this is bbc news. i'm lukwesa burak. our top stories. devastating tornadoes tear through america's midwest. at least 21 people have died. a slap in the face to the international community" — the assessment of ukraine's foreign minister, to russia assuming the presidency of the un security council. politicians in iran are reacting to the flouting of headscarf laws by women — insisting the rules must be �*enforced rigorously�*. and a critical incident is declared at the port of dover — as travellers are gridlocked for hours at the start of the easter getaway.

hello to you in the uk and around the world at least 21 people are now known to have died — as storms and tornados ripped through the united states — leaving a trail devastation. hardest hit — were tennessee, arkansas and indiana. in illinois, one person was killed — when a theatre roof collapsed. these pictures have just come into us in the past hour — showing the storm passing a car in arkansas — and as you can see, the pictures speak for themselves. with all the latest, the bbc�*s sancha berg reports. dozens of storms and tornadoes left a trail of destruction, two of the fiercest touch downed in the southern state of arkansas.

tearing off roofs, bringing down power lines, sweeping through homes with incredible force. the rate of pace and the the volume of itjust seemed rather intense and it was extremely dangerous. it came through a set of double doors and ploughed through my house, out of my front door which has steel bars in the front of it. several people have been killed, dozens injured, in this state alone. the governor declared a state of emergency. i think the real story here isn't the damage that happened but it's the heroes that were born out of the tragedy and the fact that we have firefighters who despite the fact that they had a tornado literally coming through their station were worried about the community. that tells you who they are and it tells you i think a lot about our state. 600 miles to the north in belvidere, illinois another storm hit. the roof of the apollo

theatre collapsed. one person has been killed, dozens injured. this latest destructive weather arrived just as president biden was visiting mississippi where he promised help to those were hit by another tornado last week. sancha berg, bbc news. russia has taken over the presidency of the un security council, in what ukraine says is a "slap in the face to the international community," — because of the on—going war. the presidency is rotated among the council's 15 members every month, and the last time russia had the role — in february 2022 — vladimir putin launched his a full—scale invasion of ukraine. our ukraine correspondent, hugo bachega is in the capital, kyiv and sent this update. there have been angry reactions after russia assumed the rotating presidency of the un security council, which is the top security body of the united nations.

the ukrainian foreign minister said, this was a slap in the face to the international community. and the president chief of staff said this was another blow to the rules—based system of international relations. since the beginning of the war, ukrainians have criticised the fact that russia has continued to be a permanent member of the security council, with veto power. russia has been using this power to block resolutions related to the conflict. the united states, which has been a key ally of the ukrainians in this war, said there is no legal pathway to expel a permanent member of the security council. in the last few days, the ukrainians have tried to block russia from taking over the presidency of the security council, but the us again said there was no means to block moscow

from the post. the authorities in iran are vowing to enforce the wearing of a headscarf by women more rigorously, despite months of protests. a growing number of women have been seen unveiled in public, and hardline politicians are giving judges ultimatums — to punish those who ignore the rules. param ghobadi from the bbc persian service has the story. scenes like these were unimaginable seven months ago in iran. women refusing to wear the hijab in public. videos obtained by bbc persian show women floating the islamic dress code at a sports complex in tehran on friday. it's not only women. he would also have been arrested for wearing shorts in public a few months ago. the young iranian generation is fearless. they don't want to dance to the tune

of the clerical establishment. and it's not only in capital tehran. this was sent to us from hormuz island in southern iran, in the persian gulf. and this is the central city of isfahan, and here in this western town these girls are barred from entering a tourist attraction because they have no hijab. such acts of defiance has infuriated the hardliners. here a man warns a girl who is not wearing a headscarf. he then hits both women in the head with a yoghurt bucket. the iranianjudiciary said all three were arrested. many critics say hardliners like him are emboldened due to a statement by the iranian interior ministry published on thursday.

but enforcing the hijab is not that easy any more after months of protests following the death of a kurdish girl, mahsa amini, in police custody in september. iranian security forces killed over 500 protesters, according to rights groups. despite the deadly crackdown, it would seem there is no going back for iranian women. param ghobadi, bbc news. for the 13th week in a row, tens of thousands of israelis are holding protests against a radicaljudicial overhaul, despite the process having been put on hold, by the prime minister, benjamin netanyahu, earlier this week. earlier, i spoke to bbc monitoring'sjoel greenberg from jerusalem who started by telling us what the protests had been like this week. 0riginally that, when the prime minister put the plan on hold for about a month until parliament reconvenes that there might be

a pause in the process, but tonight there are tens of thousands of israelis demonstrating in different cities, and the biggest protest was in tel aviv, where there were reports of over 150,000 demonstrators, several thousand injerusalem outside the president's residence, where compromise talks are going to resume tomorrow. it seems that the protesters want to keep the pressure on the government despite the pores announced by the prime minister. i am keen to know who actually is protesting? it is really a mix. i went out to have a look at the jerusalem protest and there were people of all ages. there were high school students, university students, elderly folks, middle—aged people. it's much wider than the usual process. this seems to be attracting people from various walks of life and various age groups.

that's been noted very much here in the local media as well. there are, of course, people who support the government plan and there have been pro—government protests, but the anti—government protests have now been going on for 15 weeks and seem to have captured a large slice of the population. is this a real risk to benjamin netanyahu? i think he's definitely feeling under pressure. he is used to setting the agenda and in this case the protesters seem have grabbed the agenda from him. he tried again this evening to seize the initiative by putting the plan on hold but this was also seen as giving in to the protesters, having to bow to their demands that this process be halted. so talks can begin or perhaps scrapped altogether. he was planning to push ahead before the recess of parliament but decided to put on hold because of the huge protests. how likely is it that he willjust

drop those reforms? i think it's unlikely at this point, because his coalition partners are pushing for very vigorously, and he needs them in order to remain in power. it would cost him his government, i think, to completely scrap the plan. what is under discussion is a compromise with the opposition, and it remains to be seen if these talks will be successful. there is a lot of mutual suspicion there. protesters say they are to keep a watchful eye. in terms of the level of violence it all looks very peaceful from what we can see on the screens at the moment. we have got the flag flying and the crowds looking very calm. what have people been experiencing when it comes to the security forces? there have been some clashes with police, who have been trying to clear protesters away, especially

on the main highway in tel aviv, where protesters have been protesting and last week there were thousands of them closing that highway traffic. so there has been use of water cannon by police but, in general, yes, the protests have been peaceful. there were some injuries after a right—wing protest that favoured the government, and some activists there went after some of the pro—government, sorry, some of the anti—government protesters, but in general the level of violence has not been high. certainly the anti—government protests have been contained by the police without serious confrontations. thank you very much. donald trump will appear in a new york court early next week. the former president is to face criminal charges over the hush money payments to adult film star stormy daniels in the days before the 2016 presidential election. court officials have confirmed that the former president

is expected to appear for his arraignment on tuesday. 0ur north america reporter nada tawfik has the latest from new york. in new york, security has been ramped up to prepare for when donald trump will surrender. he is expected to arrive in manhattan on monday night, where he will stay at his trump tower residence, escorted throughout by his secret service detail, before turning himself into authorities here at the district attorney's office on tuesday. tuesday afternoon, he will hear the charges formally against him and be able to enter a plea in front of a judge. it will be a moment captured by the world's media and is something that donald trump is trying to capitalise on. we have seen him turn this narrative, trying to rally his base and republicans around him, that this is a witch hunt against him, that it is political persecution and an attempt

to interfere with the upcoming presidential election in 202a. at the moment, he is the frontrunner for the republicans, as they look towards their primary to he has been sending as they look towards their primary. he has been sending out campaign e—mails, looking for donations, and the trump campaign says, in the 2a hours since his indictment, he has raised $4 million. certainly, in the short term, he is seeing a boost. the manhattan district attorney has hit back at attacks against him, saying this was a new york grand jury of citizens who did their civic duty and decided there was evidence to proceed, and he hit back against what he calls unlawful interference in a local prosecution. a court in romania has agreed to allow the controversial social media influencer, andrew tate, to leave prison and move into house arrest. the british—american former kickboxer is being investigated for a number of crimes — all of which he denies. lucy williamson reports. the police have been here to the compound a couple

of times already today. it's day one of house arrest for the brothers and the police have come to check they're on the premises as they're supposed to be. the judge has said they have to stay in this building for 30 days until the end of april. the tate spokeswoman said the brothers are nevertheless ecstatic to be out of police custody and that there aren't that many restrictions on them while they're under house arrest. they can have visitors into the compound, they can post material online and they can also talk to the media. although, as you can see today, the media is being kept out here in the rain for the moment. these gates have remained largely shut today, apart from a few comings and goings. but if you look through the gaps, you can see that life is continuing pretty much as it did before. inside the lobby here looks a little bit like the set of a tv show. there's a swimming pool and a small gym. there used to be a fleet of luxury cars, but they've now all gone. they've been impounded by the romanian authorities here at the end of the street,

there are large areas that are undeveloped, really just wasteland. and we also now know that some of those luxury cars inside this compound didn't belong to the brothers themselves. they were leased from a car rental company. all of that gives a slightly different impression to the one they gave in the videos online. here in the uk — 0perators at the port of dover, are putting on extra night ferries, to try to clear the backlog of travellers caught up in long delays, heading to the continent over easter. the port authority has apologised and says its "deeply frustrated," that bad weather and french border checks have caused problems. some people travelling by coach say they've faced up to 14 hour delays. simonjones, has more from dover. it's not such a great start to the great easter getaway. forced to spend hours on a coach with no idea when you're going to be able to get across the channel. guys, should we just carry

on with the karaoke? this driver from nottingham is trying to keep the spirits of his passengers up as they face missing a day on the slopes of the french alps. we've here 4.5 hours waiting. we've had other coaches in front of us who have been waiting for more than 12 hours. i have no idea how long we're going to be here. could be for another 12 hours, i don't know. the police have been doing what they can to stop dover from snarling up, but lorries and cars have been getting caught in the chaos, too. we were meant to go to italy, ultimately, but we booked into a hotel in france this evening. but i don't know if we are going to make it now. it's going to be a long one, i think. we're going to be here for a while. but it's ok, it's a holiday. so, what's causing this? it's been blamed on a perfect storm of huge numbers of people wanting to travel,

bad weather yesterday causing delays to the ferries and, according to the port, new checks introduced after brexit, meaning all coach passengers have to get out of the vehicle to have their passports checked and stamped by the french authorities. lorries were forced to queue on the outskirts of dover last night. questions are now being asked about why this is happening again just like last easter. every single holiday getaway we see this gridlock. we need to invest, that means investing in the roads, putting in lorry parks, coach parks, making sure there are facilities for people to wait and not just queue in our roads all around our town. that is not fair on the people here. the port says it is deeply frustrated, saying that it had planned ahead, but the additional coach bookings taken by ferry firms for easter have added to the challenge. it will look to learn lessons. first of all, i want to say how sorry i am that everyone who wanted to get away this easter break has been so disrupted, and particularly for schoolkids. being a father myself, i know how anxious i'd feel. what we have been doing is we've been working really hard with our ferry operators and partners throughout kent to try and make certain that

all the traffic that has been backlogged can get through as quickly as possible. but spare a thought for those who have not even got as far as the port. these students heading to croatia have been stranded at a nearby service station when their coach driver reached his daily driving limit. there's no toilet roll. they're running low on food. there's coaches constantly arriving. young children here from scouts, cubs. there's no one here to help. there's no security. there's nothing. there are people on the floor sleeping, people sat everywhere. it's just chaotic. tonight, the backlog is finally clearing, but it has been another bruising day for passengers and the port. bosses say as soon as they get through this weekend, the inquest into what went wrong can begin. water companies could face unlimited fines, for discharging sewage into england's waterways. new figures from the environment agency, suggest there was an average of 825 sewage spills a day, last year. 0ur political correspondent, ione wells has more details.

raw, untreated sewage, pumped into rivers, lakes, streams and the sea. this happened more than 300,000 times in england last year. that's more than 800 times a day. water companies release sewage like this when there's too much demand on their treatment works in rainy periods. they can be acting illegally, though, if they pump sewage into water when the conditions are dry or if they don't treat enough of the waste before releasing it. ministers want to clamp down on firms breaking the rules. they will announce plans for firms to face unlimited fines for polluting the environment. the environment secretary therese coffey says money from higher fines will be ringfenced and invested back into rivers, lakes and streams. the body representing water companies says fines alone won't clean up waterways. it's really important to remember that with 99% of sewage works

meeting their legal conditions in full last year, rule breaking is an absolute minority of the problem here. we have to rebuild the sewer system to place less reliance on overflow. but why has the government decided now to adopt stricter rules? local elections are coming up in may. while it's not an issue councils have the power to fix, it's one coming up on doorsteps around the country. other parties have said water companies should face greater accountability. what we need is a strong plan, mandatory monitoring, so we know exactly where this is happening. automatic fines are making sure those that are responsible are held to account. that's what a plan looks like. we put that before parliament and the government, if you can believe it, voted against it. i think we need to see a different approach to prevent executives receiving their huge bonuses until this problem is sorted out, and to make dumping sewage into our bathing waters illegal. it's too little, too late, -

and we need to see some much, much stronger solutions, - including bringing water companies back into public ownership. as parties vie for votes next month, they all hope to put clear blue water between them and their rivals on plans to make these murky brown scenes a sight of the past. ione wells, bbc news. the new school year started last week in afghanistan. but for the second year running, a taliban ban is keeping teenage girls out of school. so, what are the options for young afghans who want to keep up their studies but are unable to return to class? shazia haya reports on one new solution being offered by the bbc world service. across afghanistan, girls�* classrooms sit empty. they have told the bbc how it feels. translation: | find it - so painful that they are not allowing us to our schools. this decision is against islam. for the past two years, every morning i go to the rooftop

of our home to watch the primary schoolgirls going to school. i stay there until midday when they finish and i cry. i miss learning new things. the bbc made lessons for the children to access remotely during the coronavirus lockdown in the uk. we thought they might be useful in somewhere else. this is where the journalists and producers of bbc�*s afghan service are coming together to work on a very different task from what we normally do. working on an educational programme for young afghans, this lesson in dari and pashto, the two most widely spoken languages in afghanistan. the show will help people learn english in both my maths and science

the show will help people learn english, maths and science as well as have a bit of fun. where�*s afghanistan? 0k. for the presenters who are all journalists from afghanistan, it is a very personal project. my father was a teacher and he was killed in a suicide bomb attack 16 years ago. at that time, i felt that i want to be a teacher because my father was a teacher. but i became a journalist. but now, by presenting this programme, i think that i have become a teacher and fulfilled my dream and also my father�*s dream. for those unable to go to school, classes will now come to them at home. policing has rarely been more of an issue in britain than in recent times with attention especially on london�*s metropolitan police. in the capital — one officer has been using his skills to engage young people through a sport which more than a million children play every week in england. pc kip is harnessing

the power of basketball. as our sports correspondent, joe wilson explains. introducing constable kypros kyriacou. and if you�*ve never seen a police officer like this. well, that�*s the whole idea. a lot of the time when you�*re with young people, they see us asjust a uniform, a robot, if you will. so basketball, when i was younger, it wasn�*t as popular as it is now. so it�*s starting to get a lot more popular. and the kids love it. they really love it. most people usually associate police officers with like crime and everything. police aren't always bad. they are good people. when you see someone like kyp jump that high, it makes basketball look more entertaining. kyp, as everyone calls him, is a south london schools officer. this is the southbank university academy. we know that policing in london right now is under real scrutiny. we hear a lot about the urgent need to rebuild, build trust. building trust, essentially, that�*s what�*s happening on this court right here.

when i would come into schools, kids would say, you know, you�*re not a police officer. or they would say to me, oh, you don�*t seem like a police officer. so i used to say, "well, how is this police officer meant to be?" and just having that rapport and building that trust with them that they were then able to come and talk to me, ask me questions, educate them about the law. one, two, three, hard work! kyp used to train with professionals, could have been one. he was recently a guest at the london lions of the british basketball league. nothing commands respect quite like a slam dunk. has he inspired you, all of you, to actually dunk? yes. yeah. have you tried it? yeah. because if kyp can dunk... we can dunk. he�*s one officer in one gym. but if pc kyp makes a difference, well, then he�*s made his point. joe wilson, bbc news, south london.

i�*ll be back with the headlines in just a few minutes. stay with us on bbc news. hello. saturday was a brighter day for some than for others. and across the east coast of england and eastern scotland, brightness was in short supply cloud and a brisk breeze in stonehaven, keeping temperatures pegged back to five degrees celsius. but parts of south wales saw highs of 15 with a little bit of sunshine. and i�*m hopeful that on sunday more of us will get to see some spells of sunshine. certainly a drier and brighter day overall because high pressure is going to be building its way in, squeezing out a lot of the cloud, also squeezing out much of the rain. there mayjust be a bit of dampness first thing, particularly in the north west of scotland, across scotland�*s northern ireland, parts of wales and south west england. i think we will keep some areas of cloud through the day, but generally speaking some good spells of sunshine. certainly a brighter and less chilly day for north sea coast. temperatures of nine or ten degrees

high as temperatures out towards the west, 12 belfast and cardiff, 13 degrees in plymouth. and then as we head through sunday night with those clear skies overhead, temperatures will drop. it is going to be a colder night than we�*ve been used to of late quite widely. i think we�*ll see a touch of frost. the temperatures you see here are for the town and city centres minus one. they�*re in the centre of birmingham. some spots in the countryside will get colder than that. so a chilly start to monday. but at this time of year, the sun has got some strength to it. so once the sun comes up, the frost will lift and the temperatures will start to climb good spells of sunshine through the day. this frontal system trying to push into northern ireland. it may introduce more cloud here later in the day, turning the sunshine rather hazy. temperatures ten to 13 degrees now into tuesday. i think we will see a weather front bringing cloud and some patchy rain into northern ireland and scotland, particularly western scotland. best of the sunshine will be found across england and wales.

temperatures there in liverpool, perhaps up to 1a degrees, which won�*t feel too bad at all if you do get sunshine overhead. now, the middle part of the week will bring frontal systems in from the northwest that will introduce some outbreaks of rain, particularly across the northwest of the uk. it is likely that high pressure will hold on further south and east so there won�*t be a huge amount of rain here and actually for the end of the week and the start of the easter weekend, at this stage it looks mostly dry.

this is bbc news. i�*m lukwesa burak. the headlines. at least 21 people have died after severe weather hit parts of the united states. "a slap in the face to the international community" — the assessment of ukraine�*s foreign minister to russia assuming the presidency of the un security council. politicians in iran are reacting to the flouting of headscarf laws by women — insisting the rules must be "enforced rigorously". in the uk, the port of dover has declared a critical incident with up to 70 coaches delayed overnight as they tried to cross to france. port authorities cited french border controls and bad weather for the hold ups.