03/01/2017 BBC News at Ten


03/01/2017

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Surprise as Britain's top diplomat at the EU quits just months before

:00:00.:00:08.

tough Brexit negotiations are due to begin.

:00:09.:00:13.

Sir Ivan Rogers had faced criticism for warning that a post-Brexit trade

:00:14.:00:16.

His departure prompts a mixed reaction.

:00:17.:00:23.

It is a spectacular own goal, because the only way we're

:00:24.:00:28.

going to deliver a workable Brexit, is with people like Ivan Rogers.

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My only regret is that he didn't go the day after the referendum.

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Tonight the BBC has seen Sir Ivan's resignation email to his staff

:00:42.:00:44.

in which he criticises muddled thinking and ill founded

:00:45.:00:46.

The 28-year-old man shot dead by police on the M62 last night -

:00:47.:00:54.

police say a firearm was discovered in his car.

:00:55.:00:57.

Trump's tweet turns up the heat on the US car industry.

:00:58.:01:00.

Now Ford says it will cancel a new plant in Mexico and build

:01:01.:01:03.

Four Chelsea fans are ordered to pay more than ?8,000 to a black French

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commuter who they racially abused in Paris last year.

:01:11.:01:13.

And the lucky escape for a couple who got lost in Cairngorms

:01:14.:01:15.

And coming up in Sportsday on BBC News...

:01:16.:01:25.

Arsenal had the chance to go third in the Premier League with victory

:01:26.:01:29.

at Bournemouth but could they come back from 3-0 down

:01:30.:01:31.

Britain's most senior diplomat at the European Union,

:01:32.:01:55.

Sir Ivan Rogers, has resigned just months before he was due

:01:56.:01:58.

to play an important role in the complex negotiations

:01:59.:02:00.

Sir Ivan faced criticism last month when it emerged that he'd warned

:02:01.:02:08.

the Prime Minister that securing a post-Brexit trade deal

:02:09.:02:11.

Tonight the BBC has obtained his resignation email to his staff

:02:12.:02:25.

in which he urged them to continue to speak truth

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them to challenge muddled thinking about Brexit.

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More on that in a moment but first here's our Political Correspondent,

:02:32.:02:34.

Behind the darkened windows, at the Prime Minister's side,

:02:35.:02:37.

as she arrived at last month's EU summit, Sir Ivan Rogers tried

:02:38.:02:40.

But his warning that it could take the UK ten years to get a new EU

:02:41.:02:47.

trade deal overshadowed what was already a difficult

:02:48.:02:49.

He was criticised for being too pessimistic, though Downing Street

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said he was just relaying the views of other EU members.

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Some who've worked with Sir Ivan believe his departure is a real

:03:01.:03:03.

The only way we're going to deliver a successful, workable Brexit

:03:04.:03:08.

is precisely with the expertise of people like Ivan Rogers, who's

:03:09.:03:11.

now been forced to the margins, forced to the sidelines,

:03:12.:03:16.

because of the angry zeal of Brexiteers who just won't accept

:03:17.:03:19.

anyone who says anything different to what they so happen

:03:20.:03:22.

Theresa May is losing a figure who knows the corridors of EU

:03:23.:03:26.

He worked for a former British Commissioner in Brussels,

:03:27.:03:31.

David Cameron appointed him as ambassador to the EU in 2013

:03:32.:03:35.

and he was a key member of the former Prime Minister's team

:03:36.:03:38.

as he tried to get agreement on a new relationship with the EU

:03:39.:03:41.

In an unusually outspoken tweet, the former top civil

:03:42.:03:49.

servant at the Treasury, Lord Macpherson, said "Ivan Rogers,

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huge loss, can't understand wilful and total destruction

:03:52.:03:53.

But leading Brexit campaigners are delighted he's gone.

:03:54.:04:01.

Sir Ivan is part of the establishment that, frankly,

:04:02.:04:05.

haven't accepted the referendum result and are hoping that, frankly,

:04:06.:04:07.

I'm sorry to say, but the Foreign Office is stuffed

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full of these people, from top to bottom.

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For decades, they've been taking Britain in completely

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the wrong direction, and I hope Sir Ivan's departure

:04:17.:04:18.

Whilst Downing Street is determined to convey a positive Brexit message,

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sources who know Sir Ivan well and know Brussels well

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believe his warnings of the difficulties ahead

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were dismissed because they did not fit that narrative and they fear it

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will be difficult to find a replacement who knows

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enough about how Europe works and is acceptable

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And whoever takes over as the UK representative to the EU

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It's important that we have someone in the job, as Sir Ivan was doing,

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and no doubt his successor will do as well, who will report back

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to the British Government, and through the Government

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to Parliament, about what the other member states

:04:59.:05:00.

Because in a negotiation it really pays to know where the other

:05:01.:05:06.

Theresa May has said she'll trigger Article 50 by the end of March

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and it won't be easy to get a new representative

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to the EU in place and ready for the start of those crucial

:05:13.:05:15.

Carole Walker, BBC News, Westminster.

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With me is our Diplomatic Correspondent, James Landale.

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You've obtained his resignation email to staff -

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just how strong a parting shot is it and who's it aimed at?

:05:29.:05:34.

Ostensibly this is just an e-mail to his staff in Brussels but the target

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is clearly the government it does not take that much decoding. He

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says," I hope you will continue to challenge ill founded arguments and

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muddled thinking, that he will never be afraid to speak the truth to

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those in power. I hope you will support each other in the difficult

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moments when you had to deliver messages that are disagreeable to

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those who need to hear them." The clear implication is that this is

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the experience he has had as ambassador in Brussels sending

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messages to London, that those messages have been falling to some

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in Downing Street on deaf ears and he is not being listened to. That is

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why we think he has resigned, because of this frustration that he

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has felt that he has been speaking what he considers to be truth of

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power. He is clear in his unhappiness but in this long e-mail,

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four or five pages longer he also makes clear his own unhappiness with

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other parts of the government's preparation for Brexit, particularly

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in the says the structure of the negotiating team needs rapid

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resolution. He is critical of other part as well. This is a document

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that will become almost the set text of where Britain's ambassador sees

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our preparations for these extra merry negotiations that are about to

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happen and his own unhappiness and why he will not be part of it. Thank

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you. The Independent Police

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Complaints Commission, which is investigating the shooting

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of a man by armed officers on the M62 motorway,

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says a firearm was found in his car. Yassar Yaqub, who was 28,

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was shot dead in what police have called a "pre-planned

:07:07.:07:09.

operation" at Ainley Top, just Our correspondent Danny

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Savage has the details. For much of the day,

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the cars involved in the incidents remained exactly where

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they stopped last night. The two dark coloured vehicles

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and the silver Mercedes in front The two white cars were

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the target of the operation. As police boxed them

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in and stopped, shots were fired. Bullet holes can be seen

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in the windscreen of a white Audi. One man was killed and investigators

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tonight confirmed a non-police issue firearm was found in the car

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he was in. Yassar Yaqub was a 28-year-old

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father from Huddersfield. He was cleared of trying to shoot

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dead two people, eight years ago. One friend on Facebook wrote,

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"You were no angel, The incident happened just outside

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Huddersfield as the cars came off At around 6.00pm, they drove

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on to this slip road and were hemmed Shortly after that, shots were fired

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and Yassar Yaqub was killed. Three people were

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arrested at the scene. At the same time, in Bradford,

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another vehicle was stopped as part of the same operation

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and two others arrested. As the busy motorway junction

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was closed down last night, many people were caught up

:08:36.:08:37.

in the chaos. There were these rapid response

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vehicles that kept pulling up, big large vehicles, then a couple

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of ambulances turned up. As soon as the ambulance pulled up,

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some of the policemen ran up and told the ambulance they had

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to get down, as quickly as possible, to where

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the incident had took place. It looked like somebody needed

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urgent medical help. At Yassar Yaqub's family home

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armed police arrived this Friends and relatives

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who were visiting soon left. The operation related to information

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received about a criminal possession of a firearm and I've been fully

:09:11.:09:13.

updated by the Chief Constable. The incident is not

:09:14.:09:15.

terrorism related. Tonight, more than 24 hours

:09:16.:09:23.

after the shooting, the vehicles are finally being taken away

:09:24.:09:25.

for further examination. It includes the car Mr Yaqub

:09:26.:09:29.

was in and in which a gun was found. The Independent Police

:09:30.:09:33.

Complaints Commission is now One of the questions

:09:34.:09:34.

they'll be asking is - did Mr Yaqub pose an imminent

:09:35.:09:40.

threat to life? What they won't have are images

:09:41.:09:43.

from body cameras as firearms officers in West Yorkshire

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don't wear them. Danny Savage, BBC

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News, Huddersfield. The main suspect in

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the New Year terror attack on a nightclub in Istanbul

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which left 39 people dead Turkish police have detained more

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than a dozen people so far. Our Turkey correspondent,

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Mark Lowen, has been allowed into the club

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where the massacre took place. Three days ago, this

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place was full of joy, Today, Reina nightclub is a crime

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scene, scarred by terror. We were the only British media

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allowed in, briefly. A rare glimpse of where 39 people

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were killed on New Year's Eve. Imagine the horror as 180

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bullets were sprayed here. People jumping into the freezing

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Bosphorus to escape. The owners of Reina say they will

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re-open the nightclub, it's a sign Yes, people are sombre,

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yes, they're fearful, but Turks have lived with a terror

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threat for decades, albeit on a smaller scale,

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and they're determined not to let Watch the right hand side of this

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footage from the attack. A man jumps over a low fence outside

:10:58.:11:03.

the nightclub to avoid the bullets. Then the gunman runs up to the door,

:11:04.:11:07.

shooting his way into Reina. That man on the right of the video

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was nightclub manager, Ali Unal, TRANSLATION: I felt bullets

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explode next to me. I threw myself over the fence,

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but tripped and fell. The bullets went

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centimetres over my head. When I fell, he must have

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thought he had hit me, so he went inside and I heard

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the terrible sounds. The suspect still hasn't been

:11:35.:11:40.

caught, new pictures show him at a bus station in the central city

:11:41.:11:43.

of Konya before So-called Islamic State

:11:44.:11:45.

called him "their brave soldier." The Turkish authorities have given

:11:46.:11:51.

no more information about him. Raids tonight in a part of Istanbul

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from where he's thought to have Security is being tiightened

:11:58.:12:01.

amid fears IS could strike again here in revenge for Turkey's

:12:02.:12:06.

operations against There have though been others

:12:07.:12:08.

detained, including two foreigners It's not clear what link if any

:12:09.:12:17.

they're thought to have Those tired of terror went

:12:18.:12:22.

to the scene of the massacre today, Tributes were laid and thoughts

:12:23.:12:28.

gathered about how their country can rebuild and how the next generation

:12:29.:12:34.

can regain a sense of safety. I don't want to cry any

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more while I'm watching It makes me really sad and I don't

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want my daughter to grow up in this kind of environment,

:12:44.:12:53.

you know, with this news And so a nervous wait to see

:12:54.:12:55.

if those who protect this country are really closing in on the man

:12:56.:13:05.

who brought horror The US President-elect, Donald

:13:06.:13:07.

Trump, had the American car industry in his sights today when he fired

:13:08.:13:16.

off the latest of his often Mr Trump criticised GM motors

:13:17.:13:19.

for importing one of its models of cars from Mexico and threatened

:13:20.:13:26.

to impose a "big Just a few hours later,

:13:27.:13:28.

the car giant Ford then announced it was cancelling plans

:13:29.:13:34.

for a ?1.5 billion plant in Mexico and said it

:13:35.:13:40.

would invest in the US instead. So, is Mr Trump's Twitter

:13:41.:13:43.

strategy working? Here's our North America

:13:44.:13:44.

Editor, Jon Sopel. Not yet the president but the new

:13:45.:13:53.

way of doing business is clear. If Donald Trump has something on his

:13:54.:13:57.

mind, you will read about it in a tweet or two. Today out of nowhere

:13:58.:14:02.

it was the executives of GM getting a kicking from the President-elect.

:14:03.:14:16.

That left the American car giant scrambling for a response. The

:14:17.:14:22.

company pointed out that the model is actually made in a fire while the

:14:23.:14:27.

car is built in Mexico -- cars built in Mexico were for the global market

:14:28.:14:33.

but 4500 had made their way to America dealerships. This is the

:14:34.:14:37.

issue that Donald Trump made his own in the campaign. We are living

:14:38.:14:41.

through the greatest jobs theft in the history of the world. Our jobs

:14:42.:14:47.

are going to Mexico. And he is not giving up on it with no US

:14:48.:14:51.

corporation immune from the naming and shaming. And it seems to be

:14:52.:14:55.

yielding results. Today Ford announced that it planned to do a

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$1.6 billion plant in Mexico was being shelved and instead an

:15:02.:15:06.

existing plant in Michigan would be expanded, creating 700 new jobs. The

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CEO admitted that it was largely down to trump's policies. The

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announcement we are making today of $700 million investment here in

:15:18.:15:20.

Michigan and adding 700 jobs, one of the factors we put into that was the

:15:21.:15:24.

more favourable US business environment that we seek under

:15:25.:15:29.

President-elect 's trump. And bullying by tweet scored another

:15:30.:15:33.

victory as he rounded on Republicans for wanting to strip Congress's

:15:34.:15:37.

independent ethics committee of its powers. He went on social media to

:15:38.:15:39.

say... After this it tweet as House

:15:40.:15:55.

Republicans gathered, word came out they had abandoned their plan.

:15:56.:15:59.

Democrats warned this couldn't be presidency by tweet. The Making

:16:00.:16:05.

America great again requires more than 140 characters per issue. The

:16:06.:16:13.

With all due respect, America cannot afford a Twitter presidency. The

:16:14.:16:17.

Republicans had wanted to show unity of purpose today, but at times

:16:18.:16:20.

looked more united with the Democrats on the other side. With

:16:21.:16:25.

this PR disaster, they seem to have hit the ground stumbling. Jon joins

:16:26.:16:29.

me now from Washington. It certainly shows the power of his tweets. Is

:16:30.:16:33.

that what we're going to have to get used to? I think it is the new

:16:34.:16:39.

politics that we are in. If you are a politician, a diplomat, a

:16:40.:16:41.

businessman, a journalist, you have to start your day now, not with a

:16:42.:16:46.

cup of coffee, look at Donald Trump's Twitter feed. If you look at

:16:47.:16:52.

what he said in the past few weeks, various different countries have

:16:53.:16:57.

been in the cross hairs. He has rewritten American nuclear policy

:16:58.:16:59.

settled for 40 years. He has gone after individuals and

:17:00.:17:03.

gone after corporations. With the two examples we have seen today

:17:04.:17:06.

there have been successes. He promised to drain the swamp,

:17:07.:17:09.

Republicans look like they were going back on that. He whacked them

:17:10.:17:14.

one, they caved in. Likewise, Ford announcing it's moving its plant to

:17:15.:17:19.

Michigan, not Mexico. The So it used to be the case that with the

:17:20.:17:22.

President you would scratch your head and say - I wonder what they

:17:23.:17:26.

really think. With Donald Trump you know exactly what he thinks. How

:17:27.:17:30.

seriously do we take it? There was a really good comment by someone, a

:17:31.:17:34.

journalist a little while back he said, the mistake the establishment

:17:35.:17:38.

makes is it takes Donald Trump literally, but not seriously.

:17:39.:17:43.

Whereas the public take him seriously, but not literally. I

:17:44.:17:46.

think that everyone has got a lot of learning to do in this new

:17:47.:17:50.

presidency. Jon Sopel, in Washington, thank you.

:17:51.:17:58.

There's been more fighting in Yemen, with 11 civilians,

:17:59.:18:00.

including five members of one family, reported to have been killed

:18:01.:18:03.

in clashes between pro-government forces and rebels.

:18:04.:18:05.

It's believed they're supported financially by Iran.

:18:06.:18:09.

They managed to take over the capital, Sanaa, in 2014.

:18:10.:18:16.

A coalition, led by Saudi Arabia, began an air

:18:17.:18:18.

But the rebels still retain control of large parts

:18:19.:18:25.

of Yemen and the front-lines shift constantly.

:18:26.:18:29.

Nawal al-Maghafi has been to the country

:18:30.:18:31.

and reports on the danger for civilians caught in the middle.

:18:32.:18:34.

This is where the battle to retake the capital begins.

:18:35.:18:37.

The mountains ahead are all that stand between the army

:18:38.:18:40.

Their commander is taking us high up into the front-line positions.

:18:41.:18:49.

He tells me the terrain makes it a natural fortress for the Houthi

:18:50.:18:52.

rebels and his men are always exposed to death.

:18:53.:18:54.

It's the first time any international broadcaster has

:18:55.:18:56.

The army are just 40 miles from the capital.

:18:57.:19:08.

But the closer they push into the mountains,

:19:09.:19:10.

TRANSLATION: Every day we make some progress,

:19:11.:19:13.

People are lost, but at least land is liberated.

:19:14.:19:19.

The rebels are retreating on a daily basis.

:19:20.:19:24.

But both sides have reached a stalemate.

:19:25.:19:32.

Despite arms and air support from the Saudi-led coalition,

:19:33.:19:34.

these fighters from the national army haven't made any major gains.

:19:35.:19:39.

And, as they fight for ground, the situation in Yemen has

:19:40.:19:42.

As the front lines shift, landmines have been left behind.

:19:43.:19:52.

The army say that the Houthi rebels have planted tens of thousands

:19:53.:19:55.

of them in both military and civilian areas.

:19:56.:19:57.

The scale of the problem makes Yemen one of the worst affected

:19:58.:20:00.

Despite a lack of training, the army say they've defused over

:20:01.:20:06.

The locals in this area say all their farmland was mined.

:20:07.:20:14.

This is one of the areas that the Houthis had control

:20:15.:20:17.

of as they were trying to take over Marib.

:20:18.:20:20.

The national army and the people of Marib then pushed them out.

:20:21.:20:31.

As they were doing so, the Houthis planted

:20:32.:20:34.

landmines, scattered all over these fields.

:20:35.:20:36.

Sul and his family fled once the fighting started,

:20:37.:20:38.

they thought it was safe to return to their home.

:20:39.:20:40.

TRANSLATION: My wife was praying here in the room and my son

:20:41.:20:43.

They had lunch and my son asked my wife to pass him a blanket.

:20:44.:20:48.

As she pulled the blanket, there was a huge explosion.

:20:49.:20:57.

The mine planted in his home killed his wife, 22-year-old son

:20:58.:21:00.

"It hurts to remember what happened", he says,

:21:01.:21:03.

The Houthis strongly deny the use of landmines in civilian areas.

:21:04.:21:10.

They say they only target military vehicles and accuse the coalition

:21:11.:21:13.

Regardless of who's responsible, the prospect for a lasting solution

:21:14.:21:21.

remains distant and the Yemeni people, stuck in the middle,

:21:22.:21:23.

A brief look at some of the day's other news stories.

:21:24.:21:38.

A British soldier, who was killed in Iraq yesterday, has been named

:21:39.:21:43.

as Lance Corporal Scott Hetherington of 2nd Battalion The Duke

:21:44.:21:45.

He died at Camp Taji, north of Baghdad.

:21:46.:21:50.

It's understood that he'd been shot after the accidental

:21:51.:21:52.

Tributes have been paid to a former chef from West Sussex who's been

:21:53.:22:00.

killed fighting the Islamic State group in Syria.

:22:01.:22:05.

Ryan Lock, who was 20, had told his family he was going

:22:06.:22:08.

on holiday to Turkey, but instead joined Kurdish militia.

:22:09.:22:10.

He died during an assault on the city of Raqqa in December.

:22:11.:22:15.

Some British Airways cabin crew are to stage a 48-hour strike

:22:16.:22:17.

Members of the Unite union have rejected a new offer aimed

:22:18.:22:21.

A previous walk-out, planned for Christmas Day and Boxing Day,

:22:22.:22:35.

BA says it plans to ensure that all their customers can travel

:22:36.:22:39.

A court in France has given four Chelsea fans suspended sentences

:22:40.:22:44.

for racially abusing a man on the Paris Metro in 2015.

:22:45.:22:47.

The four were also ordered to pay more than ?8,000 in compensation

:22:48.:22:50.

to the black Frenchman who was filmed being pushed off

:22:51.:22:55.

A routine journey home, two years ago, that became a national scandal.

:22:56.:23:05.

Frenchman Souleymane Sylla pushed off his train three times that

:23:06.:23:08.

night by Chelsea fans singing racist chants.

:23:09.:23:15.

We're Chelsea, we're racists and that's the way we like it.

:23:16.:23:19.

TRANSLATION: Because of them I had problems.

:23:20.:23:25.

Because of them I wasn't able to ride the subway.

:23:26.:23:27.

Because of them I was held back in my job and my future was changed.

:23:28.:23:32.

Avoiding the cameras at a Paris court today,

:23:33.:23:46.

the two youngest accused Joshua Parsons and James Fairburn

:23:47.:23:48.

denied their actions that night had been racist.

:23:49.:23:50.

Another two men, including a 52-year-old former police officer,

:23:51.:23:52.

The panel of judges found all four defendants guilty of violence,

:23:53.:23:56.

aggravated by racism, handing down suspended sentences

:23:57.:23:57.

of between six and 12 months and awarding ?8,000 of damages.

:23:58.:24:00.

TRANSLATION: My client was found guilty because he was in the wrong

:24:01.:24:03.

The court did not take into account individual responsibility.

:24:04.:24:08.

This is a misunderstanding and I think this decision

:24:09.:24:10.

It took just a few hours for judges to find the four men guilty,

:24:11.:24:18.

three have already been banned from matches in Britain.

:24:19.:24:21.

French football has had its own taint of racism in recent years,

:24:22.:24:26.

but this episode, randomly caught on camera, has also tarnished

:24:27.:24:29.

the image of British football in France.

:24:30.:24:30.

A Government initiative on starter homes for first-time

:24:31.:24:48.

buyers in England is due to get underway this year.

:24:49.:24:50.

But the housing backlog is so big that it could take

:24:51.:24:53.

The roots of today's housing crisis in Britain are often traced

:24:54.:24:56.

back to the sell-off of the nation's council houses.

:24:57.:24:58.

Back in 1981, almost a third of English households

:24:59.:25:01.

Today, that number has dropped to less than one in ten.

:25:02.:25:13.

As our correspondent Jeremy Cooke reports.

:25:14.:25:15.

New homes for housing crisis Britain, and not

:25:16.:25:17.

just any new houses, these are council houses.

:25:18.:25:19.

They're a rare sight, but this is Birmingham,

:25:20.:25:21.

where they've built more council houses in the past seven years

:25:22.:25:24.

than any other local authority - on a mission to tackle a housing

:25:25.:25:27.

waiting list that stands at 18,000 people.

:25:28.:25:32.

The Osmonds' have been in their flat for eight years,

:25:33.:25:35.

but the family has long outgrown the space available.

:25:36.:25:37.

If we want to play, we have to just like play there for 10 minutes

:25:38.:25:40.

Now, they've heard it's their time to move into one

:25:41.:25:45.

We've been trying and trying and trying to get a house.

:25:46.:25:52.

We never expected to get a new house.

:25:53.:25:57.

Cambridge is one of a handful of local authorities who've just

:25:58.:26:00.

qualified for Government money to start building council houses,

:26:01.:26:03.

but there are warnings that it will take 20 years to fix a problem

:26:04.:26:07.

that's already been around for decades.

:26:08.:26:11.

The fundamental problem is that Government stops us

:26:12.:26:13.

The total value of all of our housing is ?1.5 billion,

:26:14.:26:18.

if they just gave us the freedom to borrow against that,

:26:19.:26:21.

we could build 10,000 homes over the next 20-30 years.

:26:22.:26:26.

The Government insists that the number of council houses

:26:27.:26:29.

being built today is at its highest rate since 1996 and that there

:26:30.:26:32.

are billions of pounds available to fund them.

:26:33.:26:36.

But the numbers are creeping back from an all-time low in 2004,

:26:37.:26:39.

when the UK built just 130 council homes.

:26:40.:26:41.

Hard to believe that in 1953, that number was a high of 245,000.

:26:42.:26:47.

Homes for the baby-boomers and beyond.

:26:48.:26:55.

NEWS REEL: ARCHIVE: Even by present standards,

:26:56.:26:57.

The dinette has a serving hatch to the kitchen.

:26:58.:27:12.

Ageing tower blocks, once the future, are being torn down,

:27:13.:27:15.

clearing the way for a new approach to modern, social housing.

:27:16.:27:18.

There are people living in these already?

:27:19.:27:22.

New council houses and new houses for sale.

:27:23.:27:25.

Now, in Birmingham, it's back to the future -

:27:26.:27:27.

We're also bringing empty properties back into use

:27:28.:27:32.

in the city and we're also, where necessary, using

:27:33.:27:34.

So we're using all the tool kit, really.

:27:35.:27:40.

But when council homes are built, they do change lives.

:27:41.:27:45.

The Osmonds get a first look at their house and,

:27:46.:27:47.

But for most of the 1.4 million on England's council

:27:48.:27:55.

house waiting lists, this is still a distant dream.

:27:56.:27:57.

It's one of Scotland's most beautiful mountain ranges,

:27:58.:28:07.

but a couple from Leicestershire, who disappeared after setting off

:28:08.:28:12.

with their dog on a New Year's day walk in the Cairngorms,

:28:13.:28:23.

have been speaking of their lucky escape.

:28:24.:28:24.

Bob and Cathy Elmer, both experienced hill walkers,

:28:25.:28:26.

were caught out after miscalculating the length of their walk.

:28:27.:28:29.

They were forced to spend the night in a white out

:28:30.:28:31.

after the cloud suddenly closed in and it began snowing.

:28:32.:28:34.

Our Scotland correspondent, Lorna Gordon, has the story.

:28:35.:28:36.

The brutal conditions of a Scottish winter.

:28:37.:28:43.

Out on the hills - 50 mph winds, freezing temperatures and deep snow.

:28:44.:28:46.

Bob and Cathy Elmer had become disorientated in the appalling

:28:47.:28:50.

weather and had realised their only option was to hunker down

:28:51.:28:52.

Their footprints and those of their dog, spotted

:28:53.:28:57.

from a helicopter, helped narrow the search.

:28:58.:28:58.

Then this, the moment a mountain rescue team found them and then

:28:59.:29:09.

The snow was, at times, up to our waist.

:29:10.:29:13.

We eventually got out onto the plateau with the intention

:29:14.:29:16.

of trying to find the summit of Cairngorm, and then my head lamp

:29:17.:29:23.

gave up, so we decided that we couldn't go on any further

:29:24.:29:26.

because we didn't know really where we were going.

:29:27.:29:28.

You couldn't see a hand in front of your face,

:29:29.:29:31.

so we decided to get the survival bags out and get down

:29:32.:29:34.

It was a move rescuers believed saved their lives

:29:35.:29:37.

and that of their dog, Meg, who had her own

:29:38.:29:39.

Conditions were Arctic and in the area they were, you know,

:29:40.:29:44.

no matter which way they walked, there was steep ground

:29:45.:29:52.

there and in the dark, with one head torch and disorientated, it

:29:53.:29:55.

would have been so easy to take a very, very serious tumble.

:29:56.:29:58.

This is one of Scotland's's highest mountains and conditions further up

:29:59.:30:01.

towards the summit can close in quickly, catching out even

:30:02.:30:03.

And the couple's close call underlines just how dangerous

:30:04.:30:07.

It's like they say, if we hadn't had the right equipment,

:30:08.:30:13.

It is a grim place up there in the winter time, especially

:30:14.:30:17.

And, you know, if you're not prepared for it,

:30:18.:30:22.

you can seriously run into some serious situations.

:30:23.:30:24.

Safely down, but not put off and determined to return

:30:25.:30:26.

We'll definitely be back, but we'll probably be a little bit

:30:27.:30:39.

Willie's a very careful driver, he'll look after you.

:30:40.:30:43.

Keen, but certainly more cautious after their New Year's Day walk

:30:44.:30:45.

Lorna Gordon, BBC News, Cairngorm mountain.

:30:46.:30:52.

Ten questions for 2017, and we'll have eight guests

:30:53.:31:03.

Yes, we'll be looking at the year ahead -

:31:04.:31:14.

Here, on BBC One, it's time for the news where you are.

:31:15.:31:16.

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