09/04/2017 North West Tonight

Greater Manchester Police say they dealt with 31 calls relating

to the synthetic drug Spice in just 24 hours yesterday.

Officers in Manchester city centre have launched special patrols,

these people are users of Spice, a synthetic drug which used to be

legal, known to cause extreme effects including psychosis

You see a lot of people who get absolutely smashed out

of their trees, throwing up and falling all over the place.

I just have a smoke and just relax, you know, like...

Basically, it's an escape route from the normalcy of life,

This weekend, Greater Manchester Police took 31 calls about people

14 of them had collapsed and needed an ambulance.

On this glorious day here in Piccadilly Gardens,

shoppers are being entertained, but, at the same time,

police are out here and there's quite a presence.

It's because Piccadilly Gardens has been quite a problem area when it

Over this weekend, police have had special extra patrols on here,

and have revealed they've made a number of arrests

Police say their focus is on dealers of Spice,

but they'll continue to tackle all anti-social users of the drug.

Shabnam Younus-Jewell, BBC North West Tonight, Manchester.

A 31-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder

after the body of a woman was found in Speke early this morning.

Detectives were called out to a house in Heaton Close

A postmortem examination is taking place to establish how

Firefighters are tackling a blaze at a scrap yard at Altham

in Lancashire where as many as 50 cars are thought to be on fire.

Eight appliances have been there since around 5.30 this evening,

and the operation is expected to continue for some time.

People living nearby are advised to keep windows and doors shut.

Hundreds of people have turned out this weekend for

It was organised by the group Surfers Against Sewage,

to highlight the rubbish littering our coastline.

Ian Haslam reports from the Fylde Coast was the venue,

This beach at Blackpool has Blue Flag status,

but, when it comes to littering, the tide is still to turn.

So, just a general bag we're just going to open.

You've got your plastics, more plastics, netting...

Throughout summer, you get your tourists coming down with disposable

barbecues and that kind of thing, and they just head off into the sand

dunes and have a nice picnic for the day, in this good weather,

and generally they don't take their litter home with them.

That is the bane of your life, isn't it?

As with other beach cleans across the region,

there's been no shortage of volunteers.

I was surprised by how much rubbish people discard.

Yeah, yeah, bottles and sweet wrappers.

There's plenty of bins along the coastline,

but you know what it's like - families are at the beach

And that, say local action groups, means an ongoing

By reducing all of the plastic and the waste, it's safer for people

to go out in the sea, which is also good for

the marine life and animals, because they are dying

It is killing thousands, hundreds of thousands

Well, the volunteers have been cleaning the beach here now

and this is what they've come back with -

around 40 bags full of waste and litter,

along with hundreds of plastic bottles, that will now be recycled.

Loads of litter down there, a big pile.

Organisers say there'll be another Big Beach Clean in the autumn.

Now let's take a look at the weather.

It has been a beautiful day across the region but can it continue?

After a warm weekend with plenty of sunshine around,

things are going to be turning noticeably cooler as we head

It's slowly going to start to sink down towards the south-east corner.

This is a cold front, so it will be introducing cooler

Mainly dry, with one or two showers dotted here and there.

Temperatures not falling away too far courtesy of that breeze,

with a minimum temperature of around six or seven Celsius.

Tomorrow, then, there will be a good deal of dry weather around,

but, on this north-westerly breeze, we may see

Some brightness, though, developing through the afternoon,

but, even in the sunshine, it won't feel particularly warm,

But a lot of dry weather to come as we head through this week.

Good evening. Was it spring or summer today? They crushed and some

of you may have been asking. A beautiful day across much of eastern

and south-eastern England. We saw highs of 25 degrees. Slightly

fresher in the north-west of England, and much fresher behind the

rain bearing weather front in the far north-west. As the front pushes

south,