it is that logic that perhaps explains why there are now only 42,000 staff in the national offender management service in england and wales, while there were 19,000 back in 2010. but the logic of cutting prisons has perhaps reached a limit. the pressure of fewer staff in overcrowded jails has seen violence rise — towards staff, other prisoners or in the form of self harm. bad things are happening in ourjails, and it's no surprise the president of the prison governors association has written an open letter attacking the government's management of prisons. here's elaine dunkley. violence and rioting, volatility has gripped prisons in england and wales. run. the pressure in our prison service building for staff and inmates. get down. a breakdown in law and order caused by a shortage of staff and a growing prison population. a toxic mix according to the prison governors association. attacks on prison staff and drugs academic increasing concern around mental health and overcrowding, resources and rehabilitation, major issues for the prison service, and many are warning the system is at breaking point. earlier this week specialist teams known as tornado units were called into a prison in hertfordshire following a riot, and it did not stop there, in wiltshire there was also disturbances which resulted in violence against staff. what i would suggest the secretary of state does is very seriously consider an appeal to staff who have left recently, experienced staff, through voluntary exit schemes, to create a task force to go back into those prisons causing most concern and get back control and create a regime and create stability. if that is insufficient armour i would suggest that you need extra resources sent into prison, simply to stabilise them short—term and you could consider using the army for that for example. it is a very radical measure, controversial and it carries risk, but the risks of doing nothing are simply too high in my view, to not at least consider exceptionally and for initial period time getting resources onto the landing is to restore control. there has been a sharp rise in prison violence the latest figures show nearly 27,000 assaults in prisons in the year to march, 20% more than last year. this includes more than 7000 attacks on staff equating to 20 each day. there has to be some humility frankly from government to say that we made a catastrophic mistake in reducing staff so far so fast, and there is a widespread instability in prisons. unless it is tackled, i really do fear that we are going to see a member of staff killed on duty. recruitment and retaining prison staff is a major problem. over the last 12 months there has been a net increase of just 25 officers, meanwhile the prison population in england and wales is growing. you have worked with prisoners and ex—offenders for more than 20 years, how bad is the situation? possibly the worst it has been, i think, for probably 30 years, also. mark blake is pushing for urgent reform, something he has been calling for since the strangeways riots in the 90s and he believes too many are being put behind bars. the violence is a symptom of the reductions we have had in prison staff and the amount of time people are being locked in their cells and the deterioration in terms of mental health that has contributed, we need to address the issue of groups of people who are in the system who we can divert elsewhere. we would highlight women, the women's prison population is at an all—time high, for the last 20 years, and people with mental health problems, we need to do much more. how long will prison reform take? from prison staff to the inmates locked away, be problems are clear to see but those caught in a system that needs urgent rehabilitation. i'm joined now by paula harriot, who spent four years in jail for supplying drugs — and she now works hands on with people in prison for the organisation revolving doors. how have you seen it change, in the last 5—10 years? we have seen the impact of having less staff and more people in prison is billy impacting on the ability to deliver any rehabilitation in prisons, and it has become about warehousing people and warehousing people who come into that prison unwell. mental health problems, substance misuse problems. all sorts of challenges for rehabilitation, what does that mean, more hours in a cell? it means locked in a cell. how long? we have seen cases of people being locked up the entire weekend because of staff shortages, from friday until monday. that is simply traumatising for people. imagine not being able to get out at all and how that plays on your ability to cope with the stress of the sentence, you can't access the phone to phone anybody. you are isolated and how that impacts on your mental health. some people would say, you are in prison, what do you expect, that is what you get when you go to prison. i agree, but the punishment is being deprived of your liberty and i don't think it is being placed in a degrading situation. how does the violence, round? a rather stupid question, but people locked in cells are not going to be getting up to any violence because there's nothing for them to do. the frustration builds and builds and escalates and so when you get out the anger and frustration is absolutely at the tipping point, the boiling point, and then people flare up over things that generally could be managed. in a more, in a different way. have you witnessed any violence in prisons? i have been working since my own release from prison, i've been working constantly in prisons and directly with people who have been recently released from prison, having lots of contact, and i can see that the breakdown in communication, the breakdown in access to mental health services and substance misuse services, and psychological interventions, how staffing levels mean people can't get to health care. the one substance people are allowed to misuse is tobacco, the smoking ban is causing a worry. i think that is misjudged. in my information that i've had recently around the smoking ban, it is that people are then using spice. which is much worse. and they are smoking it with tobacco, that is unadulterated and the impact of that is that it has escalated people's mental health and violence levels. very briefly, the public want people to be punished. supplying drugs, they want you to be punished but you got four years. what could we have done to signal disapproval in the way that we have done? i recently spoke to a magistrate about how we can minimise the amount of people that are being sent to prison and her answer was that we need a menu of options for magistrates, that sometimes they bail out of options. they run out of options to support people in the community to look at their funding behaviour and they don't have the ability to sentence people to mental health treatment and they don't utilise that as much as they could. they don't have the option to direct people to substance misuse treatment orders, and i think we need to have a much more coherent approach to using community sentencing to divert people out of the criminaljustice system. thanks forjoining us. i'm joined now by philip wheatley — formerly director—general of the national 0ffender management service and also a former director—general of hm prison service. and the conservative mp dominic grieve, who was attorney general under the coalition government. good evening. would you say it is crisis level in terms of violence and inability to looked after prisons the way you meant? i think it is a crisis in the way that you have seen a tripling in the level of assaults on staff since i left in 2010, it is difficult for staff to do theirjob safely on properly and that makes them likely to back off in the face of that aggression and it makes it difficult to run prisons safely. the level of assaults between prisoners and the extent to which spice has become the drug of choice, and is difficult to deal with, and now a series of incidents, mass disorder, that genuinely should be caught a crisis. and we also have suicide which has doubled since i left and that means prisons are not safe for prisoners and staff and by not doing the job they should be doing in terms of reducing reoffending. we have heard that the state of things, do you recognise that is the state ofjails in england and wales? yes, i do, the evidence is overwhelming and the problem is we have an overcrowded prison system and we have failed consistently to face up to that and to accept we have either got to reduce the prison population or provide more prisons and more prison officers, and while leadership in good prisons can do a great deal to reduce some of those issues, even if you have a shortage of staff, there comes a point where you can't go on doing that. and the message i think the government has got to take, either there has to be more investment and money being spent or we have got to find alternatives to prison is to reduce the prison population. we have failed to face up to this, and i get bombarded by people asking for prison sentences to be increased or for new offences to be created, which will lead to people being sent to prison, we have a knack in this country of seeing prison as the final destination for criminals and insisting that is where they should go, we have one of the highest prison populations in europe per head. and we don't have the resources invested in order to do that. this is quite an indictment of your party in government, they have been there seven years and they have been talking the talk. michael gove said this is appalling, no point trying to minimise attention from the problems, but it hasn't been dealt with, why not? it is an indictment of every single government that has been in office was long as i have been in parliament. this is a long—standing problem and in fairness, the present justice secretary who is a wise and sensible person has understood some of these issues and in the decisions that have been taken in getting more prison officers back, that is a step in the right direction, but it can only be a step, and we put people into prison and unless we have proper training and education programmes, what we're actually doing is putting a group of people with serious problems and a tendency towards criminality all together in one place. should we be surprised in those circumstances if we can't deliver the programmes, but in fact they end up misbehaving within the prison system itself? we heard philip aitchison basically saying if you can't get the resources, you need to have the army ready whenever there is disruption, and he thinks there will be quite a bit, are they ready to step in, have we reached that point? that would make the situation worse, in my view, and the prison‘s ability to handle disorder and two ended without injury is quite considerable, they are skilled in doing it and they have succeeded in doing that, but the army are not trained for that. to deploy them in that role would be folly and to deploy them to supervise wings, when they have had no training, that would be folly, there training is in using lethal force, not in persuading people to do things, and that would make the situation was, but there is a crisis and we do have to deal with it. they have announced there will be more prison officers, 3000 extra prison officers in england and wales. will that make the difference that is required ? it will help if they can recruit them. part of the problem is that the pay for police officers has been forced down. they earn less than they used to when i was there. that is making the job unattractive in the south—east, where the economy is running hot and we have full employment. it is getting difficult to recruit. in my time, it was 2%, but it is running just short of 10% of staff a year of turnover, so you have to recruit hard to stand still. we have to do something about both the attraction and the retention strategy, and sticking doggedly about the government pay strategy looks like it's getting in the way of that, particularly in the south—east. what happens if we don't put in the extra resources and recruit more prison officers? what happens if we do nothing? i think the consequence will be that the prison system will be run as well as it can be, but it will continue to be a chaotic situation. the rehabilitation we want from the prison system, that the vast majority of inmates will be coming out after reasonably short periods of time, is going to be lost. it is in our interests to get this right. coming back to my original point. the greatest driver is overcrowding. as long as we cannot get a grip on this as a society, we will constantly be behind the curve. we are not going to be able to address this issue. i have taken an interest in this subject for 20 years, as long as i've been in parliament, and in that time, these problems have been in the background continuously. and the prison population has gone up by a third. thank you both very much. more news breaking tonight on the tests into building cladding and insulation in the wake of the fire at grenfell. chris cook has been following this whole issue since the day of the fire. chris, just bring us up to speed with the tests. we heard a lot about test failures in the last few weeks. what the government was doing when they had all these failures was auditing the building, trying to work out what combustible materials were on buildings across england. they didn't know which combination of materials could be used together safely, because a lot of it will be ok because it will be installed such a way to ensure that fire can't get to it. they are doing six tests to work out what combinations of materials can safely be used. so these are the big six. forget everything else. what are these tests showing? we have a grid showing what these tests are. down the left—hand side are the types of cladding they are testing. limited combustibility cladding is the most fireproof stuff. fire retardant cladding is slightly less. the last one is quite combustible. they are doing big tests with those installed alongside plastic foam, for one test, and mineral ball, the insulation. we had the grenfell tower combination last week, and that was a complete failure. what we learned tonight is polyethylene core cladding and mineral ball also failed the test. that polyethylene core cladding is gone, basically. the 193 tall buildings across england that have some kind of polyethylene core cladding on them will have to be taken down, realistically, because even when you have the safest type of installation, it cannot withstand the fire tests. we have four other boxes to look forward to. in exactly, and we don't know what they are going to say. they might say that's just a little bit has to be changed. thank you very much. turmoil in venezuela continues. the constituent assembly elected — controversially — over the weekend, is due to be sworn in any time now. however, the company that provided the electronic voting system used in the vote said it thinks the government's claims on the huge turnout were exaggerated. given the opposition were boycotting the vote, it was upon turnout that the legitimacy of the vote depended. you'll have seen last night that opposition leaders have been arrested and detained, the eu is thinking about its response — probably not sanctions at this stage. but protests in the country continue as it slides into disorder. we can speak to bbc correspondent will grant in caracas. what is the latest, particularly on the swearing in of this constituent assembly, which i believe has been a bit late? that's right. it has been another one of these chaotic, ad hoc days in venezuela, when you wake up and the news moves faster than ordinary people can keep up with. the announcement you mentioned in london by the company that runs the electronic voting system will have had real shock waves here, because of course the opposition will say that the numbers were inflated, but to have those claims supported by the very people who are counting the vote, or rather operating those systems, gives credibility to them and not to the government. mr maduro is carrying on regardless, both with swearing in, which we expect in the coming hours, and also with the socialist project more generally, everything that is happening in terms of sanctions against him personally and against his top leadership. he is wearing that as a badge of honour if anything, saying that it shows he's taking the right response to washington, puffing out his chest at donald trump. this has a long way to go. as you rightly pointed out at the beginning, there are more demonstrations, more conflict, and most ordinary venezuelans caught in the middle and hoping it doesn't turn bloody. thank you very much. at one time, venezuela looked to be a country that could cock a snook at the global establishment and neo—liberalism. a left populist country, it attracted the attention of left—leaning politicians in this country. veneuzuela was pioneering an alternative path. "showing another way is possible", as diane abbott said five years ago. so as it falls into disrepair, what is the left‘s interpretation of events there? jeremy corbyn is under pressure from some of his own mps to condemn maduro's government. joining me now from derby is the shadow home office minister, chris williamson. and from glasgow, the telegraph commentator and former labour minister, tom harris. chris williamson, you either have to face it that maduro is in the right now, or you were in the wrong to support him earlier. what is the position of the left now? that is an unfair characterisation, if i might say so, because the circumstances have changed substantially in venezuela in recent years. the collapse in the oil price and these violent protests, which have been aided and abetted by the usa, who have been funding opposition groups and have a very shady record going back many decades of interfering in latin america, right back to chile where president nixon said he was going to make the opposition scream. we have had factory owners stopping production of products to cause shortages in the shops, the same tactics used in 1973 in chile. so your response to seeing opposition leaders bundled out in the night and taken away and arrested is to condemn the united states? is that your response? not at all. that is unfair. human rights are inalienable and universal. i am not an apologist for the venezuelan government. clearly, they made mistakes and didn't do enough to diversify the economy. they are under incredible pressure, and there is a very one—sided view of the situation there very often in the british media. i have yet to hear any criticism of the right wing opposition or of the united states and their sanctions. there is a reluctance to impose sanctions on the country. it would be better to bring the sides together in talks, and to encourage the right—wing opposition to stop these protests on the street. just imagine if this was happening in this country, or in the usa. many people involved in those protests would be facing prison terms of between five and 20 years! tom harris, do you think that jeremy corbyn should recant his own views and saying he should condemn what maduro is doing? i think he should. you have to distinguish between two very different positions in the labour party. since the second world war, labour party has been the party of watson and blair. they have managed to distance themselves effectively from some of these marxist revolutionary outfits. jeremy corbyn and the hard left, they've never met a banana republic they didn't like. when jeremy corbyn started talking about venezuela being an example that britain should follow, nobody really paid attention, because he was an anonymous backbencher who was known to say eccentric things. now he is the leader of the party, we have an absolute right to know whether he regrets or recants what he said. it would be a sign of political maturity to come out of hiding and say that he got it wrong. do you think he will do that? there are things that the venezuelan government has got wrong, but i'm —— there are things that the venezuelan government have got wrong, but i'm not sure what tom is saying here. he is a free marketeer. but what was the situation like in venezuelan before hugo chavez came to power? it was a chaotic, great inequality, grotesque poverty... do you think you are closer to chavez and maduro your political philosophy, or tony blair? that is quite a question! to me, it's a question of... can you not answer it? let me answer in my own way. when a government is doing good things, as they certainly were under hugo chavez, a huge reduction in poverty and investment in health care, improvement in the standard of living — that is surely a thing we should celebrate. putting up a false dichotomy of asking who i am closer to is an irrelevant question. i have to give five seconds, the last word. i'm sorry. sorry. tom, i'm sorry. we have given far too little time. just in a few words, would you not say there is hypocrisy all over the place? the important point is that nobody in the labour party has looked at saudi arabia and said it is an example to follow. it has been said that using the example of venezuelan is something for great britain to follow. this is a government that is killing people and locking them up. it is kililng people and torturing people. the cia are not forcing maduro's government torture and imprison people, and they should be outraged. i'm so sorry. we are out of time. thank you. it seems as though we get a new hamlet on the west end stage almost as often as a new head of media in the white house. benedict cumberbatch has played the prince of denmark, tom hiddleston will take on the role later this year — but currently winning golden opinions in the part is the irish actor andrew scott, who you may know as moriarty in the hit series sherlock. his hamlet has deliberately been pitched to younger audiences, with 300 seats a night on sale to the under—30s. —— with 300 seats a night on sale to the under—30s. stephen smith has been to the harold pinter theatre to meet him. tis sweet and commendable in your nature, hamlet. to give these morning duties to your father. andrew scott's hamlet wears his fencing gear almost as if it was a straitjacket. but father lost his. he says the production he leads looks at hamlet‘s plight in a very contemporary way. the thing that feels the most timely is the relationship with mental health. it's a story about a young man whose father has just died and everybody in his family is saying, move on, move on, you're the prince, we don't have time. your mental health is not important. and so because he is at the centre of the state, something rotten develops at the state of denmark. and that's what's very important. i don't think you can play hamlet in the sense, you can'tjust put on this antic position and make it is apparent to everybody that your lunatic in inverted commas because that's not the way mental health presents itself. that's what's been very gratifying. people can relate to what grieving is. i think we're on a very exciting time in the world about what we understand in mental health and our attitude towards being ashamed of sometimes being a little bit ill. do you draw on anything particular for that? yeah. yeah, you do. i think grief can manifest itself in a lot of different ways, notjust the death of people. you have to bring an awful lot of yourself to the park. tis an unweeded garden grown to seed. rank and gross in nature. but two months. no, not so much, not two... so excellent, a king, it was, was, to this. one of the things i really wanted to do was to be able to speak directly to the audience. not to kind of pretend that they're not there. speaking into the light. but actually you're live and and you're going, i'm here, speaking to you. so if someone does sneeze or laugh too loud or sometimes the rain comes down heavily and you can hear it. you can hear it? yeah. you can hear it outside. you can't pretend that that's not happening. and that is what i think keeps it live and present, people say, this is really happening to me. robert icke‘s production of hamlet has consciously appealed to younger audiences with discounts for the under 30s. i feel really strongly about that. it's this fear mongering that goes on, that young people that watch sherlock aren't going to be able to watch hamlet without snapchatting through it or eating nachos. these terrible... i believe it is snobbery. if they are going to be watching shakespeare for the first time, it's ourjob to make it as interesting as a box set. hamlet is a thriller. rob, our director, he says it shouldn't be like eating your vegetables. you know, do your shakespeare, like kind of chore. they say that about newsnight, by the way. it's like eating your vegetables. i don't necessarily agree with that. i can still prove that you created an entirely false identity. oh just kill yourself, it's a lot less effort. scott is probably best known as the suave but dastardly moriarty in the hugely successful sherlock. you're insane. you're just getting that now. what prospect of more cases for the sleuth of baker street? what about a little extra incentive? your friends will die if you don't. i'm afraid to say, don't expect much. i think it's over for now. i don't think the door is ever fully closed. i think it definitely could do with a bit of time away from it. mark gatiss says it is the fawlty towers thing. leave well enough alone. i think everybody is busy doing their thing. i don't have much to report on that front. really? yeah. you're not going to pop up in a christmas special? i promise you. 007, i'd like you to meet max denby, the head of the joint security system. it's a pleasure to finally meet you, 007. i've heard a lot about you. most of it good. congratulations on your new appointment. thank you. i suppose we should call you c now? no, no. max, please. no, i think i'll call you c. scott almost did for another great british hero, james bond, as a duplicitous technocrat. what's his view on 007‘s future? we are going to bring british intelligence out of the dark ages. into the light. a gayjames bond, female doctor who, and all of that stuff. it's almost impossible to speak of those things in general terms. because two straight people and two black people and two gay people can be completely distinct from each other, given the attributes, and those are the things that you play, you play those attributes and not the colour or the sexuality. or the gender. there's the rain. quick, improvise. thank you. nice to meet you. nice to meet you, too. andrew scott, talking to steven smith. it has been prince phillip‘s day — the day of his last official solo engagement. he greeted royal marines involved in a 1,600 mile charity race — quite a marathon. and it has been quite a marathon for the duke in his 65 years as consort to the queen. 22,219 solo engagements, including 5,490 speeches. i've not been counting, but that's the reported totals. and of course there are many, many more occasions at which he has accompanied the queen. the solo engagement count comes in at 340 per year, which is quite reasonably regarded as a good strike rate, getting on for one a day, including weekends. just before we came on air, i spoke to martin palmer. spiritual adviser and long time friend of prince phillip. and to arthur edwards — the sun's veteran royal photographer. first i asked martin if he found the duke easy to get along with. yes, very, as long as you don't catch him on a bad day or a bad morning. mornings are not his best time, especially early morning. i remember, we were on mount athos and i had to get him up at three to go to a service and then we had to leave to take the boat off the island. he was fairly grumpy. we actually cleared the deck of an entire ship, leaving from mount athos back to the mainland of greece because we had a flaming row about something. i don't know what it was now. when i went downstairs, they said, are you going to be executed? i said no, probably not. you could have a row with him, could you? oh god, yes. oh yes. what would you call him? i would just talk to him like i'm talking to you. you would say philip? no, not usually. he would always say, if i went, now, sir, he would go, 0k, whatam i being asked to do that i should not do. if i didn't bother to say that, we would just have a conversation. because otherwise it gets in the way, i have to say. arthur, similarly informal and pleasant? no, he treated the media like telegraph poles. they were there and he walked round them. i never had one conversation, except when i met him in press receptions. and after photographing him for ten years, there was a press reception in washington and i was introduced, arthur edwards from the sun. and he said, is that the baltimore sun? ithought, god, i'd been there ten years. laughter how long does it take? we've got some of your pictures. let's have a look at this first one. arthur, tell us what we're looking at. this is a picture where prince charles hasjust played polo for the navy. and lord mountbatten and prince philip, both ex— naval veterans. and they are just congratulating him. what i love about that picture, lord mountbatten was hugely close to the prince of wales and just having his arm on his shoulder like that tells everything. and a year later, of course, he was killed in ireland. we went back there a couple of years ago with the prince and it was very moving. bit of a family man, actually. there was a time when i think he saw himself as the patriarchy of the family and the queen would be the matriarch of the nation, so to speak. i think putting it simply, he wore the trousers within the household, in order that she could wear the crown for the people. and that really was important to him. it is important to him still. he was there to support her, he ran the family, the family business side of things and that was the first priority, so that she could be queen. let's look at the next picture, arthur. this one is from the 70s. now we are moving to the 80s. 1985. this is in china. they have just been looking at the terracotta warriors and that, you thought, would have been the picture of the day, but it wasn't, of course. because the prince was speaking to some students and he said, "if you stay here much longer..." the kids were saying they were bored. he said, you will end up with slitty eyes. a very intrepid reporter called harry arnold from the sun got that, and before you know it, it was the splash. and we splashed on that story two days running. i remember the headline, "philip gets it all wong". and the next day was, "queen velly velly angry". we've never splashed on the queen two days running on a royal tour ever, but that story... i was asked for some advice on this because china is my area. i have to say, we've brought a lot of chinese to see him because we work with all the major religions. particularly taoists. he has a great affection for the taoists of china. and they're always bemused that the sun would think this was a great story, because theyjust thought it was a greatjoke. they didn't know how insulting it is? no, because, remember, the chinese refer to us as "gweilo", which means ghosts. people who haven't been properly reincarnated. which is why we're all so pale — despite the good efforts of your make—up people. for them, that kind of humour, almost slapstick humour, it's fine. it was the uptight brits who had a problem with it, not the chinese. some in the diplomatic service were absolutely... yes, they were. that story ran around the world. i think all the major wires ran it. i thinkjust the idea that he has these gaffes every now and then. i think that's when it became a thing, really. yes, and also, you know, i'm delighted he did have the gaffes. it made him into somebody human. he was only playing jokes with people, that was the thing. in fact, he castigated us once for reporting them, and he did admit to the slitty eyes, and he did admit that he said to aboriginals, "you're chucking spears at each other." but, he said, "you were not supposed to hear that. that was private. " private on tour. nothing private! it's also this problem — if it's the 1000th person you've met this week, and i've seen the most incredibly intelligent, bright, active people like rabbits in headlights. they become monosyllabic. and he uses humour... 0k, sometimes fairly heavily, but he is navy, to sort ofjust crack them open a bit. to kind of break through... precisely, precisely. 0k, arthur, third picture. this is bringing us much closer to the present. a really interesting photo. i love that picture. i mean, i have to tell people — it's the duke of edinburgh. it's at windsor horse show, and it's pouring with rain. it's really a miserable day, but he brought carriage driving to prominence in britain when he took part in it, and i think he's still doing it today. and when he's retired, he'll carry on doing it and when he goes for it, when he's in competition, i promise you, he is fierce. he's a real battler. so, i didn't like him for years, but ended up loving him, because... 0h, is that...? oh, yeah, it evolves. i thought he was very rude to the press. well, he ignored us. but, slowly over the years, i've got to love him. now, when we go on an engagement, we won't be saying, "what colour do you reckon the queen will be wearing today?". we'll be saying, "do you think the duke will come today?". gents, thanks both very much indeed. we have a 90 second retrospective of his career on twitter which we did not have time to run in the programme that is just about it for tonight but we're not leaving yet — because we have another of our proms playouts now — tomorrow at the albert hall is a brahms and mozart night and on the programme is the hugely acclaimed young norwegian violinist vilde frang. tomorrow she'll be playing mozart, but tonight, for us, she is playing a piece from her new album. it is estrellita by the mexican composer, manuel ponce. vilde is accompanied on the piano by gamal khamis. goodnight. "estrellita" — manuel ponce. such a shame to spoil the atmosphere. weather. a lot of rain out across england. much will fade. showers will continue in scotland and wales. pushing into north—west england today. a blustery day. showers for england and wales. they won't last too long. most will fade in the afternoon. some continuing in northern ireland. continuing in scotla nd northern ireland. continuing in scotland in the afternoon and becoming slow—moving downpours in the east of scotland. sunny spells away from that. pleasant in the sunshine. a windy day in england and wales. a breeze on thursday night and friday morning. temperatures holding up in the mid—teens for some of us. some showers, just not as many. in the afternoon, very few. cloud around. some sunny spells. a light breeze. feeling a little bit warmer. the weekend, some showers. again, not too many. and that is your weather. i'm sharanjit leyl in singapore. the headlines: it's a highly controversial procedure but now scientists say gene editing could prevent thousands of inherited diseases. health officials in the philippines describe the country's hiv epidemic as a national emergency. i'm babita sharma in london. also in the programme: the brazilian striker neymar is poised to become the world's most expensive footballer as he's set to move from barcelona. # life story... the story of the edgy singapore of the 70s, told in wonderboy, a film released today. we speak to its star.