this is bbc news, the latest headlines: sri lanka's president has asked the defence minister and police chief to resign from theirjobs, in response to what the government's called major lapses in intelligence. it's been confirmed prior warnings were not acted upon ahead of easter sunday's suicide bombings, which took the lives of at least 359 people. north korea's leader, kimjong—un, has arrived in the far east of russia for his first summit with president putin. he was welcomed by a guard of honour in the city of vladivostok, talks between the two are set to begin shortly. heavy rain and floods have killed at least 60 people in durban in south africa. a number of children's bodies were pulled out from under a collapsed building. thousands of people have also been forced to flee their homes. south africa's president cyril ramaphosa said climate change was making the weather wilder and less predictable. it's 3:330am.

you're up to date. it's time now for click. this week, the war on fake news. when robots paint the moon. flipping out over this. and how to make a shooting star. the world's largest election is underway in india. over five weeks, 900 million eligible voters, in 20 states, are casting their ballots to decide who will rule this vast country

for the next five years. and this is no small decision — because in that time, india's population is set to overtake china's, and its economy is likely to become bigger than the uk's. the size of this democratic exercise is like no other, but the issues that it brings up are all too familiar. social media, once again, is playing a part in swaying political opinions. and once again, misinformation, so—called "fa ke news", is attempting to cloud voters‘sjudgement. and the problem is, last year, bbc—led research revealed that ordinary citizens in india are less concerned with the facts of a story, and they're more likely to share it if it bolsters their national identity. the problem is now as acute on whatsapp as it is on facebook.

and when messages come from family and friends, the receivers are more likely to believe it and to share it. india's election commission has been working with social media giants to try and stop the toxic overspill. and david reid has been finding out if they've been successful. fake news foxes the best of us. in india, it has a particular potency. i got information from social media, like whatsapp, facebook, news channels... facebook, whatsapp, instagram. last year, more than 30 people died after false social media rumours triggered mob violence. this ngo stepped in to counter its effects. the explosion of mobile internet here has been a cultural earthquake. people easily believe fiery fake news and underestimate the effect of sharing it.

india is certainly a country which comes under this whole thing like follow, share, forward, like. misinformation is catchy, misinformation is alarming, misinformation is like negative news, which is very attractive. we don't feel, you know, bad about forwarding it — without realising how a forward can impact people. follow, share, forward, like. at election time, fiery rhetoric, linked to identity, does all of these things, and there are politicians here who are happy to ferment communal tensions. —— foment communal tensions. it's why the election commission has been so worried about fake news hijacking the democratic process, and is asking social media giants to clamp down. whatsapp introduced rationing, limiting to five the number

of contacts users can share content with. as for facebook, it's smarting from a series of fake news and data scandals. india's election is the big test. it pulled hundreds of fake accounts and announced a war room to crisis manage the election. we asked to see it, and were eventually told it wasn't in india, where the election is, but in san francisco, where facebook is. our reporter, who visited it, said the war room had a "cobbled together" feel to it. the fact that we set up these operations centres, that we had the right capabilities in this room, where we have threat investigators, engineers, data scientists, meant that we had the appropriate expertise, so we could respond rapidly when it mattered the most. back in india, facebook has recruited an army of independent fact checkers.

the start—up news mobile employs a new breed ofjourno. they're certified by the international fact checking network. theirjob — to review flagged stories, rate their accuracy, and push out a corrective. this is a global epidemic and requires a global response. for every social media company globally, the fake news problem creates a crisis of credibility as well. so for them, it's incumbent upon them as well to work more deeply, especially with independent media companies. by all accounts, the fact checkers are doing a terrificjob. the problem is, there'sjust so much fake news for them to deal with. added to that, fact checking is realjournalism — it takes time. for all the time that it takes, the false story is online, doing its damage. by the time a fact checker, you know, pushes out an article, fact checks something, it's already 24—48 hours since the misinformation has been posted on the platform.

and the misinformation, by that time, has more or less reached the intended audience. and facebook has no way of informing the people who have viewed the misinformation that look, there's a fact checker responding to that. once a story's found to be fake, it doesn't then disappear. sure, it's contextualised by the fact checker‘s work and it's made less prominent, its viral wings are clipped, but it remains up there. there is, however, a category of misinformation that facebook does take down. in particular cases, where we see that misinformation violates our community standards and essentially co—ordinates harm — a good example of this just to anchor the conversation is misinformation that misleads people about the process of how to vote and logistics of when to vote, that aspect of misinformation is particularly dangerous and so as a result, we actually do remove it from our platform. for all the drawbacks to fact

checking, it does seem to be educating people to be more sceptical. or did you just forward it? ijust received it on some random group. 84 million new voters have come of age since the last election, so is the social media generation wising up to the wiles of the fake newsers? so, i think first we need to check it all, and then we have to decide that it's fake or true. my idea is if you're not informative about something, it's better not to spread rumours around that. fake news is imagined to have most impact in knife—edge constituencies where the vote is close. after the elections will be the reckoning, then we'll see how well social media outlets have done at curbing activists and their desire to trick unwitting voters. that was david reid in india. with me is will moy from full facts, an independent fact—checking charity here in the uk.

and, will, you've started working with facebook to fact check their articles recently, haven't you? that's right. they came to us last year, we spent a few months talking about how that would work, how we would maintain our independence. so when we're talking about democratic votes, like the one that's going on in india right now, i can see a future where whoever loses the election will now be able to blame fake news as much as — maybe more than anything else. is that the future that we are destined for, do you think? in terms of the past we've already lived in, i think people have always complained that the election was rigged and it wasn't fair for one reason or another, the newspapers are biased, whatever it might be. there's always been those complaints. what's true now that didn't used to be true is that a small group of people can control communications to millions of other people, that their opponents can't see. so with targeted online advertising now, it's possible to advertise to millions of people,

but only a selected group of people — you can advertise just to men with one message and just to women with another message, or an even more, sometimes quite sinister, targeted groups of people. that has to be made transparent or we really will have a problem with an election, where people can say this all happened surreptitiously, in the dark, without scrutiny. and if an election is not a shared experience, it ceases to be truly a democratic experience. in india, especially, there's a lot of sharing going on on whatsapp. now, that's not public, everything happens inside private, encrypted groups. how on earth can you fact check whatsapp groups and what they're sharing? we don't know yet. it's something that people in my line of work talk to each other about, and it's a concern. we were pleased that whatsapp made the move to reduce how easy it is to forward information on whatsapp, because that can make dangerous information go viral with too little scrutiny. but actually, it is going to come down to individual users of whatsapp and every other messaging platform saying, "i don't want to share things with my friends that

i think might not be true." because no—one actually wants to mislead their friends. but, it seems to me human nature that we want to share sensational sounding information, and that's been true before social media as well. that's just not going to stop, is it? it's not going to stop, no. but equally, pub conversations for the last, you know, 100 years have not all been completely accurate, people have told nonsense at the market, nonsense at the pub, nonsense around the kitchen table for generations. it's not necessary to create a world in which nobody says anything that's inaccurate or sensationalised. what we need to do is spot where it's causing harm and then ask people to think twice. and say, actually, if you're sharing information about how to vote but you're not sure that it's right, that's the point where you need to stop and think before you share. do you think facebook and other social media platforms are doing enough at the moment to counter that misinformation? no, we don't.

we think that they have now started to take some serious and useful steps forward, but actually, they need to do more. they need to be changing the product, so that it makes it easier for people to work out what they can and cannot trust. we need to see more research, more independent research into where problems are, and what harms really arise from them. we need more data sharing. and with the programme that facebook came to us with recently, they've started for the first time to give outsiders an insight into what's going on the platform, they started to integrate fact checking into the product. that is a decent first step, but it is not the last. thank you very much for your time, will. thank you very much. hello and welcome to the week in tech. this week, apple settled its chip royalty dispute with qualcomm, sending the chip—maker's stock rocketing up. twitter ceo jack dorsey said it's time to fundamentally rethink how his service is used, comparing himself to the captain of the titanic. and after nearly five years of development, playstation announced plans

for its next generation console. it will be backwards compatible with the ps4 and have 8k resolution. an investigation by the consumer magazine which has found the amazon online store has been flooded with thousands of products with fake five star reviews. which looked at 14 popular tech items, including headphones and smart watches, finding unknown brands also appearing in the top of the search. amazon says it's using automated technology to weed out false reviews. uber launched a feature in saudi arabia that allows female drivers to block male passengers from hailing their cab. uber discovered up to 75% of female drivers didn't want to pick up male passengers. women have only been allowed to drive in saudi arabia since last summer. alibaba's ceo jack ma has defended the culture of working long hours at tech companies, saying it's a blessing for workers to put in a 72 hour work week.

the so—called 996 work culture — working nine till nine, six days a week — was highlighted by chinese tech workers online. and finally, in the latest sign of the impending robot takeover, boston dynamics showed off its robo dogs pulling a truck across a parking lot. the 30—kilogram robot dogs will go on sale later this year. at this london gallery, art created by a robot — using artificial intelligence — is on show. these images are a very modern take on the traditional chinese ink landscape paintings. they're created by using a combination of nasa data, images that have been collected by the chinese rover on the moon, and a human has taught the al to create brush strokes that look like this. ai genesis will never create the same image twice and its inventor, who calls the robot his soulmate,

sees that as one of the joys. when you look at the picture, do you feel pleased with it? do you question the way it's come out? how do you feel when you first see it? i feel amazed. wow, that's my expression. oh, wow. if i draw myself like this, i will be punished by my ink painting master because that's not the way that a trained traditional ink painting. but... why not, what's wrong with it? they will not draw that that way. that is not a traditional technique of chinese ink painting. but the new art ink paintings, what we want to do is put some new things in traditional paintings, to renew it. you have certainly done that. who is the better painter, you or the robot? i would say it is a collaboration between us. and sometimes it is embarrassing because do i say look at my paintings... or look at our paintings? but if the creation of an image

comes down to data, numbers, algorithms, is it maybe missing something? each piece of art that is created normally has a person's emotions, persons thought and vision put into it, but when you are leaving the al to do a lot of that, is it still art? firstly, what is emotions? emotion is our response to the environment. like on a rainy day you will feel blue. on a sunny day you may feel the future is so bright. if i put data to stimulate gemini's work, to stimulate it, to create extra stimulation, less surrounding, for example i put in humidity and temperature, every time it comes out different. i would say there is emotion and relations at this moment but no—one can say that ai will not have emotion or imagination in the future.

and the idea does seem to be gaining ground. a piece of ai art was, for the first time, sold at auction last month at london's sotheby‘s. artist mario klingemann‘s memories of passersbyi was created using what is known as generative adversarial networks, or gans. these break down the data from traditional oil portraits, rebuilding it into a series of unique images. what you see there, i built myself. but like a painter does not build the brushes themselves or, let's say, they go in the store to purchase paint or canvas, i am working with materials that are standing on the shoulders of a generation of researchers. but the intention here was deliberately neither to achieve

perfection nor photorealism. selling now for £32,000. it was actually the code that was bought here with a couple of screens and a wooden unit thrown in to enjoy it on. so maybe the future of appreciation of art is one of appreciation of technology as well. that was lara. now let's talk phones. and as a gee—ee—ee—ee—eek, i have been waiting a long time to be able to do this. the idea of a flexible display has been around for years and on click we have watched this story, ahem, unfold. but these things have been an awfully long time coming. we have had to wait for oled technology that allows for flexible electronics to get to a point where it is cheap and reliable enough to survive being bent, flexed and mistreated in the real world. and this year, finally, several companies have been able to, ahem, roll them out.

the highest profile flexible phone has to be samsung's galaxy fold which becomes available at the beginning of next month. whispering: for £1,800. now the front screen is smaller and narrower than you might be used to but this device is really all about a 7.3 inch tablet screen hiding inside. you can just about see that crease down the centre, although it is less obvious when the screen is bright. on opening or closing, any apps running on one screen will switch immediately to the other in an adjusted size. that bigger screen does allow for three apps to be open at once which you can reposition or pop out

into floating windows. now this is the first time that journalists have been allowed to touch the thing and i came down here today expecting it to weigh a ton but, i have to say, it doesn't. it is heavier than the s10+ but it is lighter than an ipad mini, so it depends on your perspective, really. now, about the screen. it doesn't fold completely flat, which has caused some to worry that a stray coin in the pocket would sneak into the gap and cause all sorts of screen damage. and despite samsung's claims that it can take up to 200,000 folds, some reviewers have already experienced unexplained faults with the screen. samsung says it is looking into it but it's not exactly the best start for what is supposed to be a whole new type of device. now, then, i wonder if you've ever seen a shooting star. if you're lucky, you might see

a few of them in your lifetime but what if you could control where and when they happen? that would be pretty spectacular, wouldn't it? kate russell has been to japan to meet the scientists who are trying to take control of the night sky. three, two, one, go. it's not often you can get this close to a shooting star. ooh, that one is green. this simulation of a meteor being burned up in earth's atmosphere is part of an ambitious plan to create cosmic grade fireworks that can be seen from up to 200 kilometres away. since we last visited the company back in 2016, they have been perfecting the technology to make it compact enough to allow it

to be sent into space. hitching a ride on a rocket is not cheap, so every gram counts. many shooting stars ordinarily... basically... it is like a sesame size and this is bigger than the natural shooting stars. this is completely burned out in the upper atmosphere, so it becomes very bright and lasts longer. it will take a year before the satellite descends to an orbit where they have been cleared by the world's space agencies to eject the pellets. so the particles sit inside this cylinder and they get rotated one at a time into this chamber here. down inside here in the central chamber. then we put pressure behind them

right here and we release them and they get shot out of here. ah, 0k. so puff, puff? yep, one at a time. because the release velocity is the number one critical factor in ensuring accuracy of the particles, there is no system on earth currently accurate enough. the company is being secretive about the date for the first shooting star display. but it doesn't take a genius to work out that the timing sets things up nicely for the 2020 olympics. in future, they hope to offer multicoloured displays as well. so this is one of the materials that will be tested today, just mounted on the tip of the stick. we're not quite sure how it will burn, what colour it will be, or the brightness but that is the point of these tests. it promises to look spectacular. but there is real science at stake here as well. right now, meteor science

is not well known. it is a wide field of research and especially scientists they don't know the mass, the brightness, the composition of meteors and we don't know if it led to the spread of life on earth. because we have such an accurate system, we can tell people, scientists and our own crews, exactly where to point cameras so that they can record and get data. it is not so surprising to connect fireworks to scientific breakthroughs. around 2,000 years ago, alchemists seeking a recipe for eternal life accidentally created firecrackers. this led to our first fundamental understanding of the forces of nature. so this could mark the beginning of a new chapter of scientific study. it's also going to look very pretty. brilliant. that was kate injapan and that's it from us for this week. you can follow us on social media

throughout the week. we are on youtube, instagram, facebook and twitter. thank you for watching and we will see you soon. hello again. uk forecast in just a moment but first of all we are off to mozambique where it looks like we've got another weather—related disaster on the way. another cyclone, this is cyclone kenneth, picking up strength and it's going to make landfall thursday afternoon in northern mozambique and bringing you through five days of forecast here, you can see the problem. once the storm has made landfall, it stops moving and we will see torrential falls of rain in the same area day after day. we could be seeing, getting

on for a metre of rain over coming days combined with a storm surge 2—4 metres high which could bring coastal inundation and looks like we will see another round of devastating flooding across mozambique, particularly in the north of the country. here in the uk, our weather has changed. it's turned a bit cooler, we've got unsettle weather over the next few days with rain or showers but also temperatures have eased over recent days. it will feel cooler as we head into this weekend combined with strengthening winds as well. now, today we'll start off with some reasonable weather around. in scotland and northern ireland, a bit of brightness or sunshine first thing. showers across england and wales from the word go push northwards. in terms of being cloudy, the showers get heavy with hail and thunder mixed in. some of those downpours will be quite lengthy as well as they drive their way northwards. in the south, perhaps turning a bit lighter today, a bit more sunshine, temperatures down on recent days, 13—16 degrees and quite a breezy day coming up, really. going through thursday evening and overnight,

further wet weather for scotland, showers working in across parts of western england, and wales, perhaps some lengthier spells of rain through northern ireland through thursday night and into the early part of friday morning. friday, on the face of it, although it's quite unsettled again, there'll be some bigger gaps between the showers and perhaps some more in the way of sunshine for particularly eastern areas of scotland for a time, but it's not completely dry, you will see some further showers moving in through the afternoon. some of these are likely to be heavy and potentially quite lengthy in places. gusty winds around too. temperatures 13—15 degrees celsius and then through friday night and into the weekend, we see this area of low pressure diving southwards, tightly squeezed isobars, it's going to be a windy spell of weather. the strongest winds of this stage, targeting probably south—west england. gusts 60, 65 miles per hour, something like that. outbreaks of rain, widespread, and it's going to feel quite cold, notjust on account of those strong winds, heavy rain but also those temperatures. we'll be looking at highs of between 10 and 13 degrees.

you can forget the 25 we had a few days ago.

a very warm welcome to bbc news — broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name's mike embley. our top stories: a guard of honourfor the north korean leader as he arrives in russia. the first ever summit between kim jong—un and vladimir putin is getting underway. top sri lankan officials lose theirjobs over the intelligence failures before sunday's attacks, as new details emerge about the bombers. heavy rain and floods kill at least 60 people in durban, south africa. thousands more have had to flee their homes. the last post prince william takes part in anzac day commemorations in auckland, as new zealand, australia and turkey honour their fallen.