welcome if you're watching here in the uk, on pbs in america or around the globe. i'm mike embley. our top stories: europe's biggest regional airline goes bust — troubled flybe says coronavirus was the final straw while california's governor declares a state of emergency over the coronavirus. the state has confirmed at least 50 cases and its first death. with at least 100 virus deaths recorded so far, the highest outside china, italy closes schools, universities, cinemas and theatres. on the greek island of lesbos more violence as locals clash with hundreds of refugees and migrants coming from turkey. and how our online streaming habit could be

harming the environment. within the past hour one of europe's biggest regional airlines — the british carrier, flybe — has collapsed, threatening thousands of jobs. flybe was taken over by a consortium, including virgin atlantic, last year and was saved earlier this year. but it's again in trouble because bookings have slumped as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. talks throughout wednesday to try to agree a rescue package proved to have been unsuccessful. jon kay reports from flybe headquarters. flybe has been sobbing on a peppefy flybe has been sobbing on a peppery decade. it may be big,

and the biggest operator and many regional airports, in carrying many from the eu and the uk. tonight, those great flights were grounded for good with a source telling the bbc the game is up, grim use of passengers and connections within regions. the loss of flybe for regional airports is disastrous. it's small but if you are buying out of exeter, southampton, it really is one of the only airline choices, and at southampton, it accounts for 95% of the activity of that airport is a number of regional routes will risk not being served. flybe almost collapsed injanuary served. flybe almost collapsed in january but served. flybe almost collapsed injanuary but it served. flybe almost collapsed in january but it was served. flybe almost collapsed injanuary but it was handed a reprieve when its owners, who include virgin atlantic, agreed to put in over £13 million of their own money. in return, the government promised to review, lower air passenger duty with a tax of £13 per person on shorthaul flights leaving uk airports. for domestic routes,

that's mean it's paid twice. flybe had to see that cut in half submerged the government said it can't do that until eu rules cease to apply injanuary 2021. that mean any talk of a potential government loan to tide the airline over would be seen as throwing good money after bad. even healthy profitable airlines are struggling cope with the impact of coronavirus. ba has slashed hundreds of flights and virgin atla ntic hundreds of flights and virgin atlantic has asked staff to ta ke atlantic has asked staff to take unpaid leave. an airline like flybe already in poor financial health has been finished off by a virus whose economic impact continue to spread. a short time ago, mark anderson, the ceo of flybe sent an email out, saying he appreciates our distressing this news is and goes on to say coronavirus is impacted both oui’ coronavirus is impacted both our shareholders and ourselves

and has put additional pressure on an already difficult situation. i'm very sorry, he says, would not been able to secure the funding needed to deliver our turnaround. i feel so proud of you and thank you and wish you the very best for the future. flybe did seem to have been saved earlier this year. these are not passengers with luggage, but mechanics taking their tools home from the compa ny‘s headquarters at the end of the runway. they'd come in especially to collect their kit, even before any official announcement. we are not allowed to tell you anything. nothing. have you been told what's happening? no. it has been an anxious few weeks for the 400 staff here, and tonight, they've been arriving, desperate for news. i don't know anything either way, so... have you been given any

indication what's going on? none. sorry, guys. we literally don't know. we know as much as everybody else on the news. where does that leave you? who knows? questions also for flybe passengers arriving into exeter tonight. they told us the company provides vital roots and is an important part of this region's economy and beyond. tonight, speculation is unsettling. i mean, it's not great. it is handy having it here. i work in greenwich and it cuts 2—2.5 hours of the travelling time by being able to fly. it will be detrimental to the whole of the south—west if we can't get from plymouth and have to drive to exeter. the next stop is bristol. there was due to be a flight arriving here in exeter from manchesterjust before ten o'clock this evening, but we have been told that plane did not take off, the flight has been cancelled, no explanation has been given here. meanwhile, as more staff turn up to find out what is happening, a delivery of pizzas. a long night ahead after a difficultjourney for flybe. john kay, bbc news, exeter. the british government has

said, we recognise the impact this will have on flybe's passengers and staff and will be on hand at all affected airports. the vast majority of flybe roots are served by different transport options and with vast bus and train operators to accept tickets and other airlines to offer reduced affairs to ensure passengers can make their journeys affairs to ensure passengers can make theirjourneys as smoothly as possible. the flybe stuff, it says our rapid response service stands ready to help them find a newjob as soon as possible. more on that when we can get it, of course. the governor of california, gavin newsom, has declared a state of emergency over the coronavirus outbreak. the move will allow the state to deploy additional resources to fight the virus. mr newsom's announcement came after the virus spread to twelve counties across the state, killing one person and infecting more than 50. we've had a number of incidences throughout the state of california — no longer north, now in southern california. we have accordingly, with this new icu patient that passed away, entered into this next phase

that has required me under the circumstances to advance a proclamation of a state of emergency in the state of california. earlier i spoke to our washington correspondent chris buckler about the california declaration. it is really about getting access to resources, doing their very best to get money in order to try to tackle this problem and to stop the spread, and that is a particular concern for california at the moment because they have had their first death now, connected to the coronavirus. a 71—year—old man who was on board a cruise ship. that cruise ship returned to san francisco two weeks ago and he got off, but the cruise ship then continued on on itsjourney to hawaii and it is now off the coast of california, where 21 people are apparently showing symptoms of potentially having the coronavirus.

and that again is causing concern in california. they are goingto to try and get them tested. when you look at the figures here, mike, it is very clear that california is worried. they say so far they have had something like 53 people who have tested positive, but there are 9000 people being monitored and that is really the worry, that potentially this could get worse, and as a result, they want access to money now to try to ensure they stop the spread before things get any worse. chris, clearly this outbreak brings economic problems, it brings personal difficulties and tragedies. but politically, it is a problem for anyone seeking to be president potential — voters are likely to be looking for a steady hand. absolutely, mike. i think there is a lot of focus now on exactly what the white house is going to do to respond to this. congress has now agreed on something like $8 billion

to try and have money to make sure they can address any problems that emerge. you may remember that last week president trump was accused of being somewhat dismissive of the dangers. that has changed entirely. the vice president mike pence is going to visit a factory where facemasks are being made, tomorrow, and he is travelling on to washington state and of course washington state has got in some ways the biggest problems of anywhere in the us because they have had ten people die as a result of the coronavirus. in the greater seattle area, there is a great deal of concern. so this is really a white house trying to show it is getting on top of this problem before it becomes any worse but of course the health authorities are saying that there is a realfear things will get worse because of community spread. covid—19 cases around the world are still rising. in mainland china — where the outbreak started — the number of deaths has now passed 3,000. france has confirmed that 285 people there have the virus — an increase of 25%

on the previous day. italy has the biggest outbreak in europe, and is shutting all schools, universities, cinemas and theatres for at least 10 days. all professional sport in italy will be played behind closed doors for a month. at least 107 people have died there, and about 3,000 are infected. from rome, the bbc‘s mark lowen. an early easter break for pupils across italy. every school and university will now close from tonight in a bid to halt the virus. europe's worst hit country stepping up its response. it's a problem because we have to stop the exams, we have to stop almost all the activities in the classroom. maybe we can do something from home. but it's not the same, of course. parents and children are taking in the news. for some, the disruption is a price worth paying. it's not a question of panicking,

but taking necessary measures to avoid the virus spreading out. her 9—year—old, ernesto, says he's happy because it means no studying and no homework. italy was the first in europe to ban all flights to china, the first to cordon off whole towns, now the first to close all schools. a dramatic response to a deepening crisis. and perhaps an example of how other countries too may respond if their outbreaks continue to worsen. as cases and deaths rise, more towns in the north may be quarantined. cinemas and theatres could close. and the government is even set to advise tactile italians not to greet by kissing. so, how many rooms here are occupied? no one. none of them? empty. coronavirus fear is battering italy's economy, with hotels empty. 0wner giuseppe roscioli says he's had 90% cancellations and it's the biggest crisis in his 35 years. and if this situation

gets worse, what will happen? we have the key, we can close the door. italy is now facing an unprecedented challenge and a desperate search for a remedy for the virus and for this country's suffering. there mark lowen, bbc news, rome. the billionaire michael bloomberg has ended his campaign for the us presidency and endorsed former vice—presidentjoe biden. the round of super tuesday primaries in 1a states have left mr biden the frontrunner to stand for the democratic party against donald trump in november's election. michael bloomberg's only victory was in the tiny territory of american samoa. he explained why he was leaving the race. if you remember, i entered the race for president to defeat donald trump. and today, i am leaving the race for the same reason — to defeat donald trump, because staying in would make it more difficult

to achieve that goal. stay with us on bbc news, still to come: why venezuela's president is urging women to have as many as six children for what he called the good of the country. first, the plates slid gently off the restaurant tables. then suddenly, the tables, the chairs and people crashed sideways and downwards, and it was just a matter of seconds as the ferry lurched onto her side. the hydrogen bomb. on a remote pacific atoll, the americans had successfully tested a weapon whose explosive force dwarfed that of the bomb dropped on hiroshima. i had heard the news earlier, and so my heart went bang, bang, bang! the constitutional rights of these marchers are their rights

as citizens of the united states, and they should be protected even in the right to test them out, so that they don't get their heads broken and are sent to hospital. this religious controversy — i know you don't want to say too much about it — but does it worry you that it's going to boil up when you get to the states? well, it worries me, yes, but i hope everything will be all right in the end, as they say. this is bbc news. the latest headlines: europe's biggest regional airline goes bust — troubled flybe says coronavirus was the final straw california's governor declares a state of emergency over the virus after reporting the state's first death and confirming at least 50 cases. the greek island of lesbos is the latest flashpoint in the migrant crisis. aid agencies have complained

their staff have been assaulted and intimidated as they try to cope with people coming by boat from turkey. where are you from? congo. how old are you? ten. ten? these are lesbos's newest arrivals, trapped on the island, now behind bars. i've been here for three days. three days? yeah. what's it like in here? not enough food, no sleeping. we want to go to a better place, not here. hundreds of migrants from afghanistan, syria and the congo have made it across the sea since turkey opened its borders last week. most have been kept in this holding pen. can they leave or are they detained? they can leave? no, so they are detained? for years, this island has been overcrowded. more than 20,000 refugees now live in a camp that was meant forfar, farfewer, stuck here while europe

struggles to agree on what to do with them. thousands make their way from the camp to the port, desperate to leave. these flare—ups have angered locals and that anger has turned to violence. migrants and journalists have been attacked. and an aid centre has been set on fire. some aid workers are now leaving the island. the medical clinics, which treat hundreds every day, have been closed. why are you locking up? because we have a lot of problems on the island with ngos. we're having a lot of riots with the ngos. it looks like we are dealing ina warzone and this unpredictable security situation is something that we never experienced before. recent videos show the greek coastguard firing at people trying to cross the sea. we show these to the island's governor. they have received such orders

to shoot, but in the air, not on the people. look, look. that's the migrants being hit on the head by the coastguard. yes. what do you think about that? i reject. i don't like it. i don't like this behaviour. it doesn't represent me. as greece scrambles to secure its borders, european leaders have offered hundreds of millions of pounds to help. we don't want money, we want not to have a problem. the point is not to get money. the point is not to have a problem. let's spare their money. let's send the money back. a navy ship arrives to take the new arrivals to the mainland, but thousands are left behind, on this island that no longer wants them. jean mckenzie, bbc news. climate change caused

by humans did contribute to the conditions behind the recent bushfires in south—eastern australia. that is according to a team of leading climate scientists at the world weather attribution group. it's the first time a definitive link has been made and it could help motivate political change. freya cole reports. the flames arrived earlier, lasted longer and were worse than predicted. thousands of firefighters were deployed every day, putting their lives on the line to battle fires which were volatile and vicious. it was dry from a prolonged drought and temperatures were scorching hot. for the first time, a team of scientists can prove that human—made climate change intensified these conditions, which, in turn, intensified the severity of the bushfires. the warning is very stark and i think that we've really got to understand, i don't like the phrase "new normal", what we are doing is we are entering into a rapid transition associated with rapid warming and we're going to start seeing the earth's system responding with catastrophic responses.

the most recent bushfire season in australia has been dubbed the "black summer". 33 lives were lost, millions of animals were killed and the flames destroyed 11 million hectares of bush and forest. prime minister scott morrison was heavily criticised for his response and his government's lack of climate policy. some senior ministers still dispute there is a link between the bushfire crisis and a warming planet. the pressure is on australia's leadership to do more. tens of thousands of people are engaged in climate protests and have vowed to fight on. looking to the future, this study predicts that if global temperatures climb by 2 degrees, which is on the cards, the likelihood of a similar bushfire season would be at least four times more likely. an alarming prediction,

given the scale of destruction. freya cole, bbc news. the president of venezuela has urged women to have as many as six children for — what he calls — the good of the country. nicolas maduro was speaking at an event promoting women's health. venezuela is in the grip of a long—running political and economic crisis. shortages are widespread. between 2013 and 2018, according to the un children's agency unicef, 13% of venezuelan children were malnourished. i have been getting reaction from this. i've been getting reaction to this from selene soto, a venezuelan lawyer at the non—profit organisation women's link worldwide. it is clearly an attempt to deny the right women have to exercise their choices. women are not reproductive

regimes. but what are seeing with the crisis in venezuela does not address the severe impact the humanitarian crisis is having on rights affecting women and girls. for example, in an emblematic public hospital in caracas, the conepcion palacios maternity hospital, there is no water service. women face imminent risk when they go into labour or when they go in, because if they suffer from an emergency, there is no blood in the hospital. the health system has collapsed but it's particularly affecting women because they don't have access to these specialised services that they need. so as you are making clear, this is a country that can barely cope with its existing population. thousands have fled the country, of course. what is the response as far as you can tell within the country to this responsibility, pressure being put on women? unfortunately, there hasn't been any response. for example, this hospital i was talking about was granted

precautionary measures from the commission of human rights last year because of the extreme risk that women are facing, and up until now, the state hasn't given any response to these decisions on the commission. the national organisations are saying that women are being forced into motherhood because they don't have any options. even other organisations like the human rights commission or the un high commissioner have identified that the impact is so severe, this is making women leave the country or they decide to migrate to other countries to seek treatment or healthcare that they need. what does it say to you about the maduro government that he has made this call? i can say that at a time when these sexual reproductivwe rights are at the centre of many public debates, in order to move forward in protecting these rights,

unfortunately in venezuela there is only historical setbacks that have put women in situations compared to the last century. streaming music, movies and tv is hugely popular, of course, but there's concern about what it does to the environment. all that data requires data centres — hundreds of thousands of them around the world — many using electricity generated by burning fossilfuels. claire marshall reports. when we post a video or a photo or save something to the cloud, it leaves our device and travels through different networks. maybe through cables under the ocean to a building called a data centre, where it's stored. when we want to see it, this data is exploded into thousands of pieces, each one travelling a different route. when they get to a device, they put themselves back in the right order. so the internet, or the cloud, isn'tjust in the air. it exists in buildings like this one. i'm in london's docklands, where fruit and veg used to be traded on these streets.

now its data, huge amounts of it. in this building, thousands of servers and they're capturing and storing and sending all our data. there are now hundreds of thousands of these energy hungry data centres. the problem is that many are powered by fossilfuels. this is that us state of northern virginia, known as the internet capital of the world. this is one of the coal—fired power stations supplying it with electricity, belching carbon dioxide. a potent greenhouse gas. it belongs to dominion energy, the largest provider, which generates much of its power by burning fossilfuels. microsoft and google are here. amazon has built 55 data centres. we think of amazon as a giant online supermarket but actually the company makes far more money building and renting data centres. most of the residents are pretty clueless as to what is right here. alex rough is campaigning for the tech companies to use green energy. we are processing large amounts of data on a daily basis. these data centres are

consuming large amounts of energy to process that data to stay operational in a 24—7 environment. dominion energy told us they were committed to net—zero carbon and methane emissions by 2050. amazon said they were working towards 80% renewable energy by 2024, and 100% by 2030. technology is adapting quickly. data centres are more efficient than ever but there is a whole new challenge — 5g. 5g will generate much more traffic and demand much more power. which is not good for climate change. we've all got to change. i think the internet‘s got the power to help us control and reduce climate change but we need to change some of our more frivolous behaviour before we get there. streaming videos and standard definition rather than hd saves four times the emissions, and using wi—fi rather than 3 or 4g uses a third of the energy.

that breaking news again. the carrier fly out flybe has collapsed. customers have been advised not to go to the airport. thank you for watching. hello. 0verall, thursday, ithink, won't be too bad a day across the majority of the uk. there should be some decent sunshine, just a few showers here or there. quite a chilly start, though, with some patchy frost and fog. the one major exception is the far south of the uk. we have an area of low pressure that's ploughing into the continent, bringing very heavy rain into france and it willjust glance southern counties of england for the first half of the day. so, looking pretty wet as that low works its way to the south, certainly i think from the latter part of the rush hour into the lunchtime period, across the south—eastern quadrant of the uk, the rain could get as far north as essex, it should gradually clear come the afternoon. in contrast, look how quiet it is elsewhere. behind the area of rainfall, showers pulling into

east anglia, the west of scotland and northern ireland. temperatures still struggling a little for many of us, highs ofjust 7 or 8 degrees. come thursday evening, the low pulls away. we will see a more organised band of showers coming in from the west. with light winds ahead of it, though, temperatures likely to fall. a fairly extensive frost. where there are showers, ice could be a significant risk across western britain first thing on friday. this front, though, is kind of a patchy affair for the rain through friday daytime, more showery than coming in in a solid and persistent block, and it may manifest as some thickening cloud for a time as it drifts in from the west on friday. most likely to see some showers, scotland, northern ireland, western wales and the far south—west of england.

far south, showers around. the weekend, another big area of low pressure heading our way, shouldn't be anywhere near as severe as the feature we saw last weekend, and the worst of the rainfall should sweep through overnight saturday into sunday. so for saturday, well, yes, a lot of cloud around, a lot of dry weather, rain through the afternoon in northern ireland and scotland. temperatures on saturday around average for the time of year. we are talking around 9 or 10 degrees. as this system rolls through overnight, though, temperatures in some spots may come up as a plume of warm air ahead of the front, but for sunday, we are plunged into cooler conditions behind it and some quite sharp showers running around. some sunny intervals at times as well. temperatures look similar on the face of it for sunday, but it will deal feel chillier on sunday as we pick up a north—westerly wind.

this is bbc news, the headlines: one of europe's biggest regional airlines — the british carrier, flybe — has collapsed. the company has released a statement saying "all flights have been grounded and the uk business has ceased trading with immediate effect." customers due to travel with flybe are advised not to go to the airport, unless they've arranged a flight with another airline, and flybe says it is not able to arrange alternative flights. california has declared a state of emergency over the coronavirus after reporting the state's first death and confirming at least 50 cases. more than 80 countries have reported cases so far. italy has the biggest outbreak in europe — more than a hundred people have died. the greek island of lesbos has become the latest flashpoint in the new migrant crisis affecting parts of europe. the governor of lesbos apologised for the actions of some residents. aid agencies say they have been assaulted as they try to cope with refugees coming by boat from turkey.