28/10/2013 BBC News at Six

Four dead after hurricane force winds batter southern Britain.

Hundreds of trees have been brought down, causing road and rail

disruption. Wind speeds of nearly 100 miles per hour. At the height of

the storm half a million homes were left without power. The tree was

coming into the kitchen, actually coming into the kitchen.

Crushed in the caravan she was sleeping in - Bethany Freeman was

17-years-old. Still missing and feared dead - the

14-year-old boy swept out to sea yesterday. We'll have the latest on

the trail of destruction left by the storm.

Also tonight: The trial of former News of the World editors begins -

Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson are accused of being involved in hacking

voicemails. A call for an end to the culture of

delay and denial - a new report on making complaints about the NHS in

England. Coming up in this sport, the UEFA

president proposes an expansion of the World Cup from 32 teams to 40,

in time for the tournament in Russia in 2018.

Good evening and welcome to the BBC's News at Six O'Clock. At least

four people have died in one of the worst storms to hit southern parts

of the UK for years. Near hurricane force conditions left more than half

a million homes without electricity. Wind speeds hit 99 miles per hour on

the Isle of Wight. There was widespread rail and road disruption.

The storm, which began overnight, cut a trail of destruction across

large parts of England with dozens of flood alerts left in its wake.

Robert Hall reports on the day's events.

Racing in on the Jetstream, the storm they named Saint Jude rattled

our roof tiles and announced its presence with a swathe of damage. As

predicted, the channel facing seaside towns and cities where the

first to face the wind as it howled in from the west. In this case, the

calm waters of Brighton Marina encircled by the white horses of a

treacherous tide. Recorded wind speed steadily increased, 70, 80, 90

mph, toppling trees in country woodland, urban streets and claiming

lives. 17-year-old Bethany Freeman died as she slept in a mobile home

which was crushed by a 30 foot tree. Her mother, sleeping in another

mobile home a few yards away survived. Bethany and her family

were living in this temporary accommodation while their home was

being rebuilt. Bethany went to school in Tunbridge Wells, short

distance from here. On the school website she was described as

universally respected with everything to look forward to. Neil

Chapman had been teaching Bethany to drive. She was a lovely kid. I can't

believe it. I have just arrived. Shocked. What can I say? In Watford,

north of London, Donal Drohan died when a tree fell across his car.

Police said he had sent plebeian in the wrong place at the wrong time. A

few seconds either way could have saved him. In Hounslow in west

London, and man and a woman died in an explosion which wrecked three

houses. It is thought a falling tree severed a gas pipe. During the

course of the day, unfortunately, two bodies have been found, the

bodies of a male and female. They are in different parts of the

building. At this stage, I would like to offer my condolences to the

family of the two deceased. On the south coast, the search for a

14-year-old boy missing since yesterday, has been called off. Life

boat crews and rescue teams had spent long hours in worsening

conditions but to no avail. Dylan Alkins was swept away from the

shoreline at New Haven in East Sussex as the storm approached.

Saint Jude dashed across to the east, took in the Monday rush hour

with inevitable consequences. Dozens of lines were blocked by fallen

trees adding to the cancellations. At Reading station, commuters filled

the mobile networks with their calls of apology and explanation. Trying

to get to Winchester and it is just a nightmare. It is horrible. I am

heading to Southampton and I am stuck here. I do not think I will

get to my destination on time. The Gaels are heading for Scandinavia.

Their passing will be remembered for a good while yet, like the

householder who filmed a garden marquise somersaulting past his

window. By the civil servants who gazed up at a crumpled crane above

the rooftops of Whitehall. By the shipping companies whose vessels

rode out the storm, unable to land urgently needed cargoes. Today's

science had given us adequate warning, Saint Jude is another Up to

half a million homes were left without power as the storm swept

across southern and eastern England. Reminder of the unpredictable

consequences of an autumn storm. Emergency crews have managed to

re-connect more than three quarters of the homes but their work has been

hampered by blocked roads. Our correspondent, Duncan Kennedy is in

Pangbourne in Berkshire. Some 18 hours after this storm first

came ashore on the British trials, it is still causing problems,

particularly with the wind which has brought down trees including here in

Berkshire. Although it is hard to come by exact figures, it is

believed that tens or hundreds of thousands of people are still

without electricity. As the storm swept in, the power cut

out, around half a million homes left without electricity across a

great swathes of the United Kingdom. Dorothy Pickering in Berkshire was

one of them. The whole village losing its power and electronic key

pumped water. Woke up at six -ish and suddenly everything was black

and there was nothing. Came down and got the radio and put it on the

battery to check what was happening and they knew that we had no other

visiting. In another part of Berkshire, these women lost there

are visited. It added an extra plot to their monthly book club meeting,

the discussion this time turning from literature to lights. It put me

in a fair bad mood in the morning, because I had to boil up water on

the gas stove. If when I go back it is not on, I will have to light the

fire and do myself beans on the fire. Across Wiltshire, more power

lines were being knocked out. This one is on the outskirts of

Warminster in Wiltshire where the storm has been rattling through this

morning. It brought down this particular tree and also some power

lines and telephone lines. The council say they will be along to

try and chop it up and opened this road, just one of the transport

problems that people are facing as this storm passes through. As

workmen came to dismantle the tree, neighbours said they worked out

their own way to light the street. We stood here with torches for a

couple of hours until it was light so that people could see the tree

was there. Dennis got a shock of a non-electrical kind. I opened the

door and we have got a tree in the garden. That was close. Very close.

He nearly lost more than his power supply. We opened up the kitchen

door and the tree was coming into the kitchen, actually coming into

the kitchen. For Dennis, the biggest jolt came to his treasured model

railway set, where, like the lives of tens of thousands of people

today, it was derailed by an unforgiving storm. Around 200

engineers have been working across the main sections of southern

England today to restore power supplies. They are meeting problems,

debris on the roads, trees across the road, particularly affecting the

Moron eight villages in counties like Berkshire. We are being told it

could be some days yet before everybody is able to get their

supplies fully back on. Thank you.

Network Rail said the damage caused by the storm had been more severe

than expected. Let's get the latest on disruption from our correspondent

Helen Fawkes who's at Kings Cross station in central London. What is

it looking like this evening? This is a much busier rush-hour than

normal. Many delays and disruptions for passengers this evening. Here at

King's Cross, one of the worst affected railway stations in London,

services only received a couple of hours ago. There are only a few

trains coming and going. Network Rail said the situation as a whole

is improving but there will not be a normal service today. They said the

majority of lines are open with a reduced service. Midland mainline is

the only service which is entirely closed. There are problems on South

West Trains, East Coast, Virgin West Coast and East Anglia. Network Rail

say there is plenty of work to do to repair the damage but they hope that

by tomorrow they will be as near normal service as possible thank

you. Unlike the Great Storm of 1987,

which took weather forecasters by surprise, warnings about today's

storm were first issued by the Met Office a week ago. More advanced

technology has made predicting the weather far more reliable, as our

Science Editor David Shukman now explains.

From extraordinary violence along the south coast, to wreckage at the

heart of government in Whitehall, the storm had been forecast to pack

a punch and it did. Sweeping over southern Britain this morning, the

winds were the result of the battle of air masses which began thousands

of miles away. The precise damage, the exact timing, these could never

have been predicted in detail, but as the wreckage is cleared, it is

obvious forecasters had spotted potential trouble very early on and

they made sure we all knew about it. It was last week, with this

satellite picture with a swirl of clouds, that the Met Office was

first alerted to the risk of a storm. Even a few days ago,

observations from space were revealing the key ingredients. The

Jetstream was flowing fast in a great loop over the antic.

Meanwhile, warm air from the gulf of Mexico was being drawn upwards. This

combination was the basic driver of the storm. As it crossed the

Atlantic, it intensified with cold air being brought in from the north

and this was the result the moment of the storm, intense low-pressure,

causing powerful winds. We have seen how damaging they have been but we

had plenty of warning. The last really serious storm was in 1987.

Back then, 18 people lost their lives. 50 million trees were brought

down at the gusts of wind were stronger than now. It is not 1987,

it is a level down but one similarity is it deepened when it

moved across the UK and this one had a steam jet. That is literally a

sting in the tail. Behind the low-pressure system you have some

really strong downdraught. The forecast themselves have come a long

way. In 1987 the forecaster Michael Fish famously got it wrong. Earlier

on a woman rang the BBC and said she had heard there was a hurricane on

the way. If you are watching, don't worry, there is not. Ironically, he

was caught up in today's storm. A favourite tree was brought down. We

have got better computers, better brains working in the head office in

Exeter putting things into the computers. Now our present four-day

forecast is as accurate as one day forecast was years ago. Weather will

never be totally predictable, but the lesson from today is the more

warning we have, the better. For more information on the weather

and disruption in your area go to bbc.co.uk/news.

Now for the rest of the news. The trial has begun of two former

editors of the News of World on phone hacking charges. Rebekah

Brooks and Andy Coulson, who later became David Cameron's

communications chief, are also accused of making unlawful payments

to public officials. Both deny the charges. From the Old Bailey our

Home Affairs Correspondent June Kelly reports.

Once she was the most powerful woman in British newspapers, with links to

successive Prime Minister is. From today, Rebekah Brooks is one of the

leading figures in this criminal trial. Facing charges with her, her

husband Charlie Brooks. Also in the dock, Andy Coulson, the former

editor of the News of the World. He moved into government when David

Cameron made him the director of communications. He used to go

through the door of ten Downing St, now he will be familiar with the

front entrance of the Central criminal Court. The Old Bailey is

the setting for a case which is set to make local headlines. Two years

after the hacking affair blew up, this is the media reporting on their

own. It was the hacking of a phone belonging to the missing teenager

Milly Dowler, later found murdered, which became the tipping point in

this controversy. Within days, Rupert Murdoch announced the closure

of the News of the World. Staff on one of the country's most

established titles left the building for the last time after finishing

the final addition. Meanwhile, the police investigation went right to

the top of the Murdoch empire. Rebekah Brooks is now on trial for

conspiracy to intercept mobile phone messages, that is phone hacking.

Conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office. The allegation here

is unlawful payments to public officials. And conspiring to pervert

the course of justice. This is about allegedly removing and concealing

evidence. Andy Coulson is facing two charges. He is accused of conspiring

to intercept mobile phone messages and spirited to commit misconduct in

public office. They are among eight people on trial. Apart from Rebekah

Brooks' husband, all our current or former News International employees.

All the defendants deny all the charges against them. They left

court this evening having seen the start of the jury selection

process. Potential jurors have been told the trial could run until

Easter. The jury will be sworn in tomorrow and then the prosecution is

due to open its case. Storms have swept across Britain, bringing

disruption to travel and power cuts to thousands of homes. I am in the

sky over southern England to find out what happened. In sports day,

England's rugby league side will be without sunbird Jess after he was

given a one match ban for a high tackle in their opening defeat to

Australia. We have all seen piles of litter on our streets, parks and

pavements. Much of it is the direct result of our fondness for fast food

and sweets. Britain's population has risen by 21% since the 1960s, but

the amount of litter we drop has gone up by a staggering 500%.

According to Keep Britain Tidy it now costs more than ?1 billion a

year to clean up the mess. Joan Bakewell has joined forces with the

BBC's Panorama to look at what is being done to tackle it. Is Britain

disappearing under a layer of litter? 30 million tonnes are

collected from England's Street every year. Who is doing it? The

general public. And then they moan that their poll tax goes up, but

they are doing it. I do not like to see people's dirty rubbish bags and

dumping it in the middle of the street. Since the 90s we have had

some of the toughest litter laws in Europe. But while some councils

issue hundreds of fines, others issue hardly any. It costs us about

?1 billion to pick up the litter and that might buy as 30,000 nurses or

30,000 care assistance or over 4000 libraries. Jeremy Paxman does not

only grill politicians, as a patron of Clean Up Britain, he has got a

lot to say about litter. This is not about living in a filthy

environment. It is about the way we think of ourselves and other members

of society. If I throw away a bit of rubbish, I do not want it around me

any more and I fail to recognise it is then around somebody else. In

Manchester I met a group of volunteers taking things into their

own hands. You can have a read one or a green one. Meet the poo

busters. I started spraying it with biodegradable spray-painted to tell

people I did not like what they were doing. It is peer pressure, the

community telling other members of the community it is not a perfect

thing to do. But is peer pressure and paint enough to change

anything? Our hectic, eat on the go culture is here to stay. But there

are some councils, businesses and individuals working together which

has left me mildly optimistic that we can tidy up Britain. And you can

watch Panorama tonight at 8:30pm on BBC One. There needs to be a

revolution in the way the NHS in England handles complaints according

to an independent review. It says too many patients find the current

approach confusing and often not knowing to. Our health correspondent

Branwen Jeffreys reports. When Reginald died he left a family

believed but also angry. His daughter Pauline fought for seven

years to get an apology for his hospital care. He did not have any

food, any drink, he was not given his medication. He was not taken out

of bed to go to the toilet. He was not incontinent, but he was just

left on the sheet. We watched him every day. His care was absolutely

abysmal. She eventually hired lawyers. It is so difficult to make

a complaint against the NHS, they do not listen to you at all. Another

death at University Hospital in Cardiff also shaped this review. In

2012, Owen Roberts spent his last 24 hours on a trolley in accident and

emergency. His wife, MP and Clywd, was asked to investigate complaints

after she raised the issue in Parliament. There are increasing

complaints about nurses who fail to show care and compassion to their

patients. The review she led says hospitals need to publish

information about complaints, but most of all staff need to listen

when concerns our first raised. We hope this report will make it easier

for people to complain and the complaint will not escalate and will

be dealt with at the time it happens. This review is calling for

a big culture change in the way the NHS listens to concerns and deals

with complaints. It says in that change does not happen, they will be

back here at the Department of Health in one-year's time asking for

more radical steps to be taken. Patient groups say change will only

happen if the NHS stops being defensive. Unfortunately, NHS staff

do not see complaint as a way of learning. They could see them to

help their job better, but if they are not going to take this

approach, the culture will never change. Most families want answers,

but not excuses, when mistakes are made, but most of all to know that

lessons have been made. A Unite union official at the centre of the

Grangemouth dispute last week has resigned from his job. Stephen Denes

was waiting to hear about a disciplinary case against him

tomorrow. Upgrading existing rail lines instead of going ahead with

the proposed HS2 railing could lead to 14 years of weekend route

closures according to a government backed study. The report says the

east coast, the West Coast and Midland lines will all be severely

disrupted. Our transport correspondent is at Piccadilly in

Manchester. This comes before the govern -- the government makes its

latest case for any -- HS2. We have had a taster of what is

going to come tomorrow. The government is trying to persuade

everybody the benefits outweigh the costs. Today they told us that if

you did the next best thing, if you did not build HS2 and you beefed up

all the lines we have got already, including this one, then you get 14

years worth of weekend delays and closures, passengers forced onto bus

services. They say there is no alternative. They are laying the

ground for the business case tomorrow. There is also a vote on

Thursday one we are expecting some conservative and maybe Labour MPs to

rebel against it tomorrow. But the big thing tomorrow is this business

case which should be out at about 9:30am. We will hear from you then.

At least five people are dead and another 38 were injured after a

vehicle crashed into a crowd of people in Beijing. The incident

occurred on the edge of the politically sensitive area of

Tiananmen Square at the entrance to the Forbidden City. No information

was released about the cause. More on the storm that swept across

southern England leaving a trail of destruction behind it. At one point

in the day half a million homes were left without power. Jeremy Cooke has

been getting a bird's I's view. Across the south and east of

England, widespread disruption. Even when the storm had passed thousands

of commuters faced hours of delay and frustration. If your day started

in John Bridge, it probably started slowly. The problem was trees on the

lines, hundreds of them, up and down the rail network. At the other end

of the line Waterloo station was at a standstill, with trains backed up

with nowhere to go. And so it went on all day. Four mile after mile we

have seen the same thing. Some of the nation's busiest rail lines are

completely diverted, nothing moving into or out of London. Also on hold,

Felixstowe container terminal. This place is normally a hive of

activity, but today it is static. The cost of the storm will be

millions. The cost, of course, in casualties as well. As well as those

who lost their lives, others were injured in random events. We are

seeing a series of isolated incidents happening as the storm has

passed through. In some places there have been disastrous consequences.

Even Whitehall did not escape. A crane crashed down near Downing

Street. For many of us it has been little more than a windy day in

autumn, for others a day of tragedy and destruction. Let's hope for some

calm. The weather returned to normal for

us, but the storm lives on and it has crossed into Denmark with gusts

of 115 mph. It will move into the Baltic sea overnight. Back at home

we are left with some pretty breezy conditions. Overnight tonight some

blustery showers mainly in the north and the West. Through this evening

and overnight you can still see it is on the breezy side with heavy

downpours around. The eastern areas are seeing the clearest skies. The

lowest temperatures in the Glens of Scotland. But for tomorrow morning

whilst the clear up will continue, thankfully the weather is much

quieter. Many of the Southern counties are looking dry and then

maybe one or two showers scattered around. Some showers from the word

go in the Park of West Midlands. Cloudier for western Scotland, but

eastern Scotland should get off to a dry and a sunny start. We will keep

a few showers as we go through the day, with a few skirting inland at

times. Later in the day they fade away. All the while it remains

pretty breezy, which takes the edge of temperatures. Feeling cooler and

a cold start to Wednesday morning. Maybe the risk of a touch of Frost.

But we have got another weather system bringing a band of heavy rain

and some strong winds and that moves its way south throughout the day. A

bit of a mixed picture. Our main story: The worst storms to hit

Britain for years have left at least four people dead. Strong winds and

rain brought travel disruption and power cuts to thousands of homes.

Now we can join the news