the claims in the sun newspaper allege the unnamed male presenter paid the teenager tens of thousands of pounds. and there are questions tonight over the bbc�*s handling of the allegations. president zelensky marks 500 days since russia's invasion of ukraine. and some allies express concerns over the united states�* decision to send cluster bombs to the country. let's start in ukraine, where the country's president has marked the 500th day of russia's invasion with a video of his visit to the site of one of the war�*s most iconic battles. volodymyr zelensky posted the clip on telegram of his trip to snake island, a strategically significant outpost in the black sea that ukrainian border guards refused to surrender to russia

on the first day of the invasion, february 24th, 2022. their obscene reply to russian warnings became a rallying cry, and they were presumed dead when russian troops invaded and captured the island, though it later transpired that the guards had survived. ukraine re—took the island four months later. mr zelensky toured the island, laid a wreath and spoke to his nation. translation: dear ukrainians. i wish you good health. today we are on snake island, on our snake island, which will never be conquered by the occupier, like the whole of ukraine, because we are a country of the brave. today we want to our ukrainian heroes, all the soldiers who fought for this island, who liberated it, and although this is a small piece of land in the middle of our black sea, it is a great proof that ukraine will regain every bit of its territory. i want to

thank, from here, from this place of victory, each of our soldiers for this 500 days. as ukraine's counter—offensive grinds on, the us has committed to sending controversial cluster munitions. but divisions within nato countries about supplying the weapons are starting to emerge. british prime minister rishi sunak has confirmed that the uk, like several other nato countries, is signed up to a convention that bans their use. on friday, president biden said the weapons transfer was "a difficult decision." he arrives in the uk on sunday. rishi sunak is playing down any differences. well, the uk is a signatory to a convention which prohibits the production or use of cluster munitions, and discourages their use. we will continue to do our part to support ukraine against russia's illegal and unprovoked invasion. we have done that by providing heavy battle tanks and, most recently, long—range weapons. and hopefully, all countries can continue to support ukraine. russia's act of barbarism is causing untold suffering to millions of people.

it's right that we collectively stand up to it. and i will be heading off to the nato summit next week in vilnius, where we will be discussing with our allies how we can strengthen our support for ukraine. well, the uk is a signatory to a convention which prohibits the production or use of cluster munitions, so what is the convention on cluster munitions? it's an international treaty that prohibits all use, transfer, production, and stockpiling of cluster munitions. cluster munitions are an explosive weapon which scatters bomblets over an area. the convention entered into force on i august 2010 and a total of 123 states are committed to it. the united states and russia have not signed this convention, nor has ukraine. but most nato countries have. european nations have also been reacting to the news. spain's defence minister, margarita robles, said "no to cluster bombs and yes to the legitimate defence of ukraine." but germany, which is also a signatory of the treaty, said while it would not provide such weapons to ukraine, "we're certain that our us

friends didn't take the decision about supplying such ammunition lightly." kurt volke is a former us ambassador to nato and former us special representative for ukraine. he's told the bbc why he backs the move. ukraine, as we have seen, as been able to advance on the battlefield but only very slowly. and that is because of the minefields and the trenches that have been put in place by the russians as defensie measures to prevent the ukranians from advancing. using these types of munitions will substitute for singleshot artillery shells, it will cover more ground and they will force the russians to have to withdraw their personnel to avoid these types of weapons which will make it more feasible for the ukrainians to advance more quickly. for some insight now on what it means to clear areas where cluster munitions have been deployed, i was joined by patrick fruchet, a landmine clearance expert.

you have been involved in operations to clear areas in afghanistan, yemen and other areas. walk us through how much of a challenge it can be to clear areas after weapons like cluster munitions have been used? thank you very much. yes, so, i was involved in the clearance operation after the air campaign over afghanistan in 2001. we had good information from the us government on where it had dropped so—called blu—97 bomblets and when we went to go and clear up those bomblets, we were finding as many as 60 bomblets of 180 that should have gone off when they hit the ground, as much as 60 of them had failed to detonate on impact with the ground, and, so, the clearance teams were coming back with that kind of data back in 2001—2002 from us airstrikes... just to verify, these were weapons that had been fired in afghanistan

but according to those numbers that you're describing, this — it sounds like a fairly large failure or dud rate in these cluster munitions, many of them left lying on the ground? yes, so, that is a big controversy is that the assessor numbers back in 2001, the estimates were 5% and we saw as much as 30% when we were clearing. —— of the official numbers. what is your reaction then, because we have been hearing the biden administration insisting that the cluster munitions they will be sending, they have a failure rate closer to about 2.5% and definitely in the single digits. is that then not your experience with these weapons? i cannot speak to the specific type of cluster submunitions that's being deployed to ukraine but my experience is that the failure rates are often really conservative. in the fire of war, in the real thing, the failure rates are higher, almost always higher than they are in the theoretical exercises that lead to these dud rate estimates. when you are in the field and you're coming into an area

where these cluster munitions were used in the battle, how do you actually go about de—mining or deactivating these weapons? so, when we have — in the case of afghanistan — we had data on grid references where these things were dropped so having good information on the telemetry of where the device would have been dropped, where the bomblets can be found is a good starting point, so, if you have that, that is easier. in other cases, the devises speak for themselves. they injure livestock, they kill people, and that is how we deploy the humanitarian clearance teams is in response to a report of an injury or a death of a person or two persons or two livestocks. in general, who is on these kind of response teams? is this a national effort, an international effort? who actually does the work of going into these dangerous areas to make sure it is safe for civilians? it depends on the country but in the case of afghanistan

there were well—established national ngos that had been clearing landmines left over from the afghan russian war and so they were retrained to clear the cluster munitions. in other countries you have international ngos that get involved and in other countries you have the national military, once peace is back, takes over and thus a clearing operation. how long can this kind of operation take? we're still clearing cluster munitions in afghanistan from 2001—2002. there's still clearance ongoing in laos and in cambodia from the vietnam war era. so it can take a good long time. i think — there was a war in lebanon on in 2006 and i believe clearence

operations are still ongoing in lebanon. wow. what kind of impact does this have on civilians. they are not going to wait decades to return home. if they can, they return home as soon as possible, so what sort of impact does it have when there are still munitions potentially lying around their cities? often the impact is with children because, again, these are novel devices that show up in rural environments, for instance, shepherd children returning to areas will pick up devices because they are hurting their animals, they will come upon a device that is unusual, they will pick it up, they will drop it again, and that is what we tend to see — you often see it — the data often shows multiple children were injured or killed because once one of these things does go off, it is much, much more powerful, generally speaking, than an anti—personnel landmine. these things were designed to penetrate armour. so, these are actually more dangerous you think than traditional landmines? if they go off, the kill zone is much larger than an anti—personnel

landmine, yes. i want to circle back to this dud rate with the biden administration saying the weapons they would be providing — which are controversial — would be about 2.5%. in your experience it seems like it is a bit higher. what was your reaction when you heard the us wanted to supply these weapons to ukraine? if they are internally having a good look at what actually happens on the ground in terms of the real dud rates and they still decided to do this, i think that is a decision for them to make — it is not a decision i would have made — lots of countries have banned these weapons for very good reasons, find that there's no circumstances. i would be particularly concerned if they were actually just taking their 2.5% failure late at face value and not assuming that it could be much worse than that because if that is the basis upon which they are making this decision it is an ill founded basis to make the decision. patrick fruchet, landmine clearing

expired clearing areas in afghanistan and yemen, thank you so much for your insight. thank you. us treasury secretary janet yellen continues her multi—day trip in china to strengthen economic ties between the two global super powers. speaking on saturday in beijing, she called for deeper cooperation between the us and china in addressing what she called the "existential threat" of climate change. there has been no formal co—operation on climate change since the trump administration. yellen also urged china to support international initiatives such as the green climate fund, which helps developing nations adapt to the impacts of global warming.

this is the final day of her trip, we will keep you posted with development as they come in. 0ur asia correspondent rupert wingfield—hayes has sent this report from bangkok. i think for what janet yellen has said, she sees climate change as an area in which the us and chinese governments not only can co—operate, but it is imperative that they do co—operate. the very simple reason that the us and china are by far the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases. but also, she said they not only have the responsibility to emitters, —— as the biggest emitters, —— as the biggest emitters, but also the ability. the us and china leave the world in renewables. china last year installed more solid and the rest of the one particular. it dominates the solar industry and now increasingly dominate the manufacture of wind turbans and things like that. if they can come together, to have the financial clout and the technology to start addressing

climate change across the world and helping poorer countries to install solar and wind and other technologies to reduce carbon emissions, and of course mitigations of the effect of climate change, which will be an increasing issue the poorer countries. i think the issue here is that china still insists that it is a developing country under the un climate conventions, and that it is the responsibility of the us and other industrialised countries that have created most of the historic emissions over the last hundred and 50 years of industrialisation, it is really up industrialisation, it is really up to them to do something about it and to foot the bill for mitigating climate change and reducing their emissions. the problem with that is that if you look at china's economy and its emissions, it is not really possible to continue saying that china is a developing nation. it has got the world's largest industrial economy. it's emissions, now, the latest figures showed that china in 2020 release 13.7 billion tons of c02 into the

atmosphere. that is roughly double what the united states is releasing. its per capita emissions are still short of the us, but well ahead of many european industrialised countries. so i think the idea that china is a poor developing country and so doesn't need to take part in this is no longer tenable. i think that is the message janet yellen has taken to beijing, we need to address this together, the cooperation and during the trump administration and she is really appealing to the chinese government to reengage on this issue. it is one of the few issues right now on which the us and china category. —— can agree. there are new allegations tonight concerning a bbc presenter accused of paying a teenager for sexually explicit photographs, beginning when they were 17. the claims in the sun newspaper allege the unnamed male presenter paid the teenager tens of thousands of pounds. it's understood the corporation is investigating the allegations, and the star is currently not scheduled

to be on air in the coming days. earlier i spoke with our graham satchell. graham, just fill us in, what more do we know about this story? well, as you say, these allegations first appeared in a british newspaper, the sun newspaper. they have spoken to the mother of this teenager, now 20, but was 17, we understand, in this first started to happen. and the allegation is that the unnamed bbc presenter paid significant sums of money over a period of time for explicit photographs. these allegations are serious, not just ethically or reputationally, but legally, as well, because in british law it is an offence to share, create or possess pictures like that of anyone under the age of 18. and in tomorrow's paper, the sun is giving more details of the kind of things that were allegedly exchanged between the unnamed presenter and the teenager, so, it says that there are pictures of this presenter allegedly in his underwear

on the sofa in preparation for a video call. you can see that there are now serious questions being asked about the way the bbc is starting to handle all of this. the bbc for its part has said it takes these allegations very seriously, that it has tried to speak to the people involved to get further details. their statement goes on to say... that doesn't mean the imquiry stopped. still unnamed, but some bbc presenters have felt compelled to come out and say that they are not involved? that's right. we're in a very difficult situation at the moment because the sun isn't naming the presenter, the bbc is not confirming their name. what so what you have here is a frenzy on social

media with people speculating as to who the bbc presenter is. it's led to a number of other bbc presenters to go on social media and say, "it ain't me." so people like gary lineker, jeremy vine, nicky campbell, radio presenter, they have all taken to the various twitter and instagram accounts to say, don't speculate about me, it is not me. some have been threatening legal action. this is a very serious situation, particularly for the bbc, of course for the unnamed presenter. graham, you alluded to this earlier but there are also questions about how the bbc has handled these allegations? yes, because the family say they complained to the bbc in may. we're talking some six, seven weeks ago now. and the bbc is not confirming to us or not telling us

whether there has been a formal suspension of this bbc presenter. they are saying he's not expected to be on air in the coming days. the questions are being asked and they are serious questions, who knew what, when? why wasn't this presenter immediately suspended? if it is allegedly a criminal event why wasn't this referred to the police? big questions here. politicians here have been getting involved, caroline dynage, the politician in charge of culture select committee says bbc has questions to answer. there's pressure on hr department to investigate quickly and explain what has happened since the story first came to light back in may. the bbc�*s graham satchel. a look now at some other stories making headlines: latvia's long—serving foreign minister, edgars rinkevics, has become the first openly gay head of state of a european union or former soviet country. he has been sworn in as latvia's president. mr rinkevics first came out in 2014 and has been a vocal champion of lgbtq+

rights ever since. gay marriage is illegal in latvia, though the country's constitutional court recognised same—sex unions last year. an airstrike in a sudanese city on saturday killed at least 22 people, health authorities said, in one of the deadliest air attacks yet in the three months of fighting between sudan's rival generals. the assault took place in 0mdurman, outside the capital, khartoum. it was one of the deadliest attacks in urban areas near the capital and elsewhere in sudan. american soccer star megan rapinoe says she will retire at the end of this season, and after the women's world cup this summer. it will be her fourth world cup appearance. the 38—year—old wrote on twitter that she "never could have imaged the ways in which soccer "would shape and change my life forever." india's top court is set to deliver its verdict on whether same sex marriage can be allowed. it's a proposal that has sharply divided opinion in the country. while the government and religious groups have

opposed the idea, the lgbt community is hopeful that the court will give its approval — five years after it decriminalised homosexuality. arunoday mukharji reports. i want to get hitched. well, we're just saying we want to get married. you are not a normal human being. how are their lives getting i affected by people like us? the fight for rights is louder than ever. forging ahead. demanding change. excited and hopeful that the supreme court will now recognise same—sex marriage. it's what utkarsh saxena and ananya kota have been wanting. a college romance, they have been together for 15 years in 15.

when we met were things like indian politics... they want to get married and have what every indian married couple has, equal rights. we both want to be parents. we want to start a family. and we can't adopt children and we can't start a family. we can go for surrogacy, jointly owning property or even things. like if there's a medical emergency, what right does he have to take decisions on my behalf? so just sort of emotional reasons but also practical reasons. this judgment means a lot for our day to day life. the supreme court deliberations are already a win. even that was unthinkable when they were growing up. there was a lot of mockery and phobia in society, even though we were best friends for everyone. if there was like an intimate moment between two guys, it was a but ofjokes. i was always terrified and scared. i mean, anyway, i'm not going to have a personal future, but this would end my social life and this would end my professional life. marriage is not only a question of dignity, as if that were not enough.

it is also a bouquet of rights that lgbtq people are being denied. india's constitution is key to this issue. it promises equality to all. rejecting what we don't... yes. 0pposing sides have fought it out in the country's highest court right. to get a particular social relationship recognised as a marriage is not a fundamental right. a formerjudge of the delhi high court agrees. justice sa claims it's against india's culture. he and 20 other formerjudges wrote to the supreme court against the proposal. what is same sex marriage? it's an abnormality. a marriage should be between a man and a woman. how can same—sex couples adopt? but why should society interfere? are they not part of the same society? so if they are part of the same society, then shouldn't

they have the same rights? but that's only if they comply with the existing societal norms. it took 70 years for the supreme court to legalise gay sex in 2018. the verdict triggered hope that the right to marry might not be far behind. it's rare to see members of the lgbtq+ community claim public spaces like these in a country like india, where social stigma and taboo are still very much associated with sexual identity. people over here say that gatherings like these are a show of strength. global estimates say the community is now 10% of india's population. this decision is notjust about same sex marriage, but also about the path the country takes for equal rights. arunoday mukharji, bbc news, delhi. the dutch prime minister has been meeting with the country's king, to discuss the formation of a caretaker administration after the collapse of his coalition government.

mark rutte left the palace after talks willem—alexander. mr rutte announced late on friday that his entire cabinet had resigned after it failed to agree on stricter immigration policies. new elections are not expected to be held before mid—november. anna holligan has more from the hague. so mark rutte met king willem—alexander here in the hague to explain what had happened and discuss forming a caretaker administration. the chat lasted about an hour and a half. and afterwards, mark rutte came out, he told reporters it had been good, but he wouldn't give any further details because he said they were confidential. so no indication as to when that caretaker government may be formed. what happened ? well, the coalition collapsed because of a disagreement, irreconcilable differences, mark rutte said, between the four coalition parties over different rules for different asylum—seekers on when they should be allowed to bring family members into the country. so family reunifications. and according to reports, mark rutte wanted to place

a cap on the number of people war refugees could bring to the netherlands at 200 per month. other parties, including the family—focused christian union and the liberal d66, were opposed. so what happens next? well, the dutch electoral commission has said the earliest elections can take place is november due to electoral rules, the summer holidays and the need to give parties time to campaign. before that, though, mark rutte will address parliament monday morning, first thing, 10.15am local time, after which, we are expecting a pretty heated debate. we will have more news at the top of the hour. stay with us right here on bbc news. hello there. it was a very thundery start to the weekend, and particularly so across parts of the west midlands, into north—west england. and later, those storms spread their way northwards, into scotland, during

the overnight period. part two of the weekend looks a little bit better. there will be sunny spells around, but further showers too and low pressure always close by, and these weather fronts, which will continue to generate these showers and thunderstorms. now, we start sunday off on a bright note, plenty of sunshine. that's the overnight rain — thundery in places, clearing northwards, so it could be quite wet in 0rkney all day. an area of rain, some of it thundery, could affect east anglia and the south—east for a time through the morning. then that clears into the afternoon, and then it's sunny spells, scattered showers. most of these, northern ireland, wales and western england. now, it's going to be a cooler, fresher day across the board. top temperature, around 23 degrees in the south—east. so we could have some disruption at wimbledon for that early rain. but then, into the afternoon, it does look like conditions will improve, with increasing amounts of sunshine. so as you move into sunday evening, most of the showers fade away — not completely, but most of them will. we'll see lengthy, clearer skies, but across the south—west, here, we'll see some cloud thickening, with increasing breeze too.

temperatures lower, fresher than what we've had over the last few nights. range from 10 to 12 degrees. cooler than that out of towns and cities. this area of low pressure will throw out further weather fronts into the south—west. this area of cloud will thicken up further. we'll see outbreaks of rain, strengthening winds — south—west england, into wales, pushing into the midlands. some of this could be quite heavy. elsewhere, it's sunny spells, scattered showers. so we could be up to around 2a degrees in the south—east, given plenty of sunshine. a little bit lower than that further north. but as you move out of monday into tuesday, this area of low pressure sits right on top of the uk, so a really unsettled day, i think, on tuesday. it'll be quite breezy. there will be some sunny spells in—between, but showers or longer spells of rain, and some of these showers could turn out to be heavy and thundery in places. pretty much anywhere could catch a shower. and temperatures will be lower, 16 to 21 or 22 degrees. that's below par for the time of year. and temperatures fall further as we move deeper into the week. this area of low pressure pushes towards the north

of the uk, bringing some cooler air down on that north—westerly wind. so it stays unsettled for much of this upcoming week, with temperatures below par for the time of year. there will still be some sunshine in—between the showers.