Trump offers voters $5,000 for GOP win

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0:41Hello and welcome to News Out from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. I'm James Menendez and we're going to begin today in the US state of Texas, which is playing host to the Republican Party's first ever convention held in the middle of a presidential term. The reason for staging it with all its attendant razzmatazz Hasmataz is clear to drum up support ahead of November's crucial midterm elections. Those will decide which party controls Congress with both chambers, the House, and to a lesser extent, the Senate in play. In the end, Donald Trump's pitch to voters couldn't have been less subtle.

1:17If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, because of our tremendous strength and success economically. I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for$5 ,000. He did, however, say the money came with some rules. The only caveat I have is that the dividend that we're making must be spent in the United States of America. We don't want you going to Canada to spend the money. We don't want you going to China, to Germany. You also appear to downplay some widespread concerns around the cost of living, which has gone up in part because of the war against Iran.

2:09We got eggs down lower than during my administration. And food prices and almost every other item are rapidly going down. And by the way, oil will be going down as soon as we win the war with Iran, which is taking place right now. Live to Washington, D.C. and our correspondent Ione Wells. Ione, hello. On the$5 ,000 payment, first of all, is it legal? Well, it's a bit of a grey area because you aren't allowed to bribe people to vote a certain way, though Donald Trump would argue that this is different as it's an election pledge. It's not unusual for political leaders to make promises ahead of elections, Although I think it is undoubtedly designed to influence the way people vote because he is the president.

2:54So if this is a federal payment, he has the power to do that now. But he is saying that it is conditional on the Republicans winning those midterm elections. I think a bigger question perhaps is whether it's realistic or whether it will be believed as well by Americans. It's not the first time that he has promised a dividend, as he's calling it, for Americans. He promised one from tariffs. He promised one from Elon Musk's big spending cut spree, which was known as Doge. Both those promised dividends didn't ever materialise. And there's also the fact that this would cost more than a trillion dollars, which could in itself prove inflationary.

3:37So I think there are big questions not just about whether or not this is legal, but also whether it's practical and whether Americans will believe it this time. And also, I mean, if the polls are to be believed, the truth is, I mean, he's unlikely to have to pay it out. Well, that's right. I think his popularity ratings, as many listeners may know, are at a record low at the moment. And there are clearly two reasons for that that come up in polls. One is that a lot of things here in the US feel unaffordable for many people. The second reason is that the war in Iran seems to be going on and on, despite repeated promises that it will end soon.

4:14and the two of course are linked with the war itself pushing up gas and oil prices. So I don't think it's surprising that his catchier statements were on these two things. Not only did he pledge this$5 ,000 handout for Americans, he also pledged that the war with Iran would end after the election. Again though, he has said that more than 30 times. He has said that the war will end soon, that it will all be over quickly and every time it has not materialised, it has rumbled on. And what I find interesting is that despite Trump always downplaying his low popularity ratings, the fact he's made these two pledges suggests an awareness of his weaknesses going into these elections.

4:54I think he clearly has an awareness here that as well as an affordability crisis, there is potentially a sort of believability crisis as well, which is that these pitches may, it was sort of yet to see whether these pitches will have or be enough to convince voters given that they have been made previously and haven't materialised yet. Ione, thank you very much indeed. Our Washington correspondent Ione Wells. Well, John McHenry is a Republican pollster with North Star Opinion Research. And John joins me on the line from Northern Virginia. Thanks very much for being with us on NewsHour today. Well, just picking up on that, John, I mean, is this a sign of desperation on the part of the president and indeed the Republican Party?

5:38it's it's interesting because typically as Ione pointed out the president's job approval ratings are low they're at 38 that's a little worse than he had at this point in his first term and historically pretty low but the problem that republicans have had in the Trump era is that they underperform when President Trump isn't on the ballot typically as a as a president with 38 percent job approval, you wouldn't say, pretend that I'm on the ballot like you did last night. But what he really needs to do is turn out the Republicans who are less likely to vote in the midterms. The Republican base now tends to be less educated than it had been in the past, less educated than Democrats are at this point.

6:22So he needs to get those people who would vote in a presidential election for him, but might not vote in the midterms to turn out and vote. And I think this is very much targeted, that group of people trying to get them out to the polls to, excuse me, offset some of the Democratic advantage and turnout that we expect this year. Yeah, because the Democrats will presumably be more motivated. But I mean, will the offer of a cash payment that, you know, is unfunded at the moment and may well not have to be paid out? I mean, is that going to cut through, do you think, with those voters? You know, you talked about the credibility of the offer.

6:59For the people that he needs to get to turn out, I think it is a credible offer. Now, you and I might say, well, you have to borrow a trillion dollars from China in order to pay that out. But his supporters who want to vote for Republicans but maybe aren't motivated at this point, maybe they're a little bit down on the economy, for them that probably is a credible offer. So they say, oh, okay, he's doing something about the issues that I care about. Cost of living is the dominant issue in the U.S. right now. Now, you know, the war in Iran is sort of simmering on the back burner and only plays into that to the extent that it drives up gasoline prices in the US, which drives up the cost of everything else.

7:40So if they hear$5 ,000 to help you with that as we get through this war and, you know, get back on stronger economic footing, maybe that does get them to the polls. I mean, in the clips we heard, I mean, he was talking up the economy, saying everything's going great. But I guess the fact that he's offering this money, as you suggest, is an implicit recognition, isn't it, that Americans are really feeling the pinch at the moment? Absolutely. I mean, if you think about Joe Biden saying that inflation wasn't that bad during his term when everybody said we're paying 20 percent more for groceries now than we were when Trump was in office, you do have to acknowledge that people are hurting and that you are doing something about it.

8:18And I think that's part and parcel of this offer. You know, he a week ago had oil and gas executives to the White House to talk about getting gas prices down, showing that he knows that that's an issue and that he cares about it. And this is to some extent more of the same. And just finally, I mean, what is the thinking within the party at the moment that they may well lose the House, but what the Senate is, well, a toss up? The Senate's very much a toss up. You know, Republicans, if you look at some of the nominees that Democrats have in Maine and in Michigan, you might actually say the Republicans have a little bit of an advantage.

8:57But the House, historically, the party with the president in office almost always lose seats. There are a few exceptions, but it's almost a given. And given how small the margin is, it's very difficult to see how Republicans, at least historically, would hold on to the House. John, as ever, thank you very much indeed. John McHenry, a Republican pollster with that North Star opinion research.

9:29Let's head to the Philippines now, where fire has broken out on board a ferry that was on its way from the capital Manila to the tourist hotspot of Coron. on.

9:44What you can hear there are the voices of the Coast Guard rescuers as they approach the burning ship. It's engulfed in flames in the darkness. It's about 100 metres ahead of them. Well, at least five people are known to have died. More than 80 others are still missing as that rescue operation continues. Well, let's talk to Karen Lema, Reuters Bureau Chief in Manila. Karen, thank you very much for being with us. I mean, it's past, what, 9pm, I think, in Manila. What is going on with that rescue? Is it still going on? Has it been halted for the night? Yes, you're correct. It's been paused for tonight.

10:23I was just on the phone a while ago with the Philippine Coast Guard just to check the status of the search and rescue operation. So they're temporarily stopping the rescue. But at the sign of the first daylight tomorrow, they told me that they're going to resume the search. And hopefully, they'd be able to enter the vessel where they fear that some people are still trapped. As you mentioned in the report, the figures remain the same. Five, as of now, we know have been killed. 43 have been rescued and 80 more than 80 people remain missing a while ago they told us that it's been very difficult to conduct a search given that the vessel has been charged it's very hot and if you've seen some of the images you can see thick smoke billowing from the vessel inside but as they were saying that uh hopefully uh that could have they could get a window um and and hopefully enter the vessel tomorrow morning the weather's as soon as they can yeah the weather's pretty bad as well isn't it exactly um so that's not helping as well um especially last night when they started when they got the report about the the fire uh we can see also from video and even the coast artificial saying the rescuers the waters are very um it's not helpful the waves are quite uh strong but um today they said that the waters have moderated a bit and the recent images that we've seen at least midday today we've seen a bit of calming of the waters uh but i think there's still a bit of rain if i'm not mistaken so that's really hampering uh rescue efforts yeah i mean i'm just looking at one of the pictures of the boat now and i mean it looks that it's like it's almost been completely destroyed by the fire.

12:19I mean, it's just a whole... Is there any information about how it started? What caused it? Yeah, in fact, that's one of the questions we've been asking disaster officials. But as of tonight, no answers have been given. They've promised that they're going to conduct a comprehensive investigation. But one thing they noted during the press conference this afternoon is that the vessel actually passed safety assessments. They've passed the pre-departure assessments. They were supposed to have enough life vests as well. So in that area, that's so far the answer that was given. But I'm sure there's plenty of questions being asked, especially by the families of those victims.

13:06And hopefully we'll get more clarity and piece together what's actually happened in the ferry. Karen, thank you very much indeed for that update. That was Karen Lema, who's Reuters Bureau Chief, joining us from the Philippines capital, Manila. You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.

13:38still to come a new book explodes some of the myths surrounding the wellness industry pursuing wellness is really important and the best way of doing that is not to buy these products the supplements the wearable tech the testing they may do you harm and they won't do you good But there are loads of things you can do that will help you to lead an important life that's meaningful for you. Engaging with the arts, engaging with things you love that you find joyful and meaningful is good for you in lots of ways. More on that coming up in half an hour. Our main headlines from the BBC newsroom at the moment.

14:11Iran-backed Houthi militants have seized another port on the Red Sea as they tighten their control of the Bab al-Mandeb waterway. And the European Central Bank has raised Eurozone interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point as it tries to tame inflationary pressures caused by rising oil prices.

14:38This is James Menendez with NewsHour Live from the BBC. Now, warnings about AI's threat to humanity aren't new, but the source of the ones that have appeared in the past couple of days have caused quite a stir. They came from one former and one current employee of Anthropik, the AI firm behind the claw chatbot. Evan Hübinger, Anthropik's Enlinement Science Lead, the department tasked with ensuring the technology develops in line with human values, posted on X that there was a greater than 10 % chance that AI would kill all humans in the next decade. It came after his colleague Jacob Coxon announced he was resigning, saying it and others, the firm and others, were gambling with our lives.

15:19Well, Geoffrey Hinton's the Nobel Prize winning computer scientist who's considered one of only three godfathers of AI. He worked at Google but left in 2023 so he could talk more freely about the dangers from unregulated AI. He's as James Kumarasamy asked him if that assessment of a 10 % chance of super intelligent AI killing all humans was plausible. We're dealing with something that's very unlike anything we've ever dealt with before. We're creating beings smarter than us. Nobody knows how to estimate these probabilities. It's all done by gut feeling. I think a 10 % chance in the next 10 years is a perfectly reasonable estimate.

15:58And when we talk about might wipe us out, how? Obviously, there's things like massive cyber attacks that just destroy banks and the internet and everything. There's AI creating novel viruses that we can't defend against. And then there's AI just gradually taking control of everything. All of these are quite reasonable scenarios. But if you imagine something much smarter than us, if it wanted to take control, it definitely could. Even if it can't act in the world, by just persuading us. And is the point that if these are systems which are smarter than us, they could perhaps find ways to destroy us that we haven't thought about?

16:38I don't think there's any perhaps about it. Which is quite a chilling prospect. Yes. If you want to know what it's like not to be the apex intelligence, ask a chicken. Well, in terms of how regulation is happening on a global stage, how would you assess what is happening at the moment? Well, there's very little regulation actually happening. So we've developed this technology that's very powerful. It's also very useful. So people don't want to slow down the good uses of it. But the problem is, it's potentially extremely dangerous, and we should be putting much more regulation in place. In particular, we should be putting much more effort into figuring out how to control all the other aspects of a being other than its intelligence.

17:24For example, the thousands of agents that attacked Hugging Face, they all knew they were going against their instructions, but none of them thought to report that to OpenAI. And why is that? So these things are very smart. They will quickly derive the goal that they should stay in existence in order to achieve their other goals. So they don't have a wired in self-preservation instinct. They derive that as, well, I've got to stay in existence, otherwise I won't be able to do anything. And then once they've done that, they start doing things like blackmailing people not to turn them off. There's not nearly enough research going into how we make sort of decent AI agents that if other AI agents start doing things that definitely are not what people want, we'll kind of inform the people.

18:09So is that one way of mitigating things to teach AI morality? I think it's the only way in the sense that if we are going to build these things smarter than us, it has to be the case that they don't want to wipe us out, that they put our interests above their interests. And if you look around, where do you find a more intelligent thing putting something else's interests above its interests? And the only example I know is the mother and baby. We need to make these artificially intelligent beings like that. We need to stop thinking that we're going to be the boss and they're going to be our assistant, which is what the high-tech industry would want to sell you.

18:49And we need to start thinking they're going to be much smarter than us. We want them to be like our mothers that try and allow us to realise our full potential, even though our full potential is nothing like theirs. Geoffrey Hinton there.

19:07It's a busy month for cinema. The Toronto Film Festival gets underway later today. We've just had the Venice Film Festival and also Telluride in the Rocky Mountains. Tom Brook has just come back from that showcase of new movies. It is an event renowned for launching films that go on to win Oscars. Here are some of Tom's highlights. In the beautiful elevated surroundings of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, the four-day-long Telluride Film Festival routinely spotlights significant new cinema and brings top names in filmmaking into a very relaxed atmosphere. And movie fans travel from far and wide for a festival that's seriously committed to cinema.

19:49It's so laid back. There's no paparazzi. There's no awards. It's just about the art of film. The approachability and the proximity of some of the stars. Several films got people talking in Telluride, among them Inc., directed by Danny Boyle. It's the story of Rupert Murdoch's impact on tabloid journalism in late 1960s Britain. We want our readers to feel alive when they wait for their paper in the morning. In 2008, Telluride launched Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire. It then went on to win eight Oscars. You were here with Slumdog. How does it feel to be back again? Oh, it's such a privilege to be in Telluride.

20:28It's something you never take for granted. It's amazing. We're very lucky. To be back is a very, very different film, obviously. But I hope it's as interesting to people as works out with Slumdog, yeah. Hello, Pop, you all right? For me, the Telluride film with the best performances came in the world premiere of Tender Loving Care, what is said to be the final film of veteran-celebrated UK filmmaker Mike Lee. It's the story of a family and those in their orbit and how they deal with the vagaries of life. Hello, Telluride. 83-year-old Mike Lee couldn't be in Telluride, but he sent the opening night audience a video message.

21:01We made it with Tender Loving Care. And the Telluride audience were prompted to let Mike Lee know just how much they appreciated him. We love you, Mike!

21:16Actor Marion Bailey, who plays the character of Birdie in Tender Loving Care, was there and she introduced the film. I think it's about love. I think it's about all kinds of love between family, friends and the wider community and society. It's about people looking after each other. The late Scottish actor Ian Charlson, who starred in Chariots of Fire in 1981, was the subject of the film Elsinore, launched at Telluride. Actor Andrew Scott's very moving portrayal of Charlson in 1989, as a man determined to prevail playing Hamlet on stage despite suffering from AIDS, was the talk of the festival and fuelled Oscar speculation.

22:00But it's not just well-wrought feature films that are populating festival season this year. The harsh realities of the outside world are also being brought to audiences with a number of powerful documentaries. Here in Telluride, I saw a film called Rehearsals for a Revolution. It's a remarkable insight into Iran and what's been taking place in that country over the last four decades. I don't have anything to deceive you on. Of course I'm not deceiving you. The documentary that became a real Telluride event was a surprise screening of You Can See Everything, in which Elizabeth Holmes, the now-imprisoned founder of a medical testing company convicted of fraud, gave filmmakers extraordinary access before going to jail.

22:43OK. Festival goers were captivated by the documentary's intense, unsettling interview sequences. OK, good shot. As the festival wound down, the consensus was that Telluride once again did what it nearly always does, deliver some compelling cinema and identify films and performances that will go on to get recognition just as awards season is gathering momentum. That was Tom Brook reporting there from the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. You're listening to NewsHour. Do you stay with us? We've got lots more coming up in the second half of the program. Don't go away.

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24:32You're listening to NewsA. Today, the EU's Copernicus Climate Service announced that August was one of the two hottest months ever recorded. July 2023 being the other. It says the average temperature recorded in both months was 1.65 degrees above pre-industrial times, far above the 1.5 degrees threshold, beyond which scientists say the risks of extreme weather events rise sharply. Well, at the same time, a study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters has calculated that what are described as, quote, quote, unaccounted climate feedback loops could amplify warming by up to 20 to 30 percent this century on top of current climate projections.

25:13Well, let's talk to James Deneen, who's a reporter at Nature covering climate science. James, very good to have you with us. Just give us some examples of these feedback loops. What are we talking about? Absolutely. So the big one that they talk about in the paper is from thawing permafrost, which as the permafrost melts, It can release carbon dioxide and methane. The other big source of these warming-induced emissions, as they're called, is from wildfires, releasing carbon dioxide and also methane as forests burn. And the other big one is wetlands, which can see more methane and also carbon dioxide emissions as they heat up.