i'm ben bland with bbc news. our top story: american negotiators are meeting their chinese counterparts in a last ditch attempt to reach a trade deal. if no agreement is reached, the us will impose new tariffs on $200 billion worth of chinese goods. the united states has seized a north korean cargo ship which it says was violating international sanctions. earlier, north korea had launched two short—range missiles, raising tensions between washington and seoul. and this story is trending on bbc.com. chelsea and arsenal have continued england's domination of european football this season, with both london clubs making the europa league final. chelsea beat eintracht frankfurt on penalties, whilst arsenal won at valencia. liverpool and tottenham will battle it out for the champions league final. that's all. stay with bbc news.

now on bbc news, it's hardtalk. hello and welcome to hardtalk. i'm shaun ley. a decade ago, iceland was a byword for bubble economics, then three banks collapsed and much of the economy went the same way. from greed in high places to a green in the highest place. katrin jakobsdottir, a left—wing environmentalist is a prime minister whose ambitious pledge is to make iceland carbon neutral by 2040. she's ‘a person of strong opinions‘, she says, yet iceland's carbon emissions are set to rise over the next few years. iceland will stay in nato, against her view and will carry on whaling, against her view. a coalition government may require compromise, but does iceland's green pm have no red lines?

prime minister, welcome and thank you for being with us today. you have been prime minister of iceland for 18 months or so? 16 months. a ‘left—green‘ as you describe yourself. on a continent where it sometimes seem as if nationalists and populists have all the best tunes, what should people of your politics take from your example? i think this is not the first time that the left—greens in iceland are in government. we were also in government after the crisis in 2008 and i think we have achieved remarkable success, not least in restoring and preserving the social infrastructure of iceland after the crisis, which probably was the biggest project

of the left—wing government after the crisis. finding the money to keep the system going. we took another way after the crisis than many other european nations did. for example, raised taxes. a mix of austerity and raising taxes. what happened in iceland after the crisis was equality had grown in iceland. we are now the 0ecd country with the best income equality. i think we have done some things right and now we are again in government not least because of the issue of social infrastructure but other issues as well such as gender equality and climate et cetera. i think we have achieved a lot of success with our being in government. you ended up in government despite the fact you lost support compared to the previous election. it dropped from 21% in 2009 to 16% this time. and since then you have also seen further erosion of your support. what do you think explains that?

i have been in politics for quite some time so i have seen elections where we have had 8% in 2003, 21% in 2009 just after the crisis and now around 16, i7% last time, the second best result from the beginning for the left—greens. so i think politics is notjust about the numbers in polls. maybe least of all about numbers in polls. it is about the achievements you make and i think the left—greens have not only achieved great success in government but also in opposition because we have actually mainstreamed issues we were talking about 20 years ago. the environment, feminism, gender equality, they are now mainstream issues not only in icelandic politics. i won't thank us for global politics but i think we have been an important factor in changing the debate in iceland.

so as an example that people can draw on. the difficulty is that you are in a coalition government with a conservative party the iceland independence party, and a centre—right party, the progressive party. in those circumstances you will never get all your own way but is that what is doing you some damage? that might explain the steady erosion in your support since you became prime minister. when you took office nearly 50% of voters wanted to see you as prime minister. last month, march i should say, that figure dropped to 38%. 0ne minister in your government actually has an approval rating of 67%. my point is that once they see you in office and the compromises you have to make, maybe they are not happy. first i would like to say that neither of my co—operative parties are populist party. i would not call them that. it is a good thing to have experience in politics because obviously i served as the minister for education and culture in a left—wing

government with the social democrats after the crisis and of course we experienced a lot of loss in voting. we lost nearly half of our votes in the next election after that. so being in government isn't maybe exactly the way to stay popular. it is a price worth paying in the end? why are we in politics? to stay popular or to get some results? it is worth reminding people i mentioned it briefly in the introduction how we got here. ten years ago, iceland suffered a terrible economic shock and its economy was wrecked by reckless behaviour by the financial services industry. lot of lessons had to be learnt. there was criticism of politicians and has been since. you yourself have said that restoring the reputation of politics will not be easy and you are not surprised, i think you said, i don't blame people who don't trust icelandic politicians. you told the guardian newspaper last you that you can't really blame them. your government has a former

prime minister who was hounded out of office because of political scandal. the other party in your government was in government and its previous leader was identified in the panama papers for his family having salted money overseas. it is hard for people to say that much has changed when those sort of people are still in government under your leadership. when it comes to solving political issues, i think we should look at the structure. the structural problems need structural solutions. and when we're talking about this, we should talk about what we have been doing in regards to legislation and regulatory framework, such as taxation, where i would like to see other initiatives coming so i could act. what we have been doing is really cleaning up the legislation and the regulatory framework when it comes to taxing. and cleaning up the behaviour of politicians? i know of the issue

you are referring to, which dates from before the crisis. and actually the regulatory framework was different. we did not even have any ethical rules concerning, for example, what interests the politicians should mention or not. this has been changed. we should also be able to learn from mistakes. the report last year by the group of states against corruption which slated iceland back in 2015 as globally unsatisfactory, still suggests you have not grasped that rules are not enough, you need sanctions and enforcement. that's the problem, there are codes of conduct but they are never enforced. this has been a concern. this report is from 2018 and we have been doing a lot. since this report? since the government went into office in 2017. so i think we should be quite fair. it takes time to change things. also, i have been in parliament since 2007 and i have seen how

things have been changed. personally i am now proposing a new law on information access to information and a very important law not least for the icelandic media but also for the icelandic public when it comes to access to information. so transparency? transparency, yes. but obviously changes take time. and i have been in parliament not long enough that it is endurance and stamina that you need to make some changes. give us some insight then. you are prime minister, you sit around with the leaders of the other parties and your two ministers and their ministers and you talk about these things. to what extent are you able to impose your authority as prime minister? you can look at those proposals i have been making about these issues. i promise you, you will see some results when they have been implemented. how soon do you hope those will be in place?

hopefully the parliament is just talking about the information law right now. so what we have been doing is, really, mapping out what we need to do. is that because you cannot get the other politicians to change their behaviour? so the way round that problem is to say that they are stubborn and won't do anything differently, i believe you said that it should be possible to change icelandic political culture but we often seem to revert to the old way. so the solution is to say they won't do anything, provide the information to journalists who will then dig away and expose something and that would deal with the politicians who cannot get their act together? my take on this is that if the problem is structural you will not change it by bashing out the individuals. you need structural change. that is what you can do as a politician. neither of us are politicians nor as a person, you are not going to change individuals. but it is better to change the structure. because that will last beyond the individual. it's all about the system.

let's talk about area of policy about which you feel passionate and one of the reasons you came into politics in the first place, i presume, the challenge of climate change. just after becoming prime minister you pledged to make iceland carbon neutral by 2040 which was considerably more ambitious than the uk, which talks about 2050. how will you achieve that? we announced our plans last autumn and this month we will announce how we are going to achieve plans. the first step is switching over to renewables and transports, an energy shift both in public and private transport. so we have introduced a proposal about having a ban on the import of gasoline and diesel cars by 2030. and we have also tax incentives on the import of electric cars. what the government is planning to do is build up and fund

the infrastructure for that energy shift. icelanders do love their cars. you have more cars than people? of course. you have to travel distances in iceland. so obviously. but you also need to strengthen the public transport system. that is an important part of this programme. and then we are also planning to increase carbon binding, revegetation, restoration of the wetlands, things that the uk is familiar with. this is just the first step. and there will be more of this this year with these announcements? 0bviously. climate change is an urgent matter. the urgency is interesting. we are emitting a lot. icelanders are. in the same period, between 2016 and 2017, emissions from cars went up 5.5%. so there is a real problem here.

your environment minister said, we do not at all need to use cars as much as we do, we are just lazy. do you agree with that? i think it is all about public transport will be come a more real an option for people. so even if they are lazy, they have somewhere to go. i have... i have a family of five and we have been without a car and it was all right. it is a different lifestyle but it is not the weather troubling people. no, and i cannotjudge because i do not have children and i can appreciate that it is harder for people in practical terms with children because public transport is not set up well for people with children. but if emissions are climbing in the short term before they fall, it is still a challenging target, isn't it, to do this by 2040. meanwhile in the meantime you have millions of tourists coming to iceland over the years. you cannot really think that the level of growth you've seen in tourism is sustainable, can you? in some cases between 20% and 40% growth. and that was just between 2013 and 2017. you cannot keep going if you want

to meet those targets. let me finish on the transport. because part of it is also building up public transport. i think that is an important part of it. and you reduce both public and private transport not least in urban areas, where you can use public transport more. so i think it is not about being lazy i think it is that the public transport needs to be a choice for people. but that's not the problem for tourists? i know wow went bankrupt but there are 27 airlines serving iceland and it is a popular place to visit. in a sense, you are punished by your own popularity and tourism is now bringing in a bigger amount of income than fishing for the first time. you do not want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg but you yourself will say that this is a crisis the country must address because you deal with the consequences. the amount of ice lost in the first decade of this century compared to the whole of last century? these processes are accelerating

and your people will be victims of that. i returned to my point, having a green prime minister, is that having enough of a difference in these timescales or are all those other politicians and your desire to compromise, which is a grown—up and admirable thing to do, does that affect your ability to deliver? no, those were actually many questions and the growth in tourism has been exponential and i'm the first to admit that because it has been so quick and fast, the framework hasn't really followed but we want to have for us more sustainable tourism and because you are asking for action, just last week we announced the putting up of an electric cable underneath, you know, that is going to be under the earth, an electric cable so you can actually travel around the highlands in iceland without emitting. without having to hire a car. yeah, yeah.

0r fly. definitely not by flying. but with a vehicle that is run by renewable and that is an important step in sustainable tourism but obviously putting out a goal of 2040 carbon neutrality is because it is urgent and we need to take action and we're not going solve everything in a month 01’ over one winter. i will say in passing that the environment agency, and i'm sure you know this, it believes the growth in emissions can be linked to the rapid growth of tourism. the aviation sector is a big part of the emissions but i don't think it's the correct attitude to say oh, everything is so terrible so let's do nothing or everything. we need to start somewhere and that's what we decided to do by starting on the transport system and by the carbon binding

when we have actually achieved some great results so i think we have to do it one step at a time but still have an ambitious goal because time is running out and it is really urgent so you were asking me here before, you know, are you ok with having to make compromises? well, ithink, actually, seeing from the first time in history, a fully funded climate action plan is not a compromise, that's just the great result for a green politician. the newly refurbished silicon plant at helguvik will produce 550,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year according to the agency, maximum production that would be, that is going to add to iceland's total emissions increasing by at least 10% if the plant goes back into production. that is a compromise as well. you need energy and you need business and all the other things you need. emissions mainly come from the aviation sector and heavy industry. how are we going to do with that? we need to rethink our economy. my government is actually planning to invest in different setcors.

my government is actually planning to invest in different sectors. you live with that but you will reduce somewhere else. innovation in research and development we have to look at what we're doing. when we look at our fisheries fleet, they have reduced their emissions by 40% since 1990 and why and how are they doing that? partly because they are using new technologies, using more energy—efficient technologies so definitely part of the government's plan is to invest more in innovation, r&d, to reach the goals of climate change and carbon neutrality. your government has decided to allow icelanders to carry on killing whales. not popular internationally not sure how popular it is within iceland, given most icelanders saying they have never eaten whale meat. but that goes against your personal beliefs, yes? when we talk about whaling, you have to realise the reason we give permission to hunt these two

species, fin whales and minke whales, is that according to the advice of the marine research institutes, and their scientific advice is that the stock of those species are not endangered, they're not even vulnerable according to that scientific advice. so that decision to give out the permission is built on scientific advice however there are strong political arguments against whaling. there are also scientific arguments, the presence of whales is regarded as valuable, the presence of whale regarded by some scientists as being of real value to the oceans. according to one report, the un climate change 0rganisation says it promotes the growth of phytoplankton, i don't know what it is but it's good, it takes greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and can carry the carbon to the ocean floor. in the southern ocean, a study has shown sperm whales allow as much carbon to be captured and sequestered as 694 acres of forest each year in the united states. the whales are a good for combating

climate change but you want to allow them to be killed. it doesn't add up. here we are talking about two different species. but that doesn't affect their impact on the climate. whether they are endangered or not, it doesn't affect their impact on the climate. no, but what i'm going to tell you is that it's really important to look at this holistically and i totally agree with those who criticised this, thatjust using the stock really and making scientific advice is not this holistic approach, approaching it from the economical factors, societal factors. and also of course, these broad environmentalfactors which have not been taken into account. you ask is it something that the icelanders support, well, according to reports, there is majority support and historically there has been a majority of support for whaling in iceland, maybe because it has a long tradition. that's why you could call this yes, a compromise, but it's not the compromise against

scientific advice. it's actually being followed. one other subject i should ask you about is nato. a classic. you are not an enthusiast yourself. iceland doesn't have an army so you support is more logistics, and i guess to the philosophy of mutual support around the region. last autumn in a statement of the left green party board meeting, nato exercises were described as murder exercises which formed the basis for the quest of world domination and murder of civilians. is that your view of nato? my view, my personal view and my party's view is that we shouldn't be members of nato, however we have a national security policy which all the parties in the parliament agreed upon, except us, because

the membership of nato is actually a cornerstone in that policy. and i think, you mentioned my party had 16, 17%. ok, i did not think that that was a reason enough not to enter government to achieve some results on very important issues, like the issue of nato, so we decided to follow the national security policy and participate. even if you think it is the basis of the quest for world domination and the murder of civilians? i used my opportunity there last summer to talk about things that are very relevant. does that reflect your view or si that not a view you would share? my personal view is that nato is a military alliance. iceland traditionally has been a nation without an army, very peaceful. when we look at the peaceful countries in the world, iceland comes out nearly on top.

there is a solution to this, which is to take up the suggestion from one of your mps, anders jonsson, and have a referendum. have a referendum. does that appeal to you? have a proper debate about it and resolve it in a sense for a generation, one way or another. when we entered nato, there was no referendum and there maybe should have been. that was in 1949. you are the prime minister now. you were a relatively new country, not much choice injoining. a lot is changed since then. you are the prime minister, if you want a referendum. we have a compromise on the government manifesto that we will follow a national security policy and... go on, try it on your party. say, i've given ground and all these things. i've given you ground on climate change, how fast we progress, i've given you ground and lots of things because i'm trying to make this form of government work. yeah, but... cut me some slack here, let me have a referendum on nato. let me show my party that there is something worth having a green pm.

now you are assuming that they are not giving me any ground and i don't think that's a right assumption because what we are seeing in this government is really a change for the good for icelandic society. i mentioned the social infrastructure, the public health care, education, a new policy in investment and innovation and research. i mentioned the climate change plan. it's not for a coincidence that for the first time we have a funded climate action plan. in 2012, we had the first law on climate and that wasn't even any interest in it in the political life or on the political scene in iceland. not to mean our policies on gender equality. not to mention our policies on gender equality. so i think, what you need to admit is that definitely there are compromises being made but i think we're all, as you put it, giving each other some ground here. prime minister katrin jakobsdottir, thank you very much for being with us on hardtalk. thank you.

hello there. we've got a couple more showery days in the forecast before things start to settle down during the week and, as high—pressure begins to build in, we start to see temperatures rising as well. in the short term though, we've got this low pressure which is still influencing the weather across the country. and the weather fronts through central parts still generating some showers. so it does look like it's going to be a showery start through more central portions of the country this morning. a little bit of wintriness over the higher ground too. but for the rest of scotland, the north—east of england,

it's going to be actually a cold start. out of town could see a little bit of frost again. but less cold across southern areas. so through today, we will have some sunshine to start the day, across the south and across the north—east. more cloud through central areas with some showers from the word go and then showers are likely to develop elsewhere as the temperatures begin to rise in the afternoon, and some of these could be heavy, maybe thundering and slow—moving showers ‘cause the winds will be lighter as well. but in the sunshine we could make 16 or 17 degrees in the south—east, and double figures elsewhere too. this area of low pressure moving into france could bring some wet weather to the channel islands, southern england through friday night. and then into the weekend, high—pressure begins to establish itself. it will be quite a chilly start to the weekend, with he blue colour still lingering, but slowly we can import some warmer airfrom the near continent from sunday onwards. so we could have a few showers around at the start of the weekend before it starts to turn dryer and starts to turn a little bit warmer. so let's have a look in a bit more detail then with saturday. it's a chilly start with light northerly winds. there will be plenty of sunshine around, then showers will develop mostly through central and eastern

areas and there will be the odd heavier one too. better chance of staying dry further west, closer to the area of high pressure, and in sunny spots we could make 17 celsius. but a milder day elsewhere. 0n into sunday, i think high—pressure slap bang on top of us. so it looks like it's going to be a largely dry day. couldsee a little bit of cloud bubbling up into the afternoon, could see a little bit of cloud bubbling up into the afternoon, with the odd isolated showers, but most places dry and temperatures responding as well. 18 degrees across some of the warmer spots. high—pressure still with us again at we head to the start of next week. moving a little bit further eastwards, so we're drawing some of this warmer air from france and from spain. so it's going to be a fairly cool start. we're going to have a little bit of mist and fog through the morning. that should fade away into the afternoon, widespread sunshine, as you can see. and it's going to be warmer temperatures — 18 maybe 19 celsius, central scotland and in towards south and south—west. and it stays fine throughout the week but there are signs we start to pick up a north—easterly — it could turn a little bit cooler by the end of the week.

you're watching newsday on the bbc. i'm sharanjit leyl in singapore. the headlines: us and chinese negotiators are making another attempt to resolve their trade dispute, just hours before new american tariffs are imposed on chinese goods. the us seizes a north korean cargo ship, alleging violation of international sanctions — just hours after north korea launched two short range missiles. hello. i'm ben bland in london. also in the programme: brunei under a microscope. the un will be examining the country's human rights record. singapore's parliament passes a controversial anti fake news law, giving authorities sweeping powers, but critics warn it threatens

freedom of speech.