Lowen reports it was the high tide roaring winds and a full moon that sparked Venice's nightmare flooding last month but the real problems run deeper rising sea levels and mass cruise ship tourism combined with political failures that have prevented adequate flood defenses today's referendum the 5th on the issue over the years is non-binding in the last 4 referenda 3 rejected separation and one failed to reach the required turnout the author it is in Mexico say 14 people have died in a shootout between police officers and drug cartel gunmen here the Us border the clash happened in the small town of Vo in your own in Coeur will a state will grant has this report the state governor incl me again and again Mr Leask delivered a statement outside the bullet ridden municipal government offices in the only yawned in which he said that 10 gunmen had been killed as well as 4 police officers several more were injured and more than a dozen vehicles as well as numerous weapons had been seized following the killing of knowing u.s. Citizens by cartel gunmen in Sonora 3 weeks ago all of them mothers and children from an extended moment community President Trump has called for his Mexican counterpart to wage war on the cartels and has said he intends to designate them as terrorist organizations World News from the b.b.c. . There's no sign of a let up in the measles outbreak in Samoa with 48 deaths up from 20 a week ago nearly all were infants a mandatory vaccination program is underway in the South Pacific island nation New Zealand is sending 100000 doses that are for half the population tens of thousands of Italians have taken to the streets of Florence and Naples to protest against the right wing League party that is demonstrations by a new political movement known as the sardines the crowd filled Republic Square in the center of Florence singing the anti fascist anthem bellow chow and hanging an effigy of the league leader Matteo Salvini sardine movement was founded 2 weeks ago by young activists in Bologna or to oppose the league ahead of regional elections the Ministry of Justice in Britain has launched an urgent review of convicted terrorists released from prison following the London Bridge knife attack whose man come who killed 2 people and wounded 3 others at a conference on prisoner rehabilitation before being shorted was released halfway through his 16 year sentence John McManus reports the metropolitan police say they believe he did comply with an extensive list of conditions including wearing an electronic tag and had received permission to travel in cylinder for Friday's conference the Ministry of Justice says the review of conditions for terrorists released the license began in the media's aftermath of the attack he said the review would ensure that the conditions worst soft as they needed to be unset that meetings between offenders and the supervisors would be stepped up a new type of apple that's been in development for more than 2 decades goes on sale in the United States later on Sunday the growers of the cosmic crisp say it has the perfect combination of crunch and sweetness and will last in the fridge for almost a year those are the latest stories from b.b.c. News. 6 minutes past h.t.m. T. Welcome to Weekend from the b.b.c. World Service with me Julia Morcha with me throughout the program she curl executive director of the Angus Reid Institute that's a Canadian nonpartisan Polling Institute and the reporter and television journalist Shay Rhodes more from them in a moment 1st to Hong Kong hundreds of protesters there marching towards the American consulate many carrying Stars and Stripes flags and chanting resist Beijing liberate Hong Kong this because of what President Trump approved on Wednesday namely a law backing human rights and democracy in Hong Kong which drew an angry reaction from China now this is the 1st of several weekend rallies planned across the city as pro-democracy activists about to continue their campaign highlighting specifically police brutality and unlawful arrests with the B.B.C.'s Nick beak it in Hong Kong he told me what the marchers are hoping to show I think they want to show their gratitude to the Americans and present some specifically they say because of the endorsement they got during the week that Speccy president from passing this was legislation which means that the Americans because every year and try and make an assessment as to whether Beijing is eroding civil liberties. Yet they saw that as very much a vote for their pro-democracy movement and as I stated this morning we just on was signed and we're on the was from was and I'm sure you can hear the chants in the background fight for freedom stand behind that is the chant here it was earlier was is the right of the 3 protests was shouting for today and also I didn't make them to make out the this sort of unofficial I was these protests was once more as a home home which was dotted was singing was Jesus would you say yes was they've gathered once again was very different was the mission was and people had today the majority just wasn't. The founder of the protest movement Nic big bringing things up to date in a noisy Hong Kong more than from him throughout the day on the b.b.c. World Service from Hong Kong to China where people will be required from today Sunday to have their faces scanned when registering new mobile phone services as they go forward to seek to verify the identities of the country's hundreds of millions of Internet users the regulation was announced in September but it comes into effect today China already uses facial recognition technology to survey its population it's a world leader in such technologies but it's intensifying use across the country in recent years has sparked debate so much difference will this move make pull is a technology reporter for The New York Times in Shanghai in practice it won't feel that different because in the past usually you have a photo anyway associated with your national i.q. Which is necessary for a phone plan but this is going to be a more in a is kind of full face scanning process and as this gets rolled out what it also really probably do is just normalize this process because we're seeing these things sort of appear more and more all over the country the authorities saying they're looking to verify the identities of the country's hundreds of millions of Internet users to some that might sound slightly sinister what's important understand here is a lot of countries will force people to give over anational like you're some kind of identification to get a phone plan what China does is it has a 2nd step where if you will want to register for any social media or really any internet service at all you need a chinese phone number and because that phone number is then linked back to your IP The police have access to both at the same time and effectively ends and on anybody online in China and then as the police kind of pushed a grown surveillance the idea that you could use this sort of Internet registration process to set up will abroad or I'm out of biometric data on people for other systems for instance use use fish or recognition in cameras has been a very kind of common and constant we've seen in recent years and how does one. China is doing here compare with other countries who are clearly going down similar routes it's very normal to in a lot of countries have to get your national id over but again in China you need a phone number and you need your id to do most Internet services so effectively anonymity online has ended and I think there are some countries that are trying to kind of follow this model but the thing is it's extremely difficult it takes a lot of technology a lot of money a lot of political will to control the Internet at the level that China has and so far there's really nobody who's who's been able to do that I mean we hear you know countries like Russia and Kazakhstan are trying to kind of start be in beginning to to copy that in other places you know are buying Chinese technologies that help with this kind of stuff but it still feels very early stages and it feels like only China truly has the kind of technological prowess and organization to accomplish it in the way it has in recent years and also the centralized political system that isn't democratic that enables the authorities to do something like this if it chooses right precisely and so you know what we've seen it you know recently at least with surveillance equipment and to some degree with internet censorship equipment too is that these are going to be sold out to other authoritarian countries or places you know there's a fledgling democracies with a strongman you know so places like say Zimbabwe or Egypt or or Venezuela you know b.m.r. These kinds of places we see Chinese showing up and more in greater greater numbers and selling this kind of technology that's another thing that's kind of important to watch as we see sort of how the Internet develops from here on in technological to where does this go next do you think. We try to we've seen a real push to acquire more and more biometric information so right now it's a feast scan but it wouldn't be surprising if in a few years it became say an iris scan voice print reading as well and so basically there's all these new technologies that can identify different features poll technology reporter for The New York Times based in Shanghai. Is that something we just have to live with or do we away wary of it depends on where we live in China this is already been largely normalized 2 years ago being said he wanted to catch up to the United States in terms of Ai by 2025 exceed the u.s. By 2030 you don't pay with credit cards that at cashpoints in China anymore it's already facial rock that is your currency there's an excellent program on Frontline about this which I would recommend everybody watch or at least read the transcript but there is talk you know about Ai and and facial recognition and the advance in technology and the intersection with giving up privacy which is really going to be the stuff of a new Cold War So if there's a 4050 years ago it was about a build up of nuclear weaponry in the next 3040 years that may well be the build up of artificial intelligence and the willingness of people in the countries where this is happening or perhaps on willingness to give up their privacy and you know in the United States and Canada in the u.k. In in liberal democracies we talk about the worry of this at the same time we're giving up all kinds of personal information on social media Facebook and what have you and that that becomes a cold war how because one side of of the war if you like knows more about the other side than that side would like them to know. Yes and also uses it to its advantage well in uses that would like in similar minded countries that's the key for me is use it to their advantage and you know it was touched on in Viper. All in the report the sense that if you live in a country without democracy this is a much bigger problem than if you live in a country where where you're well protected I'm reminded of calling an ambulance in this country and the person on the other end of the line is not allowed to track my mobile phone to find out where I am and I'm like please track my phone because I really need you to come to get come and get me it's private more to my privacy is massively protected in this country possibly from Sometimes too much I think it would be quite useful if we could have a bit of a crossover we have where one agency can see my tax information and then another agency can see my benefits information and they can kind of come together and see me as a whole the whole individual rather than breaking me up into tiny little privately protected pieces of information I suppose I just wonder how how you manage the technological progress that is going on because really you can't put the genie out of the bottle in the genie back into the bottle is what I'm absolutely absolutely what people are developing Yeah and this is I'm I'm I have the fear I can feel it I can feel it we all have the fear that they're going to recognize my face they're going to scan my face but let's not be Luddites the world moves on we all sitting here with mobile phones and all the rest of it as long as the live as long as legislation keeps up we should be alright you know I cleared immigration into the u.k. Yesterday I didn't have to talk to anyone I simply looked at a photo because the government of Canada had already scanned my retinas now the decision to allow that to happen was mine I did have a moment of birth when it happened but guess what it was better than waiting in line for this and you're very welcome thank you very much 50 she had to be the junior partner in Germany's governing coalition the Social Democrats have elected as leaders to politicians who've criticized the alliance with Chancellor Merkel's conservatives the unexpected move throws into doubt the coalition already under strain we're joined live by Tom Not all but in bureau chief for The Economist magazine tell us more about these 2 politicians Tom and the significance of all this. Well Germans don't really know very much about them one of them used to be finance minister of Germany's largest state North Rhine-Westphalia but Delta boy ends in his running mate Suskind skin is a member of the Bundestag the German parliament but neither of them have any national profile and one reason why this is such a shock is that they were running against a pair that were led by Olaf Schultz he's the finance minister in the vice chancellor he's one of the most prominent politicians in Germany so this is rather a shock for the party but it's also of potentially a shock for the country at large because as he said both of these politicians have been very critical of the social democrats membership of the coalition with the Christian Democratic Union that's angle a muckle party and there's a Congress of the Social Democrats next weekend here in but Lynn which they will need to discuss whether or not they want to stay in this government and the election of these 2 politicians is a strong sign that for large numbers of the membership of the Social Democrats they just want to get out and if they do get out the government pulls. It's a very complicated there's a number of options it's probably not going to happen straight away one possibility would be for Angela Merkel to seek to run a minority government of her party and this but very insistent party Germany does not have a tradition of minority governments Angela Merkel herself is known to dislike that idea an alternative could be to try to reform a new coalition in Bundestag in the Bundestag but that looks very tricky so the possibility that we don't be left with is simply early elections and that would be almost 2 years before they expire if this Parliament she term and what does this say about the way the Social Democrats are looking at themselves now because an electorate for quite a while they have not been performing happily Yeah to put it mildly Yeah I mean in the last election federal action in 27 seen they scored just over 20 percent which was an appalling read. Ult for one of the most venerable political parties in Germany but extraordinary since then it just got worse and worse and worse it lost about one 3rd of the support since then there are now consistently and by a large gap behind the Green Party which has been surging here in Germany and there are roughly in opinion polls that roughly on a par with the far right Alternative for Germany the a.f.d. Here and this is something that I had you said that this was the fate of the s.p.d. Your 2 or 3 years ago if you body would have thought that you were mad but this is how badly the party is doing and that is why I think there is a very strong strain to get discontent discontent inside the party that it needs to rediscover itself it needs to have a search for fresh identity and for a lot of people they think that it needs to do that outside of government Tom thank you Tom Not all Berlin bureau chief for The Economist magazine on those latest political developments in Germany it's 18 and a half minutes past the hour we're going to talk about NATO for a few moments now because the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created 70 years ago in 1949 to counter the threat from the communist Soviet Union after its alliance expanded in 1901 into Eastern Europe and its forces were deployed on peacekeeping missions in Kosovo in and and in Afghanistan it took different paths but the debate on its purpose has been raging for a while the Us President Donald Trump famously for a while even pondered withdrawing from the alliance and most recently the French president Emmanuel mackerel called it brain dead and that was clearly arousing a fair amount of controversy around Europe at the time next week NATO leaders will meet here in the u.k. For the alliance's 70th anniversary I've been speaking to Rose go to Miller who was until last month Nato's deputy secretary general my view is that 2014 was the watershed year for NATO in this generation 1st Russia and seizing her. I mean a destabilizing the Donbass forcing. Up tick in our collective defense the likes of which we had not seen of course since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990 s. 2nd the rise of ISIS in 2014 the creation of the so so called Caliph that and goes all that was a huge wake up call for the allies and they also pushed forward on that front we now have significant counterterrorism train advise and assist efforts not only in Afghanistan but also in Iraq and we'll be continuing to fight terrorism also on behalf of our allies in technological terms but also in terms of ensuring that the allies are pulling together I was just checking young Stoltenberg recent press conference that in fact there will be an update to the counterterrorism plan at the leaders' summit leaders meeting I should stress I was going to say it's not a summit any more is it correct they don't hold a summit in case they disagree too much though it's not that I think I think it's a matter of fact it's one of those things we had a leaders' meeting at the new headquarters in May of 2017 as well frankly it takes some doing to get leaders together for the 2 days of a full up summit so this is a leaders' meeting just on who is our common enemy point I mean you referred to Crimea and 2014 and clearly that was when Russia was very much the focus but President macro going back to his comments did say sometimes I hear some saying that it is Russia China you know answer to the who is our common enemy is it the purpose of the Atlantic alliance to identify one or the other as our enemies I don't think so so is he moving back from the idea that Russia is as much of a problem as some NATO countries think it is it is the purpose of the NATO alliance to defend all allies against against threats and that is the important thing to bear in mind you know NATO had no desire to up its deployments in the central and eastern parts of NATO territory and. AK The steps that have been undertaken since 2014 were undertaken I think of in a very proportionate way very much bearing in mind that we didn't want to to accelerate any kind of situation with Russia but in fact they've been judicious steps to defend the allies and that's the important point it's not who in particular it is what the threat circumstances determine it I get that in which case when you look at a NATO member country like Turkey currently it would appear quite close to Moscow to those circumstances make NATO members think twice about the validity of Turkey's membership and loyalty to the cause a number of NATO allies have have strong relations with with Russia in fact McCraw himself as building up those relations with a recent visit t