this is bbc news — welcome if you're watching here in the uk, on pbs in america or around the globe. our top stories: a u—turn from the bosses of american football, admitting they were wrong to ban players from protesting against police brutality. we, the national football league, admit we were wrong for not listening to nfl players earlier, and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. the official coronavirus death toll in britain passes 40,000, only the us has more. and france says its forces have killed a key islamist militant leader in mali.

four years ago, one american football player knelt when the national anthem was played in a protest against police brutality towards black americans. many other players followed colin kapernick‘s example, but he was sanctioned by the game's governing body and has failed to find a team since 2017. since the death in custody of george floyd, taking the knee, as it's now called, has been repeated at demonstrations around the country and beyond, while many leading football players have shown their anger byjoining in or staging their own protests. and now the national football league, the nfl, has completely reversed its earlier position on taking the knee. we, the national football league, condemn racism. we admit we were wrong for not listening to nfl players earlier, and encourage all to

speak out and peacefully protest. we, the national football league, believe black lives matter. i personally protest with you, and want to be part of the much—needed change in this country. during the recent protests in the us, colin kapernick”s gesture has been copied again and again. in minneapolis last weekend, one national guard officer and his squad troops knelt alongside protesters in a powerful gesture of reconcilliation. and on friday, in the canadian capital 0ttawa prime minister justin trudeau joined protestors and took the knee himself. 0ur north america correspondent david willis has more on the story. very significant, and a sign of the zeitgeist you might say. let me tell you why, because 75% of players in the nfl are african—american, yet almost all the team owners are white, and many of them are supporters of president trump.

but president trump, who early of course back in 2016 in the days of colin kaepernick, called for players who took the knee to be sacked by team managers, well now the president has re—entered the fray after another leading player in the league called for, came out against the kneeling protest, only to withdraw that, those comments in the face of widespread criticism. president trump has gone after him, saying he shouldn't have withdrawn those comments and writing on twitter "no kneeling". but now we have the man who runs the nfl coming out basically in favour of the players, saying that it was a mistake to oppress them back in 2016 and to oppress those kneeling protest, and basically saying that as far as the league is concerned, black lives do matter. just to be clear, this isn't just about sport, is it, or one particular sport. this issue over years and years has polarised people,

been a huge issue of contention right across us society. absolutely, we are talking about centuries in actual fact of oppression of black people at the hands of whites. and this is what we are seeing at the moment, a movement really, that has coalesced into very large protests in major cities across the united states. we have seen more of them today, we will see more of them tonight. and this is a movement, make no question of it, much is made of a watershed in history, we really have one here it would seem. judging by the complexion of many of these protests, lewis, many of them have more white faces in them than black. ok, thanks david. there have been many claims

that these protests have resulted in more... a 75—year—old man has been assaulted by police in new york state, as the protests over the death of george floyd, continue. you can see there is distressing claims there in that distressing video as officers continue to walk past. right, given that quite sensitive video, let's pick up on the issue of the culture in many police forces. philip stinson is a former police officer — and a professor of criminal justice at bowling green state university in ohio. he heads a unit there researching police integrity and crime committed by officers. thank you for being with us. given what your research has been showing you, what can you

pick up, what threads can you pick up, what threads can you pick up, what threads can you pick up about policing culture? it's interesting you just showed the video where the older gentleman was shoved down and seriously injured, and it is reminiscent of what we have seen and other videos. frankly, it is similar in some respects to what we saw in the photo and thatis to what we saw in the photo and that is that police officers use violence with impunity in this country. policing is violent and even when they have every reason to know that they are being recorded on video, we see time and time again police officers engaging and what ichor, street justice. gratuitous violence to teach somebody a lesson, to push them out of the way, make sure they are not going to give the police a hard time if they should encounter each other again andi should encounter each other again and i think one of the reasons we are seeing people of all walks of life protesting and demonstrating across the country is because this resonates with people. people have stories of their own where they have been manhandled, they

have been beaten up, where they have been beaten up, where they have been beaten up, where they have been handled very aggressively by police officers, and if not themselves relatives, family members, collea g u es relatives, family members, colleagues and associates, so it is something that resonates. given that it does resonate, one of the defence often is that this is a case of a few bad apples within the police force, every workplace has been? well, no, it is well beyond that. the bad apples theory has long since been proven wrong. we have a broken policing system in the united states. if anything, the whole orchard is rotten and we need to figure out how we're going to figure out how we're going to rethink policing in the united states. it is not simply a matter of a few bad apples because when we see this video is over and over again, what we see is the same types of behaviours by officers that, you know, we have more than 18,000 state and local law enforcement agencies across the united states, it's a decentralised law—enforcement system and all is local, the

police subculture thrives in different ways and different communities but the core values of the police subculture is based on violence. given that diversity and the number of forces, how do you go about changing the culture? it is very difficult. it is not like we can fire everybody and start over tomorrow. i don't think it is as simple as improve supervision and they don't think it is as simple as improved training and one of the reasons they say that is because we have seen and videos recently in the past several yea rs recently in the past several years where officers have been charged with murder or manslaughter resulting from on—duty shootings, i've had police chiefs tell me personally that they were shocked by what they saw in the video because none of the things were encompassed in that of the's training, so officers are doing things outside of their training. we need to go way past that, and i think it comes down to a core value that police officers typically live and work in different communities in the united states. they live in different

towns, their children attend different schools, they worship at different places than the people that live in the communities where they work, so until police officers are of and from the communities where they live and work in the same place, i don't think we're going to be to make improvements as to how police officers interact with the general public. 0k, philip, thank you very much for your thoughts on that very difficult issue. former us vice president, joe biden, has formally won the democratic party nomination for this november's presidential election. a tally of recent state primary votes by the associated press news agency shows mr biden has attained enough pledged delegates to the democratic convention to become the pa rty‘s candidate. in effect he became the nominee when his rival bernie sanders withdrew from the race in april. the number of people who've died after testing positive

for the coronavirus in the uk has passed 40,000. britain is now only the second country in the world to reach that figure, after the united states. here's our health editor, hugh pym. for families and friends of the bereaved, some of whom spent weeks in intensive care, there've been months of grief and emotional turmoil. my mum, she was my best friend. she was kind, funny. this is just the worst pain in the world. i feel like without the proper protection, then more things like this and more families will lose a loved one. since the first uk death in early march, a total of 40,000 have now died after testing positive for coronavirus. the government's chief scientific adviser said keeping the death total to 20,000 or below would be a good outcome. it's now above 40,000. how do you assess that outcome given where we are now?

the day that the number of deaths from coronavirus has gone over 40,000 is a time of sorrow for us all. we've got to remember that each one of these is an impact on a family that will never be the same again. and my heart goes out to them all. and it makes me redouble my determination to deal with this virus. so, how did we get here? on 11 march, the world health organization formally declared a pandemic. that day, spanish football fans were in liverpool for a champions league football fixture. the next day, testing and tracking of new community cases was stopped, with resources focusing on hospitals. the four—day cheltenham racing festival was in full swing. on 16 march, people were told to avoid pubs and other social venues, and work from home if possible. the next day, the chief scientific adviser made this prediction.

if we can get this down to numbers 20,000 and below, that's a good outcome. on 23 march, lockdown began across the uk. on 21 april, the daily death toll hit a peak, with more than 1000 deaths. since then, the overall total has climbed and now stands atjust over 40,000 deaths, though this doesn't include those in all settings where there wasn't a test. some experts argue the government should have reacted more quickly after seeing what was happening in italy. we had two to three weeks more time to get ready for this, but i think we just took it too easy, to be very frank. i think we assumed that we were different, that somehow we were going to respond in a different way, that we could cope. and then, by the time

they realised they had the problem, it was too late. the uk covid—19 death toll, at around 40,000, is ahead of other european countries, with italy next on the latest reported figure atjust over 33,500, followed by france, spain and belgium. but adjusted for the size of the population, belgium has the highest death rate, at around 84 per 100,000 people, with the uk at 60, a little above spain, italy and france. there are slight differences in the way each country calculates its figures. this virus has hit lots of very developed nations with robust healthcare systems, robust health infrastructures, and it's taken a lot of people by surprise. and i don't think the uk is alone in having been taken by surprise. i think we need to essentially wait till the end of the pandemic and then have a dissection of what happened and learn lessons from it. for now, the authorities will focus on testing as many people as possible and then tracing their contacts, seen as the best way to suppress the virus. hugh pym, bbc news.

brazil's president is threatening to follow in the footsteps of the us and pull his country out of the world health 0rganisation. jair bolsonaro says the organisation needs to stop being what he calls a partisan political organisation. in a further echo of his american counterpart, the trump admirer, continues to tout the drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for covid—19. he's told the media the drug is back, calling recent studies into its efficacy a sham. stay with us on bbc world news, still to come: back to live performance for the vienna philharmonic orchestra, but only in front of a very tiny audience.

the day the british liberated the falklands. and by tonight, british troops had begun the task of disarming the enemy. in the heart of the german capital, this was gorby—mania at its height. the crowd packed to see the man who for them, has raised great hopes for an end to the division of europe. it happened as the queen moved towards horse guards parade for the start of trooping the colour. gunshots. the queen looks worried but recovers quickly. as long as they'll pay to go and see me, i'll get out there and kick 'em down the hill. what does it feel like to be the first man to go across the channel by your own power? it feels pretty neat. it feels marvellous, really.

this is bbc world news, the latest headlines: the us national football league has reversed its stance against players protesting by taking the knee. it's said it was wrong to stop them doing so. the british government's official coronavirus death toll has exceeded 40,000, only the second country in the world to surpass that number. the washington, dc mayor has changed the name of a plaza outside the white house to "black lives matter plaza" in a rebuke to president trump. mayor muriel bowser, a democrat, also unveiled a two—block long mural painted onto the street leading up to the white house declaring "black lives matter". the mayor's defiant, but largely symbolic, acts come as more protests are expected in dc at the weekend. clarence williams is a reporter

for the washington post. just checking you can hear me. how are you? i'm very well. thank you for talking us. give us thank you for talking us. give usa thank you for talking us. give us a labour of the atmosphere, what is happening? these streets are seeing far fewer people than they have over the course of the past week, the tone has been more of a street festival or tourist attraction that has been the kind of shouting, anger and defiance that we've seen from protesters. some bleeding and fires and destruction in earlier days, but tonight, this plaza in the city, black lives matter, people have been here taking selfies. i have seen firefighters having their photo taken here, firefighters having their photo ta ken here, that's firefighters having their photo taken here, that's something that's new. so tonight, it's calm, there are evening storms.

but tomorrow, officials here are gearing up for what should be... a huge increase in numbers expected. we should explain, those big yellow lines on the street behind you, thank you for the excellent camerawork. it is extraordinary, this mural. it is something else, to be honest. to just be objective, this is not a plaza as much as 16th st. the most famous address perhaps certainly in our country or the world, than pennsylvania avenue, this is the 1600 block, not that, but just a few hundred metres south of me, so this is quite an extraordinary thing for the people of washington and people in the entire western area.

myself included, i must say i was surprised myself. for people watching around the world, this will probably be among the first times they've heard, just tell us what she is about. she is a native washingtonian and she will come into political life in her midcareer, i'd say. she is well—known as a council woman who followed one of the previous mayors. she was very active in constituent services, making sure the streetlights got picked up in her community. vision then started to move on the city council to take more positions of power. and she is clearly not a fan of donald trump. well, she a democrat and

any democrat is certainly going to be at odds with the republican administration. this republican administration. this republican administration brings challenges like anyone has ever seen, talking to them our‘s officials, they tried to set up their position. and let them know where they are staying at any given issue. but the tenure as president and from there, and they go into negotiations and sometimes friction, which is what has been on display throughout this week in terms of the response and how to deal with the massive amount of demonstrations. extraordinary times indeed. 0nce very much for talking us through. we appreciate it. reddit co—founder alexis 0hanion has resigned from the social news company's board and has called

for his seat to be given to a black candidate. the 37—year—old who's married to tennis star serena williams says any future gains on his stock in the company will be used to serve the black community. he said resignation can be an act of leadership from people in power, adding "i'm saying this as a father who needs to be able to answer his black daughter when she asks, "what did you do?" france says its forces and their allies have killed a key islamist militant leader in mali. the french armed forces minister says abdel malek drouk del died on wednesday in what she called 'a daring operation' which is being seen as a major success in the fight against islamic extremism in the region. rich preston has this report.

mali has been suffering an islamist insurgency since 2012. dozens of attacks over the years have left thousands of malians dead, with violence spreading across the region. the man in charge, abdelmalek droukdel, commanding the group calling itself al-qaeda in the islamic maghreb, the north african arm of the extremists made infamous for the 9/11 attacks on the united states. mali was a french colony until independence came in 1960. when islamists gained a foothold in the country at the start of the last decade, it sought help from its former colonial power. with french and united nations support, the islamists were suppressed, but not beaten. this announcement from the french armed forces minister is a significant victory in the fight against the militants, saying droukdel and several members of his inner circle were killed in what she called a severe blow to the terrorist groups. the news comes as thousands of malians gathered in the capital bamako on friday, calling for the country's leader to step down, saying ibrahim boubacar keita has failed in his handling of islamist insurgencies,

and that his seven years of rule should end. translation: it's time for everything to change. 0ur army is disorganised and demoralised. the money that was promised to the army has been diverted. soldiers don't get their food rations. we are the laughing stock of the whole region. france has around 5,000 troops in mali, alongside 13,000 un peacekeepers, but though the killing of the militants' leader is a success story in this long—running battle, the security of mali as a whole, and the safety of its people, is unlikely to change anytime soon. rich preston, bbc news. one of the world's finest orchestra's, the vienna philharmonic, hasjust held its first live post—lockdown concert. they performed beethoven's 5th symphony, but in line with anti—coronavirus regulations in austria, only 100 people were present.

the vienna philharmonic is back, with beethoven's fifth symphony conducted by daniel barenboim, and attended by a tiny audience. it took place in vienna's concert hall which hosts up to 2000 people at events like the new year's concert but now just 100 events like the new year's concert but nowjust100 people we re concert but nowjust100 people were allowed to attend because of coronavirus social distancing regulations. daniel barenboim says this is an important moment for musicmaking. i think it's wonderful and this is the message that the vienna philharmonic and i want to give today. that we start again with a live musicmaking. and this is how music can and should be

experienced, live. all the players tested negative for covid—19 before the concert. the orchestra hasn't played in public for three months. it's the first time in its history the first time in its history the vienna philharmonic has had such a long break between concerts. for the audience, the event was a sign of hope. it was wonderful after corona for the first time, that you could go back to our golden hall and have the vienna philharmonic play for us with daniel barenboim. wonderful programme with beethoven and they played exceptionally well. having live performances is very important for a country like austria, which prides itself on its cultural offerings. for now, it's just for the lucky few but there are plans to slowly increase the sizes of audiences as the summer goes on. bethany bell, bbc news, vienna. that's

it. you can find me on twitter. this is bbc news. well, it's certainly not going to feel like a day injune out there on saturday. and certainly not compared to what we had last week, when temperatures were in the mid to high—20s. saturday is going to be a blustery one with further showers. and low pressure is firmly in charge of our weather. you can see the clouds circling around the area of low pressure very close to scotland, and actually through the early hours, we're seeing a band of cloud and rain slipping southwards across the uk, accompanied by some pretty strong winds. it's the weather front that's linked to this low pressure, and this low pressure will hang around through most of saturday and then by sunday, it looks as though it's going to clear away. but through the early hours, we've got a band of more persistent rain stretching from the north, moving due south. it does look as though the south of the country is actually going to wake up to some sunshine, but look how that cloud, that rain—bearing cloud slips

southwards through the course of the day, so i think most of us will catch at least a little bit of rain. but the chances are that during the afternoon the skies will clear across more northern parts of the country and the sun will come out. but it's across the south, middle of the afternoon, where we'll probably have most of the cloud and the outbreaks of rain. now, the wind arrows you can see here, those are the gusts of wind, and in places they are in excess of 40 mph, perhaps even up to 50. 50 mph in gusts isjust about gale—force, and that's a strong wind for the time of the year. certainly whipping those trees around. now, the temperatures in the sunshine in the north will probably peak at around 19 degrees, for example in the lowlands of scotland. but further south, we are talking more like the low or the mid—teens, and it is going to feel nippy in those gusty winds. and the showers will continue into saturday night and the early hours of sunday, but there is an indication that that low pressure and its weather front will drift a little bit further towards the east

during the course of sunday. so, yes, sunday on the north sea coast blustery with showers, but even here, they will eventually fade a little bit later on in the day. and i think for most of us, overall, sunday is looking better, particularly the further west and the north you are. so, again, another fine day in glasgow. and the outlook actually shows that the weather will be stabilising itself as we go through next week. perhaps not all that sunny and not all that warm, but at least those winds will die down. that's it from me. bye— bye.

this is bbc news. the headlines: the national football league in the united states has reversed its stance against players speaking out. the commissioner of the nfl, roger goodell, said it had been wrong to stop players from peacefully protesting during the national anthem, as they did by taking the knee. a surprise set of employment figures from the us has led to hopes the us economy is on its way back despite the coronavirus pandemic. two and a half million jobs were created in may. however that's only 10% of the jobs lost over the past three months. more than 40,000 people are now known to have died in the uk from coronavirus according to latest government figures. britain is only the second country in the world to surpass the number after the us. the toll rose by 357 on friday. this is bbc news.