05/03/2017 BBC Wales Today

Wales' Finance Secretary has urged the Treasury to abandon austerity,

and boost cash for public services and the economy ahead

Mark Drakeford has outlined his concerns about the UK Government's

planned spending cuts, which he says could see a

?175 million cut to the Welsh budget.

Here's our Political Correspondent, Arwyn Jones.

The budget is the big chance for the UK Government to prioritise its

So, it's a the first run out for the new Chancellor, Philip

In the past, it's meant that big-ticket items like the M4

relief road can get the green light, although motorists will know these

Now Wales' finance secretary has written to his

counterpart in the UK Government urging him to announce extra funding

for health and social care services, which he said had faced significant

Well, there are ?3.5 billion worth of

Cuts that have already been announced, but where the

Chancellor has not yet said were those cuts will fall.

Now, a share of those cuts could be as much as

And I urge the Chancellor to turn his back on those

cuts, to say, "No, they will not be happening."

Mr Hammond said this morning there wouldn't be a big

spending spree and that the job of reducing the national debt is

Those who know the Chancellor said the challenge

will be to show him the numbers add up.

This is where the challenge is for Welsh politicians in terms of

securing more investment into Wales, make winning economic arguments.

With George Osborne, it was much more about the politics,

particularly in the run up to the 2015 general election.

We are now in a phase where actually cold hard

economic arguments will sway the Treasury, probably little else.

Many politicians in Swansea will be hoping that the Tidal Lagoon gets

the nod, but they will have to wait until Wednesday, like the rest

It isn't just about the huge billion pound projects.

Carolyn Harris's eigh-year-old son Martin died

She had to borrow money to pay for his funeral and now won the

Chancellor to help families in a similar situation.

I tried to give him an insight into just how painful

that time is and how you don't consider

the cost and anything, you

just consider how you're going to get through every day.

So, to remove the cost would be doing such a

marvellous thing for any family, not even have to consider that.

So, on Wednesday, all eyes will be on 11

Downing St to see what Philip Hammond manages to pull out of his

More than 300 taxi drivers in Denbighshire have completed

training to help spot the signs of child sexual exploitation.

The council introduced the compulsory course last year,

after the Rotherham abuse inquiry found taxi drivers had played

Emergency services led by Central Beacons Mountain Rescue

have carried out a major operation to rescue two walkers swept over

After a four hour operation, they were winched out by helicopter

New research by Cardiff University has revealed that ancient footprints

discovered on a Gower beach are 7,000 years old.

When the prints were first uncovered back in 2014,

researchers believed they were from the Bronze Age,

but a special scientific technique has suggested they could be

thousands of years older and could belong to

With the shifting sands and rising tides, the printer difficult

What they found, frozen in the form of fresh water marshland peat,

is a snapshot of one moment in time seven millennia ago.

So, it's not just human footprints here, we also have

And there is also one possible wild boar

So, we think they were probably walking through

this landscape, perhaps stalking their prey as they are walking

Initially, it was believed they were Bronze Age, but scientific

research has proved it was far earlier.

What we did was we took samples from the peat that they are

set within and we did radiocarbon dating of those samples.

That gives us an earlier state that they could

have been made and they must be made soon after the formation of those

For archaeologists, the challenge now is

to preserve the prints before the lost again.

Here in the museum, we do have a number of plaster casts

that have been taken of some of these footprints and really,

They last just a matter of days, maybe even hours,

because of the weather and the tides.

So, it's a great challenge to be able to preserve them and

These footprints were literally lost in the sand of time.

Now uncovered, they give us an incredible snapshot into an ordinary

Thousands of runners braved the rain this morning in two separate events

More than 2,000 people took part the Newport Half Marathon,

and around 3,000 descended on Cardiff's Bute Park

The winds and showers will ease overnight, leading

to some clear spells by the early hours.

Apart from some rain across southern parts during the morning,

it'll be a dry and bright day with some decent sunny-spells

and a few isolated showers. Top temperature, around ten Celsius.

Hello, as was the case on Saturday there was a lot of whether around

today. Showers for some, some saw