08/09/2017 World News Today

Our top stories, Hurricane Irma continues its deadly rampage

across the Caribbean, and now there's another hurricane

In Barbuda where there's already overwhelming destruction,

a mass evacuation is happening now to escape a second hit.

Everything just started to decay and just crumble.

What have you eaten in the last few days?

Hardly anything because there's nothing to eat.

Irma's heading for Florida, where those who can, are leaving,

others are hunkering down and hoping for the best.

This storm is wider than our entire state.

And it is expected to cause major and life-threatening impacts

We'll have the very latest from the affected region and we'll

be looking at whether worse is yet to come.

The worst earthquake in a century hits Mexico, dozens are known

Also in the programme, some vintage education for China's wine industry

as it looks to Australia for inspiration.

Hello and welcome to World News Today.

Hurricane Irma has torn across the Caribbean leaving death

So far, at least 19 people have been killed and more

The massive storm, one of the most powerful Atlantic

hurricanes ever recorded, has passed through the Turks

and Caicos and Haiti after causing widespread damage

It's forecast to pass between Cuba and the Bahamas

And there's another hurricane coming up behind

Jose has strengthened to a category four, driving winds of a 200

kilometres per hour, that's 125 miles an hour,

and forecasters warn it could strengthen still further.

Our correspondent Laura Bicker is the first foreign

journalist to reach Barbuda, already devastated by Irma,

where the islanders are racing to evacuate before

The island of Barbuda was once a Caribbean paradise.

Hurricane Irma has reduced it to rubble.

The ruins lie scattered, torn and ripped apart.

Having survived the worst storm in living memory, and

knowing another is on the way, people are exhausted, hungry and

I don't know, I'm just waiting to get

evacuated from here and then I'm going to try and come back and try

We are not coping, definitely not coping.

Everybody will tell you the same, they are not coping.

Everyone is in the same situation and nobody can help one another.

We will get you off the island to safety

The Prime Minister has travelled from neighbouring Antigua to provide

He knows it is a race against time before Hurricane

We heard him haggling for every boat,

helicopter or plane to help with the evacuation.

But fear starts to spread that not everyone

This woman has been told she does not have a place

The sheer, horrifying scale of the devastation

here means barely a building is salvageable.

That means the whole island will have to be rebuilt, and

the government has already admitted it simply doesn't have the money.

The Prime Minister knows he will need to find

We are hoping that friendly governments and international

partners will step up to the plate and assist us.

They should not see this as a form of the Prime Minister

and the people coming with a begging bowl, cap in hand.

This is a disaster, a national disaster of

epic proportions, and we really need external assistance.

Fragments of people's lives lie in ruins.

They can only hope that one day they will

once again call the island home, but for now they must leave

by any means possible, including this barge.

And they do not know when they will return.

The Netherlands is sending more forces to contain,

what it calls, serious post-storm looting on the island of St Martin.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte said more soldiers and police would be

deployed on the island which is shared between France

and the Netherlands, amid reports of people with guns

On the line is Neil Crase, who lives on the island of St Martin

and can tell us more about the situation there.

Thank you for joining us on BBC World News. First off, what was it

like? Well, the storm was terrible. It was unbelievable and a lot of

people are left homeless. The big problem has been the after that with

the looting you've referred to and the laws must. We heard this morning

that tourists who had been sheltering in a damaged hotel were

robbed at gunpoint. And mobs were going door-to-door throbbing peep

hole. We've seen no evidence of these soldiers that we understand up

on the island. In our area, we've not seen a single one. Speaking of

the looting, do you think this is an opportunistic events or people

desperate, are they trying to get food and water? Well, I think it

started off may be aided the bit like that but this has been, in the

end, organised. We had a total traffic jam of people trying to get

to the supermarkets, which has been stripped bare. There was a whole car

park full of people are not a sign of police officers. Saint Martin is

split between the French and Dutch. The Dutch side being a little bit

more industrious, do you think? Has there been more recovery efforts

targeted here? Is that where the airport is located as well? Yes, the

main airport is located here but it is unserviceable, as I understand.

There has been a couple of small planes that have landed with relief

supplies but that is it for the moment. Do you think there was

enough preparation put in place? Well, obviously not. One would hope

there was. There was quite a few days to get ready. We made our

preparations. But the response so far, the roads are still blocked,

which means we haven't seen any of that being moved, there's nothing

happening. Nothing has happened. You are describing a situation of

lawlessness, almost. That is the biggest problem. There are supposed

to be a curfew in place, which they keep saying nobody should be on the

road, and, yet, I am viewing people driving up and down! Very quickly,

you describe the radio, how much information is coming to you from

government officials? Well, today was the first day... There's only

one radio station. Everybody's equipment was destroyed. There has

been broadcast by the military commander. He is now in force. OK,

thank you very much. Neal was talking about the island of Saint

Martin, whether have been reports from the Dutch troop is of looting

and although there is a curfew in place, as you were hearing, if

you've just joined us, that is being ignored by the residents of Saint

Maarten. More on this as and when we get it, of course.

Hurricane Irma is now approaching the southern islands of the Bahamas,

which are facing storm surges of up to six metres, or 20 feet.

Nick Bryant in the Bahamas has been following the path of the storm

The Turks and Caicos, where the palm trees that usually

attract people to these islands reeled under the violent

A storm people here had been tracking through satellite images,

a monster hurricane that has looked terrifying from space.

Now a horrifying, on-the-ground, reality.

Picture postcard holiday destinations like the British Virgin

This UK territory has now declared a state of emergency.

The Bahamas is starting to be blasted.

The only sightseeing this morning, from the relative safety

of the balcony, watching the approaching storm.

Old imperial buildings that have stood for centuries in this former

British colony are braced and shuttered,

Elton Smith had only just finished rebuilding his business

from the last hurricane that caused such devastation less

This is one of the worst storms in living memory,

so you have to get as much together as you can and plan for the worst,

There are five low-lying islands in this archipelago

which the authorities are particularly concerned about,

which is why the government here has ordered the biggest evacuation

But there are fears already for people who have stayed behind,

people who have defied those evacuation orders, people

who believe they can ride out this storm.

In hurricane hit Saint Martin, this natural disaster has been

exacerbated by the man-made problem of looting.

Which is why, in the Dutch part of this territory,

the streets are being patrolled by troops who could be helping

As for Britain, it has a ship loaded with aid off the island of Anguilla,

but the UK aid effort has been criticised as too slow.

RAF planes carrying equipment are now on their way.

The constraint is about understanding

What we don't want to do is rush in with the wrong kind of support,

so from a military point of view, it's very important we understand

the effects of the hurricane, where is open to us,

where can we get to safely, and that is what we have been doing

Now we are ready to make the right judgments about where we can most

So far it is small Caribbean islands like Saint Barts that have

been hit and deluged, but all the time, Irma is barrelling

towards the American mainland, threatening destruction

The governor of Florida has warned its 20 million residents

that they should all be prepared to evacuate in the face

of Hurricane Irma which is wider than the entire state.

Half a million people have already been ordered to leave their homes

and the highways out of the state have been clogged with cars.

They are now calling this one of the biggest mass evacuations

The roads heading out of Southern Florida are clogged,

This is a storm of absolutely historic destructive potential.

I ask everyone in the storm's path to be vigilant and to heed

all recommendations from government officials and law enforcement.

Nothing is more important than the safety and security of our people.

At Miami's airport, people scramble for the last chance to get out

Basically most of the flights are sold out so we're not

The worst case scenario that we're going to get hit by a hurricane

and it's terrifying and we're going to be stuck here for weeks,

I had to purchase another ticket yesterday costing $8500 to go one

way back to London and I've already paid once.

So, I'm just hoping they're going to get me on this plane.

The area of Miami normally packed with tourists

is within the evacuation zone and has been left

It's just extraordinary to see Miami's iconic South Beach

as deserted as this, but it is an indication of just

how seriously people here are taking the warnings,

particularly having seen the type of destruction that's been wrought

If they are coming here, it's to fill pillowcases with sand

to barricade their homes before Irma hits.

Donald Trump himself will be affected.

His Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, has been forced to close

and is in the projected path of the storm.

The National Guard has been deployed here.

They're stockpiling commodities that could become scarce in the coming

days like drinking water, but they're also preparing

for what's likely to be a massive rescue operation.

Right across this State, there's a sense that time is running

Aleem Maqbool, BBC News, in Miami, Florida.

You can read about the situation there on our website,

And as if the destruction in the Caribbean wasn't bad enough,

It's being described as the worst there in a century.

It had a magnitude of eight and struck just off the Pacific

Buildings shook in the capital, Mexico City, hundreds of miles away.

The tremor is reported to have lasted about a minute.

A bowling alley in Chiapas, the closest state to

This is a country used to earthquakes, but not

600 miles away, the tremors rocked Mexico City.

Frightened, some people preferred to stay outdoors.

Many can still remember the earthquake of 1985

which was similar in magnitude, and which killed

I never felt anything so scary in my life.

It was small at first, but then it started shaking a lot and it felt

As pictures have emerged from the most severely hit

areas, the death toll has continued to rise.

The fear is there may be more shocks to come.

TRANSLATION: So far there have been 65 aftershocks.

However, it's possible that over the next 24 hours we could see

a shock that's as strong as the earthquake.

In less than a minute, Juchitan's town hall was reduced

to rubble and at least 17 of its citizens were killed.

Daylight has revealed the extent of the devastation and the huge

effort which will be required to rebuild.

It's unprecedented for one Nobel Peace Prize winner

to criticise another but that's exactly what's happened

on Friday, when Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi came

in for some fierce words from Malala Yousufzai.

It's all to do with Myanmar's response to

The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic group in mainly Buddhist Myanmar,

and huge numbers of them are fleeing the country, alleging

atrocities on the part of the government forces.

Ms Suu Kyi has't taken any action in the face of these reports

and Malala used a BBC interview to call on her fellow laureate

I have been hearing about Rohingya Muslims for a while now.

And it is really disappointing what is happening there.

And I think we can't even imagine for a second when your citizenship,

when you're right to live in a country is completely denied,

I think there will be political issues, and we can go

into arguments, but this should be completely...

Considered as a human rights issue, and people should react to it,

governments should react to it because people are

And we can't be silent right now because the number of people

who have become displaced is in hundreds and thousands,

and children are mostly affected by this because,

firstly, education, completely they get deprived of education.

They do not receive the basic rights they have from good food,

good environment, and living in a terrorism situation,

where you face these extremists around to you,

and where there's violence around you is really

We cannot imagine it for our children for a second.

It's actually happening so we need to wake up and respond to it.

And I hope that Aung San Suu Kyi, she responds to it as well,

and also the global community of leaders also respond.

In case you were wondering, the chairwoman of the Nobel Peace

Prize committee has said it is not possible for a laureate to be

Meanwhile, the statistics are beginning to take

The United Nations now estimates the number of Rohingyas who've fled

into Bangladesh from Myanmar as high as 270,000.

Myanmar, for its part, denies any atrocities,

and accuses Rohingya militant groups of triggering the violence.

Our correspondent, Sanjoy Majumder's met some of those who've fled

These are the latest wave of Rohingya refugees who have

crossed the border into Bangladesh from Myanmar, staying now

on the side of this hill, completely out in the open.

Just look at the number of people here.

We've had a huge spike in the numbers of people coming in.

There are a lot of women here with families.

A little baby here, sleeping out in the open.

And over there, you can see their cooking their evening meal.

Now, it's already the early part of the evening and the biggest

problem is that there are no tents here, there are no shelters

because this is outside of the main refugee camps.

So they're having to live out in the open.

Many of these people have endured tremendous hardships to get here.

They've also gone through incredibly traumatic experiences.

This family, they are from just across the border.

It has taken them several days to come here.

Tell me, what happened to your village?

That was Sanjoy Majumder with the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

His colleague, Jonathan Head, is one of the few foreign

journalists who's been able to visit Rakhine state in Myanmar,

and we hope to bring you his special report in the coming hours,

Here in the UK, it's emerged that a teenage girl

who died from a brain aneurysm has helped a record number of people

Jemima Layzell, from Somerset, died in 2012

but officials have been able to transplant her organs

Her parents say she would have been very proud of her legacy.

It was just before her mum's birthday party five years ago that

She had an aneurysm that had never been diagnosed.

Doctors tried to save her life, but her parents were

We had seen the scans and there was such a huge shadow

on the left side of her brain and she would never ever recover.

By chance Jemima had spoken to her parents about organ

donation just a few days before she collapsed.

When she died they felt they had to follow the schoolgirl's wishes.

She did specifically say that she wanted

How did that help you then make the decision when you knew

It made that decision so much easier.

It's like an automatic thing yes, absolutely because that's

Five years on Jemima's family have now been told that her organs

including her heart, lungs and kidneys have helped more

Freddie is one of those Jemima has saved. He's been given weeks to live

before he received her liver and a transplant. This week, he started

secondary school. His family's message... Thank you doesn't seem

enough. you're grateful that they actually

stuck to Jemima's wishes and let her donate her organs

which allowed our child to live, So it's really tough,

but we can never be thankful enough. This month the two

families will meet for the first time at a charity ball

organised in Jemima's memory. Her parents know that

not everyone would make the decision they did,

but with more than 6,000 people waiting for transplants,

they're now campaigning for more of us to

register as donors. Let's go to the vineyards

of Australia now. They have been phenomenally

successful over the past 20 years, making it one of the biggest

winemaking nations in the world. Last year, China became Australia's

biggest customer for wine. And, as Hywel Griffith

reports from Adelaide, China now wants Australia's

winemaking expertise, Learning techniques tested over

decades, these students hope You don't have to be a connoisseur

to no turning grapes into wine can But by coming to learn in Australia,

home to some of the world's biggest wine brands,

they clearly see Probably I can be an assistant

winemaker in several And then probably at the end

I can have my own winery. So, do you think one day you can

make Chinese wine as good as, maybe even better than French,

Italian or Australian wine? But, I mean, they have

a different system. We have very short winemaking

history right now. The University of Adelaide has seen

the number of Chinese students enrolling for winemaking decrees

trouble in five years, drawn not so much by the weather, it seems,

but by the booming local industry. Wine made here in the Barossa Valley

is known and drunk around the world. Australia's the fifth biggest wine

producer on the planet. It looks set to be overtaken soon

by the sixth-largest, China. For Chinese winemakers,

the challenge won't be the quantity Australia took decades

to shake off the snobbery As China's wine market matures,

these students hope they'll have a part to play and get to enjoy

the fruits of their labour. Don't forget you can get

in touch with me and some of the team on Twitter,

I'm @LukwesaBurak. We have the weather coming up

shortly. Good evening. We have had a bit of a

taste for the weekend forecast of what we've had today, sunshine and

blustery showers. I call weekend installer further showers and

becoming increasingly windy.