in delhi which caught fire on saturday night, killing at least forty— three people. fire department officials and the police say nearly 60 people were rescued but they don't expect to find any more bodies. firefighters say the building had no fire safety equipment and no safety certificates. the fbi says it is treating friday's attack on a florida navy base in which three sailors were killed as a presumed terrorist act. and this story is trending on bbc.com. an artwork featuring a ripe banana duct—taped to a wall, that sold for $120,000, has been eaten by another artist. he said eating it was his "art performance". that's all. stay with bbc world news. now on bbc news it's hardtalk

with stephen sackur. holding up placards outside the funerals of dead american soldiers. celebrating schoolroom massacres. westboro baptist church has been described as the most obnoxious, hate filled group in america. megan phelps—roper was part of that group. she was born into the church, she carried those hate filled cards from the age of five years old. but as an adult, firing off tweets against online critics, megan began to doubt. eventually, she left the church altogether but she paid a high price the church was founded by her grandfather, she was shunned by those she loved the most. can she still really regard the people who taught her to hate, to desire more debt, that the world was going to hell, as her beloved, wonderful mum and dad?

megan phelps—roper, welcome to hardtalk. from the age of five and 1991, you were involved in your family's demonstrations, later taking part in pickets of the funerals of dead soldiers in the united states. can you give us a sense of what these events meant to you? describe a typical day of protest for you ? you? describe a typical day of protest for you? we organised our entire lives around our picketing ministry. we saw it is our duty to love thy neighbour, to go out and warn people of the consequences of their sins. this included homosexuality, fornication, adultery, divorce, idolatry, the list of sins was endless and the understanding that i grew up with was that everyone outside of

westboro was hell bound and our duty was to go and preach to them. we we re was to go and preach to them. we were offering them a message of life and hope. 0ur were offering them a message of life and hope. our understanding was that this was the only path for people to go to heaven and to avoid the curses of god in this life. as a child, describe your sense of what it was like. it was exciting getting ready for these? yeah. i was very happy because i thought we were doing good, i thought we were the good guys. my understanding was that we we re guys. my understanding was that we were the good guys, everyone else was going to hell, so, yeah, you are going out and standing on the picket line. 0ften going out and standing on the picket line. often it was high—energy. people coming out and were discussing these ideas that it is what life is all about. i was very happy. you described in your book that you were a willing participant in the most aggressive anti—gay picketing campaign the country had ever seen. what sort of response did you elicit from people who you were

attempting to persuade to convert? because we talked a lot about the hatred of god, people assumed that we we re hatred of god, people assumed that we were hateful, and they responded to us in kind. generally there was a lot of hostility and antagonism. people throwing things, sometimes driving their cars at us, yelling, screaming. when i said high—energy, amen it was generally very negative energy, and for us that was proof of oui’ energy, and for us that was proof of our righteousness becausejesus said listed are you when people hate you. grandpa said that we should take it asa grandpa said that we should take it as a badge of honour. the founder of the church? yes, the church is almost entirely my extended family. from behind my sign, i watched them

come to grab for our saints, our hair. the police rarely seemed to help but appearance kept us safe. because it was our duty to be out there, never saw it as my parents putting us in danger, i trusted my pa rents putting us in danger, i trusted my parents as we all do when we were kids. but they were putting you potentially in harm's way. but for them, they believe that god is with them, they believe that god is with them and requiring less of them. we would be in far more danger if they didn't have us out there doing our duty to god. do you still believe that to be the case? obviously icy that to be the case? obviously icy that they were putting us on the pa rt that they were putting us on the part of people's hatred, every time we would go to one of those protests out of town, we contacted the police department. they were actively trying to keep us safe and they do think that the people who are committing crimes where people who we re committing crimes where people who were actually with answerable for that. are you still questioning your

decision to leave? no. it was something that was a very considered decision when i left and almost immediately i started having experiences that helped me see that the things that they had been taught my entire life were entirely questionable, and the things they had taken questionable, and the things they had ta ken totally for questionable, and the things they had taken totally for granted, the idea that other people were either evil or delusional, ill intentioned almost immediately started meeting incredible people who were clearly trying to live life in the best way they knew how, so i do not question at this point my decision to leave. i'm interested, you say their views we re i'm interested, you say their views were questionable... they just i'm interested, you say their views were questionable... theyjust want to be clear, because you are on a journey, in a sense? understood. when isaac questionable, i have come to believe that they are wrong. at

this point, i'd still believe that, i'm no longer see the bible as the infallible word of god as a one dead andi infallible word of god as a one dead and i don't think westboro's understanding of the world and how it works, i have completely rejected that. you described in the book your closeness of your relationship with yourfamily and closeness of your relationship with your family and particularly your mum. you became her right hand, you helped organise, you were working very closely with her. even though you have left the church, even though you now have no contact, i think, with the family, you have dedicated your book to your parents. and people watching and listening to this might be surprised about that. what a say in the dedication is i left the church, but never them, and i never will. because i don't believe that my family is the problem. i believe that bad ideas, they have been persuaded by bad ideas and just like i was convinced, persuaded to change my heart and

mind, that they can also be convinced, because icm is good people who have been trapped by bad ideas. a wonderful father, a people who have been trapped by bad ideas. a wonderfulfather, a mother who you describe somebody who couldn't be a greater teacher, i am humbled to be your daughter. absolutely, obviously there were ha rd absolutely, obviously there were hard moments as there are for all families, the fact that my family believed strongly in physical punishment is spoken of in the bible, but because i was convinced, was persuaded of the goodness of those doctrines, i was happy stopping my conscience and my actions were in line and i've felt leo was fulfilling a divine purpose, so leo was fulfilling a divine purpose, soi leo was fulfilling a divine purpose, so i very happy. i suppose it is more about know what your parents protest a nd more about know what your parents protest and whether it is enough to say of your parents that they are basically good people, because there comes a point, isn't there, whereas good people do bad things, they are not really good people anymore. good people do bad things, they are not really good people anymorelj understand not really good people anymore.” understand what you are saying. this

is where the epigraph of the book is this line from the great gatsby that says preserving judgement as a matter of infinite hope, and that is for me a posture of grace, it is the picture of grace. it is the idea of seeing people as being on a journey and that there is hope for them to grow and evolve and change and be better, and i believe that as possible of my family, so if you wa nt possible of my family, so if you want me to say that my family are, i will absolutely say without question and without caveat that they do evil things sometimes and that is extremely painful to look back at my own past and know that i was doing evil things, cruel things, unmissable things. there are lots of children still in the westboro baptist church. your extended family, never mind others who have brought their children in. do you think the authorities, knowing what they know now, should intervene? that is a really... i think,

specifically in terms of, just because of the first amendment in the united states, identical to have any standing to intervene when it comes to the doctrines of. i do think the physical punishment... this is something, when i was writing the book, there was a part of me that wanted not to write about that. but i didn't want to, i felt the sense of wanting to protect my family asi the sense of wanting to protect my family as i think we all generally do, but it felt important to write about it for a number of reasons and pa rt about it for a number of reasons and part of it is because i do want them to be afraid to hurt the children. that was something that was really emotional, writing about that, because as you say, there are a lot of children there. on one particularly explosive morning when i was eight or nine, may my sister andi i was eight or nine, may my sister and i got beatings and they were bad. they would bloom into bruises, purple and black. you also talked about how your mother was beaten so badly by her father at one point

that she was left with lifelong injuries that she still has to deal with today. that is child abuse. yeah. absolutely. it took me a long time, because as a grew up my kind of a cce pted time, because as a grew up my kind of accepted westboro's view of those beatings. a quote in the book all these bible passages thatjustify those things, specifically even the idea of beating children to the point of bruises, that is in the bible stopping the blueness of the wound cleanses away evil, and i do absolutely believe that is child abuse. what sort of contact have you had since you left? seven years ago? seven yea rs had since you left? seven years ago? seven years ago this week. almost nothing. i reach out to them regularly, because when they first left i despaired of ever having them back, and a pretty quickly came to realise that, how dare i'd not have hope for them? considering my own

journey. if could be persuaded by kind, compassionate strangers who listened to where i was coming from, considered my perspective, and made their case and helped change my heart and their case and helped change my heartand mind, their case and helped change my heart and mind, i felt like their case and helped change my heartand mind, ifelt like i owe that to my family. these people who invested so much time and energy and resources and love in me, i owe it to them and they also feel like i owe it to the people that they target, because if they can help the moderate depositions and change their mind, they will be hurting far fewer people. you talk about twitter and this is a huge part of your story, because you went on twitter and that is something we i suppose social media we associate as a mechanism for polarising opinion, for encouraging people to express themselves in very short but graphic ways, started to open your mind. can you explain a bit about that? absolutely, i think the very first change that communication on twitter

brought in me came from the fact that it was so short. having this 140 characters, a recognised really quickly that the insults that my family through around casually, and when i got on twitter, there wasn't space for it, and when they did insult people i could watch the conversation just completely go off the rails immediately, and they didn't want to have this playground quarrels, was trying to have theological debates. first, a stop insulting people. then, the more important parts were, twitter became an alternative source of community for me. westboro had been my only... they were the only people that are trusted or felt close to in any way, and the fact that among the stay of hostility, the fact that there were also these very kind people asking questions and trying to, i was seeing parts of the humanity in a way that they never had before, and they were seeing mine, and it

enabled this conversation that, eventually, led to them finding internal inconsistencies in our doctrine. the leader of the antidefamation league rate last year, social media companies created and allowed extremists to move the message from the margin to the mainstream, get your experience of social media is more hope all and very different, it suggests it is possible for closed minds to not become more closed but potentially to open. absolutely. ifi had visited twitter in 2016 for the first time, and i was talking to the woman, she was showing the e—mails that she had written to the other twitter executives explaining why i hadn't been kicked off the platform. if she had done that, i wouldn't have had these experiences that let me see outside of westboro's ideology. twitter can be a tool for radicalisation, because you have extremist they're trying to recruit people. why aren't we're doing things like, in the mainstream,

people with better ideas, trying to recruit people? if we keep people of these platforms, isolate people, all that does is it pushes them deeper into this ideology. all they have thenis into this ideology. all they have then is this echo chamber with no way out. it is a big dilemma for the authorities or the regulators, because on the one hand we are worried about radicalisation, we have talked about the concept of islam is activity, but you were radicalised through your childhood and you are going through arguably a process of deradicalisation, and ongoing process. you know, people talk about twitter being a cesspool, for instance, and my response to that as i do believe that social media companies, i am sure there are things that they can do, buti sure there are things that they can do, but i also think that twitter is assessa ble do, but i also think that twitter is assessable because we make it a cesspool. we get to decide how we're going to engage people. we can give in to these very human impulses to respond, you know, in outrage when

we see things that are outrageous, 01’ we can we see things that are outrageous, or we can decide there is a human being on the other side of this, and this person has, and this is what people did for me, right? they recognise that i had a lifetime of experiences that led me to that place, and that the way out was not to shame me, but to help me see outside of it. 0ffer to shame me, but to help me see outside of it. offer better ideas. we have said already that the westboro baptist church was kind of what we might call a family business. i mean, it was founded by your grandfather, the late fred phelps, who was its pastor. among the things he said over the years was, you can't believe the bible without believing that god hates people. it is pure nonsense to say that god loves the sinner but hates the sin. he hates the sin, he hates the sin. he hates the sin, he hates the centre. what do you think when you read back and you hear the things he said and apparently believe? yes, he definitely believe them. we believe the bible was the literal and infallible word of god, and that his understanding of it was unquestionable. and you know, he was very smart, he was trained as a lawyer. you know, he won all kinds of awards for his civil rights work.

so he was not a stupid person, and that i think led him to this toxic sense of certainty in his own righteousness. when i listen to those ideas, i understand where he is coming from, and i can quote you so many of the verses. we spent all... every single day we were reading the bible and memorising these passages, and we would stand on the picket line and we would quote them to people who also claimed to believe the bible, and they were shocked. i don't believe in the bible anymore, and it seems such a heartbreaking waste of his time and energy and talents. you don't believe in the bible anymore, don't believe in the bible anymore, do you believe in god?” don't believe in the bible anymore, do you believe in god? i do not. there is so much of my upbringing, though, that i retain, these ideas that i learned from religion, ideas like grace and hope and mercy, compassion, the importance of community. there's so much of my upbringing that i retain. you say you don't believe in the bible, you don't believe in god. you quote the bible quite a lot, so it is clearly in some ways still an inspiration for you. no, it absolutely is. when i say for you. no, it absolutely is. when isayi for you. no, it absolutely is. when i say i don't believe in the bible,

what i mean is i don't believe in the infallibility of the bible. there are many things i find in the bible that are wonderful, it is just that i now feel free to discount and discredit the things i think are wrong. given you think that this self—styled church is wrong, given you think it is distorting religion and faith, isn't it fair to say that this is really extremism masquerading as a religion, subverting the us constitution, hijacking the us constitutional right to religious freedom in order to advance its cause? it's hard to... so for instance, i write in the book also about the snyder versus phillips case that went to the us supreme court. this is the case in which the father of a dead marine whose funeral had been picketed challenge the right of westboro baptist to do that. yes, and while of course i believe and wish that my family would stop doing things like that, that they should not use the freedom they have been given as a cloak of maliciousness, as it says in the bible, that is

what i believe they are doing there. but i also think that the fact that i think that the justices were right in making the decision that they made, that we have to have an open marketplace of ideas, that the importance of open, robust public debate, it has to be the priority. evenif debate, it has to be the priority. even if it extends to the kinds of scenes that people who used to picket had to endure? because you must have a very profoundly deep sense now of the distress that you caused. absolutely, absolutely, and it's something that i think about. you know, ithink it's something that i think about. you know, i think about it frequently. it comes up in... 0bviously frequently. it comes up in... obviously there are a lot of things that trigger those memories, and it is deeply distressing to me, the things that i did, specifically at funeral protests. and this has been pa rt funeral protests. and this has been part of what has been the motivation for me in doing the work that i have been doing and trying to make amends. when jaques kallis,

unmerciful, how i was to so many who had just lost a son or daughter. i am ashamed, and it is still really difficult to think about the harm i caused. it is overwhelming sometimes. you said those words three years ago. is it still... does it get to you? absolutely. the thing about talking about... and my life at westboro, to talk about that publicly, it is constantly putting me in conversation with people that idid me in conversation with people that i did real harm to. and it is difficult to face that, but i learned this concepts shortly after i left the church, from judaism, which means to repair the world. the idea it is incumbent upon human beings to see the brokenness in the world and to do what they can to repair it. so i do have to face that regularly, and it is painful, but i think it is necessary. because i am trying to find a way to repair some of the damage that i did while i was at the church. should westboro church be shut down, do you think? at the church. should westboro church be shutdown, do you think?” don't think that the government has a place to shut that down. i hope that it a place to shut that down. i hope thatitis a place to shut that down. i hope that it is moral persuasion that i think is what we need to use with

people at westboro, to convince them that there are better ways, to show them better ways. and it is really difficult, because obviously westboro is a very closed system. they have built all kinds of barriers, mental, cognitive barriers, mental, cognitive barriers, to keep people in. with all good intentions. this is not a cynical use of... and attempt to abuse authority, you know, to force people to stay. theyjust believe. i think it is important to realise, too, the vast majority of people in thejudge were born into too, the vast majority of people in the judge were born into the church, grew up there. so they had these ideas, as you say, beaten into them from the time they were... they were indoctrinated. absolutely, and so the answer isn't... i think the a nswer the answer isn't... i think the answer is to make better arguments, and as people did with me, show them and as people did with me, show them a way out. one day, when she grows up, your daughter, who is how old? 13 months. so she is having fun stuff right now, but one day she may come to learn about her family, her

widerfamily. come to learn about her family, her wider family. she definitely will. and you will tell her, and you will have to tell her that you were part of what i think has been described... 0ne advocacy group, the southern poverty law centre, is arguably the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in america. what will you say to her? i will tell her everything, you know. 0bviously will you say to her? i will tell her everything, you know. obviously not may be all at once and not when she is tiny, but as she grows older, she is tiny, but as she grows older, she is going to have questions, and i will answer those questions. you know, all i can do is be honest, to explain what i think are the wonderful parts of my upbringing. i will show her the complexity and the nuance of the situation, but i will also be honest about what we did that was so hurtful to so many people, in the hopes that she will avoid going down a similar path. not long before he died, your grandfather, this man who had spent yea rs grandfather, this man who had spent years kind of proselytising this message basically of hate, he was suffering i think from dementia of some kind, came out of the church

one day, walked across the road and spoke to the people who had set up i think an lgbt charity opposite the church as a kind of confrontational thing. what do you know that happened that day? what were you told he said to them? it was a different message to the one he usually propagated. yes, so this happened about 1.5 years after i left the church, and i was speaking to my brother who ijust discovered had just left the church. my grandfather hadn't been giving sermons for several months, and i asked my brother what's going on? what happened ? asked my brother what's going on? what happened? i assume there was some kind of, you know, physical ailment or something, and he said that my grandfather had been... that he was in hospice, and that he had been voted out of the church. and i asked him why, and he said the day that he was voted out, he went out onto the front lawn, as you say, and called out to the people running the equality house, as they called it, and said you are good people. so he had come, apparently, according to my brother and two other people who had left the church since, he came

to see the church as cruel and unmerciful. this is the man whose website said god hates fags, saying to fags, to use the kind of crude insult that is used against homosexuals, saying you are good people. this is kind of an epiphany. does this give you hope for your mum, yourdad, for does this give you hope for your mum, your dad, for other family members? it does, and i know a lot of people would say it is too little, too late, but i was shocked in the aftermath of my grandfather's death, the evening that he passed away, the church without protesting ata away, the church without protesting at a concert in kansas and people came out with a banner to counter protest across the street. do you know what the banner said? i am sorry for your loss. that, for me, the fact that they didn't just turn around and feedback the same hateful, ha rd around and feedback the same hateful, hard message that we delivered, the fact that they could show empathy and compassion to my family in that moment, is shocking,

and so wonderful. it's one of the things that has surprised me so much since i left the church, that people are not what i was taught. and i find so much hope in that. megan phelps—roper, thank you for speaking too hardtalk. thanks for having me. hello there. it's still windy out there. the winds have been howling in some parts of the country, and over the next few days, it's all about wind and rain. we'll have some heavy rain or heavy showers, combined with some gales or severe gales. it's probably the strength of the wind that will have the biggest impact, mind you. but over the past few hours, we've seen a lot of showers packing in from the west — really squally showers, as well. the main focus of the wetter and certainly windier weather is more towards the south—west of england and into the south

and west of wales. this of course is due to storm aliyah, and we've already had gusts of 70 mph in the south coast of wales, into cornwall. the rain should tend to ease off into the morning, mind you. by then, the winds more of a northerly, and that will drag down some colder air across the uk, and it's quite windy for many areas still by the morning time. now, through monday, we'll start to see some changes, because this ridge of high pressure will just topple across from the atlantic, and it will push the strongest of the winds over towards the north sea and kill off a lot of the showers. but it'll be windy for a good part of the day down those north sea coasts, and feeling cold with those showers in the morning in particular. a few showers out west filtering through the irish sea into north wales, but a lot of the showers fade away during the afternoon, and many places will be dry and quite sunny. will be a windy day, but gradually the winds ease a bit, probably, though, feeling a bit colder than it did on sunday. and with the winds continuing to ease in the evening,

there may be a touch of frost for a while for the eastern side of the uk, before the winds pick up again overnight, drag in some milder air, and these weather fronts are on the way. and that means for tuesday, we've got cloud, we've got outbreaks of rain, quite a few bands of rain putting their way eastwards. it's the last one, though, that will see the heaviest of the rain, and some particularly squally winds out there as well. it will be a windy day everywhere. it's going to be a mild one, temperatures typically in double figures. that mild, wet, windy weather then gets swept down towards the south—east on tuesday evening. out of the way by wednesday. we're all into some chillier air, the low pressure still sitting to the north and west of the uk. maybe some gales in the north—west of scotland. 0therwise, wednesday not as windy. it's a day of sunshine and showers, some of them heavy, with hail and thunder, and over northern hills there could be even a bit of snow as well. it's quite a chilly day, and those temperatures only typically six or seven degrees. a bit more uncertainty as we head later on in the week. could be another area of low pressure bringing some more strong winds, likely to bring some rain, particularly on thursday,

some snow over the hills in scotland. then it gradually becomes a bit drier during friday, but probably still rather windy.

i'm rico hizon in singapore, the headlines: police in india arrest the owner of a building in delhi which caught fire killing at least 43 people. the fbi says it's treating friday's deadly attack on a us navy base in florida as a presumed terrorist attack. i'm samantha simmonds in london. also in the programme: russian athletes face sweeping sanctions for another doping—linked scandal — we have a special report from moscow. and we visit ethiopia for a lesson in what can be done