dnp is still freely available on the internet. adina campbell, bbc news, in ukraine. the children's commissioner for england has proposed opening schools during evenings, weekends and holidays to keep children safe and away from gangs. anne longfield has also suggested posting designated police officers and security to every school to help combat violence. she said that opening classrooms outside of usual hours could have a transformative effect on society. jane—frances kelly reports. bell rings. the school bell marks the end of the day, but the children's commissioner for england would prefer it if pupils stayed on for a range of activities, rather than going straight home. anne longfield fears too many children are ending up indoors, stuck in front of their computers during theirfree time, because they don't feel safe playing outdoors. they have fantastic sports and arts facilities, technology there. all of it gets locked

up just at the time when children need it most. the sad fact is, we know the violence peaks between 4pm and 6:30pm when children are leaving school. that is just when schools need to be open. she warns that in more and more areas, gangs are operating in streets and parks, grooming increasingly younger children. to help tackle the problem, she would like schools to open at weekends, evenings and during school holidays to provide a safe place for extracurricular activities. anne longfield says about £2.6 billion a year of extra funding is needed to allow schools to stay open out of hours and to provide more high—quality youth support in communities. to put that cost in context, it's as much as the promised increase in school funding across the whole of england for 2020—2021. one head teachers‘ union has welcomed the idea, saying it would require extra money

and careful planning but could create time for arts and sports, which are increasingly squeezed out of the school day. the government says it's making record investments in education and children's services to help young people overcome the challenges they face. jane—frances kelly, bbc news. now it's time for a look at the weather. good afternoon. there is that? good afternoon. this is northumberland. it is my favourite picture of the day and it just makes you want to be there. the weather has settled down a bit. the cloud looked more unsettled over the moors, but on the whole it is dry with lengthy spells of sunshine. more cloud over northern ireland. still a nagging northerly breeze down the east of england in particular, making it feel chilly.

but warm in the sunshine elsewhere, with the warmest temperatures in south wales and the south—west of england. as the sky is clear, the temperatures will drop. it could be slightly frosty in north—east scotla nd slightly frosty in north—east scotland or parts of england. lots of sunshine to start the day tomorrow, still the chance of a shower down the eastern coastal areas towards kent. more cloud here and there, but the bulk will affect northern ireland again, and increasingly across western scotland. ahead of that, 16—18d, warmer than today for eastern scotla nd warmer than today for eastern scotland and the north—east of england. hello, this is bbc news. the headlines: mps, including conservatives expelled from the party, are preparing legal action in case boris johnson refuses

to request a brexit delay. the labour leaderjeremy corbyn has said the government has a duty to comply with the will of parliament. the courts make a decision to try to make the prime minister abide by the law, made by a parliament of which he isa law, made by a parliament of which he is a member. these are strange times for democracy. these are strange times for democracy. it's the law of the land and he is under an obligation to obey it. if he doesn't obey it, he can be taken to court and if necessary the court will issue an injunction ordering him to do it. and if he doesn't obey the injuction, he can be sent to prison. a warning that four in ten uk businesses haven't done even a basic risk assessment of the consequences of a no—deal brexit. satellite images appear to show the iranian oil tanker, adrian darya i, previously impounded in gibraltar, is now off the syrian coast. ukraine prisoners are united with theirfamilies, as part of swap with russia. it's hoped it will ease tensions between the two neighbours.

now on bbc news, david shukman reports on the battle to preserve the world's largest rainforest in amazon under threat. the amazon rainforest is the largest in the world. home to an incredible variety of life, but suddenly, it's all at risk. the clearing of the trees is accelerating, and scientists are warning about the danger of irreversible loss. it's never going to come back again. we are never going to be able to build an amazon. it's going to be gone forever. brazil has a new president, and he wants to develop the amazon, and he is encouraging his supporters to exploit it. so the people who live

inside the forest fear that their days may be numbered. a gentle view of field and forest in the amazon, but this region is now the scene of a struggle over land, and a battle for survival. this is the home of the uru—eu—wau—wau, a tiny band ofjust 120. they're one of many indigenous groups that have lived in the rainforest for centuries. they're meant to be protected in special reserves, but they feel the new government of brazil is against them.

one of the elders of the group, describes the rituals of getting ready for war. a crucial task is preparing weapons. the wood for the arrows comes from particular trees. the feathers from special birds. he has dark memories of the first contacts with the outside world. in the middle of the last century, settlers and loggers advanced into the forest and fought the indigenous people for territory. his wife was wounded as a young girl. an attack left her with scars and killed her family. there's been a long and violent history here, and she says she is now worried once more.

here, they are making an ink to use as a war paint. a fruit is grated to get at thejuice, a process given special meaning now as the risks of an attack seemed to grow. the pulp is squeezed, and the liquid is mixed with charcoal. everything they hear from the president about their way of life sounds hostile. adorning themselves with the paint is more than just tradition. it's because of a real sense of needing to be on guard.

so they patrol what is meant to be their protected area. but they discover incursions. this track was carved out to steal timber or create new farmland. miners often break in as well. sites like this are painful because this is home. it's where they gather food and hunt. previous governments saw indigenous people as guardians of the amazon. but now, their whole future is uncertain. the youngest generation may not grow up amid these trees.

given the negative attitude of the new president, jair bolsonaro, the new president, jair bolsonaro.

we use our drone to get a view of the dark green edge of the reserve. farmland presses right up against it, and president bolsonaro says farmers should be allowed inside. in his view, indigenous people have too much land. his election heralded a right wing agenda, in favour of agriculture and of guns. he thrills his supporters with talk of opening up the amazon. since he came to office, bullets were fired at the sign marking the land of the uru—eu—wau—wau. tensions are escalating. up the road, we get talking

to some localfarmers, and they say exactly the kind of things the president says, that the system of forest reserves for indigenous people is wrong, and that farmers need more land. with the president on their side, farmers and loggers feel a new freedom to clear trees. we found this vast area of bare earth and dead trunks, huge tracts of forest are being wiped out. my footsteps and distant birdsong

are the only sounds. it is tragic to see this close—up. to bring these trees down to the ground, theyjust knock them over with a bulldozer. this is happening all over the amazon to create new farmland, and the result is that the great forest has never been under such pressure. many trees have already made way for agriculture. nearly 18% of the forest. and the president is now pushing for much more aggressive development. we are guided to this tiny clearing, to see where illegal loggers were at work. this kind of wood fetches a high price on the black market. stealing rare timber is nothing new here in the amazon, but under the new government,

it's never been so easy. the agencies meant to stop this kind of thing from happening are incredibly overstretched, and the president wants to weaken the legal protections for the forest. to make the timber less valuable, environment officials cut into the logs so they can't be turned into planks. but they can't talk about their work, because they've been banned from speaking to the media. so yourjob, protecting the forests, must be very difficult. is it? you are trying to save the forest. so we have to meet this official in secret. his face hidden and voice changed. he says the government is trying to cover up the loss of the forest.

and the scale of the deforestation he describes is so vast that it is hard to visualise. up here, at the top of this 50 metre high observation tower, the view is just phenomenal, out over what looks like a great ocean of green. this is the canopy of the largest rainforest in the world. the problem is that more and more of it is being chopped down. it is hard to believe, but an area the size of a football pitch is being cleared every single minute. what that means is that forest that would cover more than 2000 pitches is just vanishing every day.

all the signs are that this rate of devastation will accelerate. the biggest single reason the trees are cleared is to create pasture for cattle. they are grazing on land that used to be forest. brazilian beef is in big demand all over the world, and the president's vision for boosting exports has delighted farmers like this man, who says other countries cut their forest down long ago. during our time in the amazon, we keep hearing that only brazil can decide what to do with the forest. but the trees store so much carbon that the more of them are cut down, the more we lose one of the very few

things holding up a rise —— holding back a rise in global temperatures. so what happens here matters far beyond brazil. so my name is erica, i am a scientist even though i don't wear a white coat. so i work in the amazon, in this beautiful forest, and i am from brazil. erica is a researcher based at the university of oxford. she has studied the trees of the amazon for the past ten years and she has always loved them. for me it is really important because the amazon cannot speak up, the trees can't speak up, they cannot say they are worth it, they have a value, they are really important. so i have made this my life, i have made to study them, understand them, understand the forest and speak up about its importance. erica has got to know the forest very well. she guides me through a stretch

of it that is constantly under assault from loggers and invaders. so you have become used to seeing a thriving forest, what is it like when you see the opposite, the forest cleared? it is very sad. very, very sad. because emotionally, i know everything i am losing, the connection is not there anymore, the life, but also i know how much biodiversity we are losing, how much it is contributing to climate change, so the emotions are really difficult. here is one of the biggest trees in this stretch of forest. that is just immense, isn't it. yeah. it is a really beautiful brazil nut. and you can see how far it stands above everybody else. how tall do you reckon that is? it is about a0 metres, yeah, i would say 120 feet. that is a long way up. (laughs) yeah, it is.

it probably took centuries to get to this size and also that tall. to fight for the sun. they love the sun, don't they? yeah. the challenge for scientists is to get accurate measurement of the forest. and this is one way to do that. erica waits down on the ground. she is asking for samples of wood. her assistant, way above, cuts away a few branches and throws them down. what she is trying to find out is the flow of carbon in the forest. so when we are in a forest like this and want to know how

much carbon is stored, you have to measure the diameter of all the trees, so you know its size. so these ones for example is... ..15.6 centimetres, and once we do it... we paint the tree... she has followed the growth of the same batch of trees year after year, to assess the role they play in the climate. they are helping us forfree, to remove carbon from the atmosphere, and put it in the forest and lock it up in here. it's the sheer size of the forest that makes it significant. we have used graphics to show how the countless leaves absorb carbon dioxide. that is the gas heating up the planet. as human activity keeps adding more and more carbon dioxide to the air, magnificent trees like this pull a lot of it in.

but chop it down and burn it, and all the carbon that has been stored inside over the many years is suddenly released back to the atmosphere. which of course, increases the speed of global warming. so erica's research is all the more urgent. in this lab she studies the wood collected from the forest to work out how much carbon the amazon holds. in this batch here we have lots of little bits of wood that come from different forests, and what we do is that we collect the wood from the forest, put them in these big oven behind me to remove the moisture, so they become super dry, put them on the stale, half of the weight here on the scale is actually carbon. this is really important to help us understand how much carbon the amazon is removing from the air from the atmosphere and locking up in vegetation.

so we can understand the importance of the amazon to fight climate change. the latest science is revealing about the amazon's store of carbon. it is the equivalent of america burning fossil fuels for nearly a century. 97 years of the us fossil fuel emissions, that is how much carbon there is in this place, because a big tree might store three tons of carbon, four tons of carbon, it's a lot of carbon. the rich greens of the forest have another vital role as well. they form the most vibrant habitat on earth. home to an extraordinary tenth of all species in the natural world. some of them are unnerving, others adorable. they are so wonderful, it's so full of life, so full... just so beautiful, and to lose it...

..it is never going to come back again. we are never going to be able to build an amazon. it's going to be gone forever. so once it is gone, it isjust gone, we can't rebuild it. field by field, this whole region is being transformed. it has triggered a barrage of international criticism of brazil. our research shows how easily and rapidly trees can be wiped out. and the brazilian government is now saying to the outside world, pay us to keep the forest.

in the meantime, the onslaught on the trees continues. and it can be dangerous asking awkward questions. as i hearfrom thisjournalist and charity worker, gabriel 0shida, as we travel through land that was forest. the landscape we are driving through looks very charming, with small fields, a very rattly road, but a few cows, a few trees, but what is actually going on here behind the scenes, what is it really like? even though it looks quiet and peaceful, this area is quite dangerous. this is like a wild west movie. so people are around carrying weapons, and people are doing whatever they want, they can invade new territories, i myself have already been threatened here. i have actually received death threats in this region. made by illegal loggers.

what effect has there been from the election of president bolsonaro? after bolsonaro got elected, we can clearly see that these guys here, these invaders, these land grabbers, they feel much more confident about what they are doing. and they feel that now they have the law on their side, and now they can do whatever they want because our presidency will support them. so indigenous people in the forest, like the uru—eu—wau—wau, now face a lot more pressure. so this is the forest of the uru—eu—wau—wau? i show them the view from space of what they are experiencing everyday on the ground. with this farmland all around you, and you are about there, just in that little corner.

so you have farms, deforested land, right next to you. and while we are with them, we hear a very depressing fact. the uru—eu—wau—wau have had such a troubled experience with the outside world, that to describe white people and invaders, they have just a single word. papuya means invader, but also white people. that is all they knew. they didn't know there were white people who could be friends with them. because in the past they were always having battle and conflicts against white people. so now they don't have these words, one single word for white people and invaders. the fate of these people hangs in the balance. the children here are learning traditional skills, and they have rights under brazilian law. but they are outnumbered and powerful forces are circling outside.

hello. it has been quite a pleasant day today, it will remain on the chilly side to the rest of the weekend, but high pressure is close enough that most places will remain dry. the cloud still looking a little threatening at the moment across the downs, and a few showers dotted about towards kent, but on the whole it is still dry this afternoon. the cloud is breaking up across southern parts of england and wales. still a nagging breeze down the eastern coast of england making it feel chilly and the best amateurs are across the south—west of england. temperatures will drop quickly as the sun goes down, the sky is clear and the winds dropped. it will be cold and those other temperatures in town and cities, a touch of frost possible. still it may be that northerly wind dragging one oi’ may be that northerly wind dragging one or two may be that northerly wind dragging one oi’ two showers may be that northerly wind dragging one or two showers towards the coast of norfolk and down towards kent, and cloudy skies for northern ireland increasingly from western

scotland. elsewhere, dry and there will be lengthy spells of sunshine. some cloud bubbling up through the day. temperatures 16—18d, a bit warmerfor day. temperatures 16—18d, a bit warmer for eastern parts of scotland and the north—east of england. a band of rain in the north—west, waiting in the wings and will move down across the uk on sunday night and into monday. heavy at times. for eastern parts at the moment, it should be dry.

this is bbc news, the headlines at 1500. mps, including conservatives expelled from the party, prepare legal action — in case boris johnson refuses a brexit delay. the court is making a decision to try and make a prime minister that bind bya try and make a prime minister that bind by a more by a parliament of which is a member. this is a strange time for democracy. it's the law of the land and he is under an obligation to obey it. if he doesn't obey it he can be taken to court and if necessary the court will issue an injunction ordering him to do it. and if he doesn't obey the injuction he can be sent to prison. satellite images appear to show the iranian oil tanker, adrian darya i — previously impounded in gibraltar — is now off the syrian coast. ukraine prisoners are united with theirfamilies, as part of swap with russia.