of a news website that's been critical of president duterte. maria ressa is accused of libel for an article that was written seven years ago. ms ressa and her news organisation, rappler, are already under investigation for tax fraud. mr duterte‘s government has launched a number of legal actions against the president's critics. a schoolgirl from london, who travelled to syria to join the islamic state group, says she now wants to return to the uk, so she can care for her unborn child. and this story is trending on bbc.com: indian researchers have discovered a new species of frog, in a roadside puddle in the western ghats region. small and mysterious. that's all. stay with bbc world news. now on bbc news, stephen sackur is in florida with hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. this is suburban florida,

peaceful, prosperous, seemingly at ease with itself. but the truth is, no corner of america is immune from gun violence, least of all florida, which just one year ago saw an horrific high school shooting which left 1a students and three members of staff dead. well, i've come here to meet cameron kasky. he survived that shooting, and he went on to found a remarkable student movement committed to taking on america's gun lobby. but one year on, has anything really changed 7 cameron kasky, welcome to hardtalk.

thank you for having me. it's pretty much one year since you were part of the traumatic events at the high school in parkland. how are you today? today, it's a mixed bag. i'm an 18—year—old boy who's, like any 18—year—old boy, dealing with the trappings of being a teenager. i struggle with depression, anxiety. very normal things. but issues that are hard to talk about lately. do you struggle with ptsd? i mean, is there trauma that came out of what you went through that is still with you? i think there's... i wouldn't call it trauma, i would call it a moral ambiguity behind everything, because after the shooting i found myself on television almost

24/7 for a month or two, and ifound myself skyrocketed to this position were so many people were looking at what i had to say and were listening to me. and this was only weeks after the shooting that i found myself at this point with my platform. so, ifind myself asking the question, was it all worth it? what makes me so special? why should i have been somebody who was able to reach all these people? and that's difficult, but i certainly don't have any trauma from the shooting itself. i was over a hundred yards away from the shooting. i was not in any physical danger. that's why i hate when people call me a victim or a survivor. i mean, there were young people who go to school every day right now and saw their classmates die. i didn't see anyone die. you're very frank saying, listen, i was quite a long way from where the shooter was, i'm not a victim, and yet it must

have an impact upon you. you were 17 years old and you knew the people who died, at least, many of them, and one of them, a teacher, scott beigel, was someone you'd been close to. yes, and at the time, when the shooting broke out, i had no idea who was involved. i mean, until hours after the shooting, we didn't know how many people were killed. i went home thinking it was either two or 50, we truly have no idea. i saw videos when we were in the room of people who were killed, they were on snapchat, people were saying, "yo, my school got shot up." clearly they were not in grammarclass. during the shooting itself i had such a horrible peace because, despite the fact that i felt like i was in danger, we had no idea where the shooter was, despite the fact that i didn't know if i had lost any friends, i knew what was happening. i knew it was a mass shooting, and this is the united states. it's one of our national... it's one of the things you remember the united states by. we're the country of baseball,

and the founding fathers, and mass shootings. so, it was very familiar to me. i grew up with these. i was born in 2000, which was not long at all after columbine. and, since then, there was the shooting in aurora, sandy hook elementary, vegas, we knew these shooting. you make a very strong point. we are familiar with mass shootings. we are even familiar with mass shootings in schools. the difference, and you are part of this difference, is that within hours of the shooting at parkland there were kids, including yourself, who sat down and thought, we are going to respond to this by doing something, by being active. just explain to me how it was that so quickly after getting home on that very day, february 14th, 2018, you and a few friends decided that there was stuff

you're going to do. so, what happened the night was i found myself frantically facebook posting. it was what i knew how to do. i'm 18 years old, what do i know how to do besides use social media? that's like my only skill and i'm not even particularly great at it, but i found myself frantically posting things on facebook and suddenly they went viral. and i said, well, how could that be? i'm just some kid. and the next morning i was getting all these calls from reporters and i noticed several of my other friend had been doing this as well. and that day i said, we need to flip this narrative. after all these shootings, you see such similar things, you see crying mothers talking about their children, you see people talking about how the shooter was just a nice boy, misunderstood. with only a few exceptions, so much of these shootings had the same exact response. a couple of lawmakers would get kids from the shooting to stand next to them, they would sign a bill that did nothing and we'd be done.

and i said, we can't have parkland be that city. now, mind you, there's plenty of room for crying, there's plenty of room for people talking about the horrible tragedy of loss. i understand that. but your focus was on the anger. i wanted it to be that 20 years after the shooting, when people thought of parkland, they didn't think of people crying, they thought people in the worst possible situation standing up and standing for something that was bigger than them. so, while we haven't gotten all of the legislative victories he want with gun control, we have gotten very few, actually, at the end of the day there's a victory in the sense that parkland is not the city that you think of and you instantly think of people mourning and people running away from the problem. i think when people hear the word parkland they think of something larger and stronger than the shooter. i mean, in many ways the greatest thing parkland did was that it was stronger than anyone who could try to attack it. i think one of the things people remember from parkland that didn't happen in so many of the other school shootings and mass shootings was the sense of putting politicians on the spot, direct confrontation. now, again, you were central to that, because less than a week standing up, literally standing up,

next to a florida senator, marco rubio, asking him direct, "will you tell us here and now that you will take no more funds from the national rifle association?" you, as a kid then of 17, were putting this senator on the spot in a way that nobody else had. well, i think that in many ways my confrontation of senator rubio was very positive, in the sense that it reminded a lot of people my age that politicians are just like anybody else. they are not these deities that we need to look up to as if they are our supreme leaders, these are individuals who get elected into office and they have a job to represent the people of their state.

and, you know, senator rubio represents a state where two of the largest shootings in american history happened within two years. the pulse shooting and the shooting at stoneman douglas happened right in senator rubio‘s state. do you think it went too far, though? oh, yeah! i am just looking out at things you said. for example, one quote from you, "0ur lawmakers," you said, rick scott and indeed marco rubio, rick scott being the governor at the time, "they have the blood of the 17 people, the dead people from the parkland shooting on their hands." oh, that's sensationalist, that's not fair. you said it. i understand that i said it, i said it in a very emotional way. mind you, i do think that these people have no place in office. i do think that due to shootings like this and a lack action, governor scott and senator rubio, senator scott now, these individuals have not shown the qualities of somebody who stands for florida. but i don't think that these are people who want to kill people. i don't think these are people who look at murders of other human

beings and treat like it's nothing. hmm. so, you know, i think what happened with the parkland shooting is so much a reflection of american politics right now. i think that it showed that young people standing up and advocating for something that they believed in is such a powerful and amazing force for change, but i also think it showed that sometimes how we feel about things can get in the way of our objective thinking. it is interesting, the role of emotion, and the impact it had upon you. and, again, i'm so mindful of everything you have just been through, your age as well, because you were 17 at the time, and within a month or two, going from the february shooting through to march now, you were there in washington, dc, at the head of this march for our lives movement, which drew hundreds of thousands of predominantly young people to the nation's capital to call for serious, meaningful gun control. and, again, i'm so taken by some of the things you said at the time. you spoke in the name of the people, for example.

you said "the people now demand a ban of assault weapons. the people demand we prohibit the sale of high—capacity magazines. the people demand universal background checks. stand with us or beware," you said, in front of this huge crowd. "because we, the voters, are coming." it was extraordinary, what you did. i think one of the most effective things about the gun—control movement is that the average person in this country, if you ask them, if you show them an ar—is... an assault rifles. yeah, a semiautomatic long rifle, and you say, "does any individual need this?" they're going to say no. i think there's a tremendous amount in this country who believes that we don't need gun control. and a lot of these people i don't think think that in a malicious way. i think they think they have individual liberty to own these firearms. but i think that the overwhelming majority of people in our country think that we as a society have

moved past a lot of these weapons. i think that we don't have redcoats and bears coming to our door any more so the laws written back when that was an issue might need to be looked at again. but you know better than i that the second amendment of the us constitution, the right to bear arms, is just woven so deep into the american psyche. i don't want to... you appeared to be taking that on, you appeared to be saying, "i do not accept this fundamental principle of american culture and life." well, sure. i don't want to scare you we are 20 feet away from several guns. they are all locked up in a safe in the garage. i don't know if you saw it. they are your dad's gums? not my guns, my father's guns, he was a police officer, a reserve. but i think the second amendment is a great thing in the country. i think if someone is going to come

into my house that is much larger than i am and threaten my family and i have the ability to take a little instrument and be stronger than they are, that's terrific. so i guess what i am saying is that actually, if you personally, cameron kasky, believe in the second amendment, and you recognise the value of personal firearms, do you think, and we have talked about the emotion in your heart at the time, do you think you went too far, you failed to bring a huge chunk of america with you in this message you were sending out? well, i don't think any other policy points that i advocated for are controversial, in the sense that i think that most people absolutely could get behind them. i mean, if you look at the percentage of people in this country who support comprehensive background check legislation, it's over—whelming, it's over 95%, from what i have read. now, how many of those people fully understand what comprehensive background checks are? probably less than 95%, probably significantly less. but i think that the people who didn't want to be part of the movement for gun—control were never going to be. what we had in response to that huge

march, and let's not forget hundreds of thousands of young people joined the sort of classroom exit strategy that you had for a while. the walkouts. the walkouts, where kids would gather to, again, demand meaningful gun—control. it was a huge thing and it captured the spirit of the time post—parkland, but it also generated a backlash. the national rifle association made videos suggesting that you were completely wrong and misguided. there were conservative people on tv and radio slamming you, some of them in the most extreme ways, going very personal for you and some of the other leaders of your movement. there were even suggestions that you were stooges, you were somehow paid actors or puppets of liberal forces. how bad did it get? i have to tell you, there were many cases where it got so astronomically

funny that we didn't know what to do when we were watching it. some of the most hilarious stuff i've ever seen. there were several theories that my older brother was actually me, they took a picture of him and said, "cameron kasky actually graduated in 2016." some of the stuff they put out was hilarious. you say hilarious, but was it not frightening? i grew up in the social media age. i know there are total psychopaths out there who will do anything so i trained myself to find it objectively funny which it mostly was, i can get a kick out of it. it seems to me, to coin a cliche, you've been on an extraordinary journey in the past year and made some decisions which reflect changing yourself. for example, having led the march for our lives movement, from the february shooting through the summer, by september 2018, you decided you needed to walk away from it and you talked about the degree to which you regretted some of the decisions you'd taken.

i don't think those were any organisational decisions. here and there, as part of march for our lives, i may regret working with somebody, no more than it was a waste of time, some organisations reached out to us which were not that helpful, but the things i regretted were all on a personal level. that was blatantly taken out of context by a lot of right—wing pundits who want to say, "see, this whole thing was a regret." i regret saying the name of the shooter to senator rubio and saying i can't look at him without seeing a shooter. that's not true. my confrontation with rubio was positive in that it made a lot of people feel they could be less afraid of our lawmakers but going about it, i did it in such a vitriolic way, i didn't find it very, very, i would say, meaningful and productive. i was emotionally charged.

seven days ago, my school was shot up. it was entirely understandable. without sounding like a psychiatrist, do you think your frenzy of political activism and campaigning in the months after the shooting was your way of coping and maybe avoiding some of the deeper personal pain? 0h, absolutely. so many people got politically involved because, well, what were we going to do? everybody felt helpless. the second we saw something, second we saw this change that was possible, we said, "if we can do this, we will feel better." i don't know, i think that a lot of people, it caught up with them. it caught up with me. i tried to push everything away for so long and it got to me and all of the mistakes i have made along the wayjust as a human being, a human being struggling with different

mental health issues, i looked back and only within weeks, this was not september, this was january, i look back at everything and say, i spent so long feeling like i was an avatar, feeling like my body was saying things, my mind was just cut off. putting on a front, really. i spent so long in front of cameras that i forgot how to be a person. and i think that will always happen, i will never fully come back from that. do you think you got sucked into the notion of being on a national stage, being somebody with a huge twitter and social media following, appearing on twitter and 24/7 news channels? was that seductive? the public profile wasn't seductive, the fact that i could make gun

control happen was seductive and i thought i could become the person who could make it happen, as if it was me. but it was a large push for legislative change, i had this almost messiah—like concept that i could do this and i got so high off of that, not literally, so figuratively high off the concept, what if i could do this? in many ways, that ambition was such a great fuel for encouraging others to bring change and that was such a positive way to make other people do things and to make our country mobilise towards gun control but it drove me insane. i kept on thinking of the word "i" and not "we". i was thinking of cameron all day. the truth is not much has changed in terms of america's attitude to gun control. i disagree. i think that i do agree we've done a lot, we've done great things, but in new york, there

were terrific laws passed that are very substantial and will save a lot of people's lives but i think that the thing that march for our lives did to this country was, we told a whole generation of kids, we need to start working together and thinking and just because we are little, does not mean we are inadequate when it comes to being part of the conversation. i find that so interesting because clearly, in the reaction to what you did, there were some people, and particularly it has to be said on the conservative right, who were very much on the same page as the nra, who spoke that as young people, you couldn't possibly be agents for yourselves for change, you must have been controlled by either your parents or by liberal advocacy groups and guess what, you showed us that particularly in the age of social media, young people do have agency,

they actually have a means to get a message out there for themselves and of themselves. you were a real interesting example of what now young people can do and achieve. i hope... i mean, i don't know how much i personally achieved. i know that i was part of something that really shook the country and, in many ways, the world, but i think something that a lot of people can learn from me at least, just from cameron, my own mistakes and my own journey, is that everything you'll ever do that is positive, anything good that will ever happen, anything good you will ever make happen, it's going to be because of the people around you, and you are as good as your surroundings. if you have people around you who look after you and make the best of you, which in many ways i did, you are going to succeed. if you have people who are vitriolic and so spiteful towards you, which i also did,

you are going to fail. you are who you surround yourself with and you need to be somebody that people want to be around, somebody who lifts others up and is positive towards other people because it's not about you. one way in which it seems you have learned in the course of this past year is, you've learned about people in america you would never in your previous life have had any contact with. i'm thinking of, for example, the bus to you took around parts of this nation, including texas where you met gun owners, very committed to the guns in a way perhaps you hadn't come across before. it seems, far from the confrontational stance you took in the weeks and months after the shooting when you were full of emotion, now your goal seems to be sort of to build bridges and to reach out more. would that be correct? i think the more and more you think

about how right you are and how wrong everybody else is, the less you will learn. a lot of people country get stuck in these bubbles, especially because of social media where if you surround yourself with enough people who share your thoughts, you get this holier—than —thou complex where you are right, totally right and anyone who is wrong is a bad person. i am very pro—gun control, we need to control guns. people don't like to say gun control because the right took it over and made it too intense but i share the principle that if something is out of control, you should control it and guns are out of control. when i am with like—minded people and we talk about how great gun control is, you start to think, if you don't think this, you must be a really bad person and then i met these people and i said, "they are not bad people." i don't think they are right and the way they look at the country and the world does not align with my own views, but these aren't people who want to hurt others. these are people who are wrong.

and i'm wrong about a lot of things. i spend a lot of time being wrong, it's one of my favourite hobbies, so if i vilify half the people in this country, where is that going to bring me? i think there is so much more that we can do if we all look at each other and say, well, where can we agree? because that's normally where the most progress is made. cameron kasky, thank you very much for being on hardtalk. thank you for having me. good morning. the highest temperature ever recorded in february in the uk

is 19.7 celsius was back in 1998. on wednesday it was 1a. still mild. the highest temperatures in the north—east of scotland. around the moray firsth. over the next few days we could see temperatures approaching 16 celsius. very mild indeed. the air coming south, from the canaries. chilly nights when we have the clearer skies and that is what we have at the moment the england and wales. much milder. and northern ireland, where there is more cloud. the cloud feeding and braking and developing more widely. some sunshine developing. a little bit hazy at times. blue skies for england and wales. the wind is not as strong. temperatures 12—111,

maybe even 15 degrees. high pressure keeping it essentially fine and dry. south south—westerly winds are milder. a lot of sunshine ahead of friday. more mist and fog is for england and wales early in the morning. a bit of rain mainly to the north—west of scotland. elsewhere probably dry. another lovely day for the most part. possibly 16 in north—east wales and north—east scotland. over the weekend, some slight changes but still mild. probably a bit more cloud around on saturday. further north, some brightness and sunshine coming through. one or two spots of drizzle to the far west and north—west.

essentially a dry day. still south south—westerly winds. temperatures 13 — 1a celsius. the high—pressure squeezing out into continental europe where temperatures continue to rise. a bit of rain and drizzle to the west. further east, and otherfine day, less mild perhaps on monday but little rain and most places will be fine and dry with south—westerly winds. welcome to newsday on the bbc. i'm sharanjit leyl in singapore. the headlines: police in the philippines arrest the head of a news website highly critical of president duterte for an alleged cyber offence dating back seven years. the fact that an arrest warrant has been issued, well, really interesting, and i will follow. i'm just shocked that the rule of law has been broken to the point that i can't see it. no regrets aboutjoining the islamic state group, but hoping to return home.

a london schoolgirl lifts the lid on her brutal life in syria. i'm kasia madera in london. also in the programme: a valentine's day plea from japan's same—sex community. 13 couples demand the government recognises their relationships as marriage.