well, not necessarily. my guest is the renowned colombian novelistjuan gabriel vasquez, who weaves powerful stories out of fact and fiction. is there anything magical about colombia s current reality? juan gabriel vasquez, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me. it s a pleasure to have you. now you inhabit two different intellectual worlds. you are a political commentator. it is yourjob to have instant, strong opinions for newspapers. on the other hand, you re also a novelist who writes complex, nuanced novels that are sort of riddled with doubt and uncertainty. which of these two mental attitudes comes more naturally to you? well, i m first and foremost a novelist. iwas. i began writing fiction at a very young age, and it was always my ideal to write the kind of novels that i had grown up with. but in south america, a novelist is also a citizen. and so you develop very quickly the need, the compulsion sometimes, the feeling of obligation to comment on the political reality. so in a sense, there are two different and opposite ethics. erm. you write fiction out of uncertainty and doubts and questions. novels are written to ask questions, not to give answers. but at the same time, you re a political commentator who tries to have certainties, who tries to shed doubts. are you faking it when you come up with those certainties for your columns? no, but there are few. there are very few, very few moments during the week in which you are absolutely sure about something and you write to convince, you write to do a kind of proselytism. uh, you write to try to get answers. interestingly, you dig deep into your home country, colombia, and yet you spent a significant part of your adult life out of colombia. yes. would it be correct in a way to say that you became confident in your voice, you know, exploring your home country once you d left it? yes, yes, ithink that s quite accurate. erm, in a sense, also, i was following a very old latin american tradition of leaving our countries to write about them, to understand them better. this is something that has been happening since, uh. ..since the nicaraguan poet ruben dario lived in paris and madrid in the early 20th century. and then, of course, the generation that i grew up as my role models, the latin american boom, and. and garcia, gabriel garcia marquez. ..garcia marquez. yes. ..perhaps the most famous south american author of our times. yeah, yeah. he belonged to a generation that, erm, that wrote, that retold the history of our countries from abroad. so we have this very strange situation in south america where the best novel about colombia 100 years of solitude was written in mexico, and the best novel about peru by mario vargas llosa was written in paris, and carlos fuentes, the great mexican novelist, wrote in washington and london. erm, so it is a kind of necessity, perhaps, that we find to, you know, get a little removed from the places that we are discussing. it s interesting to just reflect on garcia marquez, cos. yeah. i know it s become a bit of a cliche, but this this phrase used about his work and, indeed, 100 years of solitude was magical realism . you do something very different. yes. you use a lot of recent history, of facts, and you weave personal stories around those facts, and it s often quite brutal and it s quite violent and difficult. yes. was your writing a deliberate reaction against that sort of quote unquote magical realism ? no, no, my writing isjust the recognition that my world is different. my world view comes from a different place. i was born in a big capital city in the middle of the andes, so 2,600 metres over sea level. whereas garcia marquez was born in a very small town, caribbean town, with a very different culture and outlook. so his, his demons, his obsessions, his ghosts were quite different from mine. and you were also raised at a time of horrible violence, instability, chaos. yes. ..in your home city, bogota. yeah. i mean, did that. do you reflect on that and think, you know what, i was actually quite traumatised as a kid, as a young adult, by what was happening around me ? yes. well, when i left colombia in 1996, i was 23. erm, i thought i was leaving because i wanted to become a certain kind of writer, and that was the latin american tradition. with time, i understood that i was also fleeing the violence. i was also fleeing a, erm, a particular situation. this was the years of drug wars and drug related terrorism. erm. narco traffickers like pablo escobar were at the height of their power as you were a teenager and a young adult. exactly, exactly. napoleon says somewhere that, uh, in order to understand a man, you have to understand his world when he was 20. and i turned 20 in 1993, which was the year in which pablo escobar died at the height of his threats to the colombian system. so that s that. do you, do you think, when you reflect on it and of course, i m mindful you were writing in europe about this colombia of corruption, of chaos, of violence do you think you were, erm, expressing in a way, a sort of deep fear and anger about what had happened to your homeland? em, frustration in a sense, but mainly, uh, mainly uncertainties, maybe mainly the feeling that, the stories that were being told were not complete. i think i write out of a sense of darkness, of shadows in the collective story of my country, and i think of fiction as a way to shed some light, particularly, on that, on that very special place in which the historical meets private lives, in which private individuals, erm, as brothers and sisters and lovers and, uh, and fathers and, and siblings, they have. they suffer the consequences of politics and history and those forces that we have never learned quite how to, how to control, but that do change our lives. and this is the territory of our human experience that i try to tell in my novels. you call it fiction, but of course you fill your books with facts, sometimes very personal facts. yes. i mean, i m thinking of one of your most successful novels, the sound of things falling, which involves a plane crash. and in fact, you really did find, i think, the transcript of the recording of the last moments of a plane, which i believe was carrying a family friend, which crashed. that s right, yes. and you very literally took these horrific final moments and wrote about them. yes. you also included some other bizarre facts, like the hippo that escaped from pablo escobar s infamous zoo and which was then hunted down years later. and that was the beginning of your book. so i guess, you know, your audience might be sometimes quite confused about these blurred lines between fact and you re a journalist, so you deal in facts but then fiction, which is where you as a novelist come in. yes, i ve understood with time that in my work. my work always begins with meeting an actual person who has a story that seems to me interesting, uh, or who is hiding something, who has evidently some kind of secrets. and i start asking questions. so i always begin writing as a novel. as a journalist. i m a journalist first, and then, since my novels often deal with the colombian past, with our collective past, i turn into a historian ifind documents, i go into archives, and then the last, uh, the last person to come into the process is the novelist. and the novelist s only task is to try to say something that neither the journalist nor the historian has said. but in so doing, you twist and bend the truth. or do you not believe there is such a thing as truth? i do believe there is such a thing as truth. epistemologically i do believe that, but i don t think it s accessible through one story. i don t think one story can.interpret it fully. so you need several stories coming from several parts. and this is particularly true in my country, where we are trying to, uh, deal with a recent history of violence. and we are all trying storytellers, journalists, historians, novelists who are trying to open a space in which different stories about these last 50 years coexist, have the right to exist. but if, if your perception that, actually, truth is complex and it requires the understanding of different people s perspectives and memories. yes. ..and they can recollect the same event in very different ways. yes. where does that leave colombia s attempt to reach, you know, what in south africa was known as truth and reconciliation ? is it possible in colombia? that s what we are trying to do. the peace agreements that were passed in 2016, which i think is one of the great successes in the history of my country, these agreements between the colombian government ofjuan manuel santos and the farc guerrilla. yeah, it should be said it was with the farc group, which was the dominant insurgent group. only one of them. ..but there are many other rebel groups who have not made peace and who are not part of that agreement. exactly. but it was the biggest guerrilla, perhaps the oldest one, and the strongest one, certainly. so it was a success story to make peace with this guerrilla movement. erm, now, part of the. part of what the agreements created were two institutions, the commission of truth and the transitionaljustice tribunals. both of them are, among several other things, in charge of telling stories, opening spaces in which people can come and, uh, tell their story, be recognised as victims of violence, or as perpetrators who ask for forgiveness. the victims may or may not forgive, but the most, the most wonderful human situations have been created or allowed by this, by the institutions. and they all go through the same phenomenon of telling stories. but is it really healing wounds, or do those wounds still fester in your country? that s, that s a great question. you never know if remembering can be sometimes, erm, exciting new resentments or keeping hatred alive. erm, i do have i do have faith in the power of remembering correctly and accurately the past. carlos fuentes, the mexican novelist, said there is no living future with a dead past, and part of our role, i think, as novelists and storytellers in general, is keeping the past alive, trying to keep it true, keep it honest, so that we can understand it and move forward. ah. i mean, something pretty extraordinary happened in 2022 when the colombian electorate voted into power. yeah. ..president petro, who in a previous life, not so very long ago had been a committed guerrilla fighter in the m 19 group, and now he sits in the presidential palace. but that clearly sticks in the throat of many colombians. and ijust wonder, as you look at your country today, whether you fear that petro, who came to power pledging, quote unquote, total peace with all of the different armed groups in his country. yes. ..whether in fact his presidency is deepening polarisation. well, uh, i m very critical about president petro. i think he is a populist and a demagogue, uh, of a very old latin american tradition. but he had this unique opportunity of and this is why i thought his election was good news of implementing the peace agreements of 2016, which had been, uh, disregarded or actively sabotaged by the last conservative government of ivan duque. erm. he hasn t. it s not looking so good right now, is it? i mean, as i understand it, of the different armed groups. because he seems to be saying that he wants a, you know, an ultimate peace and a disarming of all the groups, including criminal gangs as well as insurgent rebel groups and paramilitary groups, he wants them all to be in this umbrella of total peace. yes. well, of the 20 or more different armed groups, only about five are currently engaging with the government. yes, and not only that, to me, the bad side of the whole project is that he is taking away from the 2016 agreements, all the attention and the resources and the rhetorical energy of the government. so he is forgetting them, leaving them to die a slow death through inattention, through negligence, concentrating on his own projects. erm, whereas we, we looked forward during his election to the first serious implementation of those wonderful agreements that we managed to pass in 2016 after much polarisation. it s not, it s notjust a question, is it, of the men with guns. it s also the politicians who for decades and decades, at the very least, turned a blind eye and sometimes were actively complicit in the violence, the murder, the chaos and the mayhem in your country. do you think there will be an accounting of those politicians one could say the old political elite in colombia will they be held to account? well, i certainly think they re one of the. one of the main objectives of the peace agreements and the peace negotiations has to be to find the truth, to have people speak the truth and, and accept some kind of truth as the only way for which we. a reconciliation of the country. but there has to be a reconciliation. it s absolutely no use to go through these difficult processes that have, uh, divided us and polarised us as a nation. so as you say that and you talk about your hopes for the future of your country i m just looking at my notes where i noted down that right now, opposition leaders in bogota are saying that they have plans to launch national strikes to paralyse the country if petro attempts to establish this talk of a constituent assembly, assembly to bypass parliament and the courts. there s allegations of corruption being bandied around involving close family and associates of petro, including charges that his son is facing of bribery with allegations that it was linked to campaign finance, which of course, he the son and indeed the president himself clearly deny all involvement. but nonetheless, it looks in a way like colombia is sinking back into something very dark and dangerous. i think we are not strangers to a certain kind of dynamics in the whole of the continent. 0ur continent, our continent in south america is being divided into different kinds of populisms right wing populisms such as bolsonaro in brazil some years ago and milei in argentina and the left wing populisms active in nicaragua and venezuela, which are turning their countries into failed democracies. in the middle, we have this negotiation between two kinds of extreme ideas, extreme erm, projects, political projects in colombia. and in the middle there are some looking for a way to create a new political centre of a progressive kind, and this is turning into one of the most difficult things of all. because of the current situation of that tension between what the government of petro is doing, a populist demagogue, erm. on that spectrum of latin american politics with the populism, as you describe it, of both the left and the right where do you see the greatest danger lying for colombia? which way do you believe it might. it s very clear to me that the greatest danger is that petro s government will open the way for a right wing or rather, extreme right wing populism, which is already in the making and gathering force as a reaction to what is going on from the government. that is the most worrying situation for me. underpinning much of the violence in colombia and we ve talked about politics and insurgency but underpinning much of it has been drugs. yes. narco trafficking. yeah. ..and the vast amounts of money and indeed the power that come with controlling the drugs. you have suggested that the only way out of this for a country like colombia is the full legalisation of currently illegal narcotics. yes, for any country, i would think. but particularly. what do you think that would do to colombia? erm. i think drugs are a double problem. you have public order problems linked to the violence and the corruption and the instability created by criminal gangs who try to vie for control of the trade. and on the other hand, you have public health problems linked to consumption of drugs and what that does to. the burden that places on health systems. if you legalise, every experience tells us that legalisation would get rid of the first problem violence, corruption, mafias, criminal gangs are a product of the illegal character of drugs, not of drugs themselves. and we saw that during prohibition in the united states only during prohibition did we have not only alcoholism and private problems, but also mafias and corruption and violence, which are the results of illegality, of the criminal world that is built around the protection of an illegal business. you legalise, you get probably rid of all these things, and you can devote the insane amounts of money that we use in drug wars to prevention and education and treatment of addiction. when you, as a journalist, write about the narco traffickers and the scourge that drugs represents in your country and you write about corruption and the corrosive nature of corruption you re in very dangerous territory. journalists and writers get targeted in colombia. yes. some of them occasionally get killed. do you worry about that? well, this is. this is a trend in the whole of the continent. journalists are being persecuted and imprisoned in venezuela and nicaragua. there are networks closed there. they re being actively persecuted by the government. i m interested in your personal story because we discussed you moving to europe to get a distance where you could write about colombia, but you then moved back in around, i think, around a decade or more ago. 2012, yes. yeah, so you have a presence inside colombia now. do you feel constraints on what you can say? i d rather not think about that maybe. erm. surely, you have to. well, i, uh. i do believe there s a kind of, erm.obligation i have as an intellectual, as an observer, and as a novelist. we have a certain kind of take on colombian life, novelists, erm, and it is, it is very difficult to. not to do what albert camus, who is a big figure for me, said it is the role of the journalist to say things are so when you effectively see that things are so, and this is what i try to do. and i know you are friends with many writers around the world, including salman rushdie. when you see what happens to writers who take on, uh, those who don t want their voice to be heard on certain issues, does it make you become more careful about what you say and write? well, salman, salman rushdie is a great example of somebody who has spent the last 30 years defending the freedoms the rest of us take for granted and thriving. i think he is an example of, of courage and of resilience. erm, and it s. .. for me, it s a source, it s an inspiration and a source of admiration in many senses. and you will continue to write about your country from inside your country? i have never, except for one book, i haven t written a page of fiction that is not obsessively about my country, about trying to understand its violence and trying to, uh, explore it and illuminate it. and as a journalist, i only try to defend our right our right to peace, to have a peaceful country. which is, you know, hopefully in the making, but not there immediately. juan gabriel vasquez, thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. it was a pleasure. thank you. hello, there. for most of us, it has been a disappointing start to the week, in terms of the weather. a frequent rash of showers, particularly across scotland, gusts of winds coming from the north, and in excess of 30 mph, at times. temperatures struggled to get into double figures, but it was a slightly different story, further south and west. just look at anglesey beautiful afternoon, lots of sunshine and temperatures peaked at around 18 or 19 degrees. high pressure is continuing to nudge its way in from the west, so west will be best, through the course of tuesday. there s still likely to be a few showers around, but hopefully few and further between. most frequent showers, certainly, are going to be across eastern scotland and down through eastern england. so, sunny spells and scattered showers going into the afternoon. that will have an impact with the temperature, 1a or 15 degrees, but again, with a little more shelter, a little more sunshine, 17 or 18 celsius not out of the question. a few scattered showers moving their way through northern ireland and scotland. hopefully, some of these will ease through the afternoon, but you can see those temperatures still really struggling ten to 15 degrees at the very best. now, as we move out of tuesday into wednesday, this little ridge of high pressure will continue to kill off the showers. so, wednesday is likely to be the driest day of the week and make the most of it there s more rain to come, but it will be a pretty chilly start, once again, to wednesday morning. single figures right across the country, low single figures in rural spots. but, hopefully, the showers should be a little bit few and further between and more favoured spots for those showers, once again, to the east of the pennines. more sunshine out to the west. temperatures, generally, similar values to what we ve seen all week, 10 to 18 degrees the high, but the wind direction will start to change, as we move into thursday. unfortunately, towards the end of the week, this low pressure will take over. we ll see further spells of rain at times, some of it heavy. but the wind direction will play its part, a little a south westerly wind means that we will see temperatures climbing a degree or so. don t expect anything too significant, because we ve got the cloud and the rain around. but it s not out of the question that across eastern and southeast england, we could see highs of 20 celsius. take care. live from london, this is bbc news. the united nations security council adopts a us resolution supporting an immediate ceasefire in gaza here in the uk, campaigning continues as the conservatives launch their election manifesto today. jurors have started deliberating in the trial of president biden s son, hunter. later in the program, we ll be finding out how elephants call to each other using their names. and coming up in business strava is one of the worlds most popular fitness apps. i ll be speaking to its chief executive on this programme. hello, i m sally bundock. a very warm welcome to the programme. the united states is making a major push to pause fighting in gaza, with diplomatic efforts taking place both in the region and at the united nations. the un security council endorsed a ceasefire proposal for gaza on monday. it is the first time the council has passed a resolution demanding a stop in fighting, after eight months of war. the resolution urges both hamas and israel to fully and quickly implement the three phase plan. 1a countries voted in favour, and russia abstained. us ambassador to the un linda thomas greenfield says the resolution shows hamas that the international community is united. colleagues, today this council sent a clear message to hamas. accept the ceasefire deal on the table.
all of a sudden, it clicked in my head. wow, the international space station is a submarine in space. ..moon bots and moon dust. the surface is fine and powdery. i can pick it up loosely with my toe. you know, i think i ve seen that chap somewhere before. jfk: we choose to go - to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. i neil armstrong: it s one small step for man. - ..one giant leap for mankind. 52 years ago, we laid our last footprint on the moon. as the crew of apollo 17 left the surface, they didn t know that gene cernan would be the last person to walk on another world for quite a while. we re on our way, houston. but now, in this decade, finally. ..we re going back. mission control: and lift off of artemis 1. nasa s artemis programme will, in the next year or two, return us to our neighbour. part of its mission to land the first woman and the first person of colour on the moon. another part to use what we learn here to send the first astronauts to mars. this is where it all began florida s kennedy space center named after the president who made the original pledge to go to the moon. and now, this place is at the centre of even grander plans, because this time, we re notjust visiting the moon we want to stay. this is gateway, humanity s first space station that will orbit another world. it will go round the moon every seven days. and, like the international space station above earth, astronauts will call this place home . although, where the iss can accommodate up to 12 astronauts and is comparable to a five or six bedroom house, gateway will be.more cosy. gateway is a studio apartment. it s. we re going to have room for our four astronauts, multiple docking ports, so we can bring our orion crew transportation ship, we can bring logistics, and we can dock a lander. these four explorers won t all be cooped up on board for the whole time, though. two will actually be spending a week or two on location, down on the lunar surface. it s a chance to further study the landscape and hopefully find a location for our next giant leap a permanent moon base. gateway will be there before we put a habitat on the surface. gateway allows us to access any point on the lunar surface. when we went with apollo, we had to pick that spot on the moon and go to it. gateway will give us the opportunity to go down at different locations. the first section of gateway could be launched as early as 2025, with new modules then being added from 2027. a lunar base is admittedly further out and it comes with risk, but also reward. so, how do we make that a reality? to find out, it s time for me to take one small step of my own. oh, wow. i can instantly see the dust kind of kicking up. yeah. it s really fine, isn t it? it leaves the footprints like you d expect. oh, my gosh. that s brilliant. and this is how moon dust behaves, itjust puffs up like that? it does, yeah. it s so fine. welcome to swamp works. ..the dusty, dirty lab where they work with simulated moon dust. now, the loose soil that covers the lunar surface is called regolith. it s extremely fine, very sharp on a microscopic scale, and it gets everywhere. so when we landed with apollo 11, we didn t know what the surface of the moon exactly was going to be like. you ll notice from some of the footage, the landing pads are quite huge on the landing legs and the ladder s far away from the surface. there was a lot of concern of, how much will this lander sink into the surface? how fluffy is this regolith? the surface is fine and powdery. i can.| can pick it up loosely with my toe. in fact, it s because the eagle lander didn t sink in as much as expected that neil armstrong had to take such a giant leap from the bottom rung of the ladder. today, swamp works is developing robots that can cope with and take advantage of lunar soil. and it will be very useful. see, moon dust is made of materials like silicon dioxide and calcium oxide, which all contain a lot of oxygen. if we could mine the regolith and use chemical processes to extract the oxygen, we could make our own breathable air and our own rocket fuel. the way space flight exploration has been working right now is imagine you re going on a holiday with your family, you re going on a long road trip, thousands of miles, right? right now, we are bringing a trailer behind us with all the gas, you know, that we need with us, all the fuel, everything that we need comes with us. so we want to change that paradigm. we want to. and one of the biggest things that makes the biggest impact is the fuel, right? if we can source some of that from the moon and eventually from mars, that will allow us to bring more and to go more often. making our own fuel makes regular trips to and from the gateway space station much more viable. now, mining moon dust is called isru. and, because they love an acronym round these parts, the robot to do this will be called the isru pilot excavator, ipex. we had to really reinvent how you do excavation for doing mining on the moon, and eventually mars. the challenge is the technology we have for mining here on earth relies on a lot of mass and a lot of weight, right? the more steel you put on an excavator, the heavier it becomes and the better it digs. we can t launch something as heavy as we want on a rocket. it s still very expensive, right? so we have to reduce the mass of what we put on rockets. and then when you land it on the moon, so the way the robot scoops up the dust is using this thing called a bucket drum. and it s got a kind of spiral in there. and if it turns it one way, it scoops the soil, which gradually works its way towards the middle and stays there. like that. and then when it wants to unload. ..it turns it the other way and it all comes out again. we put them on opposite ends of the robot and when it excavates, it s using both sets of drums at the same time, but they re digging in opposite directions. so one is pulling it that way and one is pulling it that way. right. ..and pulling itself down to the surface. yeah. one of the main dangers faced by extraterrestrial rovers is getting stuck. so, as an added bonus, ipex s scoops and arms can also help it to get out of a hole orflip it over if it takes a tumble. one of its other defences will keep its cameras free from all that electrostatic dust, which will cling to every part of it. its lenses will be fitted with an electrodynamic dust shield. simply apply electricity and the charged dust particles are repelled, keeping its vision clear. but after a while of going to and fro, we might want to stay a little longer on the surface. robots like this one will prepare the ground for permanent buildings by smoothing and compacting the foundations. do you have a name for this arm? um. we call it. we call it meercat, actually. you ve always got cool names for these things! yeah. why? it s called the multipurpose end effector for regolith acquisition. meercat. .. ..transportation and. yeah, yeah, that s it. you see, what worries me is there are some brilliant inventions you guys haven t bothered with because you couldn t think of a cool acronym. a cool name. that is like one of the. it s very important to have a good name for your projects because it, like, represents the soul of the project, right? now, just like the fuel situation, we can t take building materials with us to the moon either we have to make our structures from moon dust. these bricks and blocks and bars have all been made by mixing and melting regolith with plastic. in the future, giant sd printers will build shelters to protect those living on a world with no atmosphere from radiation, asteroid and micrometeoroid impacts, moonquakes and temperatures ranging from +100 to 200 degrees celsius. even replacement parts can be made from regolith. so this is a wheel that has been printed with regolith and polymer. ok. this is another example of what we can do if we capture the resources from the moon. now, do you know, i ve seen and held wheels for rovers before, full size wheels, and they re really light. right. but this is really heavy. yes, this is the opposite. and heavy wheels are a good thing, i guess. it s better, right? especially for a digger like that. like the more weight that we have on the excavator, the better it s going to perform. would you believe you can even make rope out of regolith? this is made from basalt glass really, really thin fibres, a bit like optic fibre. so you could even make rope out of moon dust. these are hopeful times for space exploration, but it s always been a risky endeavour. im 1 odysseus lunar lander separation confirmed. this year, we ve seen three probes sent to the moon. two made it, and both of those had, shall we say, awkward landings. and the artemis mission to put boots back on the lunar ground has been pushed back to 2026 at the earliest. but nasa says space explorers need to take these setbacks in their stride. i don t see it as a disappointment. it s very cliche to say space is hard, but what we re endeavouring to do is highly complex. we expect challenges along the way so this doesn t surprise us and we re pushing forward. it sounds really expensive to do space exploration. is it, and is it worth it? so, yes, it s really expensive. it was really expensive for us to explore this planet, really expensive to lay rail infrastructure, to lay highway infrastructure, to put the infrastructure in place that allows us to travel in air traffic around this globe. it s absolutely necessary for us to lay that critical infrastructure for going to space, because what we learn in that endeavour is tremendous. the exponential growth that we ve seen in the world in technology is because of great endeavours like this. it s absolutely worth it. here in the united states, every year the general population is spending as much money on potato chips as our budget is every year to go out to the moon. that s a good figure. the motivation may be different to that of the space race of the 1960s, but the size of the ambition is just as great today as we shoot for the moon once again. i m alistair keane with this week s tech news. google has confirmed it s started restricting election related questions on its ai chatbot gemini. if a user asks the chatbot about a political party or candidate, it would tell them to try google search instead. they started rolling out the measure in india. the plan is to expand to other countries where big elections are taking place. the european parliament has approved the world s first framework for regulating the risks of artificial intelligence. the ai act works by classifying products according to risk and adjusting scrutiny accordingly. the law s creators say it will make the tech more human centric. however, the act still has to pass several more steps before it formally becomes law. a surgical team at cromwell hospital in london have come the first in europe to use applevision pro to perform two microsurgery spine procedures. with xx software, the apple headset allowed some in the team to have touch free access when assessing up the surgery and offered them visualisations that were previously unavailable. and fancy wearing sunglasses that can quickly swipe to become reading glasses? well, deep optics have you covered with their newly created 32n glasses. users can transition between the two settings thanks to liquid crystal lenses. they contain pixels and tiny electronic controls. i never dreamed that i could become an astronaut. i m talking to kayla barron. ..one time resident of the international space station and now part of the artemis crew, the team who are preparing to go back to the moon. first time i looked out the window of our capsule. ..16 sunrises and sunsets each day over our beautiful planet, really fundamentally feeling this interconnectedness. everything each one of us does has an impact on the people, notjust immediately around us, but on the entire planet. that inspired me to be really deliberate about, what contribution am i going to make to leave a better, healthier, more connected, more cooperative planet? what inspired you to become an astronaut? i did decide from a pretty early age that i wanted to serve in the military, and ultimately found my way to the naval academy and to the navy and to the submarine force in particular. and i met an astronaut at a navy football game, and hearing her story just reminded me so much of my experience on the submarine. and all of a sudden it clicked in my head, wow, the international space station is a submarine in space. and i told her that and she said, it totally is. it s exactly the same. you have these really complex machines out in these extreme environments that are designed to keep human beings alive in a place we re not meant to be, really, which is deep under the surface of the ocean or in the vacuum of space, and notjust keep us alive, but also allow us to accomplish a mission, do something as a team that s of value to others. what do you think it might be like to live on the moon and then mars? well, the moon is beautiful from the space station, first of all. when the sun is reflecting off this sphere, it s notjust.you know, a crescent moon, a sliver in the sky. it felt like you could just reach out and grab it, and i think made me realise how incredible it is going to be to send human beings back. and there s incredible scientific questions we re going to be able to answer. we re planning to return to the moon, but this time, to the lunar south pole. so we ll be exploring a different area than we visited during the apollo era. answer some really fundamental questions not only about the moon s formation and its geology, but about our entire solar system. you are part of the artemis team. the artemis 3 crew is the one, i suppose, that everyone wants to be on, cos i think that s the one where the people are going to stand on the moon. are you in with a chance of being on artemis 3? of course. everyone in our office dreams of the opportunity to be part of those crews. you wait and hope. but the really cool thing is even if you re not in that seat on the flight, you get to support them and be a part of the team that makes that happen. the artemis 3 mission, they will put the first woman and the first person of colour on the moon. i m guessing that those two people will become as famous as neil armstrong. put yourself in her shoes, even if it s not you. what would that represent for you? for humankind? you know, i think that moment will really represent how far we ve come. you know, we did amazing things in the apollo era, but not everyone had the access to those opportunities. there have been women in the nasa astronaut office for a really long time doing really incredible things. so we ll be standing on those women s shoulders. the first woman to command a space shuttle, the first to do a spacewalk, the first to command the space station. and when we look around at the diversity of our office, it s really incredible, like, who we have around us. it will be this incredible, historic, iconic moment that i think young women and girls around the planet will look to as an example of the fact that you can do anything if you work hard and are supported by the systems, the communities around you to have an opportunity to achieve those goals. you might have seen space food before. but what about space plants? if nasa wants its astronauts to stay out in space for longer, they ll need to be able to replenish their own food supply. this is nothing new. astronauts have been growing crops in space for the past a0 years. but there s still an awful lot that scientists are trying to learn about space farming. we have things like radiation that we have to deal with. we also have issues with microgravity. plants have learned how to detect gravity with their roots and gravity sensing organelles in the plants, and so they know how to use these cues. and without these cues, they have to re adapt to this environment. so, without gravity, the next cue that they use is light. so, how to go up and down, how to orient themselves is based on light now, cos they don t have gravity. water behaves very differently in microgravity. it has a high surface tension, so it likes to cling. and when the water clings to the roots, it prevents the roots from breathing. and so the plants can experience things like drought stress. they mayjust look green to you and me, but plants appear very different when viewed in the infrared and ultraviolet parts of the spectrum. and the scientists here are learning how their appearance changes under different types of stress. here in the plant processing area, we re giving the plants a stressor. so, in this case, we re reducing its watering. because on the station, we know it s difficult to water. and so we can identify through our imaging project, using infrared and visible light, as well as fluorescence, that stress. we take all this data and to make that association we use machine learning. then we can associate the wavelengths that are most indicative of that stress and include them in a camera that would monitor the plants on station. this is where the plants live when they get up there the veggie unit. this is how they grow stuff on the international space station? yep. it s a simple led system, as well as a bellows, so it s open to the crew environment. we have two of these and six plants each. so you can imagine we re not making a huge feast, but it s enough for a nice serving of lettuce. lovely salad. yeah. how excited are the astronauts that they can now have salad and not just space food? they re very grateful. they can have salad, we ve grown peppers as well, and they can even have flowers cos we ve grown zinnia on space. now, there is a knack to getting these seeds to sprout in space. the way you grow plants on the international space station is using this, which is a plant pillow. so, this is the wick that sucks the moisture up. you plug your water source into here and you fill the bottom with soil, and then you get your tiny seeds, which stay in these polymer wrappers so they don t zip off and you lose them around the iss. and you pop it in here, and 28 days later. ..get yourself a lettuce. aside from the obvious benefits of creating a renewable food source, there are all sorts of other advantages to growing plants in space. gardening is very therapeutic. it s something that the astronauts would say, hey, you know, let me take care of something green. it makes them happy. plants produce oxygen and they recycle waste, they recycle water. all this fundamental stuff together will make them a very important organism to take with us. when we re living on the moon and when we re living on mars, what type of plants will we be eating? we would like to have things like nuts and citrus, but, again, there s still so much we don t know about how those plants adapt to the environment. the current goal is to use hydroponic systems, which rely on water based nutrient solutions instead of soil, which is heavy and expensive to transport. but in 2022, scientists showed that plants can grow in lunar soil, regolith. which kind of brings us full circle in a way, doesn t it? if we want to live on new worlds, we need to use the resources that they provide us instead of taking more from our home planet. this has been a fascinating trip to nasa, a place which will one day help us put builders, miners, and even farmers on the moon. hello, there. for most of us, it has been a disappointing start to the week, in terms of the weather. a frequent rash of showers, particularly across scotland, gusts of winds coming from the north, and in excess of 30 mph, at times. temperatures struggled to get into double figures, but it was a slightly different story, further south and west. just look at anglesey beautiful afternoon, lots of sunshine and temperatures peaked at around 18 or 19 degrees. high pressure is continuing to nudge its way in from the west, so west will be best, through the course of tuesday. there s still likely to be a few showers around, but hopefully few and further between. most frequent showers, certainly, are going to be across eastern scotland and down through eastern england. so, sunny spells and scattered showers going into the afternoon. that will have an impact with the temperature, 1a or 15 degrees, but again, with a little more shelter, a little more sunshine, 17 or 18 celsius not out of the question. a few scattered showers moving their way through northern ireland and scotland. hopefully, some of these will ease through the afternoon, but you can see those temperatures still really struggling ten to 15 degrees at the very best. now, as we move out of tuesday into wednesday, this little ridge of high pressure will continue to kill off the showers. so, wednesday is likely to be the driest day of the week and make the most of it there s more rain to come, but it will be a pretty chilly start, once again, to wednesday morning. single figures right across the country, low single figures in rural spots. but, hopefully, the showers should be a little bit few and further between and more favoured spots for those showers, once again, to the east of the pennines. more sunshine out to the west. temperatures, generally, similar values to what we ve seen all week, 10 to 18 degrees the high, but the wind direction will start to change, as we move into thursday. unfortunately, towards the end of the week, this low pressure will take over. we ll see further spells of rain at times, some of it heavy. but the wind direction will play its part, a little a south westerly wind means that we will see temperatures climbing a degree or so. don t expect anything too significant, because we ve got the cloud and the rain around. but it s not out of the question that across eastern and southeast england, we could see highs of 20 celsius. take care. live from washington, this is bbc news. the un security council backs a gaza ceasefire proposal as us secretary of state antony blinken makes a diplomatic push in the middle east. jury deliberations begin in the gun trial of the us president s son, hunter biden. how do you feel today went? i think it went well. we ll see. weil think it went well. we ll see. we ll wait for the jury to come back we ll wait for the jury to come back. thank you. the far right advances in the european union s elections, prompting fresh questions about europe s future. i m sumi somaskanda. the us is making a major push to pause fighting in gaza, with diplomatic efforts taking place both in the region and at the united nations. the un security council endorsed a ceasefire proposal for gaza on monday. it is the first time the council has passed a resolution demanding a stop in fighting after eight months of war. the resolution urges both hamas and israel to fully and quickly implement the three phase plan. 1a countries voted in favour and russia abstained. reactions to the resolution between the two parties have been mixed. hamas says it welcomes the endorsement and that it s ready to work with mediators. a senior israeli diplomat said her country would continue to pursue its objectives.us ambassador to the un linda thomas greenfield says the resolution shows hamas that the international community is united. colleagues, today this council sent a clear message to hamas. accept the ceasefire deal on the table. israeli has already agreed to this deal and the fighting could stop today if hamas would do the same. i repeat, the fighting could stop today.
united nations. the un security council endorsed a ceasefire proposal for gaza council endorsed a ceasefire proposalfor gaza on council endorsed a ceasefire proposal for gaza on monday the first time the council has passed a resolution demanding a stop in fighting after eight months of war. the resolution urges both hamas and israel to fully and quickly implement the 3 phase plan. russia abstained. reactions to the resolution between the two parties have been mixed. says it welcomes the endorsement and that it is ready to work with mediators. senior israeli diplomat said her country would continue to pursue its objectives. us ambassador to the un linda thomas greenfield says the resolution shows hamas that the international community is united. ., ., , ., , united. colleagues, today this council sent united. colleagues, today this council sent a united. colleagues, today this council sent a clear united. colleagues, today this council sent a clear message i united. colleagues, today this | council sent a clear message to hamas accept the ceasefire deal on the table. israel has already agreed to this deal, and the fighting could stop today if hamas would do the same. i repeat the fighting canned stop today. the bbc has more from new york. what we heard from the united states was that this was the best possible way to secure a durable end to the war, saying that it really is a deal that was israel s initiative and outlined three phases that they said would eventually lead the complete withdrawal of israeli forces the, release of all hostages in exchange for palestinian prisoners, major re construction of gaza eventually. i think from different members you heard different members you heard different positions. while the united states says this resolution passing means that the international community ask is united and that this will help put pressure hamas to accept the deal, algeria said they still had reservations about the text but supported it because they net it wanted to give diplom a chance, wanted to give diplom a chance, wanted to give a glimmer of hope to palestinians. but from russia and china, a lot more scepticism. russia said it didn t want to block this resolution because the arab group of nations supported it. but it questioned whether israel had really accepted the deal as the resolution states. they pointed to a number of statements by israeli officials, including prime minister binyamin netanyahu, that they will continue the war until hamas is defeated. china as well questioned if parties will actually implement these three phases of presidentjoe biden s proposed deal, and china noting that the other security council resolutions that have been passed weren t implemented, including a permanent ceasefire, including getting more aid in at scale into gaza, questioning whether this will have a tangible impact on the ground. so i think it remains to be seen if this resolution will, in fact, be different than the other ones. meanwhile, us secretary of state antony blinken is visiting the middle east for the eighth time since the october 7 attacks. secretary blinken is fiercely advocating for the ceasefire deal proposed by president biden 10 days ago. mr blinken met with egyptian president abdel fattah el sisi before heading tojerusalem for talks with israeli prime minister binyamin netanyahu. a state department spokesman said secretary blinken assured mr netanyahu that the proposal would unlock the possibility of calm along israel s northern border. our state department correspondent tom bateman is travelling with the secretary and has more from jerusalem. publicly, we re seeing the americans come here and try to press arab leaders to put pressure on hamas to accept this. but hamas is going to want, and basically wants, a far clearer guarantee that this would mean the end of the war and a full israeli withdrawal from gaza. clearly, they don t feel like they ve got that yet, because we re not seeing the formal response from them or the resumption of these indirect negotiations. but there s something else going on beneath the surface. this isn t part of the public presentation. what mr blinken is trying to do is bind the israelis into this, and the israelis into this, and the israeli leadership, because although mr netanyahu has said that his war cabinet has authorised a deal, we haven t heard unequivocal support from him. crucially, in his wider cabinet, that fractious cabinet, that fractious cabinet, including far right ministers, some of those have outright rejected this proposal already. and some of those have said they would quit the coalition, precipitate its collapse, if this proposal were to go ahead. so that puts pressure on mr netanyahu potentially to pull back from it all. so i think the white house is trying to bounce the two sides into making progress. that is why mr blinken is here. there are also some strong motivations, really, for the israeli leadership, to some extent the top echelons of hamas, to play for a bit more time here. but among those who are trying to rush this through the white house president biden desperately seeking an agreement before the us presidential election campaign gets underway proper later this year. but so far, here from the region, few signs of any imminent breakthrough. for more, i spoke to james jeffrey, former us ambassador to turkey and iraq, and chair of the wilson center s middle east programme, for more on the detailed proposed ceasefire plan. the israelis, again, are agreeing there are other things such as some hostages come back, there s aid pouring in, people can go back to their homes. the basic thing is, for six weeks, the israeli military stops fighting and pulls out of the major urban areas. it basically will hold a strategic terrain along the egyptian border, the sea, and other places, but stops fighting. and in return, as will hamas. and in return, as will hamas. and in return, as will hamas. and in return, will negotiate on a possible permanent ceasefire during those six weeks if. they haven t achieved a breakthrough by then, they can extend that six week ceasefire while they continue to negotiate. but, importantly, they don t have to. and if one or the other side decides after the six weeks to break off the negotiations, we would go back to fighting. so this puts pressure on hamas. that s the israeli proposal. president biden is stressing how important it is to keep those negotiations going on forever, because then the initial six week ceasefire will look like a permanent ceasefire. right. now, here in the us, the president s son, hunter biden, tells the bbc he believes his federal gun case now before a jury federal gun case now before a jury has went well. jurors began deliberating monday after closing arguments wrapped up. our correspondent spoke to mr biden in downtown wilmington, delaware, a few minutes away from the courthouse. good evening, mr biden. do you have time for questions with bbc news? how do you feel today went? i bbc news? how do you feel today went? ~ went? i think it went well. we ll see went? i think it went well. we ll see - went? i think it went well. we ll see - we ll went? i think it went well. we ll see - we ll wait - went? i think it went well. we ll see - we ll wait for l went? i think it went well. l we ll see - we ll wait for the we ll see we ll wait for the jury we ll see we ll wait for the jury to we ll see we ll wait for the jury to come back. hunter jury to come back. hunter biden is accused of lying about his drug on a federalform while lying about his drug on a federal form while buying a weapon in 2018 and illegal a using a firearm while he was allegedly a drug user. thejury will allegedly a drug user. the jury will return to this courthouse behind me here in del wire on tuesday morning to continue its deliberations to weigh the evidence and testimony that they ve heard in this trial over the past week or so. much of that has been very detailed and sometimes difficult to listen to. the prosecution has laid out its case that hunter biden was addicted to crack cocaine, that he was using the drug on or around the time that he purchased that revolver on october 2018. that and that he then lied about that on a federalform. of course, all of this evidence the text messages, the pictures, video, even some audio snippets from hunter biden s memoir has played out notjust for the jury, but also for the biden family itself. many members of that family were again in court today sitting just behind hunter biden in a show of support. among them was the first lady herself, jill biden. this is already an historic case, an historic trial. but a conviction here would also be historic. hunter biden would become the first son of a sitting president to be convicted in a federal courthouse. that would carry a maximum penalty of about 25 years. it s unlikely he would serve that amount of time the discretion would be up to the judge but of course, it s in the hands of the jury now. they will continue those deliberations on day two here on tuesday. around the world and across the uk, this is bbc news. now to another story making headlines in the uk: an initial postmortem concluded that dr michael mosley died of natural causes brought on by the causes of a strenuous walk. the bbc presenter s body was found in a rocky island in greece, symi. it was just near this beach bar that his body was found yesterday not by search and rescue teams but by local journalists, the mayor and the staff of agia marina. he passed up over the land. mikailis was one of the first on the scene. he is still in shock and feels guilt for not finding him sooner. we did our best. we gave whatever we can do and i m very sorry about it. i m very sorry about the end. cctv from the resort, which has not been released, shows the final moments of michael mosley s life. it is upsetting and shows him clearly in distress, michael mosley was 67 years old. you re watching bbc news. french political parties are scrambling to prepare for legislative elections less than three weeks away. it comes after president emmanuel macron s surprise decision to dissolve parliament and call a snap vote. mr macron made the announcement on sunday after his allies suffered a resounding defeat by the far right in european polls. the first day of the campaign was marked not with a rally, but with a memorial service. emmanuel macron visited the site of one of the worst nazi massacres in france, perpetrated 80 years ago today. he s been drawing on the past to highlight what he claims is the current threat confronting the country from the far right. in the face of his opponents success this weekend, the president has taken an almighty gamble in calling a snap election. a0 miles outside paris, this is coulommiers, the land of cheesemaking, where support for macron has crumbled. the members of the monday club said they hadn t veered to the right. but then we met 31 year old mum of three noemi, a worker in an elderly care home, who says she s desperate for something new. translation: what frightens people could actually do them j good, so we should try the national front, because france is getting worse. i m scared to leave my house and the public transport is not safe. whatever the result of these snap parliamentary elections, emmanuel macron is set to stay on as president for another three years, but a national rally victory could have a huge impact here and in many parts of france. it would also be hugely symbolic, too, because injust six weeks time, the country will host the olympic games and by then, france could have its first far right government since the second world war. this is the 28 year old who could be france s prime minister in a month. through his social media, jordan bardella has been winning young supporters in particular, focusing on the cost of living, softening the image of a party once condemned as unelectable, and working alongside marine le pen. she hopes to replace macron as president in 2027. so can national rally translate their victory at the european elections to the national vote? so they have some kind of, say, a political virginity people say, we do not know what they will do if they come to power but nevertheless, let s give them a try, and if we are not happy, we will have election next time and we ll get rid of them. it s not clear what the president s thinking is, but his legacy will be defined in the coming weeks. nick beake, bbc news, outside paris. for more on the snap election, i spoke to a writer and correspondent based in paris. what impact do you think the french president calling snap elections is going to have not only on france, but across the eu? ~ , ., ., ., eu? well, it started a large pr camaian eu? well, it started a large pr campaign by eu? well, it started a large pr campaign by both eu? well, it started a large pr campaign by both the - eu? well, it started a large pr campaign by both the left - eu? well, it started a large pr campaign by both the left and| campaign by both the left and the right throughout europe, but it s essentially a french story. macron had to do this because he has wanted to put a stop to the rise of ultra right right wingism in france, which many here call fascism. you know, the right wing here approximately tax up 40% short of a majority of the 289 seats that s going to be required to get in the parliament in the national assembly to take a majority. they have 577 seats. so macron s decision here which is a political calculation, a tricky one he just wants to shut down the ultra right wing once and for all. he thinks he can do it. you said this is a french story, but we did also see a surge for right wing parties in austria, italy and germany. you don t think we will see this kind of ground breaking snap election in any other country? no other country has yet announced a snap election. and i think viewers have to remember that the european union parliament elections have always been a vehicle to express national discontent, frustrations, in local issues back home. a good illustration, of course, is nigel farage from the uk. so, macron knows this, and again this is another reason why he intends to host the shutdown, this attempt of le pen, jordan bardella, and of course her niece, marichelle and the other cronies, to take them on in the french elections in two years. which according to the polls right now, the french right wing has a good chance of taking. france s snap election is just part of the fallout of this year s european parliament election an enormous undertaking with 373 million eligible voters across the eu s 27 member states. the parties in the for still dominate the legislature. the centre right european people s party, led by the european commission president, ursula von der leyen, gained seats and is still the largest bloc. ms von der leyen said the centre has held, but she acknowledged that more extreme parties also made gains. in her native germany, chancellor olaf scholz was pushed by the far right in germany, the alternative for germany. he rebuffed suggestions he should take responsibility for his party s result and said gains for the far right were worrying, but people should not get used to it. and in italy, the party of populist prime minister giorgia meloni secured a clear victory. elsewhere, right wing parties did not perform as strong. in poland the, governing centrist civic coalition gained victory. for more on the results across the continent, i spoke to a fellow at the council on foreign relations, focusing on europe. looking at the success of right wing parties in a number of eu countries, what do you think voters were casting their ballots on? immigration? the war in ukraine? cost of living? all of the above? in opinion polls ahead of the european parliamentary elections, european voters said that they re primarily concerned about health care, about poverty, and about social exclusion. so, very traditional social welfare topics. another item on the agenda was also security and defence for the first time a third of the european electorate said the third most important priority is actually security and defence, making europe secure after russia s war against ukraine. but social welfare has been on the minds of the european electorate, much more than immigration, surprisingly. we have seen the presence of right wing parties in previous european elections. why do you think we re seeing, however, this surge now? i think we re seeing, however, this surge now? this surge now? i think that there s a this surge now? i think that there s a story this surge now? i think that there s a story of this surge now? i think that there s a story of a - there s a story of a glass half full and glass half empty. on the one hand, the european centre in the european parliament still holds. which will allow, for example, european commission president ursula von der leyen to have a comfortable majority to have a comfortable majority to be re elected. on the fringes, we have this far right surge, as you said. this goes back to national member states and their current political situation. we have germany with the alternative for germany. the far right has been strong there. marine le pen and her party in france have doubled the votes of macron s party. other member states, however, the future doesn t look as dire as in france and germany. so, across the board, we do see a surge in the far right. but if we look down and drill down, it is spiffically certain member states where the far right has been very successful. states where the far-right has been very successful. been very successful. let s talk about been very successful. let s talk about consequences. l been very successful. let s i talk about consequences. we been very successful. let s - talk about consequences. we saw president macron call a snap elections. could we see that in germany as well? we know that there is pressure on chancellor scholz to call a no confidence vote? scholz to call a no-confidence vote? , , , . ., , vote? yes, indeed especially because germany vote? yes, indeed especially because germany will - vote? yes, indeed especially because germany will face i vote? yes, indeed especially because germany will face a| because germany will face a number of regional elections in the eastern part of the country where the afd and the far right has traditionally been very strong. this will be a tough item for this coalition in berlin. however, it is unlikely that early elections will be called in contrast to france the germans are actually much more hesitant about political instability, political surprise moves. they don t appreciate calling early elections. and for the three parties that are in government now, early elections might actually not be beneficial, because they are already in such a dire position right now. for germany, the outlook doesn t look as urgent as for france. as for france. what about the im act as for france. what about the impact on as for france. what about the impact on the as for france. what about the impact on the european - as for france. what about the impact on the european level| as for france. what about the l impact on the european level in brussels, and how the far right will have a presence there? i mean, could we see the centre right, as you said it has held with european commission president von der leyen could we see the centre right actually turn to working with the far right? that was indeed a major concern before the elections, because we have already seen this on the level of member states that centre right governments have entered into a coalition with far right parties or have been supported by far right parties, for example. sweden, netherlands, finland, have all pursued this kind of model. at the european level too, it would be tempting for the centre right to form a coalition with the far right. but the election results so far suggest that this will not be necessary, that for the election of ursula von der leyen as the commission president, if she gets confirmed, and a majority from the centre will be sufficient. but she has flirted with opening up to the far right. so this story is not yet at its end. ., , ., ., end. one more question - what do ou end. one more question - what do you think end. one more question - what do you think all end. one more question - what do you think all of end. one more question - what do you think all of this - end. one more question - what do you think all of this means l do you think all of this means for relations with the eu? we are here in washington, of course. will the relationship with the eu change at all with these different moving pieces on the european end? the relationship on the european end? the relationship with - on the european end? iie: relationship with the on the european end? iie: relationship with the eu, on the european end? i““ie: relationship with the eu, if on the european end? iie: relationship with the eu, if we just look at the outcome of the parliamentary elections, we ll probably remain stable. because the outcomes within the parliament are not too surprising. a little bit of a surge for the far right, but not a radical break. more concerning is really are we with the domestic developments in france. if we have a far right government in france, which might be a possibility after the two rounds of elections that emmanuel macron has announced, then this will have a significant impact on the european us relationship too. if it remains as it is right now, then washington can count on probably ursula von der leyen remaining an important actor working together with russia, working together with the white house on a regular basis, and steering europe into a direction of a stronger stance on china, more support for ukraine, and also stronger climate policies. uk prime minister rishi sunak and the conservative party are expected to unveil their election manifesto tomorrow. in an interview with the bbc, mr sunak detailed many of the party s initiatives, including addressing the growing challenge of home ownership, and a further two pence on national insurance. nick robinson questioned the prime minister on the conservatives many campaign promises. we ve had endless promises. i ve got all your tory press releases here. a promise of national service a couple of billion there. a promise for a tax cut for pensioners. a promise of a tax cut for parents. more apprenticeship, more police officers endless promises of more and more money from the conservatives. have you found the magic money tree? no, every single one of those policies that you have just been through is fully funded and costed, as is explained in every single one of those press releases, as indeed when we have set out our manifesto tomorrow, people will be able to see all the details behind it even further. and tomorrow you will promise more tax cuts? we will have a manifesto tomorrow that builds on all the things you just gone through that we have just built the labour party pledged to create 100,000 additional childcare places and more than 3,000 new nurses. liberal democrats are pledging everyone in england would be entitled to free at home care. the two child benefit cap would be lifted. and people in the uk would have the right to see a gp within seven days oh within 24 gp within seven days oh within 2a hours if urgent. a serious incident at a park in china instructors were in china instructors were in china for a teaching programme with the local university. the couege with the local university. the college said in a statement they were injured in a visit to a public park and that were no students were a part of the programme. a us state department spokesperson told our news partner cbs that they are aware of reports of a stabbing in northeast china, but did newt give any other details. now to other headlines from around the world: malawi authorities say a plane carrying the country s vice president and other officials has gone missing after taking off from the capital. the president s office said a search and rescuer operation is underway. the vice president and nine others were travelling to the funeral of a formerjustice minister. former us president donald trump attended a pre sentencing interview with a probation officer on monday after his hush money trial conviction last month, according to our partners at cbs news. the interview was part of the report the probation department would submit to the judge to help decide mr trump s punishment. sentencing is set forjuly11. in may, mrtrump became the first former president to become the president to become the president of a felony. a massive fire broke out on monday morning in miami, and an employee was found shot at the scene. it is not clear if the incidents are related. miami fire & rescue said multiple residents were evacuated and rescued, including some from their balconies. many people have been taken to hospital, including one for smoke inhalation. apple unveiled apple intelligence, its ai technology, at its annual worldwide developers conference in california. it will be incorporated across its apps including siri, to generate images and text. the company s partnering with openai and chatgpt, which has faced concerns over data security. apple said privacy safeguards have been built it into this new technology. that is our programme at this hour. thank you so much for watching bbc news from washington. stay with us. hello, there. for most of us, it has been a disappointing start to the week, in terms of the weather. a frequent rash of showers, particularly across scotland, gusts of winds coming from the north, and in excess of 30 mph, at times. temperatures struggled to get into double figures, but it was a slightly different story, further south and west. just look at anglesey beautiful afternoon, lots of sunshine and temperatures peaked at around 18 or 19 degrees. high pressure is continuing to nudge its way in from the west, so west will be best, through the course of tuesday. there s still likely to be a few showers around, but hopefully few and further between. most frequent showers, certainly, are going to be across eastern scotland and down through eastern england. so, sunny spells and scattered showers going into the afternoon. that will have an impact with the temperature, 1a or 15 degrees, but again, with a little more shelter, a little more sunshine, 17 or 18 celsius not out of the question. a few scattered showers moving their way through northern ireland and scotland. hopefully, some of these will ease through the afternoon, but you can see those temperatures still really struggling ten to 15 degrees at the very best. now, as we move out of tuesday into wednesday, this little ridge of high pressure will continue to kill off the showers. so, wednesday is likely to be the driest day of the week and make the most of it there s more rain to come, but it will be a pretty chilly start, once again, to wednesday morning. single figures right across the country, low single figures in rural spots. but, hopefully, the showers should be a little bit few and further between and more favoured spots for those showers, once again, to the east of the pennines. more sunshine out to the west. temperatures, generally, similar values to what we ve seen all week, 10 to 18 degrees the high, but the wind direction will start to change, as we move into thursday. unfortunately, towards the end of the week, this low pressure will take over. we ll see further spells of rain at times, some of it heavy. but the wind direction will play its part, a little a south westerly wind means that we will see temperatures climbing a degree or so. don t expect anything too significant, because we ve got the cloud and the rain around. but it s not out of the question that across eastern and southeast england, we could see highs of 20 celsius. take care. voice-over: this is bbc news. we will have the headlines for you at the top of the hour, which is straight after this programme. this week, we re heading into space to find out how we ll live, work and eat on the moon. we have space homes and a spacewoman. all of a sudden, it clicked in my head. wow, the international space station is a submarine in space. ..moon bots and moon dust. the surface is fine and powdery. i can pick it up loosely with my toe. you know, i think i ve seen that chap somewhere before. jfk: we choose to go - to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. j neil armstrong: it s one small step for man. - ..one giant leap for mankind. 52 years ago, we laid our last footprint on the moon. as the crew of apollo 17 left the surface,
as the billionaire pop star s eras tour gets underway in scotland. welcome to business today. i m sally bundock. more now on the results in europe as the bloc s parliamentary elections come to a close. as you ve been hearing, we ve seen a surge on the right across the region. we ve seen a surge to the right across the region. in france, the strong showing for marine le pen s national rally triggering a snap election in france called late yesterday by president emmanuel macron. the outcome of these elections are of significance because the politicians in the european parliament will be agreeing on the bloc s budget and economic policies and its position on trade. the european union is the world s largest trading bloc the top trading partner for 80 countries worldwide. with 27 member countries and an integrated economy, it has a combined population of around 440 million people. that s a vast consumer base for its own producers and exporters around the world. let s hear now from rebecca christie, senior fellow at bruegel. good morning to you, rebecca. first of all, your reaction to the results? first of all, your reaction to the results? the situation in france is the results? the situation in france is shocking. - the results? the situation in france is shocking. not - the results? the situation in france is shocking. notjust| france is shocking. notjust that the national rally party came in with 32% of the vote, but that it was really twice that of emmanuel macron s renaissance party and that he called snap elections so soon after, because he felt he could not govern without a new mandate. not govern without a new mandate- not govern without a new mandate. ., ., , ., ~ mandate. so, what do you think drove voters mandate. so, what do you think drove voters to mandate. so, what do you think drove voters to the drove voters to the centre right and further right? was it about economics? cost of living crisis? the fact that people are feeling worse off at the moment? it’s that people are feeling worse off at the moment? off at the moment? it s very different. off at the moment? it s very different, country off at the moment? it s very different, country by - off at the moment? it s veryl different, country by country. you do see a lot of discontent with the status quo, and a feeling of frustration. in france, that turned out, as we just discussed. in hungary, for example, viktor orban s party is facing a challenge for the first time in recent memory. in germany, the centre right christian democratic union, which is a very mainstream party, did better than people might have expected. however, olaf scholz, the current chancellor his party did worse. so we re seeing just a general sense that folks would like to do something different. going forward, when it comes to the big decisions about the budget, for example, which is really controversial how much money each country puts in the pot what does this result mean for those kind of discussions and negotiations going forward? the discussions and negotiations going forward? going forward? the new parliament going forward? the new parliament will - going forward? the new parliament will probably going forward? the new i parliament will probably be more unpredictable, or even more unpredictable, or even more unpredictable and very fractious. i would expect different alliances to form on different alliances to form on different issues. the consensus on financial regulation will be different from that on, perhaps, environmental regulation and energy regulation. again, on the budget, as you say one of the big decisions coming up is whether the eu will continue to be a bond borrower the way it has been through the pandemic. and deciding what to do with the remains of this pandemic borrowing programme and whether to have another one after 2026 will be a huge deal. will be a huge deal. we ve mentioned will be a huge deal. we ve mentioned globally - will be a huge deal. we ve mentioned globally the . will be a huge deal. we vej mentioned globally the eu will be a huge deal. we ve - mentioned globally the eu bloc is the biggest trading bloc in the world. what does this mean in terms of its global position economically? in terms of its global position economically? the eu really has to balance economically? the eu really has to balance its economically? the eu really has to balance its relationship - to balance its relationship with china and also its relationship with washington. the us, of course, has its own elections coming up later this year that will be at least as much of an effect on that will have at least as much of an effect on what s going on in europe as the eu political situation. meanwhile, with china, we are expecting in the next week or so to get some news on how the eu is going to approach automobile tariffs. all of this sets the stage for a lot of debate about how open, how much trade, how is the eu going to de risk and not de couple, as they say? because the eu cannot afford to stop trading with china, but it also wants to protect itself. fik. wants to protect itself. 0k. interesting. wants to protect itself. 0k. interesting. thank - wants to protect itself. 0k. interesting. thank you - wants to protect itself. ok. interesting. thank you for your time. good to get your take this morning. seniorfigures from germany s governing coalition have reacted angrily to a speech by the chief executive of deutsche borse, theodor vymer. in it, he railed against the country s reputation amongst investors and said germany was on the path to becoming a developing country. the speech was delivered to the bavarian economic council in april, but surfaced on social media on friday. a leading social democrat told the financial times it was more beer tent than dax listed company executive, while a green party spokeswoman tweeted her irritation on x. here are some excerpts from that speech. translation: i know half the dax peeple translation: i know half the dax people here translation: i know half the dax people here personally i translation: | know half the | dax people here personally on a first name basis. i get around a lot. i don t want to spoil it tonight, but one thing is clear. our reputation has never been as bad as it is now. economically speaking, we are on the way to becoming a developing country. we re making ourselves small in front of brussels and berlin, the entrepreneurs. yes, and the americans tell me straight to my face, stop being a public economy that sits like a rabbit in front of a snake and demands that the snake bite. become a private economy like us. the difference is now that, in the usa, they say, we don t care which old man becomes president. our migration policy i don t want to get too political is seen by everyone as completely wrong. our focus on do gooders everyone as completely wrong. ourfocus on do gooders is not shared anywhere. economic migration means that, if you have a shortage of skilled workers, you bring in people who work, who speak your language, and generate social products. but not those who collect 50% of the citizens income and send it somewhere else. let s explore all that now with russ mould, investment director at aj bell. good morning to you, russ. good morninu. good morning to you, russ. good morning- this good morning to you, russ. good morning. this is good morning to you, russ. good morning. this is really good morning to you, russ. good morning. this is really come - morning. this is really come interesting morning. this is really come interesting that morning. this is really come interesting that this - morning. this is really come interesting that this comes i morning. this is really come l interesting that this comes to the fore now off the back of these parliamentary elections in europe, where actually things worked out quite differently for germany as well and for chancellor olaf scholz. - and for chancellor olaf scholz. ., ., - and for chancellor olaf scholz. . ., ., m scholz. yeah, i had a quick look on scholz. yeah, i had a quick look on x scholz. yeah, i had a quick look on x this scholz. yeah, i had a quick look on x this morning, . look on x this morning, formerly known as twitter, and it now has 470,000 views although only 13,000 of those who ve watched it have liked it, which is interesting in itself. it does raise some big issues. germany has been through geopolitical shock because of its dependence on russian oil and gas, which it s now had to wean itself off. its economically performed pretty poorly even in the first pandemic period. even the stock market one of its major companies is going through a mire in the courts, so you can see why there s a crisis of confidence. from an investment point of view, however, the german stock market is pretty much still at an all time high. i know vymer said it sjust because german trades are trading cheaply and it s like a junkjob, but international junk job, but international investors junkjob, but international investors still think, indeed, there is still something to look for in germany. he seemed to be venting look for in germany. he seemed to be venting a look for in germany. he seemed to be venting a lot look for in germany. he seemed to be venting a lot of to be venting a lot of frustration in this speech. i have heard other economists that i ve talked to, when they ve been talking about germany, talking about the fact that the lack of investment over time, and the fact that china is now really, when it comes to the car sector in terms of electric vehicles, in particular, taking so much ground, which is germany s most important market.? ground, which is germany s most important market. . . ? ground, which is germany s most important market. . . ? important market.? yeah - and what happens important market.? yeah - and what happens to important market.? yeah - and what happens to the important market.? yeah - and what happens to the internal- what happens to the internal combustion engine for germany is a huge issue. but a lot of theissues is a huge issue. but a lot of the issues that vymer is raising energy, tax, welfare spending, immigration it s a bit of a big echo of what we re hearing in the uk general election campaign where i m sitting right now. and it looks as if the uk s going to shift to the left, whereas europe is shifting to the right. again, there s a discontent with the status quo which we re hearing about. vymer talks about how america is uccing up a lot of investment, whereas germany s finding it hard to attract it. it s interesting that, on one half, he says we need interproblemers and need a smaller state. interproblemers and need a smallerstate. on interproblemers and need a smaller state. on the other hand, he s saying we need smaller subsidies. you can t have your cake and eat it too can t have everything at once. at the same time, it s coming on social media olaf scholz s party getting the worst ever result in the european election, coming third behind the far right alternative for germany. i mean, in his party, in his coalition, there s going to be a lot of naval gazing going on now, isn t there? i think the coalition overall is this sd/liberal/green coalition seems like it s a bit frozen in inaction at the moment, finding it difficult to get anything done. again, ithink it difficult to get anything done. again, i think that s probably part of the frustration that vymer is voicing. this loss of confidence just looking at the american economy, how that continues to surge ahead, is interesting. but remember, president biden is by no means certain to win this election in november that he s fighting, and discontent with the economy and discontent with the economy and inflation are two of the biggest hot button topics there as well. there seems to be a very, very common problem one that s notjust unique to germany, despite how frustrated vymer is. germany, despite how frustrated v mer is. ,, ., ~ germany, despite how frustrated v meris. ,, ., ,, vymer is. ok. russ. thank you. good to see vymer is. ok. russ. thank you. good to see you. vymer is. ok. russ. thank you. good to see you. see vymer is. ok. russ. thank you. good to see you. see you - vymer is. ok. russ. thank you. good to see you. see you again| good to see you. see you again soon. the global tech industry is gathering today for london tech week, with microsoft and ibm in attendance amongst investors and entrepreneurs. the event will look at the challenges of balancing ai innovation with regulation, along with the future of security and data. last month, a british firm called wayve raised over a billion dollars in funding to develop tech for self driving cars. that s the biggest known investment in a european ai company. but the most valuable ai firms are based in the us or china. last week, nvidia hit a valuation of $3 trillion. so, are london and the uk becoming more attractive for international ai investment? let s hear from one of the attendees, russ shaw, founder, tech london advocates & global tech advocates. good morning to you, russ. this is a really important event for you, in particular. given the chat a we just had with russ month old about what s happening here in europe and in london, there s so much concern about london, the london stock exchange, and how things are going for cheap. talk us through how, this week, london techis through how, this week, london tech is going to make a change? well, i ve heard that london tech week is this week. this is our 11th year doing it. it really gives a bit of a boost to the overall sector, the overall economy. you mentioned wayve our latest unicorn in terms of funding. we re going to have many companies represented this week. i think we have to step back and look at the uk tech ecosystem overall. we have over 150 tech unicorns by a number of metrics salary, the uk has the third largest tech system in the world. this week, we have nearly 45,000 attendees coming. last year, it was 30,000. we have over 100 being represented this week. there s a significant amount of interest notjust in london tech, but in uk tech overall and really getting behind this next generation of start ups and scale ups that are emerging. but we need to keep them as well, don t we? if we want to see companies really go above and beyond within the uk and across europe. it s all happening in california and in the far east, isn t it?- the far east, isn t it? yeah. we ve seen the far east, isn t it? yeah. we ve seen a the far east, isn t it? yeah. we ve seen a lot the far east, isn t it? yeah. we ve seen a lot of - the far east, isn t it? yeah. we ve seen a lot of listings| the far east, isn t it? yeah. i we ve seen a lot of listings on the nasdaq. we see a lot of growth in asia and asia pacific. but i think we re starting to see some very good growth coming from uk scaling businesses. i knowjulia businesses. i know julia hoggett businesses. i knowjulia hoggett will be one of our speakers this week talking about what the london stock exchange is planning to do to be more welcoming to the tech uniforms that we re seeing. i think there s a whole game plan being introduced in the coming months to talk about how competitive our public markets can be. so we have to look across the spectrum to make sure, from early stage through start up through scale up through the listings, that the uk market and the european markets are as competitive as the us. there s a lot of work to be done, don t get me wrong. but i think the innovation that s going to be showcased this week during london tech week, i hope, gives a bit of a confidence boost that a lot of great creativity, dynamism and innovation is happening right here. ~ , innovation is happening right here. ~ , ., here. 0k. well, it s good to chat to you here. 0k. well, it s good to chat to you again, - here. 0k. well, it s good to chat to you again, russ. - here. 0k. well, it s good to i chat to you again, russ. thank you. around the world and across the uk, this is bbc news. you re with business today. i m sally bundock. india s prime minister and leader of the bjp party, narenda modi, has been sworn in again for a third term in office this time leading a minority government. that s something he is not used to. let s cross live now to archana shukla in mumbai. archana, how have the indian markets been responding to the latest developments? it s the start of a new trading week. ~ ., ,, , .,, week. well, the markets opened on a muted week. well, the markets opened on a muted scale, week. well, the markets opened on a muted scale, but week. well, the markets opened on a muted scale, but on - week. well, the markets opened on a muted scale, but on the - on a muted scale, but on the positive side. from all the wild swings that we saw last week from record highs post exit polls to tuesday, when prime minister modi s party failed to win a clear majority on its own, the shock element subsided and the markets have actually been on an upward trajectory. investors have come back and market have erased all the losses they made on tuesday almost $400 billion worth of money was lost that day, but all of those losses have been erased. as prime minister modi and his council of ministers took oath yesterday, from the list of the council of ministers, it is evident that they are looking at a policy continuity and a majority of the council of ministers come from his own bjp party. and that is something that experts say markets would be comfortable with, because that shows a sense of continuity. but the wild swings that we saw last week is something that has been of a concern. opposition parties have raised that as a question that, should leaders be making statements, forward looking statements in the market remember, prime minister modi and his home minister, ahmet shah, did say markets would be impacted. thank you. in april, nigerian film star junior pope died when the boat he was travelling in from a film set capsized. an investigation found a number of safety failings, including the fact that the boat driver wasn t certified. hannah gelbart from the bbc s what in the world podcast has been speaking to nollywood actors and producers in lagos about the industry s safety record, and what needs to change. nollywood is booming but it s got a darker side. this is a cultural centre here in lagos, and what you can see around me are some of the remnants of a huge nollywood premiere that took place here last night. it had some of the top names in nigerian cinema. nollywood is one of the biggest film industries in the world it s up industries in the world it s up there with hollywood and india s bollywood. it puts out more than 2,500 films every single year. but recently, there have been some concerns over things like health and safety in its films. in april, top nollywood actor junior pope died in a boat accident. it capsized after hitting a canoe in a river, killing five people.- hitting a canoe in a river, killing five people. send a rescue boat! rescue boat! in this clip, filmed byjunior pope the day before he died, he s clearly concerned about his safety. an investigation found multiple failures the boat wasn t registered, its driver had no licence, and only one passenger was wearing a life jacket. that s because they d brought it onboard themselves. the bbc has obtained a now deleted video clip from the producer s instagram, where she says she was told there were life jackets, and junior pope was offered one, but didn t take it. actress and screenwriter ruth kadyri was a friend of junior pope s, and she was shocked by his passing. it junior pope s, and she was shocked by his passing. it was much more shocked by his passing. it was much more painful shocked by his passing. it was much more painfulfor- shocked by his passing. it was much more painfulfor me, i much more painfulfor me, because i have been in that exact situation before. so i understood the fear, everything he must have felt, at the last minute of his life. i had to shoot an epic movie, so we couldn t use life jackets. i asked everybody on the team if everything was ok. they said yes, the canoe was fine. so i got on the boat. action, they said. they started to paddle. it tumbled into this very big river. my colleague, frankincense, grabbed me cos i can t swim and stuff like that. it s. sighs it s an experience and a day that i will never forget. actor jud dk that i will never forget. actor judy dk says that i will never forget. actor judy dk says the that i will never forget. actor judy dk says the industry i that i will never forget. actor judy dk says the industry is l judy dk says the industry is learning from its mistakes. incidents have been quite low, but right now, it s better. i think the incident was a bit of a wake up call to everybody producers, directors, actors. actors, right now, we know we have to come home. we actors, right now, we know we have to come home. have to come home. we all do crazy things have to come home. we all do crazy things for have to come home. we all do crazy things for the have to come home. we all do crazy things for the love i have to come home. we all do crazy things for the love of i crazy things for the love of this crazy things for the love of thisjoh crazy things for the love of thisjob. coming home at 3am. things thisjob. coming home at 3am. things we thisjob. coming home at 3am. things we would not normally do. things we would not normally do our things we would not normally do. ourtiming for things we would not normally do. our timing for filming things we would not normally do. ourtiming forfilming is do. our timing for filming is insane do. ourtiming forfilming is insane. the industry agents should insane. the industry agents should have proper rest days. i also should have proper rest days. i also think should have proper rest days. i also think individuals should look also think individuals should look after themselves and just fix rest look after themselves and just fix rest days for themselves. as nollywood continues to thrive, the world will now be watching how it treats people who work there. the actors guild of nigeria said in a statement, afterjunior pope s death, that it has set up a committee to look into improving safety guidelines and protocols. it s been a long time coming. but taylor swift has finally brought her record breaking eras tour to the uk. an estimated 800,000 fans will put on their friendship bracelets on will put on their friendship bracelets and get ready to experience what some are calling the concert of a lifetime. but what about the economics behind the music? here s kate moore to break it down for us. taylor swift s eras tour is a culturaljuggernaut. with a run time of 3.5 hours and over 150 shows across five continents, it s generated global headlines and unprecedented demand for tickets. the figures are quite something. it s the highest grossing tour of all time, with over $1 billion in revenue. that sjust time, with over $1 billion in revenue. that s just from the first leg of the tour. some experts believe that it could generate $2 billion by the time it finishes in december. by the end of the run, taylor will have performed to 8 million ticket holders. one concert in seattle generated seismic activity equivalent to that of activity equivalent to that of a 2.3 magnitude earthquake. that s according to a professor at western washington university. the tour has coincided with a huge uptick in the body of taylor swift s work. she s released two new studio albums and re recorded two of her older albums, 1989 and speak now. she s the first billionaire in history where songwriting is the primary source of income. all this is combined to produce what some are calling the era of swiftonomics. i m joined now by a swiftonomics academic, megan wysocki, who s designed and written a course in the discipline at the american university in washington. do tell. . .! do do tell.! do you have a lot of students studying swiftonomics? ., ,, ., swiftonomics? thank you for havin: swiftonomics? thank you for having me swiftonomics? thank you for having me on. swiftonomics? thank you for having me on. yes, - swiftonomics? thank you for having me on. yes, we i swiftonomics? thank you for having me on. yes, we do. l swiftonomics? thank you for l having me on. yes, we do. we currently have about 50 students registered for the course and a waitlist that is just as long. course and a waitlist that is just as long- course and a waitlist that is just as long. and is it - what, three years just as long. and is it - what, three years study? just as long. and is it - what, three years study? what i just as long. and is it - what, three years study? what is i just as long. and is it - what, l three years study? what is it? so it s just a single class, an elective, in the overall major of economics. elective, in the overall ma or of economics.i of economics. ok, so it s a art of of economics. ok, so it s a part of an of economics. ok, so it s a part of an economics i of economics. ok, so it s a l part of an economics degree of economics. ok, so it s a i part of an economics degree or whatever? ok. that makes more sense. sojust whatever? ok. that makes more sense. so just talk us through how she has done this. i mean, she is incredibly wealthy. climbing up the forbes rich list, etc. but it s not so much about her wealth. it s about how she has changed so much within the music industry and what artists gain in terms of their influence and power, isn t it? ., their influence and power, isn t it? . ., ., isn t it? yeah. i mean, we are truly seeing isn t it? yeah. i mean, we are truly seeing an isn t it? yeah. i mean, we are| truly seeing an unprecedented level of market power from taylor swift. i think she s a gifted businesswoman, and she s truly changed so much in the music industry from, you know, streaming services and the portion of proceeds that artists received from their streams, all the way down to ticketmaster and ticket sales. she is truly, you know has truly, you know, cornered the industry and is placing her mark on it. industry and is placing her markon it. ., , ,, mark on it. but also, it s kind of on its mark on it. but also, it s kind of on its head, mark on it. but also, it s kind of on its head, isn t mark on it. but also, it s kind of on its head, isn t it? i of on its head, isn t it? because now, the tour, or the concerts the live events are sort of off the back of huge success, which is driven within the streaming sector, isn t it, really? isn t it, really? yeah. so she s continuously i isn t it, really? yeah. so she s continuously at i isn t it, really? yeah. so| she s continuously at the height of her career. i mean, taylor swift s last tour was, i m going to say, 2017. so we ve now had nine albums since then. she s only continued to grow. really, truly, with these streaming platforms as they ve grown in popularity, grown in user size, grown in market share, we ve seen an unprecedented level of the money and power that she s gaining from these streaming services. , ., . , gaining from these streaming services. , . . services. researchers at itarclavs services. researchers at barclays looked - services. researchers at barclays looked at i services. researchers at barclays looked at how i services. researchers at i barclays looked at how much this would boost the uk economy while she is performing in the uk. she s at various venues in edinburgh at the moment. £997 million boost to the uk economy with swifties, they estimate, forking out £848 on average to see her.?! forking out £848 on average to see her -?! see her.?! yes, truly. it s astonishing, see her.?! yes, truly. it s astonishing, when - see her.?! yes, truly. it s astonishing, when you i see her. . . ?! yes, truly. it s| astonishing, when you think see her.?! yes, truly. it s i astonishing, when you think of how many people can fit into a single venue and how much money that amounts to. that s something we ll be exploring in the course, and really the point that i wanted to explore and make apparent to students is that economics all around us. we can be fans of taylor swift and fans of economics, and how these tours and shows impact everything from your tourism markets, hospitality, these labour industries, the amount of not only concertgoers to these shows, but every single person involved with putting on each and every one of these shows it s monumental. it of these shows - it s monumental.- of these shows - it s monumental. , monumental. it is indeed. and we are out monumental. it is indeed. and we are out of monumental. it is indeed. and we are out of time. monumental. it is indeed. and we are out of time. megan, i we are out of time. megan, thank you forjoining us. really interesting and fascinating. swiftonomics it s a thing! you can go and study swiftonomics. let s show you paris this morning as the sun rises: people across france are waking up people across france are waking up to the news that there ll be a snap parliamentary election just in a few weeks time. the announcement came late yesterday from president emmanuel macron. there is so much more analysis and detail on our website. stay with us here as we keep you up to date on bbc news. hello there. weather for the week ahead is perhaps not the story you want. no significant summer sunshine or warmth, i m afraid. in fact, the story in armagh on sunday really sets the scene just a high of ten degrees. we had cloudy skies with light rain or drizzle with a cool northerly wind as well. now, that rain is sinking its way steadily southwards and it will clear away from eastern england and south east england during monday morning. behind it, this northerly wind and this cooler air source starts to kick in across the country. so a rash of showers, a cold, brisk wind driving those showers in off exposed coasts and drifting their way steadily south across scotland and northern ireland as we go through the morning. here s our cloud and rain still lingering across east yorkshire, lincolnshire first thing showers in off exposed coasts and drifting their way steadily south across scotland and northern ireland as we go through the morning. here s our cloud and rain still lingering across east yorkshire, lincolnshire first thing in the morning, some heavier bursts that will ease away. best of any brighter skies, perhaps across southern england down to the south west. here, showers should be few and further between. but nevertheless, that wind direction still really digging in right across the country. so sunny spells, scattered showers, a brisk northwesterly wind for many, so temperatures just below par really for this time of year, a maximum of 10 15 degrees for most. we might see highs of 17 or 18 if we get some sunshine across south west england and wales. now, as we move out of monday into tuesday, the low pressure drifts off to scandinavia, high pressure builds. it should start to kill off some of the showers out to the west. but with those clearing skies, well, those temperatures will be below path through the night as well, low single figures for some, quite a chilly start to our tuesday morning. hopefully some sunshine around on tuesday. there will continue to be some showers, most frequent ones running down through central and eastern scotland and england. further west, some brighter skies and once again, highs of 17 degrees, but for many, just a maximum of 10 15 once again. moving out of tuesday into wednesday, winds will fall lighter still for a time, but there s another low pushing in and that will bring some wetter weather to close out the end of the working week. it will gradually start to change the wind direction. so, after a drier day on wednesday, it will turn that little bit milder, but also wetter as we head into the weekend. good morning, welcome to breakfast withjon kay and sally nugent. our headlines today. tributes to the much loved television presenter michael mosley after his body is found on a greek island. friends and colleagues describe him as a national treasure. a promise to recruit more gps and improve cancer survival rates. the liberal democrats put the nhs at the heart of their general election manifesto. a surge in support for the hard right in the european elections. french president emmanuel macron responds by calling a snap vote, holiday makers beware. a rise in online customer service scams targeting airline passengers. we ll show you how to spot a fake account to stay safe on social media. in sport, former liverpool and scotland centre back alan hansen is seriously ill. his club announced yesterday their former captain and three time european cup winner is currently in hospital. new laws make it compulsory to get your pet cat microchipped in england or face a fine of up to £500. no sign of some of this week, i m afraid. today part of england and wales starred wet and very windy. no sign of summer this week, i m afraid. it s monday, the 10th ofjune. our main story. tributes have been paid to the bbc broadcaster and author michael mosley, following his death whilst on holiday, at the age of 67. dr mosley disappeared whilst walking in extreme heat on the greek island of symi last wednesday, his body was later recovered