Transcripts For BBCNEWS BBC News At One 20200102

Delays and cancellations on the railways but fares still go up from today an average of almost 3 . Artificial intelligence can be better than doctors at diagnosing Breast Cancer from scans. And after a string of defeats, snakebite wright is finally pdc world darts champion. And coming up on bbc news. After losing 10 of his last 11 finals, peter snakebite wright is the new pdc darts champion for the first time. Good afternoon and welcome to the bbc news at one. A seven day state of emergency has been declared in the australian state of New South Wales as bushfires claims more lives. At least 18 people have been killed in the fires so far with many others missing. Australia is bracing itself for a weekend heatwave with high temperatures and strong winds that are expected to fan the flames. Tens of thousands of residents and holiday makers are fleeing towns on the east coast, and military ships and helicopters are rescuing some of those trapped by blazes. Our correspondent phil mercer sent this report. The mass exodus from southern New South Wales is under way. It has been slow going. And the evacuation has been hampered by a lack of fuel. Phone and Internet Networks have been disrupted, adding to the anxiety. The authorities are urging tourists and residents to leave while they can before the fire danger returns. We cannot guarantee your safety. If you are a resident, of any of the surrounding villages to the north and south, and dont have the means to stay and possibly defend your home, and your life, we strongly advise you to leave now. We are just trying to get our kids out of here. We were trying to stay, but it is our kids, you know . They are more important than anything. The authorities fear a repeat of the disaster on new years eve. More lives were lost and hundreds of homes destroyed. Recovering from this could take years. In victoria, thousands of people in the seaside town of mallacuta were stranded. The main road out is cut back for some, is cut but for some, there is an escape by sea. The navy has been called in to carry out emergency evacuations. So we had the opportunity today to potentially move about 500 people out of mallacuta. The interesting thing about it at the moment is, they may not want to leave. They may want to stay until such times as they may be able to get out by road. That could be a number of weeks. That could be 2 3 weeks at this stage. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was heckled when he visited one bushfire hit town. How come we only had four trucks to defend our town . Because our town doesnt have a lot of money but we have hearts of gold, missed the Prime Minister. Angry locals didnt hold back, accusing him of mishandling the crisis. His leadership is under great scrutiny. Hes been accused of not taking Global Warming seriously. We are totally forgotten about down here, every single time this area has a flood or a fire, we get nothing. If we were sydney or most coast, we would be flooded with donations, emergency relief. Four trucks mr morrisey says his governments Climate Change mr morrisons government says there Climate Change odysseys are adequate. We will try to reduce the hazards that we have seen today but also ensure the viability of peoples jobs and livelihoods throughout the country. The Prime Minister has called for calm as dozens minister has called for calm as d oze ns of minister has called for calm as dozens of blazes burning across the country. The scale of the disaster is so great that smoke has drifted hundreds of miles across the tasman sea to new zealand. There is no end in sight. More hot, dry and windy conditions are forecast for south eastern australia in the days ahead. 0ur correspondent Shaimaa Khalil is in lake conjola, 70 miles west of canberra, in an area where the fires have claimed three lives. The extent of the damage that these huge fires have caused here, in lake conjola, is all around. Homes have been ravaged, the earth is scorched, still smouldering, still hot. You can feel the smoke. Three people died in this Small Community alone, one of them just up the street over here. This is one of the coastal towns where tourists have been given 48 hours to evacuate. Many of them have been trying to get out. It has been very hard for them to leave because the conditions around us are still quite hazardous. Residents are still in shock at what happened to their town. Some have left, when the fires hit, others stayed to defend their homes. And then we could see it coming and it wasjumping from house to house. There were plants, like, underneath the front or the front of the houses, and theyd just explode into flames, and then they was embers everywhere. And then thatjust bang it just caught fire. They were going, like this one up here, it went behind, and then two down below, so we had nearly eight houses alight. You know, did we sort of cheat it . We survived. Yeah. Its pretty traumatic. 0ur reporter talking to residents there. Despite delays and poor performance from some train operators, millions of commuters in england and wales will have to pay an average of 2. 7 more for their tickets from today. It means some passengers face a rise of more than £100 for their annual passes. Prices in scotland are also going up. The rail delivery group, which represents the train companies, claims average fare increases have been kept to below inflation for the third year in a row. Emma simpson reports. Back to work today. Not much to smile about and, as usual, train fares are going up. It has become a january ritual. My travel, in particular, is affected every day. Because i have late trains every day and they literally crawl into london waterloo, so it makes it very difficult for me to plan, so it makes it hard for me to understand the justification for the increase in price, when i dont really see any improvements. Weve had a year of really bad service. But its one of those things ive just come to expect now, and ijust kind ofjust get on with it. I think people are probably quite annoyed about it. Todays increases are all about regulated fares, which cover around 40 of journeys, including season tickets. For instance, the annual commute from reading to london is going up by £132. From gloucester to birmingham, its up by £119. An edinburgh to glasgow, its not that far behind. All these season tickets are now well over £4000 a year. No one wants to pay more for theirfares. We understand that. But, by keeping the increase just below the rate of inflation it effectively allows us to cover the day to day running costs of the rail industry, which then frees up the billions of pounds of public and private sector cash which is needed to upgrade the system. But it hasnt all gone to plan. For Northern Rail commuters, 2019 saw another year of misery, delays, cancellations and overcrowding. The transport secretary says Northern Rail is no longer fit for purpose. And he confirmed it may be stripped of its franchise. I dont think its right that people cant always rely on their train services, particularly in places where, like Northern Rail, where it has been notably bad and i will absolutely bring that situation to an end. Today also announced two new trials on flexible tickets, including better value fares aimed at part time commuters. We think there needs to be a huge overhaul of the system. It needs to be simpler, easier to work out, and it needs to offer better value. That would include tickets that reflect the way we live now. Change could be on the way. A big, long awaited review of the railways, commissioned by the government is due to be published in the coming weeks. Emma simpson, bbc news. Researchers say a new Artificial Intelligence system has proved as good if not better than human experts in spotting Breast Cancer in scans. As part of a research project, a Computer System was trained to read x rays. It was more accurate than a single radiologist and on a par with two experts working together. Heres our medical correspondent fergus walsh. This is painstaking work. It takes more than a decade of training to become a radiologist and have the skill to read a mammogram. In the nhs, two doctors analyse every womans x rays. Now, Artificial Intelligence, a Machine Learning computer designed by Google Health, can do itjust as well as humans. This went far beyond my expectations. It will have a Significant Impact in improving the quality of the reporting, but also freeing up radiologists to do even more important things. Women aged between 50 and 70 are invited for breast screening every three years. The study in the journal nature showed al was actually better than one doctor working alone at reading mammograms. It produced 1. 2 fewer false positives, where a healthy mammogram is wrongly labelled as abnormal. And there were 2. 7 fewer cases where a cancer was missed. And ai will only get better. This study shows is that in the future it might be possible to make that Screening Programme even more efficient, which means less worrying time waiting for patients for results, and Better Outcomes overall. Helen edwards from surrey has been clear of Breast Cancer for 15 years. She was a patient representative on the panel which had to approve Google Health access to the mammograms, all of which were anonymized. Initially, i was concerned. Google, what are they going to do with this information, what are they going to do with the data . But when i thought about it, in the longer term, it can only benefit women having less recalls when you havent got a cancer. This is a breakthrough for Artificial Intelligence, which seem certain to play a major role in the diagnosis of Breast Cancer in the years to come. And ai has already proved its ability to read other types of patient scan, showing itself as good as leading ophthalmologists in diagnosing more than 50 different eye conditions. The nhs needs another 1000 radiologists, so using al to replace one of the two doctors who can read mammograms would ease that pressure and speed up diagnosis. Fergus walsh, bbc news. The psychologist who developed the uks main Deradicalisation Programme for terror offenders has told the bbc nobody can be absolutely sure it works. His comments come after usman khan, who had taken part in the scheme, killed two people at fishmongers hall near London Bridge in novemember. Our Home Affairs Correspondent Dominic Casciani is here. Tell us about how the scheme works. It is called the healthy identity intervention, quite a clunky name but it is about trying to get an offender once they are in prison to sit down with a senior experienced psychologist and understand and explore the reasons why they got involved in an extremist group, be it Something Like Islamic State group 01 it Something Like Islamic State group or something on the far right. The principal idea over many sessions is to get the offenders to think about their relationship with the cause, and why they get involved. 0n the theory is they can reduce the relationship they have with their cause, its something they do voluntarily, and then that will reduce their likelihood of reoffending. We have spoken to Christopher Dean who devised this because in the ministry ofjustice and he said that describing this as deprogramming, which is talked about in the media often, is simply wrong, because you cannot wipe simplys mind. This is particularly important because of what happened 21, the man behind the fishmonger is whole attack last november. What happened with usman khan. Something clearly went wrong with him and it is complex work, he had been through the scheme. What is the evidence of the scheme. What is the evidence of the success of the scheme . We dont really know, when they built it a deck and go, they said they pulled on the best independent evidence that it would work, pilots went well. But you have got such a small group of terrorist offenders within jails in the uk, only a few hundred at any one time, its very difficult to track what happens to them and if any intervention works. In the case of usman khan, he went through this scheme and went into a follow up scheme and went into a follow up scheme following his release from prison into the community, which we understand works similarly. We dont know if something was amiss trajectory and that will be a key issue for the inquests when they ta ke issue for the inquests when they take place. The three British Airways cabin crew who were killed in a new years eve crash involving a lorry near Heathrow Airport have been named by friends and colleagues. 23 year old dominic fell, joe finnis who was 25, the three British Airways cabin crew who were killed and 20 year old rachel clark died at the scene in surrey. A 25 year old woman remains in a serious condition in hospital. A fundraising page set up to help the families of the victims has raised more than £47,000 so far. Talks to restore power sharing in Northern Ireland resume today, in the hope of breaking three years of political stalemate at stormont. The talks were put on pause over the Christmas Holidays after the dup was singled out as the Party Standing in the way of a possible deal. Devolved government collapsed in january 2017. 0ur ireland correspondent emma vardy is at stormont. What chance is there of some progress . Things of some progress . Are looking closer to a breakthrough things are looking closer to a breakthrough than they have done for a long time. One big reason for that is the hard deadline of the 13th of january and if there is not a deal by then, press and Assembly Elections will be called, and because the dup and sinn fein perform pretty poorly at the general election it is unlikely they will wa nt to election it is unlikely they will want to risk being punished at the ballot box again very soon. 0ne want to risk being punished at the ballot box again very soon. One of the big issues they are wrangling over is called the petition of concern. That is something that has been used in the assembly as a veto over the years and critics say it has been misused too many times by one party or anotherjust to block things that they dont like. So now other parties want that removed or reformed, and there were proposals on the table before christmas which most party signed up to bar one and there was this unusual step taken by british and irish governments to point the finger at the dup saying that it was then holding up progress toa that it was then holding up progress to a deal. Chris mr dup said hold on a second, we need to see more detail, theyve had christmas to think about it and today the dup have come back with some new proposals, so we are waiting to see if there is something in those new proposals which could edge everybody over the line, and dont forget once all of the arguing is taking place in this building outside of the Public Services in Northern Ireland are suffering during the three years without a government. There is a serious crisis in the Health Service to deal with, mounting frustration from voters and all of that is combining to now put real pressure on the parties to find compromise. The time is 18 minutes past one. Our top story this lunchtime. A state of emergency is declared in New South Wales, as australias bush fires rage and the death toll rises. And coming up, the new army advert all about self confidence aiming to boost falling troop numbers. Coming up on bbc news, liverpool can extend their lead at the top of the premier league to 13 points. They face Sheffield United later on. Floods in indonesias capital jakarta are now known to have killed at least 21 people and left large areas of the city under water. Torrential rain has triggered landslides and the authorities have evacuated tens of thousands of residents to temporary shelters around the city. David campa nale reports. Flooding injakarta is among the deadliest in years, causing chaos in parts of southeast asias biggest city. The capital is well used to dramatic weather events in the rainy season, but not like this. Flooding injakarta is among the deadliest in years, 0ver new year, jakarta had over double the rainfall its Weather Agency considers extreme, with 377 millimetres falling in one day. The highest on record. A major rescue operation across the city saw rubber boats being used to reach residents stranded in the submerged houses. So far, 62,000 people have been evacuated from 90 neighbourhoods. The victims range in age from eight to 82. Some people died of hypothermia while others drowned or were killed by landslides. The clear up is only now just starting. Translation when the rainy season comes, we already know what itll be like, so we wait to see if the water is flowing fast, then we have to move our stuff and evacuate immediately. But usually the water level isnt this high. Residents are now bracing for another influx of water from nearby dams, and the National Disaster agency says that intense rainfall is due to continue. Jakarta is one of the fastest sinking cities in the world. Experts say it could be entirely submerged within three decades. David campanale, bbc news. Reports from beirut say lebanon has received an arrest warrant for the fugitive former nissan boss carlos ghosn. Mr ghosn skipped bail before his trial injapan on financial misconduct charges and flew to lebanon on a private jet via turkey earlier this week. Authorities in turkey have launched an investigation into how he managed to travel through istanbul to lebanon. Seven people are said to have been detained, including four pilots. A vegan man is bringing a Landmark Legal case calling for veganism to be protected by law. He wants it classified as a philosophical belief and comparable to a religion. The man claims he was sacked by the league against cruel sports for disclosing that it invested Pension Funds in firms involved in animal testing. The league says he was dismissed for gross misconduct. Jordi casamitjana describes himself as an ethical vegan and campaigns to get his message to others. This is showing you the life of the animal, how theyre killed. His beliefs affect much of his everyday life. He will for instance walk rather than take a bus to avoid accidental crashes with insects or birds. Some people only eat a vegan diet but they dont care about the environment or the animals because they care only about their health, for instance. I care about the environment, the animals, my health and everything, thats why i use this term ethical veganism because for me veganism is a belief and it affects every single aspect of my life. Jordi worked for the league against cruel sports and claims that when he drew his bosses attention to the fact some of its Pension Funds were being invested in Companies Involved in animal testing, they did nothing. So he informed colleagues and says that he was sacked as a result. He claims he was discriminated against on the basis of his vegan belief. Today an employment tribunal will consider for the first time if veganism is a philosophical belief akin to a religion and so protected in law. To qualify, it must be a genuinely held, serious belief, not an opinion. Cover a substantial aspect of human life. And be worthy of respect in a democratic society. And not interfere with the rights of others. The league against cruel sports denies his claim and says Jordi Casamitjana was dismissed for gross misconduct. But it doesnt contest that veganism should be protected in law. If successful, the case could provide vegans with protection against discrimination in employment, education and the provision of goods and services. And those holding other beliefs could then seek similar legal protection. Clive coleman, bbc news. From the spring of this year, all adults in england will be considered as potential organ donors unless they opt out. Hundreds of people die every year because of a shortage of donors. The change is being made to help many of those who are in desperate need of a transplant. Tim muffet has been to meet one family affected. Christmas day in great 0rmond street hospital. Ethans first christmas the end of a very tough year. Ethan needs a heart. Its his only way to survive. With ethans condition, that means the left side of the heart isnt properly pumping. With it being the left side as well, hes also in heart failure. This machine is only designed to be on for up to two to three months. We are getting to that point now. All this after ethans dad, richard, underwent a heart transplant a year ago. You are having open heart surgery, so you dont know if you are going to make it through it. Thats kind of all you think about before, is this the last time im going to see everybody . 50 of you is so grateful and so happy that richards alive, but at the same time, the other half of us are grieving for that family. Richard is living proof of what Organ Donation can do. He is here, he is living. I couldnt go through what i am going through if richard wasnt here. In england, the law surrounding Organ Donation will change. All adults will be considered potential organ donors, unless they opt out. Wales already uses this system. Scotland will follow suit in the autumn. Its an amazing new piece of legislation thats coming in. Without that, the amount of lives this will save, this law will save, having been implemented. However, it doesnt include children. Obviously, that age range is. Families dont really talk about it. They havent thought about it. So it makes it harder for the children to get a heart. To be honest, i dont think we had thought about it until it all happened. Everyone discusses everything about their lives, shares so much about their lives, but we find it very strange that people dont talk about death or dying. Not that Everyone Wants to, but namely, sharing your wishes in the event of your death. Live each day as it is and enjoy him while hes here and just hope that call comes and it happens. If i spent more time being upset about the things that i cant control, i will miss the time i have with ethan now and i dont want to do that. Because i dont want to ever look back and think, i spent a whole day crying when i could havejust spent the whole day being happy with him. Tim muffett reporting. The army has launched a new Recruitment Campaign with an advert all about self confidence. Social media addicts and gym goers are being targeted with the slogan Army Confidence lasts a lifetime. Its the latest attempt at boosting falling troop numbers. Heres our defence correspondent jonathan beale. Advert where does confidence come from . How you look . This, the latest in a series of high profile Recruitment Campaigns is aimed at young people, many of whom Research Suggests lack self confidence or feel inadequate when comparing their lives to others. Quick hits. Yes, brother you are coming out tonight the bold claim from the armys £3 million appeal for new soldiers is Army Confidence lasts a lifetime. In contrast to the quick fix hits of, say, social media and fast fashion. Some fresh heat. Take those dusty cast offs off your feet, man. The army hopes to build on the success of last years campaign, which saw a Record Number of applications, though still only 10 of those made it through to basic training. Come on, mate, nearly there. In the past, theres been Harsh Criticism from mps over the decision to outsource recruitment to a private contractor. Capita and the army say theyve dramatically improved the system. The army has also introduced new training programmes to help prepare young people who may struggle with fitness and literacy to meet basic entry requirements. We are about 95 on our current target with three months of the recruiting year left. So the marketing campaign, along with the hard work between the army and capita, and the hard work that goes on out in the careers offices, is making a real difference. But despite claims of progress, the british army is still well below its target strength. And the problem is not just about recruitment, but retention too. Jonathan beale, bbc news. The new pdc world darts champion says hes still coming to terms with his achievement. Scotlands peter wright beat Michael Van Gerwen at Alexandra Palace last night. The 49 year old says his success proves you should never give up. Our Sports Correspondent Natalie Pirks reports. Peter wright the cheers turned to tears but finally, peter wright got his hands on the trophy. From his first set of darts at 13, to becoming the oldest first time winner at a9, last night saw him become £500,000 richer, and realise a lifelong dream. I didnt sleep at all last night. As it settled in, it was terrible. So ive had no sleep. So its actually sunk in that i am world champion. And im just over the moon. 96 players came and two remain. Wright knew he had a job on his hands. World number one and reigning champion Michael Van Gerwen had long been a thorn in his side but it was snakebite who looked more comfortable on the big stage. Wright had nearly given it all up five years ago and had lost ten major televised finals, but at the 11th time of asking, all that stood between him and the trophy was a double ten. And this time, peter gets it right. It was all so different when he first came on the scene back in 1995, as plain old pete. Since then, the bright clothes and the mohawks, designed by his hairdresser wife, have seen him become a huge character in a sport awash with big personalities. It gives me confidence, im a very shy guy away from the sport. Whenjo puts it all on, i become the character of snakebite on the stage that you see in the loud outfits and the crazy hairdos. Its been a memorable world championships, not least for the emergence of fallon sherrock, the first woman to beat a man in the tournament. Peter wrights win with decades in the making. A great lesson for sherrick and other newcomers to never give up. Natalie pirks, bbc news. Congratulations to snakebite. Time for a look at the weather, heres lucy martin. Weve had