another of the match's big talking points was the injury to liverpool leading scorer mo salah, he has also tweeted, suggesting he will be fit for the world cup, saying: meanwhile, liverpool manager jurgen klopp has been getting behind his goalkeeper. it's really hard, ifeel for him, nobody wants that. that's the situation. the mistakes were obvious, we don't have to... we don't have to talk about that, it's all clear. he knows it, i know it, you all know it and now he has to deal with it, we have to deal with it. we will do that. of course, we will be with him, there's no doubt about that. it's been a frustrating day for rory mcilroy at the pga championship at wentworth as italian francesco molinari confirmed victory by two shots. nothing seemed to go right for mcilroy all day as he missed birdie after birdie and failed to threaten the leader — even this eagle putt fell short on the 18th. molinari finished two clear

of the rest of the field and becomes the most successful italian on the european tour with this his fifth triumph. that's all from sportsday. more from me throughout the evening, now it's time for meet the author. the most inhospitable deserts in the world are places where you will confront danger, from heat and thirst, from storms. but also, where you'll find peace. and that conundrum drove william atkins onwards, when he decided to explore some of the loneliest places on four continents. his book, the immeasurable world, is the story of those journeys. rich in history and typography and graced with many tales of human endeavour. all in search of an answer to the mystery, why do such hostile

places, where life is so hard, cast such a spell? welcome. what's your own explanation for the lure of these dangerous and hostile places? i think we are, sometimes, guilty of making the mistake of confusing flight with quest. and, often, i think our attraction to the desert emerges from flight, rather than quest. and so, i think of somebody like te lawrence or wilfrid

thesiger in the empty quarter in the 1930s and 40s, and i think they recognised something in that landscape that reflected a sense of their own sense of being marginal, in british society. and, so, it was a form of escape. and, yes, it was exploration, yes, they carried out these extraordinary adventures and discovered routes across the empty quarter and the peninsula that were unknown, until then. but they were seeking some kind of comfort. solace, of some kind? yeah, solace. you talk about the empty quarter in the middle east, this vast, pretty hostile terrain. what was your own experience like, when you first got a feel for it, when you first got there? what was your reaction? it's the most beautiful place i've ever been.

it's like entering the world of a dream or another planet. it feels entirely unlike anything i've experienced in my life. the shifting sands, the shadows... the shifting sands, the sheer grandeur, the enormity of the place. the sparsity of the place. we come from a very relatively low—lying, green island next to the sea. and this is another part of what i think appeals, particularly to british explorers about deserts. it's completely unlike any environment we've experienced. near the beginning of the book, you talk about the history of people seeking solitude, really. going to deserts, finding it, you know, sparse, godless. you know, completely barren. and, yet, discovering there, tranquility and a deep sense of the spiritual.

it seems a contradiction. yes. and the tranquility is associated with that barrenness. the desert fathers, the founders of christian monasticism in the second and third centuries, had a concept, panaremos. victorian travellers talked about the absolute desert. victorian travellers in the sahara talked about the absolute desert. both of these concepts referred to the idea of the absolute desert, the most deserted desert. where everything is taken away. exactly. the centre of the desert. and so, this is kind of a concrete image of transcendence that this idea somehow represents the infinite, the eternal, the absolute. and so, i think it's true of the desert fathers as well as explorers and probably myself, that you're seeking this desert absolut pa naremos. you travel all kinds of places.

to china, to australia, to the aral sea in kazakhstan. and to the united states, arizona, the dusty, hot places in the south west. there, you discover that the desert, although it is forbidding and dangerous and beautiful and all the rest of it, it is the border. that is your interest when you get there. the deserts of the south west, particularly the borderlands of arizona and mexico effectively are a wall. we don't need a wall. we know this. because a wall already exists. it's a barrier. it's the most extraordinarily, insurmountable barrier. if anyone can cross that desert, they can get over any wall. many people watching this will not have experienced a desert, even the fringes of a desert. proper desert. explain what it is like when night comes down in a desert place. a very, very long way from anyone else, what does it feel like?

there's an idea, i think, that we, we go to the desert to find ourselves. but i think there's an argument that says you go there, in a sense, to lose yourself. and night comes down and i think one of the things you're most aware of, the stillness of the desert. but the silence. the silence. and one of the things i realised, through spending quite a few nights in desert places is that when the silence comes, you understand that there's no such thing as silence. because you are, as they say, thrown back upon yourself and you lie there and listen to yourself breathing, you listen to yourjaw clicking, your eyes opening and closing. so, in a way, everything

is magnified and not taken away. your body is magnified and far from somehow escaping the body, which, i think, was the idea of the desert fathers, you're thrown back upon it. and your body, your sense of your own body is magnified. say there's a heightened consciousness? a heightened sense of embodiment, a heightened sense of one's self. and yet, that corresponds to a diminishment of oneself. because of the enormity of the landscape. and you understand your place in this creation is quite a small one and a fragile one. so, your vulnerability is underlined. yes. and your insignificance. in a way, you're trying to discover that sense of solace that some of the explorers you talked about were clearly in search of. did you find it? solace? no.

these are highly contested, conflicted landscapes, almost invariably so. britain's nuclear tests zones in southern australia. the borders of the southwest, us, that we have just talked about. the taklamakan desert in xinjiang, northwest china, the aral sea, the destroyed aral sea. these are places that are challenging to be, but also challenging in terms of the political situation. which was your favourite desert place? i love arizona. i spent a week in a straw—bale hut, not very far from tucson, 60 miles from tucson. in the sonoran desert. it's exceptionally dry, hundreds of people there die every year trying to cross into the usa. and yet there's vegetation,

there's the sound of the cicadas every night, there's the sound of foxes and coyotes yapping. and it's one of the safest places i've ever been. i've never felt so safe. i would sleep outside under the stars and never feel a sense of the remotest threat. the magic of the desert. william atkins, the author of the immeasurable world. thank you very much. thank you. hello, once again and thanks very much indeed forjoining me. i want to update you on how we see the rest of the holiday weekend panning out right across the british isles. before we look into the future, let me take you back to last night, where we had the most enormous amount of thunderstorm activity, gradually drifting its way across the southern half of the british isles. some 50,000 lightning flashes were recorded in just a few hours. a big area of low pressure still churning away in the bay of biscay,

throwing these thundery plumes up across the british isles and here is the thing. we've done pretty much the same sort of thing in the first part of this evening and we will continue so to do possibly in different areas over the next few days. that thunderstorm risk still persists. part of the reason for it is that things are on the mild side at the moment, to say the very least, even as we move towards midnight. temperatures around 20 degrees, across parts of the south—east. many more of you will notice, as the thunderstorms fade away, we will see the incursion of low cloud coming in off the north sea to give a pretty dull start to the new day across the greater part of central britain. a bit of sunshine further south, still pretty sultry here. temperatures never lower overnight than 15 degrees. a fresher start to the day across the north of scotland but, again, gloriously sunny here come away from the eastern shores. the heat of the day

pours on through, again, another close day. eventually spawning more thunderstorms across some of the southern counties of england and wales. in some areas, 26 and possibly even 27 and even into northern ireland, scotland, temperatures comfortably into the 20s in a number of locations. eventually, that low cloud peeling its way back towards those eastern shores. but, as we get on through the evening and, indeed coming to the start of tuesday, so there will be quite a blanket of cloud coming in, off the north sea, pushed in by a gentle north—easterly breeze. tuesday starts off pretty cloudy. eventually, the sunshine pops on through and eventually, again, those temperatures get into the low 20s. this time it's the far south of the british isles likely to see the greatest number of thunderstorms. into the middle part of the week, not a great deal changes. perhaps we willjust develop some thunderstorms drifting towards the northern parts of scotland and still that threat of thundery showers down into the southern parts as we get into the second half of the week. this is bbc news.

i'm lukwesa burak. the headlines at eight: celebrations in dublin, but now the focus shifts to the north and abortion laws that are far more restrictive than the rest of the uk. our policy is the same from the north of ireland right through the bottom of ireland. we want to see the same policy. we need to show care and compassion towards women. i think it is a popular opinion throughout northern ireland that we should not have a liberalised abortion regime. no end to the political deadlock on italy as the man designated as the country's prime minister gives up his bid to form a government. the us sends a delegation to north korea aimed at reinstating a possible summit between the countries‘ leaders. 0rganisers cancel the mutiny festival in portsmouth after two people die at the event. also ahead: chris froome makes cycling history in italy.