conservative judge, amy coney barrett, to fill the vacant seat on the us supreme court. mr trump appeared alongside the judge at the white house, describing his nominee as one of the country's most brilliant and gifted legal minds. thousands of university students across the uk have been forced into lockdown for two weeks after a spike in coronavirus cases on campuses. 1700 students in manchester have been told to self—isolate in their rooms on campus for m days, after 127 of them contracted coronavirus. one of bollywood's best known actresses, depika padukon, has been questioned by police in mumbai — in connection with an escalating investigation into illegal drug use. the inquiry was sparked by the death of the actor, sushant singh rajput, injune. tributes are being paid to matt ratana, the police officer shot dead at a south

london custody centre on friday morning. an investigation is under way into how the handcuffed suspect — who is in hospital with a bullet wound — was able to take the weapon inside. acting deputy commissioner of the metropolitan police, stuart cundy, gave this update. yesterday, one of my colleagues, matt, was murdered. and my thoughts are with his partner, his family, his friends, his colleagues, both here and across the world. and, as well as remembering that, over the last two days, we have been working round the clock on our murder investigation. at this time, the suspect remains in hospital in a critical condition and due to his state, we are not yet able to speak to him. we have teams of specialist investigators who are investigating matt's murder.

we have four major crime scenes, each of which is being painstakingly searched and will be subject to a detailed and painstaking forensic examination. we have recovered the gun from the custody suite where matt was shot and that gun is being forensically examined. we also have the cctv from that custody suite, which shows the event. and we have body worn video of our police officers who were involved in the circumstances surrounding the arrest of the suspect. our specialist investigators are carefully reviewing all of that footage, which will be considered alongside the accounts of the officers. one of the aims of our murder

investigation is to establish why matt was shot. one of my priorities is to ensure that any future criminal prosecution is not jeopardised. and i know that will be important to the public, too, which is why i ask for everybody‘s support, to not speculate about the events and circumstances. and finally, i would like to thank everybody for their support, which means so much to all of those who worked with and knew matt. thank you very much. now on bbc news it's time for witness history. hello and welcome to this special edition of witness history with me tanya beckett.

this month we will be meeting five people who have experienced extraordinary moments in environmental history. coming up, we meet a botanist who risked his life to protect the ituri rainforest in the democratic republic of congo. the artist who uses nigeria's environmental struggles as inspiration for work. and the man who has spent his life trying to protect the great barrier reef. but first, 15 million trees were felled by the great storm which hit the south of england in 1987. one tree not only survived the storm but also changed the way that trees are cared for around the world. tony kirkham of kew gardens in london spoke to witness history about what he learnt from the turner's oak. at the time, i was devastated. trees you'd been looking after, that you'd grown to recognise and be familiar with were lying

on the ground. here we are in kew gardens, the royal botanic gardens of kewjust south of london. in the gardens we have about 1a,000 trees, and an incredible diversity. there hasn't been a storm like this in the south coast county for as long as anyone can remember. certainly the scale of the devastation hasn't been experienced since the second world war. in 1987 on 16th october, we had a storm that came in from the south—west, very strong winds, that wasn't really predicted. in the south—east of england alone we lost 15 million trees in the space of about an hour.

here at kew gardens, we lost over 700. the canopies were like the sale of a tree so the wind hit the canopy and literally pushed them over. turner's oak was probably the kingpin of the whole story. this whole tree had been lifted out of the ground and we are talking about a bigotry that would have been nearly 200 years old, the whole tree had lifted out of the ground and sat back so the whole route plate had come out, slightly tipped, leaned over. before that we knew the tree had been slightly unwell, and this was an opportunity to save it and give it a last chance. we managed to push it back and we propped it, so the props are still under the tree to stop it falling over again and we decided that would be the last tree to cut up, we'd clear the arboretum and come back to it.

three years later we came back to it... picture of health and we couldn't understand why. what we realised was over the years people walking into that had compacted the soil around the roots, so the route plate was compacted. i use a wine glass as an example of a tree. the piece at the bottom, the base that sits on the table and stops it from tipping over is the route plate of a tree. the route plate is very shallow so on that night, nature picked the tree up out of the ground, shook the roots back in, then lots of ferocity in the soil saw the oxygen could get back down into the roots and any water. what we realised is that any other tree at kew gardens was suffering from the same problem. that was the start of a new era in tree management. not only at kew gardens but in gardens across the world today.

over the years companies have developed machinery specifically for soil injection and what we call air cultivation, and from that came in the air spade. whenever i walk past the turner's oak, i always have a smile and a chuckle. i'm getting a bit... emotional now. she has put more than a third of her growth on since the hurricane. so i walk past and pat her, stroke her leave so she knows i'm there and her, really. tony kirkham at kew gardens in london. and, next, in 1996 the democratic republic of the congo, then zaire, was in the grip of a violent civil war. the conflict reached the ituri rainforest in the north—east of the country

and area with enormous biodiversity and rich in rare minerals. for several months corneille ewango hid from the armed groups in the forest to try to protect the area's plants and animals. almost a quarter of a million people have fled eastern zaire because of fierce fighting in the region. the un says it's begun evacuation of

almost a quarter of a million people have fled eastern zaire because of fierce fighting in the region. the un says it's begun evacuation of humanitarian staff.

corneille ewango, who is now the director of the wildlife reserve in the ituri ra i nfo rest. in australia in the 1960s, conservationists began fighting to protect the great barrier reef from mining and oil drilling and our next witness, eddie hegerl, has spent his life trying to protect the coral reef from destruction.

the barrier reef has a wonderful array of fish. really, the things to me are the most spectacular are the ones i know the least about it, and that is the enormous variety of marine invertebrates. there is an enormous number of species, it's pretty hard not to go a day without seeing something you've never seen before. in mid—1967, there was an application to mine on ellison reef. the man who wanted to mine it for limestone actually called it a dead reef. i and a group of colleagues who'd been studying coral reefs and fish were asked to go and carry out a scientific survey of the reef to determine if what he said was true.

we spent five days diving and found it to be a perfectly normal reef which certainly should not be allowed to be mined. the queensland government of the day's attitude was that the reef was a nice part of limestone that could be carted away to southeast asia and made in to cement. the queensland premier, pietersen, felt that mining lots of reefs would create lots of employment. he miscalculated the public. i had to start working full time just as a barrier reef campaigner. the final decision over the mining application came seven months later. the really big shock came on the 24th of december 1968.

the thought of having an oil industry throughout the region potentially was just appalling. i thought this was going to be a lot harder fired because this was the world's oil industry wanting to get a toe hold, and that was a very frightening prospect. we needed people all over the world to say to the australian government, please don't do that. we want to visit the barrier reef so please don't drill the reef. people responded, they really did. we got international attention, and i think they started to realise this was going to impact on australian tourism.

having that national legislation passed really was the decisive moment in 1975. the entire barrier reef region was proclaimed a marine park. no one can drill it, no mining, and that was the day we thought, oh, we actually succeeded! how did that happen?! the reef isn't completely safe. in particular we have to deal with climate change. fortunately, kids and high school students and even younger are really going to make the difference if they keep on and keep it up, that's all we need. don't shut up, keep it up. eddie hegerl continues to campaign to protect the reef, most recently highlighting the dangers posed by climate change. remember, you can watch

witness history every month on the bbc news channel or catch up on all our films along with more than 1000 radio programmes in our online archive, just search online for witness history. next, battle bus was made by sokari douglas camp in memory of the nigerian environmentalist ken saro—wiwa who was executed in 1995. the sculpture was seized and impounded by nigerian port authorities in 2015. when the artwork was shipped to niger as a memorial to ken saro—wiwa and the eight other activists killed with him. i like metal because it has tensile strength that is fantastic.

something very small can hold up something gigantic. i love the fact you can stretch it in the most incredible way, make things that look like fabric and look soft. my childhood started off in independent nigeria. and i was sent to boarding school in england so i had a foot in niger and a foot in england. my people live on 22 islands in the niger delta and our transport was by boat, dugout canoes the women would take out, and they'd gather periwinkles on the mud flats and make the most incredible stews. gradually, these things have been dying out because of pollution, because of the way that oil is being extracted there. oil was discovered in the niger delta in 1956 and now

nigeria is one of the largest oil producing countries in the world. the ogoni people say their homeland has been ruined by oil. we are going to demand our rights peacefully, nonviolently and we shall win. ken saro—wiwa, poet, environmentalist and leader of the ogoni people. the nigerian government says he's a murderer and has sentenced him to death. ken saro—wiwa tried to get the oil companies to behave differently by talking. there was no violence involved. nigeria's military leaders provoked a storm of international outrage today when they went ahead with the executions of nine human rights activists including the playwright and satirist ken saro—wiwa. no one could believe it.

pure, pure sadness, yes. ken's memorial was extremely important to me to make sure people remembered him. this is a mini version of the real bus, the real bus is life—size. the memorial had ken's name on a banner at the front and on top of the bus were barrels with the names of the other eight that were killed at the same time on it. it had words that ken saro—wiwa said in one of his last interviews before he was executed. the battle bus had quite an adventure. the environmentalists from nigeria decided they'd like the memorial to travel to nigeria, and when it got to lagos port, it was arrested by nigerian customs because it was believed that it would cause havoc.

it's still locked away. it's still arrested. our problem is global. our clothing, toilet seats, lipstick, everything has this crude oil element to it. it's an incredible product, it's a magic product. and, yet, it is killing us. so, it keeps on turning up in my work. sokari douglas camp at her studio in london. and, finally, in december 1988, the brazilian environmental activist chico mendes was shot dead in the amazon rainforest. his close friend remembers the early days of the struggle to protect the amazon.

when chico mendes was killed, it was a terrible feeling. so sad. at that time, no one was concerned about the forest. he changed my life radically. chico mendes was a leader of the protest movement of the 805. it was he who warned the world your environment depends on keeping our rainforest alive. i first met chico mendes in 1981, in the western part of the amazon. he was a very happy person, a very charismatic person. he was organising the rubber toppers to protect the forest, to stop deforestation.

poor people defend the forest because the forest was their livelihood. it was so dangerous to do this kind of movement at that time. my dream is to see this entire forest conserved because we know it can guarantee the future of all the people who live in it. chico mendes asked my help. he wanted to strengthen the capacity of the rubber tappers to fight. we talked for two or three hours. i became so impressed with him. six months after, we started the first school for adults in the forest. at the time that i started working with chico, the approach of the brazilian government to the amazon, it was to incentivise the big farmers to cut down the forest

and plant agriculture on a big scale, or cattle ranching, roads, mining... but chico mendes was able to persuade the government to protect the area that was in conflict with farmers. the first initiative in the amazon to create and protect the area for rubber tappers. two months later, chico was assassinated by the farmers that lost their land. the gunman, police say, had been hiding outside his dingy shack for days waiting for the moment when he would walk alone through his back to the outside shower. when he was to put away from the door, he was shot. he came back in the house, walked about five yards and fell down near our bedroom door.

i tried to lift him but he fell down again. at this moment, i realised chico was dying. the international repercussions of the assassination of chico was so unexpected, and the fight of the rubber tappers became known. we have today more than 10% of the amazon protected for the people, this is his legacy. quite unthinkable at that moment when he was assassinated. i'm so grateful to him and to the rubber tappers. and i'm still involved with this movement now. violence against environmental

activists in the amazon continues to this day. and one of those involved in the current struggle to save the forest is chico mendes daughter, angela. that is all from this special edition of witness history. we will be back next month with more first—hand accounts of extraordinary moments in history. but, for now, from me and the rest of the witness history team, goodbye. the cold winds are still with us on sunday, especially if you live close to the north sea coast, another very brisk day on the way and at times cloudy. but so many of us further towards the west, we will actually have a very decent sunday. let's have a look at the satellite picture. we're still sandwiched

between two weather systems, a low pressure centred in europe and excessive weather fronts coming off the atlantic. we're in this gap here, and actually, the skies have remained clear and that's also led to a touch of frost across parts of scotland, certainly where the winds are light around the lowlands. at northern ireland, down to around 5 degrees, but notice where winds remain strong. the temperatures are around double figures early on sunday morning. you can see from the arrows the winds are still blowing from the north there, actually dragging in a fair amount of cloud into the northeast of england, 15 degrees on thermometer doesn't seem too bad, but it will feel chilly, much better weather toward the west with more sunshine. on monday, there will be a change in the wind direction. we'll lose the northerlies, but also come these milder, wider westerlies, that will be the theme for

the next few days. that does mean the weather is going to turn a lot more unsettled. i think on monday, just a bit of cloud on rain splashing through northern ireland through the afternoon, reaching the northwest of england and wales as well. generally speaking, with the sun comes out on monday, having lost that wind, temperature is get up to around 17 or 18 degrees. should not feel too bad at all. on tuesday, we are up between weather fronts, one just out of the north sea, another to this area of low pressure heading our way. but tuesday isn't looking too bad at all. i think there'll be some decent sunny spells around, but after that, pretty much from wednesday, this jet stream is actually going to send a serious of low pressure in our direction. that means that the temperatures might be rising because this is overall milder but also come the clouds and the increasing winds, wednesday onwards, the weather is not looking too great for some of us. bye— bye.

this is bbc news. i'm maryam moshiri. our top stories: president trump nominates conservative judge amy coney barrett to the us supreme court, in a move that could have a major impact on landmark legal rulings. todayit today it is my honour to nominate one of our nation's most billions and gifted legal minds to the supreme court. —— most brilliant. if the senate does me the honour of confirming me, i pledge to discharge the responsibilities of thisjob to discharge the responsibilities of this job to the very best of my ability. thousands of university students across the uk are forced into lockdown for two weeks after a spike in coronavirus cases on campuses. some say they feel trapped and are worried they'll run