Today at 5 a state of emergency is declared as australias bush fires rage and the death toll rises. There are fears that a heatwave forecast for this weekend could make the crisis even worse. Australias Prime MinisterScott Morrison cuts short a visit to one devastated community as people there heckle him. How come we only had four trucks to defend our town and . We dont have a lot of money but we have hearts of gold, mr Prime Minister is julias army and navy are evacuating as thousands flee from the flames. The other stories on bbc news at 5. Delays and cancellations on the railways but fares still go up from today by an average
of nearly 3 . More accounts emerge of the deaths of the three family members who drowned in a pool in spain. Researchers say Artificial Intelligence can be better than doctors at diagnosing Breast Cancer from scans. Its 5 oclock our main story is that a seven day state of emergency declared in the australian state of New South Wales as the bushfires there claim even more lives. At least 18 people have died in the fires so far with many others missing. Australia is preparing itself for a weekend heatwave with high temperatures and strong winds that are expected to fan the flames. Tens of thousands of residents and holidaymakers are fleeing towns on the east coast and naval vessels 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 in these areas and do not have the means to stay and possibly defend your home, and your life, we strongly advise you to leave now. We just want to get our kids out of here. 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 are stranded. The main road out is cut but there is an escape by sea for some. The navy has been called in to carry out emergency evacuations. We have the opportunity today to potentially move about 500 people out of this town. The interesting thing about this is that some people may not want to leave. They may want to stay there until such time that we may be able to get out by road. That could be a number of weeks, that may be two or three weeks at this stage. The australian Prime Minister was heckled when he visited a small town. How come we only have two trucks defend our town . We dont have much money but we have
hearts of gold, mr Prime Minister. Thye accused him of mishandling the crisis. You are an idiot, mate. He has been accused of not taking Global Warming seriously. With donations and emergency relief, four trucks. If we were sydney, if we were north coast, we would be flooded with emergency relief. Four trucks Scott Morrison says his Climate Change policies are adequate and responsible. Our policies will both protect our environment and reduce the risks that we are seeing today and at the same time our policies will seek to ensure the viability of peoples jobs and livelihoods around the country. The Prime Minister has called for calm as dozens of blazes burn across the country. The scale of this disaster
is so great that smoke has drifted hundreds of miles across the sea to new zealand. There is no end in sight. More hot, dry and windy conditions are forecast in south eastern australia in the days ahead. As our science editor David Shukman explains, the government in australia says it has to balance the need to meet Climate Change targets, while protecting jobs in Industries Like mining which contribute heavily to Greenhouse Gas emissions. This government is trying to do a balancing act, of trying to sound like its taking chuck Climate Change seriously while at the same time fostering a very important employer, a very important part of economy. Australia is one of the largest exporters of coal in the world, most going to china and
india. The Australian Government response to this is to say, under the last Climate Change treaty, the kyoto protocol, we met our targets. In fact their targets were incredibly generous and even allowed an expansion of Greenhouse Gases, so its not totally accurate to say, it is accurate to say they have met their targets but not that they have contributed to a reduction of emissions. At the same time you hear Scott Morrison saying, we are only a tiny contributor to Global Warming, a percentage point or so. The answer is that as a developed country, australia like britain and america has been pumping out Greenhouse Gases for longer than lets say china or india, and therefore you could say theres a moral responsibility to take the lead in reducing those omissions. This has all been given a sharper focus because last month, at the annual un
climate talks in madrid, i was there, australia played a pretty dirty game, trying to get in the way of the negotiations, held up by many environmental groups as a particularly awkward member of an awkward squad who dont want to take action on Climate Change. They came out of it heavily criticised, on one example of double counting, trying to argue that if they sold gas to developing countries then those countries could rather burn australia burnt call and astray should get some kind of credit for that, for trying to argue that under the previous emissions scheme australia earn some credits and should be able to carry those forward under the paris agreement. It sounds technical but would allow them to keep burning more fossil fuel. This comes at a time where we saw Scott Morrison getting a lot of local criticism for a failure to act in the towns affected, but also globally, more and more countries
and environmental groups highlighting australia saying you area highlighting australia saying you are a victim of the changes climate scientists have been talking about. You as a government are failing to act. 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. Our Business Correspondent emma simpson reports. This back to work today and not much to smile about. As usual, train fares are going up and it has become a january ritual. My travel in particular is affected every day because i have late trains every day and they are literally crawl into london waterloo, so it makes it very difficult for me
to plan so it makes it harderfor me to understand the justification of an increase in price, when i do not see any improvement. We have had a year of bad service, but i have just come to expect now. Ijust get on with it. The service has not been particularly good over the past two or three years, so i think youll find that a lot of people are 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, it is going up by £118. And edinburgh to glasgow, it is not that far behind. All these season tickets are now well over £4000 per year. Nobody wants to pay more for their fares, we understand that, but by keeping the increase just below the rate of inflation, it allows us to cover the day to day running costs of the rail industry, which then frees up billions
of pounds of public and private cash which is needed to upgrade the system. But it has not 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 confirmed it may be stripped of its franchise. I do not think it is right that people are unable to rely on their train services, particularly in places like northern, where it has been notably bad. I will absolutely bring that situation to an end. Today he also announced two new trials on flexible tickets, including better value fares aimed at part time commuters. We think there needs to be an overhaul all of the system, easier to work out and also has to offer better value. That will include tickets that reflect we live now. Change could be on the way,
a big long awaited review of the railway commissioned by the government is due to be published in the coming weeks. A Youth Support worker who gave cpr to one of the three members of the family who drowned in a pool in spain has spoken to the bbc about the incident. 52 year old gabriel diya, his nine year old daughter comfort and his 16 year old son praise emmanuel, died on Christmas Eve in a Hotel Swimming Pool in the costa del sol. Josias fletchman, says he was one of a number of people who tried to help revive praise emmanuel. He described how his faith in god kept him going at the moment that he arrived at the scene of the incident. The bodies had already been pulled out of the pool at this point of time, Emergency Services were there, people are doing the cpr. I was
praying as soon as i got in there, a sign of faith straightaway and then after that, the lady asked me to help because she was getting tired, i helped the cpr, i carried on praying while was doing the cpr, the medics come, the medics were doing their thing, i was still praying, recognised a lady that was Walking Around praying, i recognise the daughter that was crying. Shed been comforted, and next thing you know id asked the lady, do you know these . And she said calmly to me, yes, these are my children and my husband. I was a bit stunned by how calmly she said it and it took me back for a minute and she said, yes,
all i can do is pray. So i said to her, iam all i can do is pray. So i said to her, i am in agreement with you right now and im standing in agreement and im praying now. She said, thank you, thank you. The headlines on bbc news. A state of emergency is declared in australia as bush fires rage and the death toll rises. As weve heard, delays and cancellations on the ra i lwa ys delays and cancellations on the railways but fair still go up from today by an average of nearly 3 . More accounts emerge of the deaths of three family members who drowned ina of three family members who drowned in a pool in spain. In sport, more bad news for england cricketers on their tour of south africa. Rory burns has had a scan after hurting his ankle playing football in a training session. Jofra archer is also a doubt for the second test. The arsenal defender Calum Chambers is out for the rest of the season. He has ruptured a cruciate ligament
in his left knee. During a defeat to chelsea last sunday. And that chaos will donate over £100 for every ac Service Industry in tournaments of the next month. Part of the Fundraising Efforts for wildfires in that country. Nick kyrgios. Researchers say a new Artificial Intelligence system has proved as good, if not better, than human experts at spotting Breast Cancer in scans. Than human experts at spotting 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. 0ur medical correspondent fergus walsh has more details. This is painstaking work. It takes more than a decade to become a radiologist and have the skill to read a mammogram. This in the nhs, two doctors analyse every persons and x rays. Now, thanks to Artificial Intelligence, a machine can do it just as well as humans. Reading a mammogram is highly skilled work, this went far beyond my expectations. It will have a Significant Impact include proving the quality of treatment and allowing experts to focus on other important things. Women aged between 50 and 70 are invited for breast screening every three years. The study showed al was actually better than one doctor working alone at weeding mammograms. At reading mammograms. It produced 1. 2 fewer false positives, where a healthy mammogram is incorrectly diagnosed as abnormal. And there were 2. 7 fewer false negatives where a cancer is missed. And ai will only get better. This study shows us that in the future it might be possible to make that Screening Programme more accurate and more efficient,
which means less worrying time waiting for patients results and Better Outcomes overall. Helen edwards has been clear of Breast Cancer for 15 years. She was a patient representative on the panel which approved google healths access to the Anonymized Health data. Initially i was concerned, google, what are we going to do this information, what are we going to do with the data . But when i thought about it, longer term it can only benefit women in having less recalls when you havent got a cancer. This is a breakthrough moment for Artificial Intelligence which seems certain to play a major role in the diagnosis of Breast Cancer in the year to come. A has already proved its ability to read other type of patient scans. It is as good as leading experts in diagnosing more than 50 different eye conditions. The nhs needs another 1,000 radiologists, so using al to replace one of the two doctors who read
mammograms would ease that pressure and speed up diagnosis. Just underlining some of the developments that would like to talk more about. And we can speak to professor lord darzi who were just heard in our report. He is the studys co author and director of the Cancer Research uk Imperial Centre and is in doha for us now via facetime. Thank you very much forjoining us, good to have you with hours. And here with me in the studio is dr rupa sarkar editor of at the lancet digital health. Thanks forjoining us, good to have you with hours. First of all, because you have been so involved with this, why dont you just tell viewers how excited you are by the findings on what the potential is . We started with the progress that this will go over something but in
the video we far exceeded our expectations. 30,000 mammograms, 26 from the nhs, and within a fairly short period of time, we have an algorithm there that as fergus mentioned as reporting as good as the first reader. It is actually better than the first radio because a radiologist will have some clinical details when theyre looking at that image whereas a machine doesnt have any clinical details and adding to that the potential being as good as the two leaders combined is very exciting. The video demonstrated, and Breast Cancer screenings it is the only imagingl cancer screenings it is the only imaging i know of that needs to radiologist to read and it is done for all sorts of reasons, because obviously we dont want to miss Breast Cancer, so the ability to
release one of the radiologists opens up and increases productivity, and secondly, and even more importantly, is reducing what we call the false negative which is the most cancers or the false positive, which is a serious issue in terms of anxiety and recall. So very excited and would really love to see this implemented within the nhs. Bear with us. Im just going to bring in doctor sarkar. In one of the questions as if you are a patient, are you going to want a machine or a computer involved at this level of diagnosis or are you going to be more reassured by a much higher profile human involvement, as we have been used to in the past . What is your thought on that . I think patients like convenience especially in health care so we are already seeing machines, many patients seek primary care or their gp service
through apps and video calling. Many patients with Heart Disease were heart rate monitors, so these machines have a lot of promise. What we really have to be careful with these kinds of tools, and the study is fantastic as are many others, but they need to be validated in clinical studies that show real world efficacy of these tools. I suppose lots of viewers watching will be wondering, this is fa ntastically will be wondering, this is fantastically exciting and got huge potential. Where does this lead us because we are talking here in terms of diagnosing