a 14—year—old girl and a coach driver have died after their school bus overturned on the m53 in merseyside. police say that 58 people were involved. a 14—year—old boy also suffered life—changing injuries. pupils at the schools are getting special support. some other stories now from sunday. a new law will ban shops and takeaways from selling single—use plastic like cutlery and polystyrene cups. the thing is, some businesses are saying they have no idea about the ban, and haven't prepared at all. facing financial stress, more than half of uni students are balancing their studies with paid jobs. the higher education policy institute, which did the research, is worried it makes inequalities between students worse. people born using sperm or egg donors in the uk who turn 18 after sunday will now be able

to find out who their donor is, because of a law from 2005. matthew and phoebe were conceived via sperm donor. they've known since they were two, but only the bare minimum. his height. his, like, build. eye colour, hair colour, age, some of his hobbies. so when we have a conversation at home, he's usually referred to as the colombian guy orjust... "other dad". and we'll leave you with 10 seconds of pioneering pipes. yes, thanks to her tiktok fame, royal albert hall organist anna lapwood has given the instrument a whole new fanbase, and now she's releasing an album. you're all caught up now. see you. voice—over: this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines and all the main news stories for you at the top of the hour,

straight after this programme. this is the end of the tour. like the last day. it has been a really insane, intense run. i am sure i go onstage and be fine but i feel really anxious. my fine but i feel really anxious. my heart is just racing. usually have one of those gel packs at the stake, the superpacs before i go on in ten minutes time, it will kick in and be good.

values, take note. and put tampons in the toilet. since rena sawayama broke out in the music scene in 2017, she has been doing it her way. into the music scene in 2017, she has been doing it her way. she's campaigned to change rules for the brit awards, landed a hollywood role, come out as pansexual, and has been hailed as the future of queer pop music... ..and i've come to ask her how

she got to this point # you're preaching even though i'm dead # like the first time i'm in my prime. # how come you don't expect me to get mad when i'm angry? # you've never seen it done...# thank you so much forjoining us. thank you for having me. it's surreal. how would you describe this particular moment in your life? it feels like so much has happened in the past few years. the first phrase that comes to mind is probably a sigh of relief. ithink, you know, my career really took off during the pandemic, and i'm so grateful for that, you know? it was really unexpected. but at the same time, i worked solidly through the pandemic, then out of the pandemic, then since then, i haven't stopped — and the majority of the work i've been doing after the pandemic was touring, because everyone, like me, all the artists were catching up on the tour dates

that we had to cancel for two years, and so it was nonstop. you were born injapan and you moved to the uk when you were a child. what was that like? what are your memories of that time? well, i was five years old when i moved, and we moved because my dad worked forjapan airlines. and so i was injapanese school, so, continuing my education so that when i went back it wouldn't be so disruptive, but after five years we were eligible for an indefinite leave visa, and so we decided to stay. my mum said that... she was like, "i realise how much of a weirdo you were, "and that if you stayed... "if you went back to japan, you might not reach "your full potential." like, "you might get bullied," and she said that she was just really worried, so she wanted to, you know, she wanted to keep me here. but i remember, yeah, back then it was hard, because i couldn't speak english, you know? cultures... it couldn't be more different, priorities couldn't be more different, and i remember all through my childhood and adolescence really

struggling with this home life, of very japanese home life — japanese cooking, japanese lunches, my mum speaking japanese to me, you know, her not necessarily being able to help with, like, homework, for example — and then straddling that with london, and in particular central london, like, state school life. i remember being really, you know, pulled in two directions. how much do you think straddling two cultures has affected you as an artist? i come at it, even though i very much consider myself a londoner — and i also considerjapan as my home, as well — i often feel like i can look at western culture with quite an objective lens. and, you know, a lot of my music — like xs and stfu — you know, it really looks at things that are very normalised in western culture that i think are wrong, or the priorities are wrong, and that, i think, is what people connect with me, because i am able to point that out and put it into music

rather than just create a, you know, another love song, or whatever. you know, my first single for my first record was stfu, and i wrote that because i grew up with this sense of... ..i guess now i recognise as anger that i had to always be representative of my race. and at the time, i was in my mid 20s or mid to late 20s, and i had gone to one too many weddings where someone would come up to me and they'd...they�*d start talking to me, and maybe the first couple of things would be quite standard. "what's your name? " but then, then on, it would just be about japan. it would be about how i looked. "where's your parents from?" and i remember thinking, wow, i've done so much — i feel like i've got an interesting life. i went to cambridge. i was seeing conversations happening with other people

who aren't japanese, or whatever, and the conversation would be like, "oh, yeah, so what are you up to these days? "what do you do in yourspare time?" but for me it was like, "oh, i'd love to go to japan sometime," and ijust became like... i felt like what people saw of me was this map ofjapan. it wasn't me as a person. and i rememberfeeling so frustrated growing up, because that is... ..that�*s been the story of my life. and, sure, it's positive — everyone loves japan. that's amazing. but truthfully, i didn't grow up injapan and i think a lot of immigrants, orfirst gen immigrants, can really relate to that. it's a very tricky relationship that we have to navigate our whole lives. # call me crazy. # call me selfish. # i'm the baddest. # and i'm worth it...# growing up in a traditional migrant family and studying at cambridge university, it wasn't obvious that she'd pursue a career in music — but it was her creative calling. # give mejust a little bit. # a little bit. # give mejust a little bit...#

yet entry to the pop industry didn't come easily. # 0h me, oh my. # give mejust a little bit. # xs, xs. # 0h me, oh my. # give mejust a little bit. # a little bit...# you know, a lot of people know what cambridge university means. you know, prime ministers and global leaders, the people who decide a lot of our society go to those universities, oxford and cambridge. yes. for you, what was that experience like? my whole life, i never thought of cambridge or 0xford. i was like, that's for different kind of people. like, that's not for people like me. but i did still see the kind of... the elites, the, you know, the kind of future city elites, and the people who were going to go and eventually make decisions on behalf of people like me — and it really, really scared me, actually. i remember distinctly feeling quite depressed about it when i was there

and thinking, wow... ..these people who are clearly so privileged, they've never met, like, an asian person, or had a conversation with an asian person, they've never met a muslim person. they have no idea what anything means in terms of people looking differently to you, and realising that it was a lot of people like that who would go on to make decisions made me really... ..brought everything into sharp focus. and when did music become this idea of something to do as a living, and not just kind of hanging out with your friends and having fun? so, the school i went to, even though it's a state school, it very much focused on... it was like a... it's called a c of e school, church of england school, but it was very much mixed faith, so any faith can go. i wasn't christian or anything like that. but what you got was this incredible church next to the school that was part of the school, so you got to perform all the time. it was really natural to me that i would think about the music industry,

but i had no idea, no connections, i don't know how to get in. so, ijust worked, like, normaljobs, like, officejobs. i was a loan administrator for, like, nearly a year, and i was a nail technician, doing pedicures, and i was working at an ice cream shop, i worked at the apple store. like, i did a lot of part—time work, and then, eventually, i got a manager, started to release songs. everything i had saved up with my part—time job i would put into there. parents did not support me whatsoever, because my mum was like, "you went to cambridge, "why don't you work for a bank?" but when i quit all my part—time jobs was when i was about 27, so that's when i became kind of full—time musician. see, 27, i think is young. i think so, too. i think 30s is young. 30s is young. but i did see a tweet from you where you said that you had felt pressure to lie about your age. yeah. where did you feel that pressure from?

just the standard, erm... the kind of accepted standard of pop musicians when i was growing up, especially in the �*90s, 20005, is that you get signed when you're 13, or maybe 16, 17 at the oldest, and then you are in development and you're a full—time artist, and so, at the point that i signed my first record contract — and when i say a record contract, i mean album contract — i was 29, so i felt old. and it is an industry that fetishises youth. it does. and, luckily, now i think it is changing slowly. and, yeah... i mean, there's always going to be very young artists and exceptional artists, and i don't think there's anything wrong with that, necessarily, but i do think that it's nice to see a slight shift towards not thinking that people who are in their 30s are too old to be on screen, yeah. have you felt pressure about not being able to be forthright about other things? yeah. well, i think there's...

listen, i think there's a lot of things that people outside of the music industry don't know about the music industry. it's been something i've been really thinking about recently because of the sag—aftra strikes. that's the actors' strike... the actors' strikes. ..that�*s currently ongoing. currently ongoing. to talk about working conditions for actors across the scale. yes — and what really struck me was the kind of conversation not only about the working conditions, hours and all that, but it's the conversation about royalties and ai. that's a huge threat to the music... aiis...? artificial intelligence. so, it's... they're arguing that they can not only use people's words that real humans have written, and then extrapolate that into something else, they can use people's voices and deepfake that into another advert that they haven't signed up for, or without extra pay. and royalties are, i mean, it's basically how actors and writers get paid. the parallels between that and music is very close. what's our future?

like, our contracts currently don't have anything to do with al. and it's really made me think a lot about, wow, like, recording artists in particular... ..have very little rights as, you know, when you compare it to what actors have. yeah. and it's made me think... it's made me think, wow, i think there needs to be some sort of overhaul, because currently it's really very much benefiting music labels and record labels, and not the artists. and one member of your audience is someone people might not have heard of — eltonjohn? how did that friendship start? he's been really vocal about how big of a fan of yours he is. i know. i mean, every time people say that, it is so surreal. he reached out to me because he was a massive fan of stfu, and then the subsequent singles — comme des garcons, xs.

so, he played me on his radio show, rocket hour, and then we did an interview on facetime — this was all during covid — and, you know, he was the one new friend i made... ijoke the one new friend i made in lockdown is elton john. you know, i thought how it works with these things is that they reach out, and they amplify you and talk about you for, like, a week, and then theyjust disappear — but he has been the most incredible friend, mentor. he really puts his neck out a lot, you know, to support people who are...who he feels are not being seen enough, and i've got to play at his oscars party and, obviously, i was onstage with him at glastonbury. yeah. with elton, you know, what he represents in terms of being this well—known queer artist that has been, you know, kind of paving pathways for so many of us for so many years.

you know, you represent kind of a new generation of that. how do you feel... you know, how do you take the weight of what you represent? i made a concerted effort, actually, around about the second album, that i'm not going to read anything about myself. that's including comments. so, my instagram is, you know, handled by other people. i don't go on it, because i love seeing the positives, but there's also negatives, and the more you care about the negatives... well, the more you care about the positives, you care more about the negatives, as well. and so there's no controlling it. it'sjust the human brain. you just can't not care about what other people say. whether they're saying something positive or negative, you start to detach them as real human beings with real lives, with jobs and families and responsibilities — you start seeing them as just this comment that they've left that has affected you emotionally in some way. yeah. 0n the flip side of that is that a lot of people can act very inhumane online. you know, it's a very... you're getting one moment of their day.

so, your second album, hold the girl, you've talked about kind of the process of writing it. could you tell us a bit more about it? yeah, it was a very intense album to write. like a lot of people did in lockdown, i had some realisations of my own, and i was quite... i was really struggling mentally, but with something quite specific that i'd never addressed in my life — and i've actually never talked about this in any other interview, this is the first time i'm talking about this — but, essentially, through doing sex therapy, sex and relationship therapy, i realised that something that i thought was a relationship that i had when i was 17 was, actually, i was groomed. and why it happened then, why that realisation happened in my 30s was because i was finally his age. and... so, therefore, there's a song called your age in the record. right. because i looked... you know, there's a school

down my road, secondary school — 17, you know, you're in secondary school. and to ever think that that could be ever acceptable for me to look at a 17—year—old and think that, oh, yeah, that's. .. ..that�*s fine, or that, you know, that i could try and go for them. it... i remember distinctly how uncomfortable that made me, but i didn't put the two and two together. and it was through this very intense form of therapy — which i feel so lucky to be able to have had access to — that i was able to come to terms with it. and it completely broke my whole world apart, cos at the time, after, you know, it came to light that that was what was happening in my school — basically, it was a school teacher — i was so badly slut shamed that i developed so much shame around my sexuality and lost completely my sense of self. i detached from my skin, like, inside...

i don't know, like, how to describe it, but ijust felt so afraid of things and i'd have anxiety attacks, and all of that. that dissociation with your body. exactly. that numbness. and i... you know, in doing the therapy, it was about, you know, revisiting that inner child — the 17—year—old who went through that — and holding her close and telling her it was not her fault. and that was a very, very emotional process, as you can imagine, and it actually then led to the song hold the girl, and it's, you know, it's about realising that you go through a lot of things when you're young, some things are more messed up than others, some people have more trauma than others, but you're often... more often than not, you'rejust a child, you have no agency in that situation. 17, to me, is a child. you're in school. you have no autonomy

most of the time. and especially if you're in a school setting, you know, if a school teacher is, you know, coming on to you, that's an abuse of power — but i didn't realise that until i was his age. and so, writing that album was one of the hardest things, but, also, when i finished it, it was one of the most incredible experiences. and now it makes me so happy when i see, you know, especially, like, women or femmes in the audience connecting to it. because i haven't talked about this in specifics — i'vejust said, you know, it's about a period in my life when i was younger, and... ..but i know the truth, and when i look out to the audience and i see femmes or women connecting to it, i'm like, "maybe you know, maybe you know what i'm talking about. "maybe you're feeling it right now." rina says it's important for her to have a close team around her, one that she's carefully built.

you keep a close community of people around you. i've met a lot of the people who you work with. is that, like, a deliberate choice to keep that unit around you, you know, really diverse and really close? yeah. you know, in different parts of what i do, i think it's really important, because a lot of different parts of it has beenjust straight white men for a long time. the music industry... even if, you know, you look at the heads of music industry, still it is straight white men. so, you know, i try and work with people who could also be my friend. and, also, i work with people who i want to see more of in the industry. do you feel freedom to speak openly? because you've set the kind of dynamics of how you will speak openly about certain things, like micro—aggressions and sexism and ageism — you've set a culture where you're going to be honest about a lot of things in the music industry. yeah. i have always wanted

to lead with the truth. always. i think that truth and educating the public and, you know, breaking open... like, making it transparent is really important to me. the people that you reference in your songs, like whitney and britney, and those artists that we've seen in front of us and we've seen that career play out, where they didn't feel autonomy about their career, has that inspired you in some way? yeah. sadly, my heroes are the bad examples. you know, the examples where it's gone not so good. it's destroyed their career or their lives. and... but i can see how that can happen. 0bviously, on my level it's so much smaller, but i see the culture of it. i see this protection that people place around artists that actually doesn't protect the artist at all. itjust hides things from them, and, yeah... ..and it's sad that it's this way, but i do feel

that there is some truth to what i'm trying to explore, which is this... ..clear understanding and transparency over who owns what. you know, what. .. you know what your rights are, i think, that's one of my kind of key things. do you feel completely free right now? yeah. yeah, very much. # i won't leave you on your own. # teach me the words i used to know...# for you, will your music always be autobiographical, or do you see it...? your art, notjust music, you know, aspects of your creativity — will you always put parts of yourself in it, or will there just be parts where it's just, "i'm just going to put some paint on a canvas, "and you can do what you want with it"? 0h, honestly, after releasing hold the girl, i was like, i have no more, i have no more. i don't want any more traumas to come out. i don't want it any more.

i don't want to talk about it any more. i don't want to talk about myself. i hope so. i hope that i don't have to write autobiographically all the time. my story is not the most important story to tell. there's a lot of stories to be told, you know? yeah, i mean, i'm very excited about the third record, because i've learned so much from the first, so much from the second, and notjust musically, butjust in terms of the creation of it — writing, producing and mixing. i've learnt so much. so, i'm excited, yeah. i don't know what i'm going to write about yet, but i would love a day where i can just write a song that's just about love or sex or, you know... i'm getting there. thank you so much. thank you. # hey there, little girl don't you wanna see the world? # don't be scared. # hey there, little world are you ready for this girl? # do you dare? # only took nine months and a lot of love. # carried all our dreams

and she's ready now...# hello. we may be officially into autumn, but a little dose of summer on the way for some of us over the next few days, notjust here in the uk, but widely across europe. and in fact, temperatures are expected to reach the 30s in spain, france, in the uk, even mid—20s expected in the south in the days ahead. now, at the moment, there is a little weather front heading our way — that is going to bring a bit of a mixed bag for some of us. now, the early hours will be clear, generally speaking, across most of the country, and it will be quite a nippy morning. in fact, in the glens of scotland, it could be around four degrees, but i think for most of us, in the range of around 7—10 celsius. so, it starts off quite sunny and bright at the very least for most of us. but out towards the west, this rain crosses ireland and you can see thickening cloud there from the southwest across wales, the irish sea, northern ireland and into southwestern scotland. so here, a very different picture to other parts of the country. outbreaks of rain, at times heavy

in belfast, and also gusty winds around coasts. the north of scotland, most of the north sea coast and further south the weather's looking fine, sunny. i think sunshine for plymouth, for the isle of wight and also for london, where highs will reach 20 celsius. now, notice that rain never reaches the south. it veers off towards the north, and with that also comes relatively humid air to the south of that weather front, and that humid and also quite warm air will spread across many parts of the country. that means that early in the morning, on sunday, it will be very warm. look at that — 16—17 degrees celsius at eight o'clock in the south. now, there will be a little bit of rain around in the morning, i think across parts of wales and the midlands. but eventually, the sun should come out in most areas, and we're talking about the mid—20s in the southeast on sunday. a little bit fresher in scotland and northern ireland here of around 16 or 17 celsius. now, the outlook for the rest

of europe shows a large area of high pressure building across the continent. that's basically going to allow the warm air to spread all the way to eastern parts of europe. there'll be a bit of a blip because this weather front will introduce temporarily some slightly fresher air to some parts of europe. but i think overall, it's going to stay on the warm side. let's have a look at a snapshot, then, for some of our cities into the week ahead,

live from washington, this is a bbc news special report on the impending us government shutdown. it's crunch time on capitol hill after republicans reject a measure to temporarily fund the government.

now time is running out for us lawmakers to strike a government spending deal before saturday night's deadline. hello i'm caitriona perry, you're very welcome. the clock is ticking here in washington, withjust over 2a hours left for lawmakers to strike a deal on government spending and avoid a shutdown. in this special report, we'll bring you interviews with key players on capitol hill and look at how we got here, plus the impact of a government shutdown. the house adjourned about two hours ago for the night, still without a deal on spending. earlier on friday, congress had rejected a bill to temporarily fund the government, making it all but certain that federal agencies will partially shut down beginning sunday.

us house speaker kevin mccarthy failed to convince enough