so i don't think we will be building any more dynamic hard shoulder smart motorways. the network is monitored by cctv cameras and screens in control centres. but, in response to a freedom of information request, highways england told the bbc all screens cannot be observed around the clock. the study found the average time to reach a car stranded on a smart motorway is 17 minutes. the department for transport says it owes it to the families of those killed for its safety review to be "thorough and quick", and expects to announce an outcome very shortly. highways england says it's committed to implementing any new recommendations as part of its work to make roads safer. if the campaigners are successful, then smart motorways will be safer. many, though, want them scrapped altogether. john maguire, bbc news, sheffield.

time for a look at the weather. here's mel coles. it's that time of year when we can expect anything and everything from oui’ expect anything and everything from our weather, certainly the case through the coming week. for many it got off to a decent start but we don't have to look very far to see the next system showing its hand, this big band of cloud in the atla ntic this big band of cloud in the atlantic already breaking cloud and rain to northern ireland and the western fringes of that continues this afternoon, proving quite relentless at times. best of the dry and bright conditions the further east you come but even here it sta rts east you come but even here it starts to cloud over as the day goes on. winds strengthening to, particularly for irish sea coasts. temperatures, in the sunshine it should feel pleasant, as they are above average for the time of year, but that the time of year, but that rain is relentless, particularly for parts of mid wales. the met office hasissued parts of mid wales. the met office has issued an amber warning. flooding and travel disruption as likely as through the next day or

so. likely as through the next day or so. into this evening, the rain fairly relentless. for driving commuters, it continues to spill eastward overnight. the main bank clearing away but more rain to come for parts of mid wales and north—west england through the early hours of the morning. murky down towards the far south and west, a lot of cloud around, and across the board it be fairly windy through the night but temperatures as a result won't drop away very far. tuesday, south—westerly winds drawing up a waft of something a little milder. we will all notice temperatures rising a little bit tempered by the strength of the wind because across the board it will be a windy day. more rain for north wales and north—west england but gradually turning more showery as the day goes on. showers for scotland, quite a lot of cloud the further south you 90, lot of cloud the further south you go, but we should see some breaks and when we do particularly for places like east anglia we could see temperatures reach as high as 16, possibly i7 temperatures reach as high as 16, possibly 17 celsius. tuesday

evening, for many the winds will start to ease. this trailing weather front just keeps on start to ease. this trailing weather frontjust keeps on going. still low pressure in charge, quite strong winds once again for parts of north—west scotland through the day on wednesday and actually here it will feel cooler through the day. showers packing in. some will be wintry over the hills initially but gradually as the day goes on they will start to fall to lower levels. elsewhere, xiao is tending to favour and western areas but not exclusively and —— the showers are tending to favour western areas. looking ahead to the end of the week it remains more unsettled on thursday. blustery showers that order of the day and a quieter day for many on friday. many thanks for that indeed, mel. that is all from me. time tojoin

time for some sports here on bbc news. the game will have to be delayed until later in the year. it is the second after england's match in italy was last. a scottish player has tested positive for the virus in the women's rugby. a government body decided that sporting event in britain are unlikely to be affected in the immediate future. unless government advice changes in the next few days. there is no medical rationale for cancelling events behind closed doors yet but it is a moving situation so we will keep talking and go from there. and the wales and scotland game in cardiff,

will that go ahead? it looks good. i don't see why that won't proceed. the basic message is let's not panic. let's monitor the situation and carry on as normal. the england italy game is already off and in terms of the rescheduling, what you think is most likely? autumn? we are working with six nations and the italian federation and we will find a date that works for both teams. outside the uk, events other than the six nations continue to be affected. the indian wells tennis tournament in california over the fears of the virus health officials are saying there was too great a risk to hold a large gathering of this size. many players including rafael nadal had arrived. we asked oui’ correspondence rafael nadal had arrived. we asked our correspondence what the ramifications might be for the tour. ifa ramifications might be for the tour. if a decision is taken to cancel a tennis event because of one local case in the area, you would think it would be very difficult for any

major event to be played in weeks and months to come. it may well be that other events take a slightly different view. if we look ahead to miami, that takes place in florida. there are already three confirmed cases of coronavirus there. very big music festival in march has already been called off. the wta chief exec said it is too early to speculate about events to come but after miami, the tour moves on to europe. thank events are scheduled there, in monte carlo, in madrid and most notably in rome. so i think have to be serious question as to whether tennis can put together a calendar over the weeks and months to come. another paris event, the champions league opening psg and borussia dortmund will take place behind closed doors. the authorities have dictated that no fans attend because of concerns about the outbreak.

dortmund the tie. england midfielder jordan nobbs says they are lucky to have both ellen white and beth england for the shebelieves cup. chelsea striker england started yesterday's match against japan but white came off the bench to scroll the goal. i would not like to be picking that teen and it is incredible that we have two top form strikers in the league at the moment so strikers in the league at the moment soi strikers in the league at the moment so i think ellen white does what she does best, gets into the right places but it showed that we needed beth to be a part of the squad and thatis beth to be a part of the squad and that is what got us up the win in the end. that is your sport for now. and what changing and moving in terms of coronavirus and how it is affecting sport, it is worth heading to the website. head to bbc, website. there will be more sport in the next hour.

time for your questions answered. joanna gosling has been talking to a doctor who answered some of your questions. with me to answer some of your questions is doctor mike tildesley, an associate professor of infectious diseases at the university of warwick. welcome, thank you forjoining us. good morning. tony asks on twitter, is the rise of covid—19 cases due to more testing for the disease now we know it exists? if that is the case, would we find more examples if we tested people who had apparently had flu? this is a really good question and one of the real

challenges we have when we're trying to predict the number of of coronavirus. if we see the situation in china, we are only reporting people who have quite severe symptoms and are seeking treatment. the big difficulty we have at the moment is trying to identify people in the community who may have had much milder symptoms. flu—like symptoms, cough and cold and so forth and have not sought treatment. one of the things that has been happening in the uk when we have seen cases a door is what has been called contact tracing to find people who may have been in contact with confirmed cases to do exactly that, then test those. it is extremely possible that there may have been people who had flu—like symptoms in the population and have not been confirmed. and it is one of the really important things we need to try to do to determine how badly the outbreak could get. amanda says we are being told not to touch ourfaces, nose and mouth, so why is mask wearing actively discouraged?

it will at least provide a barrier to people touching their faces. this is a really difficult one. there has been lots of advice about this. the difficulty with standard surgical masks is they don't prevent all infection from happening, they don't fit perfectly around the mouth and nose. it is still possible to be infected if you wear a mask. it will reduce risk and little bit and there is evidence to suggest that wearing a mask will slightly reduce your risk of being infected. however, some research shows that some people who wear masks actually might not follow other good hygiene practices as much because they view the mask as being somehow being preventative. i would say it is, it will reduce risk slightly but it is not a substitute for maintaining good hygiene practices, regular handwashing, minimising contact with suspected infected individuals.

"if person—to—person spread is being witnessed, why are people who have not been abroad or had known contact with an infected person not being tested ? italy has done a lot of testing to limit the spread. is there a reason why the uk is not testing as widely?" it is a really good question. everything keeps relating back to, you only need to worry if you have had direct contact with someone from an affected area but there is community spreading now? this is a really good question, this is something that is not being as widely reported. there has been quite a significant number of people tested in the uk. it is in the tens of thousands. possibly not quite as many as have been tested in italy but that is because we have over 7000 confirmed cases in italy compared with round about 300 and the uk. what is happening at the moment is this contact tracing going on to try to identify high—risk individuals and then they are being tested. that number is in the tens of thousands. the vast majority of those have

been tested negative. of course, the figures reported, the 300 so with confirmed infection. terry, via e—mail. this is an excellent question. i will start by saying this is not exactly my direct area of expertise. this is something called plasma therapy. it has been used in previous outbreaks, it was used to treat patients for avian influenza and the recent ebola crisis we saw in africa to treat some patients. there is work going on currently in china to look at potential effectiveness of this plasma therapy. at the moment, it is really unclear how effective that would be for the current

coronavirus outbreak. be on envelopes." keith has come up with a specific example of envelopes but people are talking about bank machines. think about everything that you are touching and who might have touched again, this difficult. it is hard to advise someone not to take precautions to minimise the risk of infection. what i will say is, always look up the current advice coming from public health england and there is actually a report that has come out from public health england saying there is no documented evidence from the china outbreak that there has been infection through infected post and so forth. that said, it is really important to maintain good practices to minimise risk. there is evidence the virus

can survive on surfaces for a few hours. again, i would emphasise the need for following good hygiene practice and if you are in a particularly high risk situation, if you feel you have been in contact with confirmed cases, it is really important to take these came the precautions to minimise risk. john on twitter asks... this is a really hard call and i suspect we might see some decisions being made in the next few days as is going to happen. what is going to happen. we are in a situation of what we would currently call the containment phase, where we are dealing with most of the cases that have come into the country, have been through travelling back into the uk or through direct contact with those people. of course, this is an evolving situation. we have seen the number of case

rise over the weekend. it is always a really difficult trade—off, because if we want to minimise risk. we need to start putting in these kinds of isolation measures but that needs to be traded off against the cost of those isolation measures taking place. any sort of decision like this needs to be made taking into account the current risk on a national level. and i suspect over the coming days we will have a much better understanding of how much risk there might be and we may see the government advice may change. to go back to the point you made in your first answer about the symptoms that people might be showing and whether on not it may actually be coronavirus, people may have had it without realising, you said if you have minorflu or cold symptoms, they are all quite different symptoms but the symptoms we are told to look out for four we are told to look out for coronavirus are specific. temperature, the lack of breath,

and the deep chesty cough. how is there so much potentially that other, a cold, could be a sign of it? the problem we have with coronavirus is that there is a whole range of severities of symptoms depending upon the individual. some people may literally have a cold and a cough and essentially as we said, think they have some sort of flu and will recover. the more severe cases that get respiratory difficulties and it could be much more serious. this is the real challenge that we have had and as i said earlier, there is evidence to suggest that there may be some proportionate individuals who are almost asymptomatic and are essentially infected but don't really have any symptoms. that is what makes this disease really hard to get ahead. the other aspect of it is that it is complicated by the incubation period of the disease. people can be infected for up to two

weeks and not show any symptoms before they start to have these symptoms. that is why it is actually very difficult to put in the right measures to try to control the outbreak. it has been great talk to to you. thank you very much for answering reviewers questions. thank you very much. to bring you up—to—date on the global stock market, the new york stock market has opened and closed straight because of a slump in numbers on the new york stock market. that is because of coronavirus but also the slump in oil prices that you see with that oil prices that you see with that oil prices that you see with that oil price war between saudi arabia and russia. which has led to a huge

fall in global stock markets. just hearing that trading on us stock exchanges was halted immediately after opening, as the s&p 500 fell 7% which triggered an automatic 15 minute cut out which was put in place after the 2008 crisis. the london footsie opened with an 8% fall. a similar kind of fall. there are fears of a global recession that have been amplified by the rapid spread of the coronavirus and as i mentioned, that slump in oil prices, 2296 mentioned, that slump in oil prices, 22% slump in oil prices so that you'll affect of those factors have been devastating on global markets. the new york market and stock index figures fell 5% overnight in daily trading limit. dramatic scenes on

the new york stock market. we will bring you more. on friday, megan made a surprise visit to a school to mark international women's day. she used it to urge men to do more to respect women. earlier, victoria derbyshire spoke to three pupils from the school. all of them got a chance to meet the duchess on friday. she was really lovely a nd meet the duchess on friday. she was really lovely and i think for me it was really important that she came to our school specifically to celebrate international women's day because as such a huge public figure, it is important that international women's day is recognised not just in international women's day is recognised notjust in general but end somewhere that women's issues are end somewhere that women's issues a re really end somewhere that women's issues are really important and struggling at the moment and to have that

empowering message and have somebody that people would want to look up to come to our borough and tell our banner that women's issues are important as incredibly important for working—class women at the moment. we're just the pictures of you meeting her and being in that short formal line where you are chatting. what did you think of her? she was amazing. extremely down to earth. as i said in one of the news articles, it is a moment i will never forget. very easy to talk to, honestly an amazing woman and it inspired hasta be like, yes, hopefully we can be this successful, ta ke hopefully we can be this successful, take on the advice she gave us. what about you ? take on the advice she gave us. what about you? it was such an honour and it really empowering the as a woman and made me think my voice matters. what i have to say is important. the fa ct what i have to say is important. the

fact that she came to dagenham. place were changed did happen and where women received equal pay which is something that i take for granted today, the fact that happened 40 or 50 years ago is absolutely amazing. what i am interested to know is what is it about her saying that you can do whatever it is you want to do? what is it about megan seeing this which inspires you as opposed to your mum 01’ which inspires you as opposed to your mum or auntie or somebody saying it. she is such an influential woman in the royal family, but she is such an influential person. knowing that she wants to take the time to talk to me, it really makes me feel like i am important and what i have to say matters and i feel like especially now, i feel like matters and i feel like especially now, ifeel like my matters and i feel like especially now, i feel like my voice matters and i feel like especially now, ifeel like my voice is matters and i feel like especially now, i feel like my voice is more head because of when i come from. the fact that she wants to come to my school, it makes me feel i

achieved the unachievable. briefly, are you sad that she will spend more time in canada, and do fewer if any royal engagements over the next 12 months? i don't think that her being and empowering women will matter where on the globe she is. and i think she will go on to, like anybody else, use her platform to do good and i don't think that being in canada or the uk or wherever well impact that. what i think is so empowering about meghan markle is that she has made that decision and utilised that a female autonomy that is championed by international women today to make a decision that is best for her and her family. today to make a decision that is best for her and herfamily. if anything, that only contributes to her as being an empowering person. that was pupils from the school in dagenham who met the duchess of sussex during that visit to school today. to go back to the new york stock market, we told

you it had closed because of big falls when it opened. 7% falls and it has now just falls when it opened. 7% falls and it has nowjust reopened. those huge falls caused by a combination of the coronavirus and fears that that might trigger a global recession. also, big fall in oil prices triggered by a fight on oil prices between russia and saudi arabia. the new york stock market has now reopened. the annual birdman rally has been taking place in melbourne. it's an event where people dress up, build home—made hang—gliders and then throw themselves off a jetty — in a usually fruitless attempt to fly. the bbc‘s tim allman has more. every year on the banks of the yarra river, they set out to prove the old adage that what goes up must definitely come down.

cheering. this is a place where hope springs eternal. despite all evidence to the contrary. i wouldn't say i'm fat but i'm very short for my weight, so yes, i've got massive disadvantages when it comes to actually flying. it's not actually possible. i think i'm going to go forjust a really fun leap or something. i'm not really sure. just see whatever happens. competitors are awarded for distance and believe it or not, altitude. they also get marks for entertainment value. which is just as well, all things considered. but it's still as scary as ever when you jump in, no matter how many times you've done it. it was very exciting, i'm still a little bit like, what? it was a lot of fun. i enjoyed it a lot. it's said insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. tell that to the bird men

and bird women of melbourne. who still believe one day they'll fly. tim allman, bbc news. the authorities in colombia say they've busted an animal smuggling ring out of the country, rescuing thousands of native mata—mata turtles. according to officials a sniffer dog found the turtles as part of a routine inspection at an airport in the southern region of amazonas. the turtles, said to be worth a quarter of a million dollars on the black market, were to be smuggled out to the united states and japan. more on that throughout the afternoon. now it's time for a look at the weather.

we can expect anything and everything from our weather and that is the case in the coming week. the next system is already showing its hand. this not of cloud out in the atlantic. northern ireland and western fringes seeing the rain move in. the further east you are the more likely it is you will hang on dry and bright conditions were longer. gradually clouding over as the day goes on. winds strengthening too, particularly for irish sea coast. some of this rain will be heavy and persistent. particularly for wales and north—west england. in the sunshine it should feel pleasant, above—average for the time of year. in this evening, the rain keeps coming, particularly for mid wales. the met office has issued an amber warning for some heavy downpours, particularly over the hills. likely we will see flooding and travel disruption. as the rain spills east, some tricky driving conditions out there. the main band does clear through the early hours of the morning but more rain for mid wales and north east anglia and. wales and north west england. widely it will be a milder night

because there is a lot of cloud around and it remains windy. a waft of milder air being drawn up which will give the temperatures are best. the temperatures a boost. some heavy downpours for mid wales and north—west england but gradually that should ease as the day goes on. further showers, some bright sunny intervals, more cloud, further south, it could be drizzly. a drizzly day across—the—board but given any breaks of cloud, we could see temperatures reaching 16 or 17 celsius. as we head through tuesday evening, gradually saying goodbye to that milder air, still under the influence of low pressure, sitting to the far north and west, winds strengthening once again for north west scotland. a cooler feeling day across scotland on wednesday. showers packing in which could be wintry, mainly over hills at first

but some lower levels as the day goes on. the further south, still holding onto some milder air. temperatures will be down on tuesday's values, it will still be fairly mild.

hello, you're watching afternoon live — i'm simon mccoy. today at 2pm. trading on wall street was halted immediately after stock markets crashed creating an automatic cutout. no need to panic buy — the government says it remains focused on containing the spread of the coronavirus as the prime minister chairs a meeting of the government's emergency committee. there is absolutely no need for anybody to stockpile or anything like that. we are in constant contact with the major retailers. italy's prime minister says his country is facing its "darkest hour" with 16 million people in quarantine. the trial begins of alex salmond — former first minister of scotland — on charges of sexual