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it can get done this week. i am not making a promise or prediction but it is there for the taking and we are going to work to make it happen. >> we are pressing hard to close this. the deal that would free the hostages, halt the fighting, provide security to israel, and i allow us to significantly surge humanitarian assistance to the palestinians. ♪ >> israel and hamas appear to be getting closer to reaching a cease-fire deal in gaza. the palestinian official familiar with the negotiations told the bbc for the first time since 2011, the two delegations are conducting indirect talks in the same building. in washington, the u.s. national security a cautiously optimistic note saying a deal was entirely possible in the next few days.

meanwhile, in los angeles, the fire threat level for the whole of the county is critical as officials fear strong winds in the next few days could spark new fires. ♪ >> let's begin with that developing story in the last hour or so because the white house national security advisor has said a deal to halt fighting in gaza and release israeli hostages could be reached in the final days of joe biden's presidency. jake sullivan said an agreement was close. an israeli official says the gaza cease-fire talks are in the advanced stages for the release of up to 33 hostages. we will be live with our middle east correspondent in jerusalem and our gaza correspondent in a moment. but first, here is jake sullivan. >> we are now at a pivotal point in negotiation for a hostage deal and cease-fire in gaza. the president spoke with prime minister netanyahu yesterday and just got off the phone with the

emir of qatar and will be speaking soon with the president of egypt. we are close to a deal and it can get done this week. i am not making a promise or prediction but we will work to make it happen. >> jonah fisher is in jerusalem and our correspondent is in istanbul. i want to get from both of you the latest that you are hearing from the respective sides in the negotiation. jonah, i will begin with you. >> today has been a day in which we have heard strong voices against this deal in israel including prominent members of benjamin netanyahu's cabinet. one of them came out this morning with a tweet saying he thought it would be a catastrophe for israeli national security if the deal went ahead. clearly, mr. netanyahu has quite a job to do. there was also a letter written

to him as prime minister by 10 members of his own coalition urging him not to make the deal. there is certainly opposition here. it remains to be seen if we do get to the point of it possibly being agreed as to whether those people within his cabinet who are against it, whether they kick up a fuss and threaten to leave government or when push comes to shove if they make the objections heard but allow the deal to go through. >> you have been speaking to the palestinian official with close knowledge of the negotiations. what have they been saying about the shape of the potential deal? >> they said it is almost done. once or twice before, israeli delegation and the hamas delegation are in the same

building. the egyptians, the americans, the qataris are in the same building trying to put the final touches to the steel as the -- to the deal as the official told me. israeli army will remain within the area called the buffer zone with a limit of 800 meters to the border. hamas rejected the idea. they insisted they wanted a complete israeli withdrawal from gaza but most likely this is not going to happen. according to this official who i met in the morning, the head of the hamas delegation who he met and had a chat with him, he said the israeli army will remain in the buffer zone, the border between gaza and egypt. they will remain also for the

first 22 days on the road which is separating gaza. what is significant is the people who were displaced over a year ago from the villages and towns in the north will be allowed to go back to the north. but there is also a lot of complication in this because they will be allowed to walk on the road and be subject to x-ray screening machines that will be put in place to allow cars to pass through the x-ray. may understand the chips and -- we understand the egyptian security division will arrive to facilitate the screening and coordinate with the local police. who is going to take the job of organizing?

there too many details, too many difficult details to be finished yet. but i think as we speak, they believe this will be the final meeting to put the final touches for a deal that might come in the next two days. >> jonah, there have been periods of momentum before in this process which have come to nothing. is it your sense that it is different this time? >> it could be. it could be in part due to the fact this is the last week of the joe biden presidency. we are a week away from a donald trump inauguration, and donald trump has threatened, in his words, to unleash hell if the hostages are not released upon his inauguration. there may be extra pressure exerted not only on hamas but also on the israeli side, that this is a chance to curry favor with the incoming president, to give him something he can celebrate.

he likes to be seen as a peacemaker. i think there is an element also in which president trump wants to get on with a bigger regional plan for the middle east which involves normalizing relations between israel and saudi arabia. that can really only start to begin to happen if the gaza war is sorted in some way. >> thank you very much. we are going to keep you up to date with anymore developments on those negotiations. president joe biden has been speaking in the last few moments on closing a cease-fire deal between israel and hamas. take a listen. >> the deal would free the hostages, halt the fighting, provide security to israel, and allow us to significantly search humanitarian assistance to the palestinians who have suffered terribly in this war that hamas started. they had been through hell.

so many innocent people have been killed. so many communities have been destroyed. the palestinian people desire peace in the right to determine their own futures. israel deserves peace and real security. the hostages and their families deserve to be reunited. >> joe biden. we will have more on that story throughout the program. nearly one week after the devastating wildfires began in los angeles, authorities say the fire threat for all of l.a. county remains critical. the flames continue to dump fire retardant and firefighters are cutting vegetation. but with the strong that fanned the flames last week expected to pick up again, the worry is the existing fires will spread. this is where the fires are

still burning. the palisades fire which began at 10: 30 local time last tuesday is only 14% contained. the eaton fire is 33% contained. further north, the hurst fire is almost fully under control. for kenneth fire has now been fully contained. with the winds growing in strength again, the chief of the l.a. fire department have been speaking about the plans to deal with the risk. >> the palisades fire, your lafd remains committed to the fire and we have a significant number of engines that have been dedicated to this fire. the crews involved, we have crews from up the state come outside the state, they have made excellent work overnight mopping up flareups and hotspots. the primary focus last night was on the mandeville canyon area. this fire is now at 23,700 13 acres with 14% containment with 5123 personnel assigned to the

palisades incident. >> let's speak to my colleague in los angeles for us. i know you spent quite a few hours at that donation center behind you. a much needed resource for people left with very little. >> much-needed. in past few hours speaking to people, more and more people coming either donating things or people coming needing to pick things up. either they have lost their homes, lost everything, or they are in evacuation centers right now with very little of course. i want to show you some of the things we have for people. so many of them fleeing in the dead of night when they get the evacuation orders paid they need things like clothing, shoes, like basic essentials, water for example, even beyond that. we have an ultrasound fan, perhaps for women who had to flee who need pregnancy care for

example. the need is great. the concern is about the winds picking up in this area. we have seen tankers flying. they can drop off a lot of water which will be needed to get on top of the blazes. i want to talk more about needs with two guests involved in the emergency response and the road to recovery. thank you so much for being with us. talk to us about the needs and what you have seen. >> right now, we are still assessing more areas people have not been at yet. over all, it is more on the cleanup side. people can get anything they need immediate. the first stage of disaster is always the food, water, and sheltering items. then we are cleaning, buckets, anything we can utilized to clean up and get people back

into their homes if they are able to. >> we are resource providers. we get a lot of corporate donors. we work with cargo. we came down here to assess and see what they need. we will be sending in water and shelfstable milk for people coming here. this facility is open only through friday i believe. they will be shifting to a more permanent site. that is where we come in where we start delivering more long-term assistance. high-volume stuff. we will help their. we have several other sites we are visiting. >> the goal is to help many different areas because there are so many displaced at this point. >> when people take about los angeles, they think about hollywood and the glitz and glamour. this is impacting people from all different backgrounds. the road ahead will be long. >> it is heartbreaking. i am from this area.

have been through a lot of fires, a lot of different disasters here. this one is really catastrophic. and to see the number of people who have lost their homes, these are people -- we are at the altadena site, sorry, i have forgotten the name of the fire, the eaton fire. these people, it is a different demographic. a lot of these people cannot just go into housing without having some assistance. it makes a big difference. in these situations, the recovery, the rebuilding for these people will be years. i have a friend and they have not rebuilt after five years. >> you have been involved in eight efforts around the world. i wonder what it is like to see a crisis like this come to your own backyard. >> >> it is really hard.

we are here to help in every way we can. to see everyone going through this, it is difficult. we try to be resilient as we can, this is what we do for a living, but it is not easy. >> absolutely. you are speaking about your field explains over many years. thank you very much for sharing your expertise with us. as you can see, so many people still in need. we were discussing that it is not just the here and now. the road to recovery here will be a very long one. >> thank you very much. around the world and across the u.k., this is bbc news. ♪

♪ >> it is a revolution coming whether we like it or not.

artificial intelligence may have the potential to transform the world. the u.k. intends to be at the forefront of that transformation. the prime minister has been setting out his government's intentions, what is called the ai opportunities action plan. leading tech firms are said to be investing 14 billion pounds, around $17 billion, in various projects. they include plan for so-called growth zones where the development will be focused. the aim is for a 20 fold increase in britain's computing power. the hope is improved ai could lead to multiple benefits everything from improving medical treatment to speed up the filling of potholes. let's listen to some of what the prime minister said. >> investors, the entrepreneurs, researchers, who will make those breakthroughs, they are looking around the world. they are choosing where to make their home. trillions of pounds worth of investment at stake.

the battle for the jobs of tomorrow is happening today. >> joining me is a senior research fellow at the university of cambridge and co-host of the good robot podcast. good to have you with us on "the context." the prime minister saying there is a vast potential for ai to transform the way public services operate. do you agree? to what extent is ai already in use in our public services? >> well, this is a crucial time for the government. keir starmer is trying to make britain great again through a lot of nationalist rhetoric. we hear him harking back to the glory days of british industry, steam, electricity, to rally the public behind his audacious effort to make the u.k. a national and world leader ai hub. the important thing to recognize is ai nationalism, which is what

he is trying to do, is a political maneuver that he hopes will boost our mood as well as the economy. he is hoping to replicate the glory of britain's computing past when we built the world's first commercially available general-purpose computer in manchester in 1951 which was generating algorithmic poems long before gpt was. he is also looking back to the u.k.'s strong but overlooked record of women in computing, notably the women who made up the cryptographers at bletchley park. this is a great time to get women back into computing. we need that women power in the u.k.. women make up only 18% of the ai workforce in britain. starmer is doing a lot to boost the diversity he claims. he is saying we will offer

conversion forces. these are really important measures because the u.k. is a small place for the government is aiming to che pick national ai champions. in this small country, there will be a heavy amount of who you know and who has hobnobbed successfully. >> i want to get through a couple more questions with you if we can. there are people that say the ai develop might lead to the loss of jobs in certain sectors and there are people who have fears around some kind of dystopian future. previously, there has been a more cautious approach from the u.k.. not so much now. do you think caution overregulation is taking a second-place to the desire to boost economic growth through ai? >> yes, absolutely. but that have been the case for a long time. the u.k. has always said we are going to be an innovation hub. we think the e.u. is regulating

too much which means we have always taken a back step with the ai ethics aspect of things printed this is very negative but it is the u.k. trying to carve out its own path. i think the real concerns are that ai might not be very effective in the public sector, which is what you mentioned before. the plan is a bit detached from the realities of public sectors where most computer systems are slow and outdated, barely functional working on windows 95. can ai free us from the constraints of the public sector and the slow systems we are working with? absolutely not. half the time, the cases he is talking about are nothing to do with ai. the reason why the public sector is slow, for example the backlog of court cases in england and wales, is because people do not turn up. ai cannot make people turn up. we have to be cautious when we hear the silver bullet

narratives that ai is going to save us, bring the country into a new era, when ai is always bolted onto existing systems. >> finally and briefly, when it comes to creating ai growth areas, growth zones the prime minister was talking about, what would it take to deliver those in terms of money, energy, and so on? can it really make it an ai maker instead of an ai taker? >> it takes real energy and that is costly. ai has made startling progress in the last decade because of the sharp increase in computing power applied to training algorithms. that energy does not come from nowhere. the big question is, does the u.k. have the resources to be able to build this big infrastructure, this energy intensive infrastructure that he is talking about? in the u.s., they have a high

concentration of data centers which are these huge, clunky, unsightly, smelly, noisy buildings. do we want a country full of these buildings? in the u.s., you do not see them so much -- >> i am sorry to interrupt you but we are out of time. so many interesting points and questions raised by you. thank you very much. in england, a leading obesity expert has warned weight-loss drugs could bankrupt the national health service if prescribed to all of the patients eligible for them. >> ray is 62 and has battled with his weight most of his life. what size is that? >> that might be a 6 or 7 xl. >> he got a shock a few years ago when about to have surgery. >> i was waiting to go to the theater and they said we can operate, he is too big for the table. >> is july 2024 at london's

hospital. he is about to become one of the first patients to get the weight loss jab on the nhs. he weighs 148 kilos or 23 stone. in trials, patients on we govy lost an average of 15% body weight in just over a year. >> we are ready to go. good luck. >> the weekly job works mimicking a gut hormone which makes you feel full. it can cause unpleasant side effects in the stomach which some cannot cope with. the patients know that they have to play their part, eating healthier, smaller portions. if he can lose weight, it would help him and the nhs. >> we treat complications associated with obesity.

he has prediabetes. he might need joint surgery in the future. achieving weight loss can prevent a lot of the complications and save the nhs a lot of money. >> he heads the u.k. government's obesity goals program. >> the cost of these drugs is still at a level where we cannot afford to treat several million people within the u.k. with these drugs. it would bankrupt the nhs. >> he estimates it costs the nhs around 3000 pounds to give a patient weight loss jabs for a year. if everyone eligible got them now, that would be 10 billion pounds a year. most are simply paying for them. ray is doing well. after five months on wegovy, he has lost 14 kilos, more than two stone. >> i am pleased with you. it is clearly doing what it is supposed to do which is

switching off those food noises. very nice. >> and ray, who has recently become a granddad, is delighted. >> please, cannot believe it. my daughters, every time they see me, they say i am shrinking or wasting away. >> most patients put their lost weight back on if they come off the jabs, so these could be drugs for life for ray and others, bringing bot announcer: funding for presentation of this program is provided by... announcer: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation, pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. ♪ ♪ announcer: "usa today" calls it,

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