from berlin. the united nations warns the world must get ready for more destructive heat waves. rome hits a new all-time record high above 41 degrees celsius. increasing emergency crews tackle a second wave of wildfires near athens. also, an american citizen is held in north korea after crossing the border without permission. the u.s. soldier went missing

after a tour between the demilitarized zone between the two koreas. thousands of israelis stage a so-called day of resistance in protest against government plans to reform the judiciary. opponents saty democracy is at risk. ♪ nicole: i'm nicole frolich. to those of you joining us on pbs in the united states and all our viewers watching around the world, welcome. the united nations says the world needs to prepare for more intense heat waves as countries across north america, europe, and asia endure more extreme temperatures. in the italian capital rome, the thermometer hit a record high of 41.8 degrees celsius, a bit over 107 degrees fahrenheit. the u.n.'s world meteorological organization is warning that

more record highs could be on the way for the northern hemisphere. greece is being hit especially hard by wildfires. excessive heat pushing through the 40 degree barrier is making normal summer time hazards even worse. firefighters are tackling the flames while trying to keep residents and tourists at a safe distance. reporter: smoke thickens the air. it's hard to breathe as people rush to evacuate. for a second day, firefighters have battled the blazes just outside of athens. the authorities have ordered residents to leave. in mandra, northwest of the capital, police tried to convince these nuns to leave their monastery ahead of the fire front. while in a nearby city, some residents refused to abandoned their homes as well. >> i am not leaving. i started building this house when i was 27 years old by myself.

i will stay here to watch it burn. i am not leaving. reporter: in some towns, residents have already seen everything they own go up in flames. this man and his wife had lived in this house for 32 years. they had gone swimming when the fire struck. >> i have only my bathing suit which i swim in, nothing else. and the shirt. i have nothing else. i don't even have other shoes. nothing. i'm finished. reporter: france and italy have sent planes to help firefighters. but why they try to bring the main blazes under control, smaller fires spring up in forested areas, dried out by high temperatures. the heatwave baking much of southern europe is set to intensify this week, and greece's weather authorities

have warned that the extreme heat will bring a high risk of even more wildfires. nicole: another heatwave has been announced for greece, so no relief is in sight. sophia coast talkie is in athens and told us more. reporter: greece saw temperatures of 40 degrees and higher this week. the acropolis was closed during the hottest hours of the past days in order to protect visitors. maybe 10, 20 minutes before we connected today with you i saw outside the window the lights went off at the acropolis. now it's on again. so i don't know if that has been linked. potentially record temperatures are expected at the end of this week as well, specifically on thursday. another heatwave wave approaches and the guidelines from the greek civil protection are to close doors and windows in order to keep safe. nicole: what do we know about

the cause of the fire? sofia: well, regarding the cause, there are three main factors. of course the heatwave, the high temperatures, and secondly the very dry weather conditions. we have not seen rain and a while. although the very high temperatures started late june in july, june was not very warm in greece and athens. and third, the very strong winds that started yesterday. nicole: greece has been hit i wildfires over and over again in the last few years. has any progress been made in preventing them or protecting civilians? sofia: i think it is very early to talk about improvement. what we can say so far though is that the evacuation of the residential areas have been immediately ordered by the security authorities. ok, this caused tensions with

residents who did not want to leave their possessions behind, which happens. houses and properties were and are burning. domestic animals have been killed by the flames. although there have been no serious human injuries reported so far. so the main concern is protecting human life right now. nicole: sofia kleftaki, thank you so much, joining us from athens. the united states says it is working to resolve the situation after an american soldier crossed the heavily armed border from south to north korea without authorization. officials say the service man is likely now in custody after running across the border during a tour around part of the demilitarized zone. the u.s. state department advises americans not to enter north korea due to the serious risk of arrest and long-term detention.

u.s. defense secretary lloyd austin had this to say about the case. >> what i can confirm, and i would say up front that we are very early in this event and so there is a lot that we are still trying to learn. but what we do know is that one of our service members who was on a tour, willfully and without authorization, crossed the military demarcation line. we believe that he is in drp k custody. so we are closely monitoring and investigating the situation and working to notify the soldier's next of kin and engaging to address this. in terms of my concerns, i am for most concerned about the welfare of our troop. we will remain focused on this. again, this will develop in the next several days and hours and we will keep you posted. nicole: that was u.s. defense

secretary lloyd austin. a south korean journalist told us more about the area where the incident took place. >> the military demarcation line is just a bump in the ground, it really is a line. so crossing over that line would really only take a step. witnesses say there are no soldiers guarding the north korean part, especially since the pandemic. so if this individual in question would like to cross over that line, it would only take a split second. the u.n. command guarding the south korean part, they would not have enough time to react. so indeed it does seem something like this is possible, even though it is an extremely rare case. we are also dealing with something a bit -- something that we have not seen before. there was a case in 2001 where a

foreign national did try and cross over to the korean side but was immediately caught by the guards. but something like this has really never happened before. the person in dprk custody, south korea is very concerned about him. since referring back to some of the cases that happened before, especially the auto warm beer case in 2017, a u.s. national who was detained in dprk custody and was later returned home in a vegetative state we are dealing with a very dangerous and delicate situation. nicole: thousands in israel have been protesting against the government's planned judicial reforms. in tel aviv, demonstrators are staging rallies across the city as part of what has been described as a day of disruption. authorities have deployed water cannon on the streets in response to the crowds. the action comes in the run-up to a parliamentary vote on a key part of the proposed reforms

which critics have said would dismantle democracy in israel despite months of similar protests, prime minister benjamin netanyahu looks set to move ahead with the program. dw correspondent rebecca ritters has more. rebecca: after more than 15 hours a protests across the country, these demonstrators have ended up on the main highway in tel aviv. the main highway that leads into the city. there are hundreds if not thousands of people here blocking the highway and causing disruption. this is after all what they call the day of disruption. we see bonfires along the highway and traffic is blocked. police are trying to clear things out, put out the fires, and trying to get these demonstrators off the road. but these people want their voices heard. their president is currently in the u.s. and they want him to take a message to u.s. president biden to say they are not happy

with how their democracy is going and that they worry about the reforms the current government, benjamin netanyahu's coalition, is trying to push through. two votes on a particular bill in the reform package, these people are trying to put a halt to that. they had some success earlier in the year and we have seen the protests weeks after week for the last several months. this will not be the last time we are out in the streets in tel aviv. these people say they are not going anywhere and they will not stop until their government listens to them. nicole: that was rebecca ritters . the unrest has also cast a shadow over the israeli president's visit to the white house. issac herzog has been invited to white house to celebrate israel's 75th anniversary. he has been trying to find a compromise over judicial reforms which has strained relations between benjamin netanyahu and u.s. president biden. how are the protests affecting

president herzog's visit to the u.s.? i posed that question to ines pohl. ines: president biden, as all of his predecessors, is a staunch supporter of israel. but he, as many others here in the u.s., has criticized benjamin netanyahu directly, and also his rising coalition about his plans to reform chorus and his settlement policies. he used really strong words saying that they -- and they, he means the israeli government -- they cannot continue down this road. and with strong words like that he kind of reflects really some feeling of many americans. on the other hand he got harshly criticized for that from prominent republicans like

former vice president mike pence who referred to biden and other democrats as anti-semitic. so the country is really divided over that. and with the changing demographics here, the relationship with israel seems to be getting more complex. but after all there is no doubt that the majority of americans want the two countries to keep working together for geopolitical and security reasons. having said that, many experts say that the u.s. israeli relationship has never been as bad as it is right now. nicole: united nations security council has been holding his first formal discussion on artificial intelligence. governments around the world are looking at how to minimize the dangers of the new technology. the development of ai is being accompanied by an increase in deepfakes and propaganda can conflicts including of course the war in ukraine. reporter: in this video, russian president putin is announcing on

state television that russia is under attack. the message was also carried by several radio stations. but it is a fake. to be precise, a deepfake. the kremlin and state owned news agency both said that the speech was fake and the result of a hack. this video, which also announced a general mobilization, was shared thousands of times on multiple social media platforms. with deepfakes like this one, the main purpose is to spread confusion and panic among people. here, by hacking official tv and radio channels, it contributed to confusion by using official and trustworthy sources to spread this information. deepfakes and generative ai have become stronger in the past years, and are being misused especially in conflicts to manipulate people. >> i think that with the recent developments in ai-generated text and ai-generated images,

and with the foreseeable revolution of deepfake technologies for videos, we're headed in the direction of having a huge risk of floods of misinformation content. reporter: two of the most notable deepfake examples in this war went viral in march 2022. one was of ukrainian president zelenskyy ordering his troops to surrender. the other was of putin suggesting a peaceful resolution. both had poor quality and were debunked quickly, but they did manage to cause confusion and so doubt. in a war, that quality fakes can still create uncertainty, and they are used to manipulate on a different level. >> when i had images and video of human rights violations in ukraine by the russians, putin can say hey, those aree fake. how do we know they are real?

when politicians get in trouble, they claim deepfake. i would say that is the larger threat vector here. reporter: deepfakes are not only being used to manipulate locals. in this viral example, a man impersonates a russian soldier on the chinese version of tiktok. this man shared in mandarin his first-hand experience of the war with his 400,000 followers. but he was exposed as being neither russian nor a soldier. in reality, he was a resident in china. he had used artificial intelligence to fool his followers. several hints helped to discover the truth behind this video. the man had a heynong accent. there were unnatural movements of his face at the level of his mouth and chin. and an alleged ukrainian nuclear power plant is actually in china.

despite many users pointing out inconsistencies, some fell for him, saying russian soldiers fight to the end. long live the hoorah victory. he banned hjis account june 16 for disseminating false information. >> since deepfakes scratched onto the screen in 2016 or so, we've only seen an increase in the sophistication and power and misuse. reporter: we see that deepfakes and generative ai are becoming more sophisticated and therefore also more dangerous by the day. however, they are not being used in a way and scale as experts had anticipated. but still enough to sow doubt for civilians on both sides of the war. nicole: chris meserole is an washington, d.c. and i asked him what sort of scenarios we are looking at when it comes to the misuse of artificial intelligence. chris: on the scenarios, the

deepfakes scenario that you already laid out in the prior clip is a really compelling one as far as how it can be used in a time of conflict to sow confusion and distress. beyond that i would say there are two really important scenarios to bear in mind. one is unfortunately, if they are trained on the right data, these models can produce information relative to the manufacturing of different i logical agents or even potentially chemical weapons. and nonstate actors in particular who might not otherwise be able to develop those kind of weapons will be able to do so potentially if they have access to the right kind of ai systems. the second big class of threat that the nonstate actors might be able to carry out in terms of having access to ai relates to cybersecurity. these tools are also trained on computer code.

they are able to flag vulnerabilities in different systems. it is not beyond the possibility of a nonstate actor or some kind of criminal or terrorist group to be able to use these systems to more effectively hack into safety critical applications where that is hospitals, power went, etc. -- power plants, etc. nicole: so what kind of regulations do we need to make sure ai does not slip out of our control? chris: i would say there are two main regulations we need. one is disclosure of generative ai systems. if you were creating or distributing an image, whether it is president zelenskyy or president putin, you should be forced to disclose that that was generated by ai and that is not actually who it is portraying. there are very straightforward laws that we can pass. there is a lot of consensus on that within the u.s., the eu, even china, on making sure that kind of legislation is passed.

the second really core and critical regulation would be testing and auditing these systems. if something goes wrong regulators need to have the ability to understand what it was, what happened within the model, what happened within the ai that paused -- caused it to produce a certain kind of information. whether that is a bioweapon potentially or some kind of hacking vulnerability. regulators need the ability to look inside these systems and understand and backtrace when something goes wrong exactly went wrong in the first place. nicole: but i am wondering if that is going to realistically help us, especially when it comes to nonstate actors. chris: i think it will. because once we have a good sense of how these systems behave we can begin to deny them capabilities that they would otherwise have. if we knew that a particular model was capable of producing certain kinds of information about biological weapons, we could lock down that part of the

model in advance. the problem is right now regulators are flying blind. we don't really understand what is in these models. we need some way of testing them and evaluating them, ideally before they are released out into the world at scale for these critical and dangerous capabilities. nicole: we only have about half a minute left, but experts agree that ai is going to develop more and more rapidly from here on out. will we be able to catch up or are we already too late in the game. chris: i am an optimist so i refuse to throw in the towel. there is a lot we can do. ai is racing ahead but there is a lot that the good guys can do to catch up. i don't think that by any stretch of the imagination the game has already been won and we might as well already throw up our hands. i don't think the sky is falling and there is a tremendous amount we can do to make sure that the future of ai is a bright future for all of us. nicole: chris meserole in

washington, thank you so much for your time. chris: thank you. nicole: many women across the middle east and north africa are not free to go where they want. a new report from human rights watch looks at 20 countries where women's movement is restricted. in iran, women need their husband's permission to get a passport or travel with their own children. i.s.n yemen, houthi authorities have stopped women from traveling abroad without a male guardian. that is having a devastating impact. reporter: she hasn't seen her family for more than two months. she's in her 30's and from yemen. she used to live with her family in saudi arabia. last may she came to yemen on a visit after her father died. but when she tried to return to saudi arabia, she was told she was not allowed to travel without a male relative or husband.

>> i tried everything to get around the rules. to travel with my sister or my mother. but to no avail. having a man was the only way i could travel. reporter: houthi authorities in yemen recently issued directives requiring women to travel with a man or with written consent from a male guardian. the ruling has been criticized by many rights organizations, including human rights watch. a recent report published by the group paints a bleak picture of the conditions for women in the region. it says many countries in the middle east and north africa still prevent women from moving within their own country or traveling abroad without the permission of their guardian. >> authorities often justify these restrictions by saying they are designed to protect women, and in fact they are a

violation of freedom of movement, which is a basic right guaranteed to every person in the world. so these restrictions do not protect women, they deprive them of their rights. reporter: she talks to her children in saudi arabia as often as she can. but being a long distance mother is not easy. >> it's painful for a mother not knowing what her children are doing. what are they eating? what are they watching on tv and on their phones? they can watch anything uncensored these days. i try to communicate with them, but talking to each other via s scr -- via a screen is not enough. reporter: her only hope now is that the houthi authorities will

reverse their decision. only then will she be able to return to her country and see her children again. nicole: some sports now. tennis player -- has been banned for 18 months by the court of arbitration for sports for violating doping rules in 2021. ymer, ranked 51st in the world, failed to disclose his whereabouts on three different occasions which left him untested during that period. it comes despite ymer being clear last year for the same offense. ymer reached the third round at this year's wimbledon. football great lionel messi has finally hit the training pitch with his new club enter miami. a contract signed keeps him in florida through 2025. his debut is planned for friday when miami hosts mexico. having the world cup winner on

board should give the sport a big boost in the u.s. it trails in popularity on the other major men's professional leagues in north america. enter miami owner david beckham spoke about the impact he expects lionel messi to have on his club and the u.s. >> this is a journey we are now going to go on with one of the greatest players. so it is not just for our fans and our club, it is for the whole of the mls, the whole of the sport in this country. because to see and uplift of what has happened since that announcement, since the rumors started, has been incredible. it is great for us. it is great for the league. but even more importantly it is great for the sport in this country and that is what we want. we want to inspire the next generation that will come through and want to be like leo. nicole: you're watching dw news from berlin. after a short break, i will be

back to take you through "the day." hope to see you there. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

>> feeling the heat -- southern and eastern europe, asia, and much of the u.s. face scorching and in some cases record-breaking temperatures. a day of disruption -- protesters in israel are back on the streets in a show of opposition against prime minister benjamin netanyahu's plan judicial reform. and the eu antitrust chief defends her choice of a u.s. economist who has been appointed to