16/02/2017 BBC News at Six

More misery for hundreds of thousands of commuters as a deal

to resolve one of the country's longest running rail

Southern Rail passengers face the prospect of more

strikes as train drivers go against their union refusing

My husband pays almost ?4,000 a year for his season ticket and he doesn't

know when he turns up at the railway station in the morning, whether he's

I feel it's the job of both the unions and the management

Surely that's what they're there for.

We'll be asking when the next strikes are likely to take place.

We report on the plight of hundreds of thousands of children in the UK

who are forced to care for sick and disabled relatives

Fears for the future of thousands of jobs at Vauxall's UK plants.

Crisis talks are held with the government and unions.

More than 150 thousand million million miles away,

scientists build a telescope to see the black hole thought to be

The new wren is welcomed by a Petty Officer and ushered

into the presence of the Chief Officer.

And the women's Royal Naval Service founded a century ago,

that marked a huge change in women's roles in the armed forces.

And coming up in the sport on BBC News, Arsene Wenger's future will be

decided at the end of the season, after his Arsenal side

were humiliated in the Champions League by Bayern Munich.

Good evening and welcome to the BBC News at Six.

Hopes for an end to the rail misery that's affected hundreds

of thousands of commuters in southern England

Train drivers ignored their own union and voted against a proposed

deal to end the long-running dispute with Southern Rail.

It's one of the country's busiest commuter networks.

Unions have been at loggerheads with the company for more

than a year over staffing and safety issues.

For nearly a year, around 300,000 commuters have

endured overcrowded trains, delays and strikes.

It's been one of the most intractable rail

After two weeks of talks hosted by the TUC it was thought

We are pleased to announce that Aslef and GTR Southern have

For Southern travellers at Brighton that means huge disappointment.

And I pay a lot of money for the train monthly as well,

That's terrible. What can you do?

It's a lot of money on Uber, isn't it?

Disappointed, to be fair, because I pay a lot of money

to travel to Brighton every day and I think the service

Around 900 Aslef drivers who work for Southern voted in the ballot.

There was a turnout of over 72%, nearly 46% voted in favour

of the deal, but over 54% voted against.

This is an embarrassment for Aslef, the deal negotiated

by their leadership has been overturned by their rank

Mick Whelan, the general secretary of Aslef says,

"We understand and support the decision arrived at them

The dispute is over how many members of staff should be on every train.

Could there be driver only trains or must there

always be a second person, a conductor, on-board?

Aslef said they had got a deal where there would always be two

staff members on a train, with some exceptions.

The reality was there was a whole host of exceptions that meant up

to 1800 trains a day would be able to run without the

Southern's parent company Govia said in a statement:

"Naturally we are saddened and hugely disappointed, as will be our

passengers with today's decision by drivers,

particularly as the agreement carried the full support

and recommendation of the Aslef leadership."

The RMT has already scheduled another 24-hour

strike on the Southern network for next Wednesday,

and the same dispute about driver operated only trains is spreading

Ballots are being sent out today to staff on Arriva Trains North,

there's also the prospect of industrial action on Merseyrail.

The big question for these passengers travelling home tonight

is, what happens next? In the short term, the Aslef leadership would

have to get back around the negotiating table to get a better

deal if they can to their members. In the long term, there is the

possibility, only the possibility at the moment, of more strike action,

although no dates have been announced. Remember, this is the

train drivers we are talking about here. When they go on strike, the

network is virtually shut down. More than half a million children

and teenagers in the UK are carers who look after their ill

or disabled relatives. Some spend more than 12 hours

a week looking after them. But budget cuts at local councils

are making it increasingly difficult for these young people to get

the support that they need - that's according to the Local

Government Association They say it's crucial for councils

to have better relationships with schools and hospitals

to try to make sure more youngsters Our Midlands Correspondent

Sima Kotecha reports. In Dudley, 17-year-old Alex

looks after his mum, I suppose you could say it's

a big responsibility, but it doesn't really feel like it,

because, obviously It's just the normal thing to go,

have you had your tablet today? How many tablets does

your mum take everyday? It's just trying to

sort out which ones. He's her primary carer

and is one of 700,000 young It is frustrating at times

because you do just want to throw the towel in sometimes and just

go, I've had enough. But then you see at the end

of the day, you just see how happy you make the person or the people

that you care for, and it really Some of these young people do get

support from the local authorities, but the organisation

which represents local councils in England and Wales says,

tight budgets means they are having to make tough choices about who gets

help and who doesn't. There might be some people

watching this thinking, is it fair to have a Child helping

you and being there for you, when actually the adult should be

there for the child. I agree with that,

to be quite honest. I wish that I hadn't got to rely

on Alex, sort of thing. So I've got to rely on him,

sort of thing, to help me. It's not as though I'm somebody

that he doesn't know. Not too far away in Wolverhampton,

ten-year-old Ethan takes care With his mum, he's one

of his primary carers. Sometimes he does things

that makes us angry. But then he does lots of things that

make us happy as well. Noah has complex learning

difficulties which means He needs to be

supervised at all times. The government says later this year

it will publish a strategy that will outline what more it will do

to help vulnerable young carers. There's an argument that

being young and responsible for someone's well-being is a duty

that's just too much. But in many of these cases,

there is little choice. Sometimes he doesn't

listen to anyone else. But if I tell him to do it,

he will listen to me. And when I tell people about it,

it just makes me feel proud. Sima Kotecha, BBC News

in the West Midlands. The president of General Motors -

which owns Vauxhall in the UK - has flown to London to hold crisis

talks with the government and unions, amid fears

that thousands of jobs A rival French company is in talks

with General Motors about taking over its European business,

but there's concern about what that would mean for Vauxhall's plants

in Luton and Ellesmore Port. Our Business Editor Simon Jack

is in Westminster. Those plants employ

more than 4000 people. I think quite worried, because I can

tell you the government is taking this threat of deadly seriously.

After meeting the president of General Motors here today at the

Department of business behind me, this Secretary Greg Clark got an EU

row start train to Paris and is meeting with his opposite number in

Paris, as we speak, the industrial minister. He will then meet the

board of PSA, deep company that owns citron and Peugeot. This may come

down to a 3-way fight between the French, German and British

governments. In that fight, the French government owns 14% of

Peugeot. The Peugeot family on another 14%, so there will be a

distinguished French feel to this company. You have to feel that

sacked in German auto engineers is considered three times more

expensive. With 24 combined plants across continental Europe, with two

in the UK, it's clear Greg Clark the Business Secretary will have to turn

on the charm he did with Nissan to persuade them to stay in the UK. But

that three could fight he has, it's a bit of a mountain to climb.

A suicide bomber has attacked a crowded Sufi shrine

in southern Pakistan, killing at least 50 people

So-called Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack.

It is the largest in a string of bombings by militants

The Islamic State group has also claimed responsibility for a huge

car bomb in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

45 people died and at least 50 were injured in the blast

which targeted a used car market in the southern district of Bayaa.

It's the third car bomb attack in as many days,

The new US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, has held his first

face to face meeting with his Russian counterpart.

It comes in the wake of turmoil in the White House over alleged

links between the Trump administration and the

Rex Tillerson also held talks with the foreign secretary,

Boris Johnson, as part of a G20 summit in Germany.

From Bonn our diplomatic correspondent, James

Rex Tillerson's first day overseas as Donald Trump's top diplomat,

and it's been the toughest of starts with Washington in turmoil over

links to Russia and much of the outside world worrying

where America's foreign policy could be heading.

Top priority for the new Secretary of State - reassurance.

Russia, he said, won't dictate to Washington.

Where we do not see eye to eye, the United States will stand up

for the interest and values of America and her allies.

And this was the crucial first meeting, America's novice diplomat,

although experienced in commercial dealings with President Putin,

face-to-face with Russia's veteran Foreign Minister,

Sergei Lavrov, eager to deny any Moscow wrong-doing.

You should know that we do not interfere in domestic

But if that was meant to close the issue of alleged

Russian interference in the United States, it didn't.

At Nato headquarters, America's Defence Secretary seemed

REPORTER: Do you believe that the Russians interfered

Right now, I would just say there's very little doubt that they've

either interfered or they've attempted to interfere in a number

So, could Boris Johnson somehow help America out?

The Foreign Secretary came closest to making his new friend,

Rex Tillerson, laugh at their first meeting.

Afterwards, the Foreign Secretary told me they'd had a terrific

conversation, he had no worries at all about the United

We don't want to get into a new Cold War,

that's something that London and Washington are

I think that goes for all our European allies as well.

But nor do we want to allow Russian behaviour to continue

as it is and Rex Tillerson's been very clear about that.

There are plenty of countries represented at this meeting

They remain deeply anxious about the Trump administration,

its policy towards Russia and the Middle East,

over climate change, and the host of this global

gathering, Germany, well, its leader, Chancellor Merkel,

is blunt - no one country, she says, can solve the world's

A 15 year old girl has pleaded not guilty to the murder of a 7 year

Katie Rough was found with severe injuries

on a playing field, and died later in hospital.

The teenager accused of killing her appeared

at Leeds Crown Court this

morning via videolink - charged with murder,

This month we've been focussing on the pressures

on the health service - particularly the crisis

in social care brought about by the Uk's ageing population.

Many say the key to solving it is greater cooperation

between health and social care services - an approach that has been

in place in Northern Ireland for many years with care provided

for some patients at home rather than in hospital.

Here's our Ireland correspondent Chris Buckler.

Hour after hour, people arrive at hospitals looking for treatment.

And to ease that constant pressure, staff need to find ways

of keeping some patients away from this building.

In his living room, Thomas Wright is seeing a doctor.

In his kitchen a nurse is preparing his antibiotics.

Yet in the past, and even now, many 97-year-olds would be

on their way to hospital for this kind of care.

We actually got the call from the paramedic when he was in

the back of the ambulance on his way to hospital.

They rang us first and we said, look, why don't we see him at home?

So we came straight out and saw him here with his son.

He was delighted not to have to make that journey.

In Northern Ireland, like elsewhere around the UK,

operations are regularly having to be cancelled because beds

Now we have all year round pressures.

And we have such a stretch on beds that we are often unable

Waiting lists in Northern Ireland are already among the longest

in the UK, and in recent months politicians have warned the health

At the end of last year they published this,

a 10-year plan to try to change the way services are delivered.

And with this report came a stark warning -

currently, of the total amount of money that Stormont

has for public spending in Northern Ireland,

health and social care takes up around half.

Ministers say unless there is significant change,

that figure will rise to 90% of the total budget within a decade.

It's already showing signs of struggle, financially

showing signs of struggle, showing signs of struggle

in terms of waiting times, and those will both exacerbate

Unlike other parts of the UK, for decades here there's been one

budget for both health and social care.

It can make it easier to offer joined up services.

Mervyn has been waiting years for a kidney transplant

but with support he's able to look after his own dialysis

It's different to the treatment he would get 20 miles away

at hospital in Newry, but there are advantages

It's probably at least a third, maybe in some

cases half as expensive to deliver home dialysis.

And money is a concern for the busy health service in Northern Ireland.

Where the collapse of the power-sharing government has

created uncertainty, not just for politics

More misery for Southern Rail passengers as drivers go

against their union and refuse to accept a deal to end the dispute

Still to come, we'll be live here in Portsmouth Naval dockyard to mark

100 years of the Wrens. Swapping the Premier League

for the Middle East. After taking charge of three

major finals in 2016, referee Mark Clattenburg quits

English football to take up It's more than 150,000 million

million miles away from earth - now an international team

of scientist is determined to try to photograph

the supermassive black hole that they believe is at

the centre of our galaxy. So they've built what's effectively

the world's biggest telescope. Our Science Correspondent,

Pallab Ghosh has had exclusive access to this ambitious project

underway in America. A swirl of stars and planets

including our own Earth. At its centre it has

a heart of darkness, It's an object with immense gravity

that pulls in everything around it. It's so strong that it

even sucks in light. In a few weeks' time,

researchers here will try So, there's a tonne of excitement

around getting this picture. We are all really looking forward

to getting the data in April And not only because it's

going to be super cool to take the first picture of a black hole,

and see it looks like, the immediate environment

around a black hole, So how are scientists down

here on earth going to see the black No single telescope is powerful

enough, so 12 of them, all around the world,

will be linked together, and the images they collect will be

fed into a computer in Boston. Now, our galaxy is a vast

spiral with the earth here on one of the arms,

and the black hole is right at the centre,

153,000 million million miles away. It's four and a half million times

the mass of our sun. No one has ever seen it

but scientists think it looks And very soon they'll find

out if they're right. It's a mind-boggling amount of data

stored on dozens of hard drives flown in from telescopes

all across the world. It will take the team here months

to go through all the information. The project is the brainchild

of Professor Shep Doeleman, who has waited 20 years

for this moment. Black holes have been

mysteries forever. It's been almost a holy grail

for astronomers to be able to image and probe the area right around

the point of no return, What we're going to learn is how

black holes feed and swallow some The scientists here may

have their first image by Christmas. And it'll help them discover how

galaxies are created and what the centre of our own

Milky Way is really like. While we've been on on air,

Donald Trump has been giving his first solo

press conference since He's used it to launch another

attack on the media, The press has become so dishonest

that if we don't talk about it, we are doing a tremendous disservice to

the American people. Tremendous disservice. We have to talk about it

to find out what is going on because the press, honestly, the level of

dishonesty is out of control. Our Washington correspondent was

listening, more sharp words for the media, what else did he have to say?

Extraordinary moment. We got about one hour notice this was going to

happen, it came pretty much out of the blue. He's not given to doing

press conferences, he's controlled them very, closely. We had a sort of

meandering account of his first almost four weeks in government,

almost a mixture of what he did in the campaign and some of the things

he's done since. He said he'd done more than any other president had

done in the amount of time. He rejected claims that the White House

was in chaos. He said it was a fine tuned machine that was running in

the White House at the moment. He introduced the new Labour secretary

nominee, one of those pulled out last night, and that is in a week

where he lost his National Security Agency. He also told us that the

controversial executive order that banned people from those seven

predominantly Muslim countries from coming into America for 90 days has

been caught up in the courts, has been put on hold by the courts. He's

promised to redraft that and issue a new one of those next week, as he

puts it, to protect the American people. He promised that would

happen this week. It's going to happen next week now. He's just

about to start to take questions from reporters. We'll see whether he

takes any from unfriendly organisations or those who are less

friendly towards him. The first question he answered, he said that

Michael Flynn had effectively lost his job because of the actions of

the media. Gary O'Donoghue with the latest from the White House, thank

you. In Wales more patients are having

to wait over 12 hours at accident and emergency units -

than a year ago. In January 4,000 patients

were left waiting compared The proportion of patients waiting

less than four hours held steady, according

to the latest monthly figures. Plans by former footballers Ryan

Giggs and Gary Neville to redevelop areas of Manchester would erase the

history of the area. Historic England said the area which includes

two skyscrapers and a five story hotel threatens the area history.

The former Manchester United players claim the development would

transform the area. They're famously known as the Wrens

- the women's royal naval service - which was founded 100 years ago

during World War One. It was the start of a huge change

in the role women played Wrens initially served as cooks,

stewards and dispatch riders but they went on to play other

key roles in the Navy, during the Second

World War, and beyond. Our Correspondent Duncan Kennedy

is in Portsmouth, where events You know the story of the Wrens has

never really been told in a full major exhibition like this,

especially their lives and achievements. Royal Navy was of

course the first of the three services to officially recognise

women like this. And now 100 years after the formation of the Wrens,

their story has been told in full. At 90 years old, Win Price still has

an affection for the sea. And the Wrens who hold sway

over her maritime memories that first began when she joined

as a 17-year-old in 1944. They had cooks and

stewards they wanted. Well, I couldn't cook,

so I opted for a steward. Proud then, and honoured now to be

celebrating 100 years of the Wrens. No, the ones before

me were pioneers! The Women's Royal Naval Service

was formed in 1917. By the Second World War they had

become the home front force that Now a century of achievements

are charted in this new exhibition. The strength of this exhibition lies

in its detail and the telling This is the leave permit

for a Jane Rossiter, it's dated December 1918,

was obviously going But then we know that Jane

subsequently left the Navy and then re-enlisted at the outbreak

of the Second World War. Here we have her

identity book for that. In 100 years women sailors have gone

from medics to Marines, They had to prove themselves,

which they did really well. After that it was for the other

women to embrace that change, and they took it forward,

and it's continued to go forward. Now called sailors, not

wrens, women's have seen And for those like Win Price,

the exhibition is a proud salute Duncan Kennedy, BBC News,

Portsmouth Harbour. Not a huge amount of sunshine today

but some amongst the showers in Scotland, a rainbow looking out

towards Perth and sunny spells in Essex. In Northern Ireland it turned

wetter and we've seen outbreaks of rain through Wales, north-west

England, edging through the Midlands towards East Anglia. As the night

goes on, some of that showing up in south-east England. You can pick up

the dam zone here overnight. North of that becoming dry, clearing skies

in Scotland, chilly overnight, top shelf frost for some, and fog

patches developing in southern Scotland could be slow to clear. We

still have this damp zone tomorrow morning but by the afternoon any

rain left will be patchy in nature into western Scotland, and the rest

of us will have a mainly dry Friday afternoon. The best of the sunshine

in Scotland will be in the east and I stayed to north-east England.

Increasing clouds in Northern Ireland. Lighter winds across the

northern half, so although temperatures a degree or so down it

will not feel different to today. Outbreaks of rain reaching West

Wales and the far south-west of England. Brightening up, south-east

England staying rather cloudy. A week weather front coming as we

start off on Saturday, when speaking up across the northern half of the

UK again. Quite wet in western Scotland at Saturday begins but it

will ease as the rain edges further south. To the south of that the bulk

of England and Wales staying dry. On Sunday breezy across-the-board and

wet again in north-west Scotland. Some sunny spells elsewhere. Mild,

potentially the start of next week very mild.