search—and rescue operation is underway off its coast after a migrant boat capsized. almost 80 people are known to have drowned. the government has declared three days of mourning. the boat is reported to have been heading to italy from the libyan port of tobruk, when it began taking on water late on tuesday. more than a hundred people have been rescued and taken to the greek port of kalamata. the greek coastguard says the search operation has been hampered by strong winds. it's thought the vessel may have been carrying up to 400 people. our europe correspondent nick beake is in athens and has this update. we don't know the scale of this disaster tonight, but it's clear it is bad. more than 100 people have been rescued, but survivors are saying that up to 700 people, they believe, were on board this fishing boat. it set off reportedly from libya and was heading to italy. an image has emerged showing the vessel packed with people in the deepest part

of the mediterranean. no—one, it would seem, had a life jacket on. the greek authorities have said tonight that they went towards the vessel and that no—one wanted help when they offered it. but that has been challenged by an organisation which provides an emergency phone number for people at sea, and it says, in fact, the authorities waited hours before they approached the vessel. they also said that, in terms of anyone refusing the offer of support, that was because of the so—called pushback policy that greece pursues — in other words, pushing people out of greek waters. that is a policy which athens says doesn't exist. it repeatedly and strenuously has denied that it uses this sort of tactic. so, where are we tonight? well, the families of the dead are grieving. for hundreds more families, they face an unbearable wait to try and find out what has happened, and european leaders are talking once again

about trying to find a solution to all of this. but the reality is so far this year, more than 70,000 people have arrived in europe, mainly in four different countries in the south of the continent. and with us going further into the summer, with the weather being good, the fear is that many more people will attempt this perilous crossing. the bbc has spent months secretly communicating with three people in north korea who risked their lives to share their experience inside the secluded country. north korea has largely been closed off to the world for decades. and gaining a window into life there is even more difficult now after the government sealed its borders at the onset of the covid—19 pandemic. since then, reports of starvation and executions suggest that the situation is the worst its been since the 1990s. 0ur seoul correspondent jean mackenzie�*s exclusive reporting provides a peek at life inside.

food supplies are so low, people have started dying. this chilling testimony comes from inside north korea. once, i didn't eat for two days. i only drank water. recently, people have been knocking on the door, asking for food, because they are so hungry. hearing from people inside this isolated country is extremely rare. but with fears the country is on the brink of a famine, we've been secretly communicating with people who live there. we're using actors and animations to illustrate their words, and have changed their names to protect them. in our village, five people have starved to death. chan ho is a construction worker living near the chinese boarder. in one family, the wife was too ill to work, so the two children were surviving by begging. in the end, all three of them died.

at first, i was afraid of dying from covid, but then i began to worry about starving to death. at the start of the pandemic, north korea completely sealed its borders. these pictures released by the regime are all the world's been able to see. foryears, no—one has been allowed to enter the country. authorities even stopped food and medicine from crossing the border. in south korea, we began to get reports of chronic food shortages, and so we teamed up with an organisation here. daily nk has sources inside the country who were able to get our questions to people.

0ur sources found people they trust. to tell people what is happening in the country. for months they _ happening in the country. for months they relate answers in secret because of the government knew these people were talking to government knew these people were talking to us government knew these people were talking to us they government knew these people were talking to us they would likely be killed. this person lives in the north korean capital, the wealthiest part of the country, she tells us even here, supplies are running dangerously low. once i didn't eat for two days. i thought i was going to die in my sleep at night. my husband and i survived by thinking ten more days, and then another ten days, thinking, if something happens, we might starve, but at least we will feed our kids. there are lots of beggars now. if they are lying down, we check them and usually find they're dead.

there are others who kill themselves at home or disappear into the mountains. what these people are telling us evokes memories of the devastating famine of the late 1990s, known as the arduous march, which killed as many as three million people. for the past ten, 15 years, we rarely heard of death by starvation. that was something that happened in the late 1990s or early 2000s, but to hear it happening, again, you know, in the past two, three years, ithink, you know, it is taking us back to the arduous march, which was the most difficult period for the north korean people. when covid finally breached the country's borders, the authorities banned people from leaving their homes. during one lockdown, i know of five people that were trapped in their house for ten days. they were half dead

by the time they were let out. they managed by sneaking out at night to get food. but the spectre of another famine has not stopped kim jong—un from funnelling his limited finances into building nuclear weapons. the money he spent on missile tests last year would have been enough, according to some estimates, to ensure his entire population was properly fed. the people never wanted this endless weapons development that brings hardship to generation after generation. i want to live in a society where we don't starve, where my neighbours are alive. north koreans are more isolated than ever before. it's getting harder for them to survive, and impossible to help them. the bbc put our findings to the north korean

government — known as the dprk. here's what a representative from its embassy in london said: earlier, i spoke to our seoul correspondentjean mackenzie about her exclusive reporting. thank you forjoining us. how common do you think these stories are in north korea? it's very hard to tell of course, we only communicated with three people, but we did our best to try and get what we felt was a representative snapshot, we spoke to three different people from three different parts of the country, varying ages who were different professions, to try and give us as full a picture as we could, and we have spoken to some of the other camps in pyongyang, those living across the border,

but ultimately we only have their stories to go on but they do paint a picture, one that is more troubling than what we imagined, than we imagined, the food situation in particular is worse than i think people had realised, we had heard reports that people perhaps were starving to death in north korea but the fact that we went and spoke to three people and two of them were able to say to us that their neighbours had starved to death, i think shows you how serious the situation is and certainly people we have spoken to have said this probably is more serious than we realised and the food situation probably is the worst now than it has been since the famine in the late 1990s which killed so many people and is widely regarded as the most tragic time in north korea history. what has made this situation so severe right now? by closing the border, kim jong—un not only stopped people from going into the country, he quite staggeringly stopped

trade and freight trains crossing the border, and that meant for a very long time, vital supplies of food and medicine cannot cross into the country and north korea is a country that can't provide enough food for all of its people, so if you stop any food from entering you are automatically going to end up with a shortfall so that is one of the main reasons and the other is if you look at how the economy works, there is this huge informal economy that has grown up over the years, so people essentially cross the river into china, cross the border, sneak out at night and sneak back in with things to buy and sell and they sell these things at local market prices and this is how the majority of north koreans make their money, it's thought that around 80% of north koreans rely on this informal market trade, so by sealing the border and making it incredibly difficult for people to cross, it's also cut off this unofficial sort of smuggling trade making it very hard for people to get what they need and very hard to make a living, so people operating with much less money than they normally

would have, there is much less food in the markets anyway, so therefore that situation has built up to what it is. tell us about your reporting. how did you gain access to these three voices? it's impossible to talk directly to people in north korea so we had to work with an organisation that has a network of sources inside the country, and these sources were able to find sources and we got the questions to people and then they relayed the answers, but it was a painstaking process that took many months, because we had to drip feed the information, it was sent back in hundreds of different instalments because it was too risky to even send one complete answer at a time and we have taken so much care to make sure that we keep these people safe and we do not reveal their identity, so taking our time and making sure we did it very slowly was part of that process.

thank you so much for sharing your report with us. around the world and across the uk, this is bbc news. bringing you different stories from across the uk. local residents outside barking town hall wanting to meet which the council to discuss ways to save the community centre known as the community centre known as the wherefores providing facilities and resources that rival most community centres in the capital of not the capital. there is a maker space and free space where people to come together. space where people to come together-— space where people to come touether. . . , together. the charity run say the run together. the charity run say they run out _ together. the charity run say they run out of— together. the charity run say they run out of funding, - together. the charity run say they run out of funding, the | they run out of funding, the council who had provided the premises now wants commercial returns from the property. we have to do _ returns from the property. - have to do what's best for as many as possible. while we are not able to keep this one facility open, we know that thing else will be there for the residents.—

thing else will be there for the residents. now residents are looking _ the residents. now residents are looking to _ the residents. now residents are looking to raise - the residents. now residents are looking to raise more - the residents. now residents - are looking to raise more money to save the centre, they are even offering to fund it themselves, are calling on the council to help them achieve this. for more stories from across the uk head to the bbc website. you're live with bbc news. an author of an influential scientific paper that helped to cast the idea that covid might have leaked from a laboratory as a conspiracy theory, has told the bbc that they might have gone "a bit too far" in their conclusions. the statement, from tulane university's bob garry, comes in the latest episode of the bbc podcast fever: the hunt for covid's 0rigins. john, it is great to see you again. what did professor gary tell you? if you think back to the early days of the pandemic we have those claims and counter claim circulating, the idea of course that covid may have been accidentally leaked from a laboratory, but even more controversial claim that it may have been

deliberately released from a laboratory, that that idea of a bio weapon even finding itself into the mouth of the us president at the time, donald trump, totally without foundation of course but nonetheless that was the amateur at the time. —— atmosphere. you also have a sort of equal and opposite pushback from scientists, and much of the media, that were very quickly dismissing any idea, any talk of the lab leak as a conspiracy theory, and central to that was this very influential scientific proof, the proximal origins of sars—cov—2, and what those five authors said was they had looked at the genetic structure of the virus, and determined that it is very unlikely to have leaked from a lab. i had a chance to speak to one of them, as you say, dr bob garry, very distinguished virologist from chile university, and i asked him three years on, looking back, what did he make of that conclusion today, in particular one very strong

sentence in the paper. "we do not believe any land—based scenario "is plausible", they had written, and this is what he told me today. at that point we were still largely under the influence, when that particular sentence was written, that this might have been a bio—engineered virus, maybe — a weapon that accidentally got released... but that sentence is not about bio weapons, it says any laboratory based scenario. yes, it was, so maybe we went a little bit too far there, but, you know... so for a scientific paper that was as influential as that one, the idea of hearing somebody as eminent as bob garry suggesting that they may have pushed that conclusion a little too far is, as you might expect, getting a fair bit of reaction on places like twitter this evening. it does seem pretty surprising. how significant is this? well, we ought to say and make it very clear that prof garry told me that much of the evidence that has

emerged since they wrote that paper, the location of some of the earliest covid cases in proximity to a wildlife market in wuhan, what we know now about the kind of animals that were on sale in that market, makes him more convinced than ever that a natural origin for covid is by far the most likely. so, in a sense, he hasn't changed his overall stance, his overall conclusion, but nonetheless, the idea that he is at least saying, on the evidence at the time, for that early scientific paper, that the conclusion went a little far, well, it raises an interesting question, of course, because if they are at least stepping back a little from the certainty, then, might you wonder whether the claims of certainty being made today, ruling out a lab leak, are equally being pushed a little too far? so i think, in that sense, a lot of people will say this

is a significant admission. it is really interesting, and one more question, different us agencies here have competing versions of what is responsible for covid, whether it is the energy department or the cia, and we know that the us secretary of state antony blinken is heading to china next week. how much pressure do you think he is under to address this? well, whether or not he will push his chinese interlocutors on that question, we don't know. of course, it is unlikely that they would deliver much new information. china has made its position very, very clear, on both the question of the lab leak and the market origin. china's official position seems to be that the virus did not come from china at all. 0n the other hand, what we do have in the next few days, of course, is the declassified intelligence that president biden has order to be released. that is coming up, a lot of people are awaiting that

with deep interest, and they are keen to see whether that reveals new clues, either way, to that vital question of where this thing came from. very interesting, great to talk to you as always. thank you. members of the european parliament have approved a draft legislation to regulate artificial intelligence. eu lawmakers hope to have legislation in place by the end of the year. the law now heads to the european council for approval by members states' governments. if enacted, it could set the standard for worldwide regulation of ai. the proposed high—risk list includes areas like education, hr, migration and infrastructure. ai in the highest risk categories would be assessed on its poentital to harm health, safety, human rights and the environment. generative ai technologies, like chatgpt, which write words or code, or create art, would have special requirements in particularly, they must have a way of informing users that a machine, have a way of informing users that a machine produced the content. earlier, i spoke with marietje schaake, a former member of the european parliament who now heads

the stanford university institute for human—centered ai. thank you again for joining us on bbc news. the eu parliament has passed the ai act. how important do you think these regulations are? i think it's very important. the eu is an important economic and political bloc, and it is the first to really advance ai laws in the democratic world, so i think the world is watching how the eu is going to manage this rapidly—evolving technology, with generative ai as its latest, deeply impactful technology, so, yes, i think the law, once it is in force, and enforced, will be a game changer. how will this legislation regulate generative ai, like chatgpt, like you just mentioned? so the european parliament had the opportunity to update the draft that was presented, to incorporate the underlying models on which generative ai is trained, and to put obligations on the companies, to make sure that those are in line with the risk—based approach that the eu takes. so, for example, there are regulations for seeing through this law that prevents the most risky impact of ai,

including generative ai come on people's lives. including generative al, on people's lives. so, for example, if there is an impact on people's freedom, like on recidivism or people's freedom, predicitive policing, for example, or someone has access to social benefits or employment, this is considered high—risk, and in the case of generative ai, that could be considered high—risk, for example, when it is used by social media companies to steer people in their behaviour, when it comes to advertising and online purchases. so this will have some serious implications for companies that are using generative ai, like google, microsoft, 0penai, that is the company behind chatgpt, and in may, the 0penai ceo sam altmann had initially made the threat to leave the eu if it becomes too hard to comply with the eu rules. he has since walked that back, but do you think these companies will comply with these rules? they will have to.

i don't think companies always do so with a big smile, but it is very normal for companies to be bound by laws, and i expect that these big tech companies that we already know, you mentioned microsoft, google, meta, of course, because otherwise they won't have access to the eu markets, and i don't think they will sacrifice it, even if it might have sounded tough on the part of sam altmann. what you think it will take to set global standards beyond the eu, especially with countries like china also developing europe —— developing ai and using facial recognition software? that is a great example of where the european approach, which seeks to limit and even do away with facial recognition and these types of artificial intelligence, is completely different where it is actually used in china by the state to have maximum control over people in the society. so i don't think we can

expect all countries in the world to agree. it would be hugely important for like—minded countries to agree. there is discussion going on now in the g7 but at the same time, i think more countries in the global south should be included for this to be legitimate and truly carrying a global impact. are you concerned how non—state bad actors type of technology? of course we should be concerned how non—state actors use this, on the one hand, there is the non—governmental powerful non—state actors, but other than that, terrorist groups, criminal organisations are always using technologies in smart ways to achieve their political or criminal goals, and we should expect them to use the technologies that are available to them, and we've seen, for example, that it is more easy to write convincing e—mails that may persuade people to click on a link, for example, that contains a bad script to defraud people, or mislead them otherwise.

and the same worry exists about disinformation, in the context of democratic integrity, where it would be so much easier to present all kinds of content in a convincing way, in a diverse way, so it is not copy—based and very obvious that it is a botnet, with the help of generative ai, which could seriously undermine trust in democracy, in what we see with our own eyes, because you've probably already seen synthetically generated photos that are quite convincing. the same can be done with text, and soon voice, and so we have a really unprecedented situation, where even people in companies say they worry about the survival of democracy. and yet they continue to build the very technologies and push them out into the market that could actually exacerbate this threat to democracy. final question, there is a study from mckinsey global institute out, that predicts that generative artificial intelligence will add up to $4.4 trillion of value to the global economy every year. do you think we are focusing too much on the risks of ai, and not enough on the benefits

that it could provide? well, this to me sounds a bit like a spreadsheet exercise, because there are other studies that really worry about job displacements, and if you take a long horizon, you can sort of glance over what happens in the interim, and if there is a period of significant job loss, insecurity, threats to the livelihood of artists, for example, then i think we should not just go with a macro sum of trillions added to the economy, we should really not see this as an economic story only, but very much as a human story, and there is a lot of uncertainty and job displacement that is actually predicted, so obviously i hope the pie will get bigger, but there is a real concern about how it will be divided, and i think it is important, from a political point of view, and also from a democratic survival point of view, that concerns are taken seriously. it is good to be cautious. we have learned the painful lessons in responding far too late to the threats and harms of social media, and those

mistakes should not be repeated, when it comes to dealing with artificial intelligence. marietje, thank you very much forjoining us. thank you for watching bbc news. hello. the warm weather is set to continue, but you might be thinking more about the rainfall by now. it's notjust our parks and gardens that are desperate for the rain, but, of course, our wildlife, and there is some rain on the horizon. if i show you what's going to be happening over the weekend, well, this low pressure here will continue to push warm air in our direction, but also a lot of moisture, and perhaps more widespread storm clouds than of late. but, again, not everybody�*s going to get the rainfall. hopefully, it will be a little more widespread, and, hopefully, it'll fall at the right time, and not on your barbecue. anyway, let's have a look at the forecast for the short term. so, a lot of clear weather, first thing in the morning.

temperatures will be around the mid—teens at 7am on thursday, and then, basically, it's blue skies, steady as she goes, through the course of the morning and into the afternoon. now, fairweather clouds will be bubbling up, and some of them will form, locally, at least, into a few storm clouds, and we could see some thunderstorms developing around the north and the west highlands. temperatures in glasgow up to 26 celsius, a warm day for northern ireland, too. also, perhaps, one ortwo showers, and the odd rumble of thunder, maybe across wales, maybe the midlands, and also in the southwest of the country, but the vast majority of us are in for another very warm and sunny day, with highs approaching the high 20s. now, here's the weather map for thursday into friday — low pressure to the west and southwest of us is nudging in. it's pushing that energy in, that moisture, those clouds, but you can see there's not too much rainfall, at all. in fact, we'll see a few maybe reaching parts of northern ireland and western areas of the uk. but, again, many of us are in for a dry and very warm day on friday, with temperatures typically in the mid—20s, and noticejust how much warmer it's also getting, because of a change

in the shift in the wind direction, across the north sea coast. now, here's the weekend. that low pressure is much closer to us, but look at that — some storm clouds coming in from the south — and this could bring some appreciable rain, to at least some parts of the country. it's not guaranteed, but i think quite a few of us will get the rainfall, so we'll have to wait till saturday, some of us sunday, and into next week. but in the very short term, it remains very warm, and, of course, very sunny. bye— bye.

this is bbc news. we will have the headlines and all the main news stories for you at the top of the hour, straight after this programme. welcome to hardtalk, i'm steven sackur. artificial intelligence is the latest technological advance to be labelled transformational — from healthcare to the law to journalism, many tasks carried out by people could soon be the domain of intelligent machines. is that good news? well, not necessarily. leave aside nightmare visions

of a terminator—style apocalypse, my guest today, the renowned economist