22/08/2017 London News

Welcome to BBC London News with me Victoria Hollins.

More than 30 people have been arrested in a series of dawn raids

It's part of a crackdown against knife crime,

drugs and child exploitation ahead of Notting Hill Carnival.

It's the Met Police's biggest operation every year -

but there's been criticism - with some asking if the raids

are racist by targeting a so-called "black event" -

and more for the benefit of the cameras than Carnival.

A very different type of wake-up call.

The Met Police's targeted raids at 21 different addresses

in just under an hour, all within the boroughs

of Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Brent.

It's 5:30am and about ten specialist police officers as just raided this

What we know is seven people inside, five of those have been arrested

and one of those has swallowed something so they have called

The aim of this is to make sure that those arrested here do not turn

What has happened here has taken two months to plan.

We start off with dynamic entry when you heard the shouting

Then when we have done that, and secured those people inside,

then we slow things down and make sure we do a methodical search

of the premises, looking for the evidence included

in the warrant, so on this occasion it will be Class A drugs and items

Those arrested will be built under strict conditions which police say

will prevent them from turning up at the Carnival this weekend.

In a control centre five miles away, Mark Bird and his team of 75

officers will keep a watchful eye over the event.

This BBC documentary shows how complex and difficult it can be

to police an event that attracts millions of people.

Were today's raids more of an exercise of public reassurance

Our endeavours are about keeping the Carnival safe and free from

How on earth are you going to monitor the people

We have a range of tactics which will include obviously the use

of CCTV, automatic number plate recognition, and there will be

plainclothed officers and other tactics that we will use to keep

I don't understand why they need to be showing off and saying

we are on top of this, this is a big issue and we will

There are criminals operating, they should be doing this throughout

the year and it should not just be on the eve of Carnival

And today the South London rapper Stormzy waded into the debate,

suggesting they Met's tweets on the raids were offensive

He said: how many drugs did you lot sieze in the run-up to Glastonbury

or are we only doing tweets like this for black events?

This has already been re-tweeted and liked

Tonight, the Met have initially reiterated the raids

were intelligence-led and it is their duty

Only three London boroughs are meeting their recycling targets,

according to figures obtained by this programme.

London's councils are all meant to be recycling 45% of their waste,

but the overwhelming majority are failing to do so.

Here's our environment correspondent, Tom Edwards.

Do Londoners recycle enough of their household waste?

No says Paul, a self-confessed recycling anorak.

He's even set up a charity to encourage it.

He lives in Newham but he's a rarity in this part of London.

This area has the worst recycling rate in the capital.

Newham has 40% of its housing is flats.

You can't easily recycle in flats, without having some

Your building in London, we're building on every square foot.

You have to do it now whilst you're building new to make sure you have

Next door to Paul these flats have no recycling facilities at all.

This block of flats, where's the recycling?

It's one bin that takes the recycling and the rubbish.

This is the whole problem with Newham.

Across London there's a mixed picture.

The amount of household rubbish the boroughs recycle.

The best is Bexley, recycling 52%, followed by Bromley and Kingston.

The worst are Lewisham, Westminster and Newham, where just 14.7% of

There are lots of different reasons why different areas have

Some of them are practical and about space, for example,

flats have less room for all the bins.

Some communities are less aware of recycling.

And different boroughs also have different schemes for recycling.

Bexley say they are now seeing a commercial value in recycling

In Bexley it's cheaper for us to recycle than to throw away.

If anything, we've been trying to put more effort into getting more

stuff recycled because it costs us over ?100 a time to send things

to the waste to energy plant, when we recycling paper,

Increasing recycling rates is a key ambition of the mayor.

He wants 65% of London's waste recycled by 2030.

Helping the boroughs to get there will be a huge challenge.

Another victim killed in the Grenfell Tower fire in west

65-year-old Sakina Afrasehabi was a mother of five.

Her family have paid tribute to her, saying she was "completely

selfless in all she did and always put other people first".

An estate agents in East London has been destroyed in a fire,

after a car ploughed into the shop front.

The car smashed through the glass windows of Portico estate

It burst into flames and the blaze quickly ripped through the shop,

Next, these two masterpieces by the Italian painter Titian made

the headlines when they were saved for the nation.

They were bought, in part, by the National Gallery for ?95 million.

Now the gallery has once again found millions to save a renaissance

Day one for this 18th century masterpiece in its new home.

Bernardo Bellotto's The Fortress Of Konigstein From The North

deemed a national treasure, will now not

be sold abroad, yet it so nearly wasn't the case.

After being sold to a foreign, private collector last year,

the Government blocked its export temporarily in the hope

the gallery could find ?11.7 million and buy it instead.

He's the nephew of better known Canaletto.

He's an artist that is not as well known as he might be

because there's no major work, until today, by the artist in any

This picture being here at the National Gallery can now be

appreciated by the millions of people who come here every year.

What makes this Bellotto a national treasure worth saving?

Every time a piece of high-end art is being bought and taken out

of the country, a panel of experts must consider three criteria -

first, its historic significance to the UK,

second, whether it has a unique aesthetic and third, whether it's

The experts decided it was a national treasure

Does its first public audience for centuries agree?

Allowing people to come here and see the image,

is better than selling it off to a collector and letting

them keep it in a room, which is never going to be seen.

I think we should all do what we could to preserve art.

I don't know if it's worth ?11.5 million, I'm not sure.

I think it would have been a shame if it had gone into a private

collection and people here today and people who come

into the National Gallery wouldn't be able to see it.

The painting is now being displayed just feet away from some

Undoubtedly it helps if your uncle is Canaletto and the most

We know Bellotto was training with Canaletto from the age of about 13.

Walk round the corner, you can see how Bellotto uses

It you look at the building here, the texture of crumbling stones,

that's absolutely out of Canaletto's workshop.

There's some soldiers up on the ramparts created really out

That's something that Canaletto has as well,

Every year, a handful of national treasures can't

be saved and disappear to private collections.

All the more reason to enjoy the one that's stay.

That's it for now from me, but let's find out what the weather's up

It's been a little bit more summery today, hasn't it?

It has. But still disappointing temperatures. We got a glimpse of

blue here by our now silent Big Ben. It really was a cloudy day, misty

conditions around to start the day as well. This is what most of us saw

for much of the day. Through the course of the day tomorrow, a humid

start but it turns fresher. Cooler feel by the time we get to the end

of the afternoon on Wednesday. Sunny spells for the rest of the week.

Always the chance of one or two showers. A lot of dry weather around

as well. Over the next hour, I may still catch a shower. It will be

mostly dry overnight. A mild night to come. Start off the day tomorrow

on 16 or 17 degrees Celsius. Still feeling quite humid tomorrow

morning. We will see things brighten up nicely through the morning, some

spells of sunshine. This is when we'll probably see the highest

temperatures. Then the cloud thick beings through the middle of the

day. By the time we get to the end of the day, it will be sunny again

and we'll have a westerly wind. For the rest of the week: Sunny spells

at times, a lot of dry weather around. A lot of uncertainty for the

bank holiday weekend. around. A lot of uncertainty for the

bank holiday weekend. Good evening. I think it's fair to

say it's been a disappointment August so far. We want blue sky,

sunshine. We want what we had today in Newquay and Cornwall, 25 Celsius,

77 Fahrenheit. Beautiful on the beach. As opposed to what we had in

Fermanagh. You can see by this picture. The rain so heavy,ing off

the roof of the car. In fact, that heavy rain was accompanied by some

pretty significant thunder and lightning as well, which is

continuing to drift its way steadily north as we speak. It's moving into

the Western Isles and we'll see some heavy rain overnight tonight across

the Western Isles