Exmoor big picnic to mark 70 years of national parks-->The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall will attend the celebration.

Pic--Exmoor National Park will host a picnic for 500 people including the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall

Royal correspondent(wp/bbc):::

Hundreds of people are expected to attend a "big picnic" to celebrate the anniversary of the law allowing national parks to be created.

The event hosted by the Exmoor National Parks Authority will mark 70 years since the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act was passed.

Since then, 15 national parks have been created in the UK, attracting millions of visitors each year.

The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall will attend the celebration.

The Act was born out of a decades-long campaign that led to the mass trespass of the Peak District's Kinder Scout in 1932.

During the protest, hundreds of ramblers walked on to private land on Kinder Scout, in Derbyshire, to assert their "right to roam".

The Kinder Scout protest was credited for bringing the question of public access to rural Britain into focus.

In 1951, the Peak District the protesters had "invaded" was declared a national park.By the end of the 1950s, thanks to the passing of the 1949 Act, 10 national parks had been established.

Those 10 parks were the Peak District, the Lake District, Snowdonia, Dartmoor, Pembrokeshire Coast, North York Moors, Yorkshire Dales, Exmoor, Northumberland and the Brecon Beacons.

Since then, a further five parks have been established: The Broads, Cairngorms, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, New Forest and South Downs.

A spokesman for the Campaign for National Parks said the establishment of the national parks remained "our premier achievement and indeed one of the top environmental achievements of the past 100 years".On Wednesday, picnickers will gather in Simonsbath's riverside meadows, at the heart of Exmoor in Somerset.

Sarah Bryan, chief executive of Exmoor National Park Authority, said she was "amazed and encouraged" by the demand for tickets, which were allocated within two weeks.

"National Parks offer so much to the country and simply wouldn't exist­ were it not for the foresight and determination of those who fought for their establishment," she said.

New legal definition of domestic abuse

Staff reporter(wp/bbc):::

New legislation that creates - for the first time - a wide-ranging legal definition of domestic abuse has started its journey through Parliament.  

What's being described as the "landmark" Domestic Abuse Bill was welcomed by MPs of all parties.

But there were questions about whether the next Prime Minister would be fully committed to it. 

Kristiina Cooper reports. 

You can hear more from Today in Parliament at 11.30pm on Radio 4.

Johnson planning summer 2020 election - Times

Political reporter(wp/reuters):::

Boris Johnson’s team wants to hold a national election in the summer of 2020 and has started raising funds to hire more staff and prepare the Conservative Party for the contest, the Times newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The former mayor of London is the clear frontrunner to replace Theresa May and become British prime minister when the result of the leadership contest with Jeremy Hunt is announced next Tuesday.

Johnson has said it would be “absolute folly” to hold an election before he has taken the country out of the European Union and the Times said his team was planning to pump more money into the party’s headquarters to put it on to an “election footing” for 2020.

Britain is due to leave the bloc on Oct. 31.

“There’s a desire to get this done while (opposition leader Jeremy) Corbyn is still around,” the newspaper quoted one senior member of the team as saying. “Labour is utterly divided — Brexit is killing them. Labour is in no fit state to fight a general election.”

Britain’s next election is due in 2022 and both contenders for the leadership have said publicly they do not plan to hold a national vote before then.

Labour anti-Semitism row: Advert criticises Jeremy Corbyn

Political repoter(wp/bbc):::

More than 60 Labour peers have put their names to an advert in the Guardian accusing Jeremy Corbyn of failing to tackle anti-Semitism.

The signatories, who make up about a third of Labour members in the Lords, said the leader was presiding over a "toxic culture" of anti-Semitism.

Many of the 67 signatories are long-standing critics of Mr Corbyn.

A Labour spokesman said Mr Corbyn and the party stood "in solidarity with Jewish people".

Labour has been engulfed in a long-running dispute over anti-Semitism, which has seen nine MPs and three peers leave the party.

Last week, the BBC's Panorama revealed claims from a number of former party officials that some of Mr Corbyn's closest allies tried to interfere in disciplinary processes involving allegations of anti-Semitism.

As well as calls for an investigation into the claims made in the programme, the Labour leadership is also under pressure to adopt an independent complaints process.In the Guardian on Wednesday, the peers said Mr Corbyn had failed to accept responsibility for "allowing anti-Semitism to grow in our party".

"The Labour Party welcomes everyone irrespective of race, creed, age, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Except, it seems, Jews," the advert said.

"This is your legacy Mr Corbyn," it added.

"Labour is no longer a safe place for all members and supporters," it said.

It also accused Mr Corbyn of having "failed to defend our party's anti-racist values".

'Misleading claims'

About a dozen of the signatories are former ministers who served in the last Labour government - including Peter Mandelson, Beverley Hughes and John Reid.

Those who signed make up about a third of the Labour members of the House of Lords.

A party spokesman told the BBC: "Regardless of false and misleading claims by those hostile to Jeremy Corbyn's politics, Labour is taking decisive action against anti-Semitism."

When the Panorama documentary aired, a Labour spokesman said the former employees who had talked to the BBC were "disaffected", and included some officials "who have always opposed Jeremy Corbyn's leadership".

But more than 200 current and former staff wrote to Mr Corbyn to say the party had treated whistleblowers in an "appalling and hypocritical" way, and that the "moral responsibility" for the anti-Semitism crisis lay with the party's leader.

Labour has never confirmed the number of anti-Semitism cases it is investigating and the scale of the issue among its supporters has become a source of political dispute itself.