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20/10/2014

Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.

3 hours

Last on

Mon 20 Oct 2014 06:00

Today's running order

0635

Europe is top of the political agenda again this morning because of a speech the outgoing president of the European Commission is about to make. Norman Smith reports.

0638

Rescue teams in Nepal say they are no longer searching for stranded trekkers after the blizzards and avalanches in the Himalayas; their focus is now on recovering bodies buried in the snow. Our correspondent Andrew North is in Khatmandu.

0641

Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power 2 years ago saying his number one aim was to clean up politics. Soon afterwards he launched an anti-corruption campaign the likes of which the communist state has never before seen. Tens of thousands of party officials are now under investigation or in prison. And a growing number are killing themselves - the suicide rate among the country's mid- to top-level officials is now at least 30 percent higher than the urban average. Our China Editor Carrie Gracie reports from Shanxi province, the front-line of the president's anti-corruption campaign.

0649

There's been an extraordinary increase in the number of people getting liver disease.... and it's because we're drinking so much. We hear from Professor Julia Verne from Public Health England, who led the research.

0653

Europe's leaders are meeting this week and they'll be talking about climate change and cutting carbon emissions. They've agreed they have to be cut by 80% by the middle of the century and 40% over the next 15 years. But one senior figure on the UN's panel for climate change, Prof Jim Skea - vice chair of the UN's panel on coping with climate change - says that 40% figure is not high enough. Roger Harrabin, Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Environment Analyst.

0709

You'd think if there were a very big fire at a very big power station it might cause problems with electricity supplies. But apparently not. Didcot B in Oxfordshire is one of our biggest (it serves a million homes) and the fire broke out yesterday.Simon Furlong, Assistant Chief Fire Officer who has been on site since the fire started and is running the operation. Malcolm Grimston, Senior research fellow at Imperial college and energy expert.

0713

We still don't know how many people are missing in Nepal's worst ever trekking disaster. At least 39 people are known to have died, and nearly 400 people have been rescued after the blizzards and avalanches on the Annapurna trail. Rescue teams say they are no longer searching for stranded trekkers; their focus is now on recovering bodies. Alan Hinkes is an International mountain guide and the only british climber to have reached the summit of all 14 of the world's highest mountains.

0716

Business news with Justin Rowlatt.

0719

Over the past few weeks we've heard promises from all the main political parties about how they would protect the NHS. This week the man who runs NHS England, Simon Stevens, who only took on the job in April, will give his first detailed appraisal of what the health service needs and how it should develop over the next five years. With a rising population, the increasing needs of a growing elderly population and public health problems like obesity, the NHS is facing major challenges - and all against a backdrop of financial austerity. Our Health Editor Hugh Pym reports.

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0732
It might have passed you by, but ASBOS are no longer with us. It's generally agreed they didn't really work - but the question now is will the new measures be any more successful at controlling people who make their neighbours' lives a misery with their anti-social behaviour. They come into force today but they've been trying them out in Manchester for he past 18 months. Today reporter Tom Bateman went to see how it's working and we hear from Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Office MinisterΜύNorman Baker .

0744

Space scientists spend a fortune (and a huge amount of time and effort) chasing things. They're always sending rockets into space to see what's going on out there. Now they've had an enormous lucky break. A comet from way beyond our solar system has come to them. To Mars to be precise. And the great thing is that Mars already has all sorts of scientific gear on it or circling it.ΜύDr Kelly Fast, a NASA scientist involved in tracking it, explains the excitement.

0750

Jean Davies starved herself to death because she said it was the only legal way to exercise her right to die. She hadn't been terminally ill but did have a number of chronic health conditions. She had also campaigned all her life in favour of euthanasia. It took five weeks from the day she stopped eating until she died on the 1st October. Her daughter Bronwen Davies joins us from Cardiff.

0810

The outgoing European Commission president is to call on pro-European politicians in the UK to make a more positive case for staying in the EU. Jose Manuel Barroso is expected to say in a speech today that he is worried that no-one challenges the assumption that UK and EU interests are opposed. The Prime Minister David Cameron is reported to be considering plans to cut EU migration by imposing an annual cap on the number of national insurance numbers given to low-skilled immigrants from Europe. New arrivals would get a national insurance number only for a limited period, to prevent them from coming to Britain to work and claim tax credits indefinitely…. Mr Barroso has said he thinks the plans would illegal under EU law, because they would violate the principle of free movement of people. Bernard Jenkin is the Conservative MP for Harwich and North Essex and a Eurosceptic Bruno Maçães is Secretary of State for European Affairs in the Portuguese government. Nick Robinson is the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's political editor.

0820

The rapid spread of new technology in Africa is changing the way people get news and entertainment. Mobile internet and the growth of television is forcing those in more traditional media to adapt in order to remain relevant. Traditionally, radio has been what vast numbers turn to keep informed - so how is it coping? In the first of a part series about the changing face of African media, Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ world service presenter, Alan Kasujja who has worked at radio stations across East Africa, returned to Kenya - where there used to be a single state broadcaster - and he found an unrecognisable landscape...

0832

The 2014 State of the Nation report throws down the gauntlet to all political parties ahead of the next election to be more honest about what they can achieve and by when in reducing poverty and improving mobility. It is expected to say that the 2020 child poverty targets cannot be met and that the next government should supplement the existing targets with new ones, set out a new timescale for achieving them and adopt new approaches to tackle poverty and improve mobility. Alan Milburn is chair of the Government's Commission on Social Mobility.

0837

A report out by the CBI today called "Pulling Together" recommends ways to kick start the UK's supply chains, and solutions to reinvigorate Britain's industrial state. It argues that targeted action to revitalise domestic supply chains could inject Β£30 billion into the economy by 2025, creating more than half a million jobs across the United Kingdom, according to a new CBI report. Vince Cable, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills.

0842

Five of the UK's biggest price comparison sites are being accused of "hiding" the best energy deals from consumers. A rival website said the five were behaving unethically. It said they filter out the best deals, by asking consumers whether they want to switch "today" or "now". Anne Robinson is, Head of Consumer Policy at Uswitch.com and Will Hodson, Co-Founder, The Big Deal.

0846

Despite much publicised air strikes and the arming of Kurdish Peshmerga forces large areas of Iraq continue to fall to Islamic State militants. More than 80% of Anbar province, which lies just to the west of Baghdad, is under their control. So too are most of the province's cities. The provincial capital, Ramadi has also come under attack and many of it's residents have either fled or been evacuated by plane. It's feared that if Ramadi falls the country's capital Baghdad, could follow soon. Our Correspondent, Mike Thomson has been speaking to a long-time resident of Ramadi. He began by asking, Mohamed Dlimi, how likely he thinks it is that the city will fall soon to IS?

0850

Pope Francis has suffered a setback as proposals for wider acceptance of gay people failed to win a two-thirds majority at a Catholic Church synod. A draft report issued halfway through the meeting had called for greater openness towards homosexuals and divorced Catholics who have remarried. But those paragraphs were not approved, and were stripped from the final text. Christopher Lamb is assistant editor at The Tablet, who covered the synod in Rome.

0855

In his latest series, Professor Brian Cox is looking at our place in the universe. He has looked at our evolution, asked why we are here and are we alone. So, is there anybody out there? Professor Brian Cox, presenter of "Human Universe".

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All subject to change.

Broadcast

  • Mon 20 Oct 2014 06:00