really has to get rid of bots because bots are seen as a way of notjust faking political speech online but also bolstering metrics of advertising and really affecting the bottom—line of the company itself. how closely is twitter working with the political parties on these midterms? that remains unclear. in the past we have seen twitter, facebook and google working with parties in a political communications capacity to sell them advertisements and things like that. what we don't know whether or not the company is working with parties to actually actively get

rid of bots. in fact often times what we see from twitter is quite a sort of hidden practise of how it manages this problem. sam, i am interested to know because the last time we heard allegations of this sort of interference, political interference, at the us elections of course with the presidential elections and there was the allegation that this had originated from russia, do we know whether this was home—grown or foreign accounts? what my research shows is that a large proportion of the traffic that's being used to target social groups, specifically jewish americans, members of the left, latino community and african americans is coming from the alt—right and members of white nationalist parties in the united states. but that could be really a veil for russian accounts. we know that russians have impersonated us voters in the past. but the thing to underline here is that it's really hard for researchers like me to tell

who is actually building bot accounts and it's actually really hard for a group like twitter to actually tell because anonymity is baked into the platform, so to speak. let's stay in the united states actually. this is donald trump, he has just stepped off air force one and he is in belgrade montana. the beta stopover from the campaign trailfor beta stopover from the campaign trail for the beta stopover from the campaign trailfor the midterms beta stopover from the campaign trail for the midterms which will be taking place on tuesday. the six—year bbc news of the covering them of course. not his last up today. you'll be off to pensacola florida. 0n today. you'll be off to pensacola florida. on monday 0hio, indiana and mississippi were misery rather. before he finishes hejust mississippi were misery rather. before he finishes he just tweeted about 20 minutes ago. he said landing in montana, at least

everybody admits my lines and crowds are far bigger than guest to? barack 0bama. he did highlight who he will be talking about here in montana. all about those job numbers and wages. wow, he said in a tweet. attacks on firefighters in england have increased by a quarter in the past year — according to their trade union. the fire brigades union says there were more than 930 incidents where crews were abused or threatened. the home office says new laws coming into place this month should give the police and courts more power to deal with those who are violent towards emergency service workers. a man in his 50's has been struck by a vehicle and killed, while walking on a motorway, at around two o'clock this morning. west mercia police said it was yet to be established why he was on the m5 near to frankley services in worcestershire. the motorway was closed overnight for investigations

but it's now been re—opened. detectives are continuing to investigate the fatal stabbing of a 17—year—old boy outside a south london tube station, a day after a 15—year—old was killed in the city. 19 teenagers have been killed in violent attacks in london so far this year. the latest happened in broad daylight outside clapham south station. no arrests have been made. the world is losing plants at an unprecedented rate, with around one in five thought to be at risk of extinction — so the race is on to store back—up copies in seed banks. not all species can be preserved in this way, including many trees. 0ur science correspondent, helen briggs reports. coming down into the vault itself. buried beneath the sussex countryside, a bomb—proof, flood—proof, radiation—proof vault. it contains store rooms kept at —20 degrees.

we put our coats on. and everywhere you look, there are seeds. the scale of the operation. large seed collections in these kilnerjars. you can see all of these, drawer after drawer after drawer, 90,000 collections of 39,000—plus species. seeds from nearly every country can be found within these walls, an insurance policy against the extinction of plants in the wild. but not all seeds can be preserved in conventional seed banks. it doesn't give full cover for some very important groups of plants, particularly threatened species, rainforest trees and even in the uk, some iconic species, the oaks, their seeds cannot stand drying and cannot be frozen. we need to work on alternative methods. one alternative being tested is cryopreservation. it involves separating the plant embryo from the rest of the seed. in this state, it can survive very cold temperatures. when thawed out, it will

grow into a new tree. this baby oak tree has come out of the deep freeze and is starting to grow. trees in a test tube could be the answer to protecting our forests in the long—term. trees face many threats in the wild, from climate change to diseases like ash dieback, which can wipe out whole populations. now it's time for a look at the weather with stav. been increasingly windy but my out of the day. so the sunshine across the southeast quadrant of the north and west the weather front has been bringing outbreaks of rain and it could be pretty wet across or within and west areas this evening. wendy would gales on the irish sea coast in the northwest scotland. drier weather will push into scotland and northern ireland bar a few stray

showers of most of the rain coming by to central portions of england and in towards wales. it will be a mild temperatures ranging from five to 11 degrees. very wendy the northwest corner and the news and wales have quite heavy at times. on that mild theme into next week that the sunshine across eastern areas and a bit of rain and the further west you are. this is bbc news with the headlines. leicester city players observed a