02/08/2017 Outside Source

Hello, I'm Ros Atkins, this is Outside Source.

We will start in Venezuela where there has been an explosive

accusation about last Sunday's elections. That the turnout numbers

on Sunday the 30th of July for the constituent elections were tampered

with. Those accusations have been called irresponsible.

President Trump has signed into law new sanctions against Russia -

That sanctions bill also targets North Korea -

and it comes as the US Secretary of State strikes a conciliatory

tone after weeks of tensions with the country.

We do not seek a regime change. We do not seek the collapse of the

regime. Barcelona confirms its star striker

Neymar wants to leave - and it could make him the most

expensive player ever. We are used to dramatic of elements

in Venezuela at the moment, but this ranks as one of the most dramatic.

"Venezuela authorities tampered with constitutional

That from the head of the company which provided the voting machines.

Smartmatic has provided a lecture and technology in Venezuela since

2004. Even in moments of political conflict and division we have been

satisfied that the voting process and the count has been completely

accurate. It is therefore with the deepest regret that we have to

report... that the turn-out numbers on Sunday

30th July for the Constituent Assembly in Venezuela

were tampered with. The Venezuela election Council has

responded by saying the accusation is irresponsible. Will grant joins

us now. How do we decide who is right? Has any evidence been offered

by either side? So far it's just a war of words. What's interesting is

that you are right, the latest is that the election Council here, the

head of the election authorities in Venezuela, has come out all guns

blazing, and she says that he claims from the Smartmatic company that

runs the voting machines in Venezuela and has done since 2004,

that their claims are irresponsible and baseless. You are right, who do

we choose? Who is telling the truth? It's hard to say, except for the

fact that for a long time the Venezuelan government has heralded

that company as the reason it's elections are free and fair, so if

it suddenly calls them baseless, it throws that into question. It looks

like it will rumble on. The Venezuelan government have no

intention of backing down on this and will continue to say they drew

in more than 8 million votes for as long as this conversation goes on.

You have tried to help us all week that this vote is to elect a

constituent Samba, which if it wants to can alter the Venezuelan

constitution. -- constituent assembly. Is the contention from the

company that the outcome of the election is incorrect or is it just

about the amount of people taking part. The outcome would never be

incorrect because of the fact the opposition boycotted it. That Tim

threw's government would win was never in question. The turnout is

important, because a couple of weeks before the opposition had their own

informal popular referendum and they say they gathered around 7.5 million

votes. That day queues were seen not just in Venezuela but countries all

over the world that have large Venezuelan populations. Here we did

not see so many cues, not by a long way, so the suggestion, and this

comes from the opposition, that whatever was going to happen the

Maduro government had to be seen to be beating that earlier popular

informal referendum that has carried out in polling stations in

roundabouts and people's front yards. It was very ad hoc. It's a

confusing situation, and confusing for those of us here. It still has a

long way to go before there is any clarity. I think most Venezuelans

are concerned there isn't more fighting on the streets, more

demonstrations and more death. We have had more than 120 deaths since

this whole thing began. Another element of the story to look at and

that is how the watching world is reacting. If you watched us

yesterday we reported that two leading opposition figures in

Venezuela had been taken from their homes in the middle of the night and

taken to a military prison. Donald Trump has condemned that is the

actions of the Maduro dictatorship, and he has added...

"The United States holds Maduro personally responsible

for the health and safety of Mr Lopez, Mr Ledezma

And this is the US secretary of state.

What we want to see is for Venezuela to return to its constitution,

returned to scheduled elections and allow the people of Venezuela to

have the voice in the government that they deserve. We are evaluating

all our policy options as to what we can do to create a change of

conditions where either Maduro decides he doesn't have a future and

wants to leave of his own accord, or we can return the government

processes back to their constitution. The problem for

America is the more it criticises Venezuela, the more it plays into

the narrative of Mr Maduro and the narrative originally promoted by

Hugo Chavez. Definitely. And the more they put sanctions on the top

leadership and President Maduro personally, and many Venezuelans

fear on Venezuela as a country, the idea that there would be some kind

of Cuba style US economic embargo on the country, is very worrying too

many Venezuelans. But the more that happens, the more it could

potentially strengthen Maduro instead of working against him. In

the Cuban example, President Obama decided it simply wasn't working any

more so decided to roll back some of the parts of the US economic

sanctions, but that has taken six decades. If they were to start doing

the same thing in Venezuela, I think there is general consensus that it

would hurt the poorest instead of the Maduro government and it would

essentially backfire Washington. Thank you. The Americans applying

pressure to Venezuela. And they have also applied more pressure to

Russia, North Korea and Iran. Donald Trump has signed through

fresh sanctions against Russia, particularly because it encroaches

on the executive branch's "Despite its problems,

I am signing this bill He finished the statement

by telling us. "I built a truly great company worth

many billions of dollars. As President I can make far

better deals with foreign This is to do with who can lead

America's response and interaction with these countries. We also had

this from Russia... They are telling us that Mr Medvedev, a senior figure

in that we're putting's administration says it an end to

hope for better ties with the Trump administration. We can go to Laura

Bicker live in Washington, DC. A few of us thought those hopes had

already gone. I think right at the start of the Trump administration

there was hopes of a reset with Russia. Both Donald Trump and

Vladimir Putin looked for it. When President Obama heard from the US

intelligence agencies that they believed Russia meddled in the US

election, President Obama responded by expelling Russian diplomats. At

the time Putin said he would not react and would work with the new

Trump administration. Here we are more than six months later and

Congress has done in acting for Donald Trump with regards to their

reaction to this alleged meddling and Russia's actions in Crimea. When

it comes to Congress's response, they have made their decision clear.

But it all went to President Trump's desk and he wasn't happy. During the

White House briefing we had in the last hour, press secretary Sara

Huckabee Sanders said it wasn't the fact it was sanctions President

Trump was concerned about, but he believed Congress had overreached

and was stepping onto the White House lawn when it comes to

responsibility. He believes it should be up to him to punish Russia

and Iran and North Korea when appropriate, not Congress. That's

one of the reasons why he mentions in his statement him being head of a

company and him being elected to perform such measures. But the swift

reaction from Russia, A full-scale trade war, that is what the four

Russian Foreign Ministry has described it as and they say the

relationship is perilous. Iran say the sanctions violate the nuclear

deal and they will respond in an appropriate and proportionate

manner. This is the wire copy of the Russian statement. We can talk about

North Korea next and we will bring Laura back in.

A really interesting statement from US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

We do not seek a regime change. We do not seek the collapse of the

regime and we do not seek accelerated acceleration of the

peninsula. We do not seek an excuse to send our military north of the

38th parallel. We are trying to convey to the North Koreans, we are

not your enemy or your threat. You are presenting an unacceptable

threat to us. Quite a shift in tone. Consider that statement when I tell

you US Senator Lindsey Graham in a recent television interview said...

There is a military option to destroy North Korea's missile

programme and North Korea itself. If thousands die, they will die over

there, they will not die here, and President Trump has told me that to

my face. Quite different messages coming from the White House and the

State Department. The secretary of state going on a big trip, it will

be difficult for him to pitch this. It puts him in a bit of a bind. If

he's heading out to speak to leaders in the region, they will sit back

and wonder, which authority, on whose authority is he actually

speaking. We had one message from the White House and one from the

State Department. So Rex Tillerson now has a difficult job because he

has not got to negotiate with China, especially after what Donald Trump

tweeted about China at the weekend, almost putting the blame for the

North Korean situation in the Chinese lap. And then Rex Tillerson

saying it's a North Korean problem, and not a Chinese problem. So when

it comes to his negotiating skills and power, it puts him in a bit of a

bind. It will be an interesting trip for him. Laura Bicker in Washington,

DC. Some of you might be watching in

south Asia if you are a plate. Our next story is about extreme weather

warnings in that part of the world. This is long-term -

by the end of the century high humidity and temperatures may get

to the limit of what They say India, Pakistan,

Bangladesh will be affected. They contain around a fifth

of the world's population. I spoke to Envrionment Correspondent

Matt McGrath about the science Most of the time when we talk about

climate change and rising temperature, we talk about air

temperatures. These scientists have looked at humidity be, it that's the

real killer. When you get above 35 degrees, human bodies can't survive.

We all die in six hours, the fittest person alive. Scientists have

projected forward the climate models to the end of the century and they

find large areas of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh will be exposed to

that kind of temperature. Nobody is exposed to this 35 degrees threshold

at the moment, but about a third of that part of the world will be at

the end of the century if nothing is done. Why are we focused on southern

Asia? There are other parts of the world like Iran and the Gulf

countries where temperatures are even higher. What's unique is the

combination of temperatures and people and poorer people working in

agriculture. Millions of people who work outdoors. If these projections

are maintained, a lot of these people would be in conditions they

can't survive in. It feeds into a broader discussion about how the

entire world should respond to rising temperatures. One of the more

hopeful lines in the study is that if we can put into place some of the

restrictions talked about in Paris, we could stop a large number of

these types of deaths that would occur in these humidity editions. Do

you think this type of study will influence the discussions we have

about the conditions in which we live. It seems to be a more

sophisticated portrait than simply saying the temperatures go up by

this much. It's on a broad scale. This is using a number of very

sophisticated climate models, it will not go down to the granular,

city or regional area. It looks at a bigger area and it can't hope beyond

that at this moment in time. Is it political? Sometimes there is a

sense scientists put out data because they look for outgoings. I

don't think so. Research has been looked at before in Iran. They are

looking at the combination of heat and people in these exposed regions

which is why they say believes people will be at risk. In a few

minutes we will turn to Donald Trump's choice for ambassador to the

Netherlands. If you have heard what he has had to say about the

Netherlands and also on Muslims, you will realise why this has got a lot

of attention. Fifty army cadets aged between 12

and 17 have had to be rescued in Northern Ireland after getting

into difficulties in The group who'd travelled

there from England - 16 of them were understood to be

suffering from hypothermia. The Ministry of Defence has

confirmed that all are now Our Ireland Correspondent Chris

Buckler is at the scene This afternoon up this pretty

steep and narrow path, 4X4 rescue vehicles have been

driving up and coming back down with teenagers in the back,

many of them on stretchers, Others suffering from

ankle and leg injuries. Taking a look at the Mourne

Mountains, there is still a little bit of mist, it looks quite calm

at the moment but the weather can change in a moment

and that is exactly what happened to these cadets from

the Cleveland Army Cadet Force. There were caught out in very strong

wind, in heavy rain. At some stages the rescue teams

tell me that visibility was down to perhaps 20 or 30 yards

and that is why there This is Outside Source live

from the BBC newsroom. The company that provided

the technology for Venezuela's voting system says the turnout

in Sunday's controversial election was inflated

by at least one million votes. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has

hit a record high today. It's an index of 13 major US

companies. That kind of 32,000 points.

This graph is from Bloomberg - you can see a spike in November

after President Trump was elected, and then again in January

We can go live to New York. Is it too simplistic to say this is just

down to Donald Trump? Trump doesn't tell the whole story. The Dow Jones

and all US markets have been on an absolute tear for the last few

months. The Dow Jones closing today above 22,000 points. That marks the

sixth straight time that the Dow Jones has had a record close. It's

quite significant but a few things are at play. First, its earnings

season, so a lot of companies report quarterly earnings and 70% of

companies have already reported and by and large a lot of the companies

have reported pretty good earnings. The baking sector is doing well, the

oil sector is doing well now the prices are rebounding. We heard from

Apple yesterday. Their earnings were much better than people expected and

as a result we saw Apple's shares hit another all-time high in trading

and that really lifted the Dow Jones to where it is now. Presumably when

the big companies do well, that doesn't automatically mean the whole

economy will be performing equally well. There are other factors at

play. Exports are higher. Investors are feeling more confident now the

Federal Reserve, the American central bank, has said they will

raise interest rates but do it slowly. They are communicating

really well. Some outside factors. And there is somebody who is

business friendly at the White House. When we look at investors and

Wall Street, they are pretty much shrugging off the fact that

legislatively we have not seen some of the things President Trump wanted

to get accomplished, like reforming the tax code or getting the $1

billion infrastructure spending bill. That said, we have somebody

that is business friendly and Wall Street is responding to that. Thank

you as always. We can go to the car industry now.

German carmakers have avoided a government ban on diesel cars

by agreeing to a software upgrade which is designed to

It comes in the wake of the diesel emissions scandal,

two years ago Volkswagen admitted installing cheat software

It caused a lot of problems for the company and for people. Volkswagen

had put aside $19 billion to cover the cost of it and it is now thought

the bill might be even higher. Here's the BBC's

Jenny Hill in Berlin. Nothing keeps Germany's car

manufacturers awake at night more than the prospect of diesel engines

being banned from German roads. Air pollution levels here are now

becoming so high in inner cities that they regularly breach legal

limits. Last week a court in Stuttgart upheld a proposal to ban

diesel cars from the city itself. Having said that, the German

government were able as a result to sit the manufacturers down today at

the so-called diesel summit and say that something needs to happen. I

must say that this evening the outcome of those high-level talks

has been rather widely regarded as proof that the German government is

either unable or unwilling to really bring the, albeit tarnished but

powerful automotive industry to deal. 5 million cars will be

retrofitted with the software that should reduce emissions by something

like a quarter to a third in a vehicle, we are told. In mind that

the majority of those vehicles are made by Volkswagen. My understanding

is that half of them, 2.5 million vehicles, were due to be retrofitted

with the software anyway. There is a sense here that perhaps the

government and automotive industry could have gone a lot further.

You may well not know him - if you're watching in

the Netherlands, you're about to see a lot more of him.

He's been confirmed as Donald Trump's choice

It's an interesting selection - here's Mr Hoekstra in 2015

in a discussion about Muslims in Europe.

The Islamic movement has now got to a point where they have put Europe

into chaos. Chaos in the Netherlands. There are cars being

burned, politicians are being burned. With the influx of the

Islamic community, and, yes, there are no go zones in the Netherlands.

They are tearing the Dutch apart, politically.

He went on to describe his experience after

The little railroad station we went through in Buddha pest, there were

15 of us going through the Soviet era efficiency. -- in Budapest. But

the next day it was surrounded by 10,000 invaders, refugees, people

climbing through the window of the train we would have been on if we

had stayed longer. When they come, they don't integrate. They are not

assimilated. They become marginalised. They may be OK when

they first get there, but they are the next wave of jihadists in

Europe, the people who have not become assimilated. A few things

warranting comment there. I spoke to Mr Zwart,

from the Washington bureau of the NOS, the Netherlands

public broadcaster. I think the reaction to the reaction

was threefold. The natural reaction is, who? Nobody knows the US

ambassador to our country. It's not important to people in their daily

lives so they don't care too much. But then they hear that he is from

Dutch heritage, and his name is very Dutch. He was born in 1953, and that

fills people initially with a sense of pride. The Dutch feel a very

strong sense of connection to the United States and feel they were at

the cradle, the birth of New York. They feel a strong connection to the

United States. And then they see videos like you just showed, and

then the reaction changes. What Pete Hoekstra says goes directly against

a lot of the social and economical values we have in the Netherlands.

I'm sure you want to know a little bit more about that. I would like to

know about it, and I covered Dutch elections where immigration was a

big issue, but is not accurate to say it was tearing the Netherlands

apart. Do you think he has exaggerated the importance of

immigration? Absolutely he was exaggerating. The fact he says

politicians are being burned in the Netherlands, being set on fire,

that's a blatant lie, let's be honest. The fact he says there are

no go zones, dangerous criminal no-go zones with criminals and

immigrants, that's absolutely not true. Does that mean we in the

Netherlands have a happy go lucky, all inclusive society? Absolutely

not. There are a lot of people in the Netherlands that feel

overwhelmed by the numbers of refugees coming in. They watch the

news and they see the terrorist attacks, like in your country, and

they are worried about it. There is a reason why the right-wing Freedom

party of Geert Wilders did so well in the previous elections in March.

But does that mean that every Dutch person feels that there is a tsunami

of Muslim immigrants coming to the Netherlands like Geert Wilders is

saying and what Pete Hoekstra is condoning, that's absolutely not

true. It goes against the values we have in the Netherlands. We try to

resist in the Netherlands that kind of rhetoric that divides the country

and doesn't bring us anywhere. If you're watching in the Netherlands

you welcome to give your reaction to that news of the new US ambassador

to your country. That's it for this half of outside source. I will be

back in a couple of minutes time when we will have the latest on this

potential deal between Barcelona and Paris St Germain. Neymar could break

the world transfer record. We will be talking about floods and

typhoons in this weather forecast. Much of our time will