this week, click travels to kenya, where piles of electronic waste are making locals choose between lives and livelihoods. translation: it is dangerous work, but we have to do it. . if we do not, we will go hungry. we're also in the rural communities where ai is improving prenatal care. the information that i'll get here will help me . to save the life of a mother. we look at the tech aiming to put museums in the metaverse. and paul's dying to meet the microbes that could clean up the fashion industry. bugs are quite simple creatures. kind of like me and you. if you ever wondered where your old laptops,

phones and tvs go to die, well, every year our planet generates over 50 million tonnes of electronic waste. the problem is thingsjust don't last as long these days. take phones, for example. the entire industry seems geared around us replacing our handset every couple of years or so. but only about a quarter of that e—waste is properly recycled. and that's really bad because our devices contain potentially toxic chemicals. well, michael kaloki has been looking at how one company is trying to combat this in kenya. this is dandora. this community on the outskirts of nairobi is home to one of the largest dump sites, not only in kenya but east africa. although it was declared full 20 years ago, over 800 tonnes of garbage is still dumped on this sprawling 30—acre site every day.

and in recent years, an increasing proportion of this is e—waste. men, women and even children scour the stacks of waste for discarded electronics, breaking them apart for their motherboards, batteries, wiring, anything that can be resold for parts. it's become an important income stream in what is a desperately deprived area. i've come to this part of the dump site to meet an e—waste collector. there are thousands of people who work in the dump site and it's a dangerous environment to work in. stanley mwangi is one of them. translation: we get a lot of e-waste here, as you can see. we find items like motherboards. we repair some of the motherboards and others we just use as replacement parts. anything we can't use, we sell to chinese traders.

there are many buyers for e—waste materials, but the e—waste is not easily found. the items are few and the buyers are many, so the price shoots up. we sell the e—waste by the kilo. traders pay 1,500 shillings, which is about $6 per kilo. he's worked on the dump since 2002 and, as a single parent, says he has no other choice. it is dangerous work, but we have to do it. if we do not, we will go hungry. one of these fingers got chopped off working here, but i had to keep working here to make ends meet. he says the injury was caused by a shard of glass. and while such injuries are common where people don't have access to any protective gear, there are arguably greater dangers to working here.

they are exposed to toxic chemicals such as lead, mercury and cadmium. these chemicals can leach into local water supplies and noxious fumes inhaled when any unwanted e—waste is burned. but while kenya only recycles 1% of its e—waste, this is farfrom being just a kenyan or an african problem. for example, north america only recycles about 15% of its e—waste. while the informal and partial recycling of electronic waste has been the status quo in kenya for decades, one organisation is hoping to change that. so some of the waste from landfills like the one in dandora ends up in e—waste centres such as this one. well, i'm here to find out what the process is when the waste gets here.

the waste electrical and electronics equipment centre collects and recycles a variety of e—waste, ranging from computers and phones to solar panels and refrigerators. at its nairobi headquarters, these are then channelled to the relevant workshop. in one, technicians test and refurbish laptops and tablets so they can be used again. and any device or appliance deemed beyond repair is sent to the dismantling room to be stripped for usable parts. and in another room, hundreds of batteries are upcycled, saving them from contaminating the soil in dumpsites like dandora. at the moment, we are able to receive 240 tonnes - of e—waste per year, though i we have the capacity to process 200 tonnes per month, - which means we are performing way, way, way below capacity. so why then is there this low volume of e—waste being collected? it's due to lack -

of public awareness. the majority of communityj members do not know that e—waste is dangerous. now we are moving ahead to incentivise the sector. i we are now creating - what we call the green points. when you go to some of these conveniencel stores, you'll find bins. and when you go to gas. stations, petrol stations, you'd also find e—waste disposal bins where - you drop your phone, - dead phone, and you are able to get green points. those green points, - you could go to a convenience store to redeem them for a new electronic . device or any other item at a discounted rate. - however, there are also external factors at play here. so, joseph, is all the e—waste that is found in kenya, is that generated here? the e—waste that is produced is as a result of electronic- devices that have been imported to this country. _ some of them are coming as good devices that are able _ to last for a long time, -

others a very short lifespan. we also have other devices that are coming to the country- through illegal channels. they do not go through the required tests. - but of course, we also| have electronic devices coming to this country. disguised as donations. you can't use them for more than even two months. - but despite these hurdles and the prediction that the amount of global e—waste could double by 2050, joseph hopes that organisations such as his could start to make a positive difference. but what difference that could have on the livelihoods of people like stanley who rely on dumps like dandora to survive is now uncertain. translation: i've been able to open a repair shop - with the money i've made here, so i will keep going. i will only stop working when my body gives up.

that was michael. and we're staying in kenya now to look at the issue of maternal health. yeah, yasmin morgan—griffiths has been looking at attempts to widen access to vital health care in remote parts of the country. a woman dies every two minutes due to complications in pregnancy or childbirth. the majority of all maternal deaths are in sub—saharan africa. and in kenya, the problem is actually getting worse. 70% of the population lives in remote rural areas where they're cut off from life—saving infrastructure. not all mums are able to access the right kind of care, transport — getting to the hospital is always an issue. we don't have enough health care workers for the population. big problems, i would say.

not all maternal health clinics across kenya are as well—equipped or as well—staffed as this one in nairobi. but it's hoped the technology being trialled here could help ensure that more mothers—to—be get access to potentially life—saving treatment. this is janefer�*s first glimpse of her baby. the legs. oh, wow. ultrasound scans like these play a key role in ensuring a pregnancy goes smoothly. unfortunately, there's been some bumps in the road forjanefer. last month, i had a complication. . i had a discharge. she was advised to go straight to hospital to get checked out. i was scared. yeah, i was scared. i was like, "maybe i'm losing the baby or something." - luckily, janefer and her baby are both fine, but she also had problems

in her previous pregnancy. i had to go for- caesarean section. and did your doctors tell you that it could have been prevented if you'd had an ultrasound earlier? yeah, they said it could have been prevented. l where you live, is it difficult to get an ultrasound during your pregnancy? it's quite expensive - and you have to go for a long distance to get it. jacaranda health, the organisation that runs this clinic, has partnered with tech giant google to trial a solution that could help save lives. it's important for pregnant women to do ultrasound throughout their pregnancy. the first importance is to check foetal anomalies. initially, as a nurse, we were not able to perform the ultrasound. until now. this ultrasound probe sends video output to a tablet or smartphone, making this system cheaper and much more portable than traditional

ultrasound scanners. artificial intelligence then interprets the image without the need for a sonographer. the information that i'll get here will help me to save the life of a mother and also save the life of the foetus. i've come to google's offices in nairobi to find out more about how their ai models are being developed and how people who aren't sonographers can be trained to use it. if this technology is intended to be so easy that you could train anybody to do it, do you think that i could have a go? i think you definitely could. first, i need to measure the size of the bump and apply my ultrasound gel. so as you smooth it, you'll start to see the imagery. oh, wow. yeah. next, it's time to do the scan. i need to do six sweeps over the abdomen, and the app gives me instructions for every step of the process. you're doing amazing.

thank you. it feels like if i were more confident, this would be much quicker. the ai models then analyse the image. they give two vital pieces of information. the gestational age — that's how many weeks old the foetus is — and the foetal position, or the direction the foetus is facing inside the uterus. so it says gestational age is 23 weeks and two days. the foetal presentation is... i actually can't pronounce that. cephalic. cephalic, what does that mean? thatjust means heads down. non—cephalic positioning could be breech or transverse, which means that the patient might need a c—section or something like that. we're not trying to replace sonographers. humans are very important to providing care, and wejust want to give them additional tools in their toolset. you know, obviously, we've done

this on a model that is created for training purposes. are there challenges to doing this on real human beings who might vary from each other? the models were trained on thousands of patients from different backgrounds, and so the model's seen a lot of different variations. but google needs to collect an even greater diversity of patient data to ensure the system can work for as many people as possible. ai is only ever going to be as good as the data that it's trained on. it's always very difficult to get hold of very good data. so this is something that could take a couple of years to do. it may well show that, actually, this is fine to use in x country but actually doesn't work in y country, so that's where the testing comes in. and if you were to deploy it wider, it's to make sure that you're not creating that bias. you've got to make sure that this is 100% foolproof. there is no margin for error. around 100 scans have been collected in clinical

settings in kenya so far. a lot more than that will be needed before the system is ready for routine use. although the research is still in its early stages, jacaranda health hopes the trial marks the beginning of better days for maternal health in kenya. 10% of mums in rural kenya have access to ultrasound services. if this is available, it will definitely be a game—changer. time for a look at this week's tech news, mehta says it will introduce technology to detect and label images generated by other form and label images generated by otherform ai and label images generated by other form ai tools. the company says it hopes the new tech will spur industry efforts to tackle ai fakery. a team of researchers from the national

university of singapore have developed a wearable assistive device to help visually be impaired people understand objects around it.— impaired people understand objects around it. what type of tea is it? it _ objects around it. what type of tea is it? it is _ objects around it. what type of tea is it? it is back— objects around it. what type of tea is it? it is back to - objects around it. what type of tea is it? it is back to you. - tea is it? it is back to you. the application _ tea is it? it is back to you. the application uses. - tea is it? it is back to you. the application uses. we i the application uses. we want to make ic _ the application uses. we want to make ic more _ the application uses. we want to make ic more accessible i the application uses. we want. to make ic more accessible and affordable, to achieve this we are making attachments to the advice —— device, to speed up processing time and also enhance initial recognition quality. enhance initial recognition iuali . ., ., enhance initial recognition auali . ., ., ., quality. social media giant sna - , quality. social media giant snap. which _ quality. social media giant snap, which operates - quality. social media giant - snap, which operates snapshot, says its plans to cut 10% of its staff, the lay—offs are to reduce hierarchy and creates in person collaboration. served, europe's nuclear research organization says it's four—legged roller —— robot has completed his first radiation test. it is a new addition to

concerns of family of robots. there's been a really strong shift in the museum world. technology is key. i am chante st clair inglis, head of collection services at national museums scotland and i'm one of the project partners for museums in the metaverse. we have 12.6 million object specimens in the collection here at national museums scotland, and the vast majority of those are here at the collections centre where we hold, preserve, research and provide access to them as well. we have been investing in and looking at how we share our collections online for a long time and our goal is to make them accessible to audiences for learning, for enjoyment purposes as well. museums in the metaverse project tries to make - good on the promise of virtual museums. | we can bring objects that aren't togetherl in the real world together — from different collections, i

from different parts of the world. - and in some cases, we can even put back together- things that are broken, or maybe we can bring| back to life things that have been destroyed. i so this is a arago photogrammetry rig. and what it allows us to do is take lots of photographs in a very short period of time. we're able to create a 3d model out of all of those images. once the object is finished, we will then optimise it and prepare the object for being imported into a virtual reality environment. one of the objects that we've started on is this sand timer. it's produced from wood from robert burns cottage. and it's an object that people wouldn't be able to access that regularly due to its fragility and its small size, its shape, so it allows us to get that displayed for a lot more people. we will initially start -

with exemplar experiences, which will act like prototypes and proof of concept, really. | 0r i'm able to pick up and look at edinburgh castle, _ and it's notjust me that gets to do this, right? _ anybody who uses the museums in the metaverse platform - will be able to do this - with objects and environments from their story. for the idea that people - will be able to build their own museum experience and other people will be able _ to experience those creations. we're going to try and track some of the problems - to do with technology. and access technology. but one of the barriers - for virtual museums is not everyone has the equipment . to view them, so not everyone has a virtual reality headset. they are becoming cheaper. they are becoming easier to come by. j but it may yet for a while be the case that you visit - an arcade or a site which has. the equipment waiting for you. one of the opportunities that the virtual presents us is the ability to engage with collections where you are the curator — co—curation, collaboration,

bringing more voices into that narrative is something we are really dedicated to and many museums are, that this puts you in the curating seat. i personally don't think the digital will ever replace the physical. that kind of tradition that we've built up in heritage spaces around material cultural collections, that's been with us for hundreds of years. it'll be interesting to look at how we create that kind of social experience online, but i don't think we're there yet. earlier in the programme, we looked at e—waste. but another big environmental pollutant is chemical dyes — things like textiles, paper, plastic, inks. they're all dyed to make rich colours. but that high demand comes at a high price for the planet, of course. well, paul carter has been to visit a company which is trying to find a natural solution to

this man—made problem. colour is powerful and it's so powerful it can even impact our emotions. but to create those rich pigments that textiles need, not only are chemicals left over in our water systems, but industries need to take from the natural world. the industry as a whole is using upward of 5 trillion litres of water a year, 700,000 tonnes ofjust pigments and dyes, not to mention all the other chemicals that go into textiles and clothing. colorifix have developed a new way of dyeing fabric, and it takes its inspiration from nature. so we start off by finding colours that are interesting in nature, and we then looking in the dna code for the message to make this colour. we then have to basically

copy it, put it into our microorganism. but how do we get from the genetic code to the final dyed fabric? we can mix and match those pieces of dna sequence in different ways, which ultimately come together to build a nice colour and move on to actually building them and putting them into our microbe. with their dna to make a new pigment, the microbes are left to grow in a small scale before being sent off to the analytics team. meet scotty. it's a robotic machine that preps the dna samples. then the team will separate each chemical compound to check every detail of the pigment. once they have the final dna sequence, the microorganism then makes its way to fermentation. what we're looking at here is a fermenter, and what's inside is some of our lovely, colourful bugs. 0ur bugs are quite, quite simple creatures, kind of like me and you. the essentials they need is they like lots of oxygen, they love food — just, again, like us.

that's what they need to grow and, we hope, make pigment as well. we'll continue this growing until we're sure it's kind of eaten all the food in there and it's kind of got as colourful as possible. we can take a sample. this is then what we will dye with. that will go onto the fabric and we all know we wouldn't be too impressed in a shop if, when you're looking through the rack, everything's a slightly different colour. it's really important that we ensure we get the same results every time. we measure out a specificl volume, depending on how much fabric we're using. once the bugs have eaten all their food, it creates a lovely, rich pigment which makes its way to the colouration experts who put it in a special machine to dye it evenly. over at the factory, everything is done on a much larger scale, where it's ready for a manufacturing level. many times you'll find garments that, per kilo of fabric, you use 1.2 kilos of chemical to get to that end product.

you add a lot of chemicals, a lot of water and you're bringing it to a high temperature, right? making a somewhat toxic soup. it's not good enough to just make it greener. and what we do reduces the use of chemicals by 65%, water use by 78% and emissions by 31%, so it makes a real difference to what is a very, very large—volume industry. this problem is far too big for any one player, be it us, one brand, one manufacturer in the supply chain — it's a supply chain—wide problem. our goal is to be on every type of material, working with every brand, because all these players need to do better, right? and pointing the finger, saying fast fashion is the problem or haute couture is the problem doesn't really solve it in the end. it's about the whole supply chain, about how we make these products as a society. and our goal is to change that. that was paul.

and that's all we've got time for. yeah. thanks for watching and we'll see you soon. bye. hello there. instead of snow falling, it's rain that's going to be falling this weekend. and that combined with some snow melt, has already seen large numbers of flood warnings, particularly through the midlands and southern england. the weekend, though, does look like it should be a bit drier than it has been. we've got this weather front, though, bringing some wetter weather towards scotland and we've still got low pressure in charge. but the colder air is getting restricted to the far north of scotland on saturday, with milder conditions elsewhere leading to that snow melting. there may not be a great deal of rain falling. most of the wet weather will be in scotland.

the snow really in the far north over the tops of the mountains there. and we may well get some sunshine later in southern scotland, also northern ireland and a brighter day for northern england. some sunshine elsewhere across england and wales with a few showers, mainly for south wales and the south west of england. we're making 12 or 13 degrees in the south east of england and seven degrees across large parts of scotland. so the milder air is pushing north. and the last of the cold air moves away from the north of scotland. so we may have some brighter conditions here as well. maybe the chance of a bit of rain, though, coming from some weather fronts through the north sea near those coasts. 0therwise quite cloudy to begin with, a bit of sunshine coming through the odd shower around southern and western areas. nothing particularly heavy, still a bit blustery through the english channel. otherwise the winds will be light and those temperatures are going to be nearer 8 to ten degrees. so continuing to turn a bit milder in scotland in particular. there is some slightly cooler air though coming in from the atlantic on this polar maritime air mass that's

originating from the northwest and swinging round to the uk as a westerly wind. and that's going to bring sunshine and showers really for monday and the bulk of the showers will be towards the northwest. and because it's a bit colder, it could be some winter illness over the hills in particular, one or two showers heading towards cumbria too. but for many eastern parts of the uk, monday should be dry with some sunshine around. those temperatures are nearer seven to 9 degrees for the start of the week. that low pressure still to the north of scotland, still feeding in a few showers overnight. and then this weather system is coming in from the southwest on tuesday. so still a few wintry showers for northern scotland, some sunshine in the rest of the country and for northern ireland for a while. but the cloud will increase quickly across england and wales and across wales, southern england. this is where we're probably going to see the bulk of the rain, especially in the afternoon. ahead of that, we could make eight or nine degrees in north east england and also much of scotland. things are milder for the south and this mild south—westerly wind will bring some further rain overnight and into wednesday.

things are a little bit chillier in the north of scotland where it's generally dry here with some sunshine, but some outbreaks of rain developing in northern ireland and also southern scotland. and that hang back of rain across southern england and through the english channel means we may see some sunshine through the midlands, across to some eastern parts of england where temperatures are reaching 11 or 12 degrees. now, looking further ahead, some uncertainty. yes, some computer models want to take areas of low pressure and continue to move them over the uk. what is marginally more likely is that that area of low pressure is going to move away, and anything coming in from the atlanticjust going to get stalled out at sea as we get a bit of ridging across the uk. and that happens because the jet stream is going to really buckle into this sort of shape. we're going to be on the colder side of the jet stream. so later next week into the weekend, things may turn a little bit colder, bringing the risk of some frost, but it

should be a bit drier.

live from washington, this is bbc news. coming up — our special report on the ongoing crisis in sudan as the civil war there rages on, displacing millions and leaving the country

on the brink of humanitarian disaster. sudan's warring factions have agreed to talks on allowing aid into the country — but a political solution seems a distant reality. plus, we'll hear from humanitarian workers, diplomats, and experts to help explain the conflict, and prospects for a resolution to the crisis. hello. i'm carl nasman. welcome to this bbc news special report on the war in sudan. the united nations recently urged the international community not to forget the civilians caught in the middle of sudan's civil war. millions of people in africa's third largest country are in desperate need of humantarian aid, after ten months of fighting. first, here's more on the roots of the conflict. sudan is engulfed in a vicious power struggle between the sudanese army's de facto leader,