25/02/2017 South Today

Good evening, I'm Laura Trant with the news in the South.

More than 40 firefighters were called to a large fire

in a high-rise building in Portsmouth this afternoon.

The fire, believed to have started in the kitchen of a fourth-floor

flat at Gunwharf Quays, took over an hour to extinguish.

Nine appliances battled against high winds.

There have been no reports of injuries.

A 400-metre stretch of a Dorset beach is currently cordoned off

by police after reports of a potential unexploded bomb.

Dorset Police took a call from the coastguard

after the unidentified object was found on Highcliffe

Photographs of the object have been sent to bomb disposal

Police say there is no risk to the public at this stage.

Three men have appeared in court on slavery charges after police

discovered a cannabis farm in an underground nuclear

Thousands of plants worth more than ?1 million were found

on Wednesday inside the former MoD nuclear bunker at

The men are also accused of conspiracy to produce

Plans for a major waterfront development in Southampton have been

labelled as sterile and corporate by the Green Party who today marched

The ?450 million Royal Pier development would include offices,

flats, leisure and retail facilities near the Mayflower Park site.

Lovers of nature, out to protect Southampton's waterfront.

Mayflower Park is one of the city's few waterside public spaces.

A major regeneration project would see the derelict pier

demolished and land reclaimed from the water.

Opponents fear new flats, shops and offices would

The new plans are high-end housing, commercial activities, the casino.

What is that? The plans involve Red Funnel's

terminal moving into the docks to make way for what the developers,

Royal Pier Waterfront Ltd, say would be a vibrant destination

with unprecedented public access and no loss in the

amount of open space. Southampton City Council says it is

committed to keeping public access to the waterfront here and improving

the quality of the park and says full consultation plans will take

place in due course. They say the city has a poor track

record in opening up the waterside. Southampton has not the but not a

lot is accessible to the public. It is often quite unpleasant and you

are forced to walk along a narrow walkway in you feel fenced in.

As the planning process continues, protesters say they will do all

Briony Leyland, BBC South Today, Southampton.

Onto football and, with Southampton playing Manchester United

in the League Cup final tomorrow, it was left to Bournemouth

to fly the South's flag in the Premier League.

But a mistake from goalkepeer Artur Boruch saw the Cherries lose

2-1 at West Bromich Albion - their sixth defeat in seven games.

Joshua King had given Bournemouth the lead.

In the next few minutes, Brighton and Reading will kick

off their top-of-the-table clash in the Championship while elsewhere

in the Football League today there were wins for Oxford,

Portsmouth are up to fourth in League 2 after an impressive

It is staying mild but breezy for the remainder of the weekend. A band

of rain pushing into the region and making its weight eastwards. Behind

it, low cloud and hill fog. Temperatures down to seven or 8

degrees. Tomorrow morning, one or two breaks in that cloud, brightness

that time, but showers increasingly pushing ahead of a band of heavy

rain sweeping through during the late afternoon. And still fairly

mild. But it will be breezy again tomorrow, gusts along the coast

reaching 40 mph. Good evening. Starting with a quick

look at the satellite sequence from earlier. We started under a big

blanket of cloud but Scotland and Northern Ireland brightened up as

the day went off. Underneath the cloud in England and Wales, quite a

bit of rain at the moment, drifting southwards and East. It