this is bbc news, the headlines. ukraine says its forces have retaken the entire region around the capital kyiv, with russian forces withdrawing from key towns. but, as russian troops retreat, the evidence of civilian killings is growing, with reporters in the nearby town of bucha finding at least 20 bodies in the streets. hundreds of people have managed to escape the bombardment of the southern city of mariupol and reach safety in private cars. but a third attempt by the international red cross to drive buses to the city to evacuate people from the area has once again failed. a two—month truce has been agreed in yemen for the first time since 2016, in a war which has killed an estimated 400,000 people. the deal between the saudi—led coalition and iran—backed houthi rebels coincided with the first day

of the muslim holy month of ramadan. an unprecedented rise in the energy price cap this month, alongside rising fuel costs, tax bills and interest rates, has created the biggest squeeze to living standards in 30 years. the rising cost of living is forcing some to choose between heating their homes, or feeding their family. simonjones reports. counting the cost. charity worker kerry thompson from milton keynes has muscular dystrophy. she needs to travel regularly to hospital, the cost of fuel has gone up. she has a specialised diet, the cost of food has gone up and now she is facing a huge hike in energy bills. nobody wakes up in the morning and says, we want to have a disability. we don't. but the cost of living for as...

of living for us... is higher than everybody else and that's not fair! the energy price cap has risen by 5a%, the maximum suppliers in england, wales and scotland can charge for each unit of gas and electricity. that means an average increase in bills of nearly £700 a year for a typical household, taking the total to just under £2,000 a year. those on prepayment metres face an even bigger rise, £708 a year, taking the average bill tojust over £2000. council tax, water bills and car tax for many have also gone up. in howdon in north tyneside, this charity is trying to help, distributing surplus food provided by the industry. for £7.50, people get three bags of goods. mainly because we both work, and we both work our backsides off, then i have got three children at home that have all got extracurricular activities, i try and do as much as i can. i've got fibromyalgia, so i cannot do as much as i should be able to do

and with the gas and electric going up, our council tax, our national insurance going up, it is like working, you are more penalised for it now. businesses like this hairdressers in southampton aren't protected by the energy price cap. they are reluctantly having to pass costs on to customers. it is crazy. i mean, i even queried it| with the energy company ourselves, actually rung them | up and said, we need to query this, is it a mistake? no, apparently we were on the right tariff. - energy prices have been affected by a worldwide surge in demand, as economies emerge from covid restrictions. to help those struggling, the government says it is knocking £150 off most council tax bills and introducing a £200 reduction to household energy bills in october, but that will have to be paid back in instalments. but opposition politicians say the reality is that more people will have to choose between heating and eating. simon jones, bbc news. now on bbc news, our media editor amol rajan talks

to sir ian mckellen. just over four years ago i drove to chichester to interview a titan of stage and screen. he was starring as king lear in the local theatre and he told me it would be his last big shakespearean role. i should not have believed a word, because last year, at the age of 82, amidst the pandemic and some five decades after his first public turn in the role, sir ian mckellen played hamlet. it was typical of him — surprising, mischievous, pure thespian charisma. above all, it showed that in his ninth decade, he seems indefatigable. undoubtedly one of the greats this country has produced, he is a pioneer, a game—changer, who rewrote the rules of acting and helped britain confront

the truth about itself. known to a global audience for his portrayal of gandalf in the lord of the rings, it has been quite a journey for a boy from burnley born before the war. 0ver six decades, he has been called the heir to laurence olivier, starred in hundreds of productions and illuminated screens small and large. how good do you think you are? whenever i start rehearsing a play, i tell myself the fact that i'm the best actor in the world to play that part. along the way, his championing of gay rights has earned him the ire of many and the respect of many more. 0ur conversation covered everything from his life story the weather, for instance,

non—jewish actors should play jewish roles and the story behind the first same—sex kiss on the bbc. he has invited me to explore, if not explain, a life that charts the story of post—war britain. i have a simple quest, to find out who really is ian mckellen? camera a, b, c, d. ok, let's do it. sir ian... don't call me sir! why not? i thought you were rather proud of your knighthood. proud, yes, of course, but i do not want to be separated out from other people, i don't really like titles. there we are. thank you for talking to me. otherwise i will have to call you mr. that would be very weird and it would also highlight the hierarchy! do you remember what it was like as an eight or nine—year—old falling

in love with the theatre? you got amazing access, partly via your family, to the backstage and there is this contrast between the sheen and glory of what you saw on stage and dare i say it, sexy, illicit, not quite seedy, but the underworld element of what was happening backstage and you fell in love with that, didn't you? i was most intrigued, not by what i saw, but to wonder how it had been achieved. how do they do that? how did that curtain go up? how did that light go through that curtain, so we could see beyond? how much do they get paid? do they know each other well? i wanted to know what it was like! well, as an amateur actor, i could discover that. acting at school, primary school, and secondary school, i could find out what happened, how you put on a play. my fate was sealed then, ijust wanted to live in this world. so, the production and how it

got made had a magic and the sense of it as a profession, something you could earn a living with and learn from all these other people and be embedded in a community? these people, when you saw them from the front, from the audience, were very special. time honoured, lancaster. i brought heather henry hereford, my son. they looked special, they wore make—up, the men! they painted their faces! the lights were so bright. this was intriguing! they were not like us and they were visitors to the town, and where did they go to? so, istarted reading the stage newspaper and then i began to understand, there are all these theatres, all over the place! i think if you had to define what these little towns were like, in the north and elsewhere around the country, theatre would have to be a part of it. not just professional theatre,

there was the bolton theatre, school, of course, it was all available. and although to be an actor was an odd thing, my family would think to do, as a profession, my mother told her sister before she died, too young, that if ian became an actor, she would be happy because actors brought such joy to the lives of people. and i have held onto that. but you found a sense of belonging and freedom to be yourself as an undergraduate at cambridge, and you are part of this extraordinary generation who have gone on to great things in the theatre and on screen. although there is no drama faculty at cambridge, i spent most of my time acting and we had our own amateur theatre. wasn't i lucky, itjust seems a natural progression, what had begun as a hobby,

the fun of going to the theatre, by the time i was 20 and ready to earn a living, my hobby became my profession and then my life. before you could act professionally, in 1961, when i was starting out, you had to become a member of the union, equity and their rule was that you could only become a provisional member until you had completed 44 weeks of work as an actor. it was a real trade, wasn't it? it was, and are you taking this seriously, young person? all right, 44 weeks was how you got on and until you are a full member, you could not work on television, in film or in london. that meant going out of london and working in the regional theatre, which is what i did and what derek did and judi dench did... it is what we all did and expected to do and wanted

to do, because we knew, whether we had been to drama school or not, i didn't go, that is where you would learn your trade, that is where you are discovering your strengths and weaknesses. i just learned how to act. you did these hard yards of theatre for decades really, before you had this transformative moment in tv and film, but is one of the real reasons that you spent so long in theatre, rather than going for it on tv and film, that your first adventures in tv and film were tricky? do you remember your first ever tv performance, if i told you it was 1964 and you're halfway up a tree, could you remember where you were? yes, i think i was in the bbc television centre and pretending to be in india, i think. there was the tiger! i walked up to it, took a single shot, fired and that was that.

how big was it? oh, i would say, 11 feet. 11 feet. did these for a schema to the television was the future? did these forays convince you television was the future? television? i had no idea. in those days that you would be recorded by four cameras, all on the move, and the actor, if he was wise, knew which camera was on him, so that he could respond to it. you were i think pushing the boundaries of what people thought you could do in britain, through your work in the theatre. your kiss on stage in edward the second, the marlow play, the bbc put that on television and that was the first gay kiss. kind words and mutual talk makes grief greater. therefore the dumb embracement, let us part. that was quite a remarkable moment

of cultural transgression. did you think of it at the time? i look back at that time and i think, goodness me, it was 1967 that homosexuality was decriminalised, that was a remarkable moment! yes, we had a passionate kiss, james and myself, for which i am always grateful! and it was broadcast by the bbc. the bbc was not out to shock or educate people, it wasjust doing a play that had had success at the edinburgh festival and two seasons in london, and christopher marlowe wrote that play, he was born the same year as shakespeare. it was not a new playwright, but it was the first play ever with a gay hero, nevertheless there it was and i don't remember anyone complaining. of course since i have heard

from people saying, i am so grateful to you for that kiss which i was watching in indiana with my parents, and we had a good conversation about it afterwards and i am a happily married gay man. that was wonderful. i didn't do that play because i was on a mission to tell people about homosexuality and certainly not about my own, because i was closeted, i was not honest about myself. you were 20 years from coming out publicly, you had actually suffered the consequences professionally of being gay, because i think in 1979 you were due to star in an adaptation of harold pinter�*s the betrayal in an adaptation of harold pinter�*s betrayal and the producer, i think he said to you, when would you come over to america

with your wife? i went to meet sam and howard had to leave and i was left with his producer. we have nothing in common, we were talking and i referred to an upcoming visit to america and he said, about taking the family and my wife and i said i am not married, i am gay. i think sam may be the first person i came out to. when i was shown the door. literally? shown the door. leave. and of course i was not in the film. now, the interesting thing to me now is not that it happened, but where was harold pinter? harold pinter, a great humanitarian... nobel prize winner... fiercely honest... open in his political views, went along with this judgment that i was inappropriate because i was gay,

although he must�*ve known i was gay. and it was 30 years later, i think, shortly before harold died, that i was in a restaurant london and he came by, slightly tottery and i stood up to greet him and he leaned into my ear and said, i am sorry about betrayal. was it a premeditated decision when you went on a radio 3 show, i think it was, the third ear, and it was a publisher associated with the sunday telegraph and used two words, like myself, in reference to homosexuality, was it a premeditated decision that that would be the moment? i don't know. it probably was, it probably was. i think that the moment at which you use those two words, like myself, was a very significant moment in post—war british history, because i think it gave a lot of other people confidence.

injanuary 1988, while taking part in a debate about the controversial section 28 bill, which inhibited schools and local authorities from promoting homosexuality, mckellen finally went public in his own characteristically nuanced way. so, you would like to see clause 28 disappear? - i certainly would, it's offensive to anyone who is, like myself, homosexual, apart from the whole business about what can or cannot be taught to children. i probably thought, this would be a good debating point and it was, and i seem to remember that he shut up, really! oh dear, oh dear. peregrine and i were both knighted on the same day! we stood next to each other. do you feel that the bbc

has been an important part of your life? i can remember seeing my first television, the boat race, in a shop window. so, it was radio that i listen to as a child. which we as a family listened to, we sat down to listen to particular programmes. i first met anton chekhov and henrik ibsen and bernard shaw, not in the theatre, but saturday night theatre, the saturday night play, every week. whatever people think about the policies and activities of this country, the bbc is the calling card. i want to go back to the acting, why is it that you often play secondary roles, back in 1974, when you are

already talked about as wigan�*s answer to laurence olivier, you starred in king lear, and a tiny role in others, like iris murdoch plays, what is this interesting paradox that your upfront and at the back? if you're in the company of actors doing a different player every month or so, you do not want to play the main part every time and sometimes the leading part is not appropriate for you to play, it is for someone else. that is built into how i think companies work and if everyone can be the same... i want to ask about the x—men, there is this fascinating thing about magneto, the character you play in x—men alongside professor x played by patrick stewart... stay where you are and put your hands over your head right now. they have a different approach to civil rights movements. one of them is magneto, who says we have to be aggressive and push the boundaries and be prepared to take people on, a bit like malcolm x, and the other is professor x,

much more, perhaps, let's assimilate and work with people and come together. when you came out as gay, when you were knighted, there was a push back against you by the likes of derekjarman who said you had sold out byjoining the establishment. as you reflect on it now, do you feel you have decided, which is a better way to approach this, is it magneto or professor x, and which are you? i am on the side of professor x, they were deliberately designed to make people consider the two points of view when it came to changing society. yes, well, my dad was a pacifist. i'm not going out with a gun or a stick or a stone. there was violence against gay people, who had been killed and still are in dreadful occasions, being killed for what they are.

but that did not come from us. stonewall was set up, co—founded by you, to fight prejudice and bigotry, and today gay marriage is legal in this country, do you feel that the majority of what you set out to do you have done, which is a remarkable thing? it seems to have been totally successful. i am not the only one who thinks that the laws in this country are superior to anywhere else in the world, there's nothing now in the law that needs hold back a young, gay man or woman. if they said come back as gandalf, would you do it if amazon did, or the bbc? i have been waiting for the call and it has not come. there are going to be new stories from tolkien, on tv, but i gather gandalf

will not be a part of them. that's a shame. are you available? if there is one part that you cannot be too old for! i think 7,000 years old! that was 20 years ago, you know. what i want to do now, professionally, is treat every job as if it is the last that i'll ever do. you told me when i interviewed you for lear that you would never play shakespeare again! i wrote it on the bbc news website and i think it is still there, rather embarrassingly and you played hamlet since. let me ask you one last philosophical question, helen mirren playing golda meir, there has been this interesting discussion about whether a jewish actor should play a jewish icon, you played magneto, he isjewish and you are not

ofjewish heritage, what do you think of that idea that you should havejewish people playing jewish characters, or indeed whether you need gay people to play gay characters? there are two things, isn't it? is the argument that a gentile cannot play a jew and is the argument therefore that a jew cannot play gentile? is there an argument that a straight man cannot play a gay part and if so, does that mean i cannot play straight parts, and i am not allowed to explore the fascinating subject of heterosexuality in macbeth? surely not? we are acting, we are pretending. are we capable of understanding what it is to bejewish? are we going to convince ajewish audience that we are jewish? well, perhaps we do not need to, because we are just acting.

let me ask you some quickfire question, what technology is indispensable? the gas stove. what social media platform do you favour? i do not know what that means. favourite sports person? rough. dickens or shakespeare? what do you mean? if you had to choose? choose the literature of one over the other, who would you prefer? that is not a sensible question. i agree. most people give bad answers. tolkien, with gratitude. how much tea and coffee to drink? i have not drunk tea ever in my life really, coffee i stopped drinking 13 months ago, along with alcohol. do you eat meat? no, apart from bacon, pork pies and sausages.

on occasion. would you like to go into space? i can get myself into it, i could do it now. it would not be a big feature of my ordinary life. for almost 70 years, ian mckellen has delivered era defining performances across the globe and it strikes me he is far from finished, but as he looks back on his game changing life and times, i have one last thing to ask him. final question. what advice would you give to that young boy in the north west of england fascinated by theatre and wondering where he fits in the world? make sure you enjoy yourself and that does not mean

you don't have to work hard or do things you do not like in order to get better, but find your enjoyment in working hard and make sure before you go on stage that you do up your flies. ian mckellen, sir ian mckellen, i am not to say sir, thank you so much for your time. thank you so much. i really appreciate it. hello, there. another cold day on saturday but not as bitter as it has been because the wind was not as strong.

we started with blue skies and a frost but as the day went by, we had clouds building to bring scattered showers and even some hailstorms. for quite a few of you, the weather is going to follow a similar pattern on sunday. right now, we have clear skies for the majority. temperatures already below freezing. in the first part of sunday morning, a widespread and sharp frost, temperatures down to —4 in some towns and cities. there could be one or two icy stretches around first thing. for many of you, a lovely start to the day if somewhat cold. blue skies and plenty of sunshine. through the day, cloud bubbling up in england and wales and we may see some showers, the odd one with hail. in the north—west, outbreaks of rain moving into northern ireland and scotland. heaviest rain in the highlands. temperatures similar to saturday, about 10 degrees. sunday night, the rain pushing

south and east across the uk, introducing for many parts of the country milder atlantic air. the heaviest rain in western parts of the uk, although some rain in the east which won't amount to much. a lot of cloud and perhaps some hill fog. also a lot milder than it has been, top temperatures around 14 or 15. in shetland, still cold. tuesday, we have some cooler air moving down into the north of the country. for many of us, we are in this milder air with a lot of cloud and outbreaks of rain. something of a battle zone building in. with cloud and rain, could be some mist and hill fog. for most parts on tuesday it looks like it will be a mild day, with temperatures of around 12—15 across england, wales and northern ireland. in the far north of scotland, colder, down into the single figures.

in the latter part of tuesday afternoon, the rain bumps into the colder air and looks like we'll see some hill snow in scotland, probably north of the central belt. that's the latest.

this is bbc news ? i m lucy grey. our top stories... ukraine says it has retaken control from russian forces of the entire area around the capital kyiv — including this airport — panic must have ensued. look how this armoured vehicle has ended up ramming that one. they had no idea what the ukrainians had in store for them. relief as hundreds of people manage to escape the bombardment of the southern city of mariupol and reach safety. these people have been escaping any way they can, from cities, towns, villages that have been under russian bombardment. a two—month truce is agreed by warring parties in yemen for the first time since 2016, in a conflict which has killed an estimated 400,000 people.