this is bbc news. will have the headlines and all of the main news had stories at the top of the hours straight after this programme. hello and welcome to news watch with me, samira ahmed. as violence continues in sudan, the bbc starts a new radio service for listeners there. but with cuts being made elsewhere in the world service, is it time for the foreign office to start funding it again in full?

first, there is no doubt about the main broadcasting event of the weekend, and the bbc, along with the rest of the media, have been gearing up for the coronation all week. we'll be looking in more detail next week at how bbc news has covered the ceremony and the celebrations around it. but in the meantime, here's royal correspondent nicholas witchell on the preparations being made over the past few days. in the potteries and other places in the souvenir business, they've been gearing up for this moment for months. turning out the mugs and plates and a host of other goods which commemorate the coronation. it all means jobs and a significant boost for trade. by the time that report was shown on tuesday. mike dixon had already had enough. "i accept that the coronation is newsworthy, but the coverage is utterly sycophantic and certainly not balanced". "we constantly hear everyone will be celebrating, everyone will be partying, everyone will be watching it".

"but the bbc are ignoring a recent yougov poll which clearly shows "more than half the uk population are not interested in it". "all we ever hear, which is not pro coronation, is the occasional disparaging reference to anti monarchy activists". but rob jordan thought that anti monarchists were being given too much attention by the bbc, pointing towards these two articles on the news website. "the articles are very negative". "why isn't there a more balanced approach"? more of that debate to come, as they say. but we've also had feedback relating to coverage of the local elections, which took place on thursday in most parts of england, though not in the rest of the uk. this included the traditional all night results programme shown both on bbc one uk wide, and on the news channel. there were compliments for the extent and range of the bbc�*s reporting, but also objections such as this telephone message. this is disgruntled of pembrokeshire. here in wales we have not had

any council elections. i am absolutely disgusted that the bbc think it's appropriate to network the election results on both bbc wales, bbc scotland and bbc northern ireland. but most galling thing is you have a dedicated news channel and instead ofjust having the election results on there, you decide to put it on bbc one throughout the night. bbc one�*s news bulletins are normally also shown on the news channel, but when there's breaking news, the channel sometimes continues with that instead. one such occasion came on tuesday when viewers tuned to the news channel at 6:00 would have seen this. this is bbc news. i'm nicky schiller. and in the next hour

or so, we're bringing you special live coverage of wrexham football club's victory parade. it's after the men won the national league, and promotion back to the english football league 15 years after their relegation, whilst the women secured promotion to wales�* top women's league. for the next hour and 50 minutes as it turned out, viewers were treated to continuous coverage of that victory parade. so why did the promotion of a team from football's fifth tier merit so much time on national television? from playing in the third tier of english football and to go down.. that's down to the takeover of wrexham football club a couple of years ago by two hollywood actors, ryan reynolds and rob mcelhenney, a tale that is clearly caught the attention of fiona power, who wrote, "we are from wrexham and are in spain at the moment trying to watch the coverage of our team back at home". "can you please shut up with your talking and actually play the live sound from wrexham instead of constantly chatting away"? that view was in a minority

though, with susan black's opinion more widely held. "i have turned on at 6pm to watch the news and it is complete coverage of wrexham football club's victory parade". "this may be a small news item of, say, five minutes length, but so far it has lasted one and a half hours and still not finished". "i am a football fan and support my local team, but this is too much". "it is ridiculous". fighting has been continuing in sudan for the third week, with over 100,000 people having fled the country since the conflict there broke out. with no immediate end in sight to the bloodshed, the bbc world service has launched an emergency radio service broadcasting into sudan twice a day for the next three months. but the move comes just as significant cuts are being made to other parts of the world service, including the african service. so how has money been found for the new service? who exactly is paying for it?

and what's the current funding model for the bbc�*s international services as a whole? bbc... injanuary, the bbc�*s arabic radio service went off air after 85 years of broadcasting, one of ten foreign language services ending radio transmissions, also including the chinese, hindi and persian services. the bbc said the cuts, involving almost 400 job losses, were made because of the two year freeze in the licence fee imposed by the government. up until 2014, the world service, run for decades from its bush house headquarters in london, was funded not by the licence fee but directly by the foreign office. since then, the bbc has had to finance it mostly from its central budget, supplemented by annual foreign office grants. its outgoing chairman, richard sharp, back injanuary, called on the government to take back responsibility for funding the world service, saying its future is injeopardy. and though the government provided a one off payment

of £20 million in march, serious questions remain about how to pay for what's widely considered to be a pillar of soft power for the uk. there's been a lot of audience concern about those budget cuts, with andrew barclay writing "the bbc world service is an incredible asset for our country, useful and irreplaceable in so many ways". "such a mistake to cut it hard to get back once done". and owen clerkin posted this, "sad to see the world service cut back on broadcasting in many languages, including arabic, chinese and hindi". "reliable reporting and accessible languages is more important than ever, and not everyone has access to online content". meanwhile, paul lawrence was confused about this week's new service for sudan. "has the bbc come into some money or is this licence fee funded"? "we should keep out of other countries affairs". well, let's speak to tarik kafala, who's controller of languages for the bbc world service.

thank you so much for coming on newswatch, tarik. how did you decide to launch this new service for sudan and what did setting it up involve? so the emergency pop up service for sudan is a response to a crisis in sudan. obviously that escalated very quickly and suddenly. and we tried to respond as quickly. so our audiences in sudan, mainly to the arabic service, would normally receive our news through television and digital. we closed the arabic radio service in february this year. so under these circumstances, in this emergency, in this crisis, electricity is obviously a crucial issue. it's supply, power cuts and so on. so where are people going to get they're going to get their news from? we felt, as we have in the past, we've got a history of this. we'd respond to a particular crisis with a particular service.

how are you paying for this service? yeah, it's being paid out of current budgets. we are obviously we always have a contingency budget for emergencies. the bbc is pulled together. we're being offered the studio space and the technical support for free from other parts of production operations. and the bbc are colleagues in distribution and marketing are just sort of stretching their workload to cover this. we also have, in the business, people who are in our radio services who are moving into new roles or potentially leaving the business, leaving the bbc, and we are retaining them to support this operation. now, the bbc has recently cut nearly 400 jobs in the world service, including such important language services as arabic and chinese. why cut language services in such crucial parts of the world? we're not cutting language services. no language services are closing.

what we're doing is making some changes, very significant changes in the platforms that we distribute our news and current affairs on. so in the case of arabic, which obviously is the main language used in sudan, audiences in normal times and normal circumstances would come to our television and online. so those are the services we are sort of focusing on radio, which has been in decline in terms of audiences. we're sort of moving away from that generally in areas where radio is the only way to reach audiences with our content, such as afghanistan, parts of africa and myanmar, for example, we are retaining those services. well, talking about budgets, three quarters of the world service budget now, i gather, comes from the licence fee, which of course is paid by viewers here in the uk. and some are questioning why they should pay for a service which is aimed abroad, like the sudan emergency service.

there are a number of justifications, they revolve around the impact of the world service. it's one of the most trusted and strongest brands that the uk has. it's well loved and used around the world and brings benefits back to the uk. people who use and consume the world service are much more likely to invest in the world. in the uk, they're much more likely to travel to the uk. they think more positively towards it, they're more likely to study in the uk. these are the sort of soft power benefits they have. and the bbc is is one of those absolutely sort of gold standard brands in the world. and that's largely due to the world service. other reasons for funding the world service, partly from licence fee, is the benefit to licence fee users. a lot of the international news that you get, a lot of the reporting that you get in these crises around the world does come straight onto radio for the news at ten the today programme and and services

that are very important in the uk. tarik kafala, thank you so much for coming on newswatch. thank you for all your comments this week. if you want to share your opinions about what you see or hear on bbc news, on tv, radio, online and social media, email us newswatch at bbc.co.uk or you can find us on twitter at newswatch bbc. you can call us on 0370106676. and do have a look at previous interviews on our website, bbc. co. uk slash newswatch? that's all from us. we'll be back to hear your thoughts about bbc news coverage again next week. goodbye. the first coronation in almost 70 years. it's seen people the length

and breadth of the uk find their own way to mark the historic occasion. from elvis impersonators in ayrshire to punjabi dancers in reading, from choir singers in county antrim to the pembrokeshire horses who are leading the procession in london. a moment to remember and a time to celebrate for many. buckingham palace in central london, and the mall is the focal point during royal celebrations. preparation for the event has been a long time in the planning. and people have been camping out for days to get a prime spot

to watch the monarch en route to westminster abbey. well i'm here now, i was inside the house and we are the first persons here. i was here on thursday. we came on the 27th for my friends carol. hello. we got here at 4:00 and round about 6:00. it poured down to the heavens, and we had this tarpaulin and we put that up. it's been miserable and cold and it's horrible. of course, it's our first coronation and we're so excited because i don't see a coronation, a lifetime. a front row seat at the parade will guarantee good views of this gleaming treasure. this coach will bring charles and camilla from the palace to westminster abbey. well, it's the first time that this carriage has been used at a coronation. it was delivered to queen elizabeth, the second in 2014, and used for the state opening of parliament that year.

the interior of this carriage is especially poignant for king charles. it's made from wood, from the grounds of balmoral castle near aberdeen, where the late queen died, aged 96. this coach will be the centrepiece of the much larger and longer procession from westminster abbey back to buckingham palace on coronation day. it's nearly four metres tall. it's over seven metres long. it weighs four tonnes. because of that, it can only be used at a walking pace. but preparations aren'tjust taking place on the ground. the royal air force have been rehearsing the coronation fly—past over raf cranwell in lincolnshire. hugely important to get it right. he ultimately is our commander in chief. he's been very closely associated with the armed services throughout his time and it's great to be able to put such a spectacle together for his coronation on the sixth. what you've seen today is a smaller version of that, 36 aircraft, but across all three services,

and hopefully you've seen the amount of planning that's gone into that. i was very happy with the practice today, the spacing,