the director of the fbi. mr trump said he'd lost confidence in james comey and the bureau needed new leadership. democrats claim it's an attempt to derail the fbi's investigation into allegations of collusion between russia and the trump campaign. two more people have been killed in another day of anti—government protests across venezuela, bringing the number of dead close to a0 in over a month. young protestors in caracas threw bottles at soldiers firing tear gas and water cannon. government supporters held their own demonstration. the bbc has gained exclusive access to foreign fighters in syria, who are trying to get back to europe, as so—called islamic state extremists continue to lose ground. after weeks of fighting, us backed forces are preparing an assault on the group's last major stronghold of raqqa after recapturing the city of tabqa. it's time now for click. this week: the coolest history lesson in history. the smallest car race in the world.

and we are with the doctor as something goes bump in the night. school, it's changed a lot since i went through the education mangle all those many years ago. many years ago. the school buildings may look the same but technology has been infusing education for quite a while now. we have smart whiteboards, we have increasing use of tablets and laptops. we have e—textbooks instead of textbooks, but also there are some systems which mean

the way in which kids learn and are taught is changing completely. it seems many tech giants want to become part of education. after all, an early introduction to their brands may one day add up to a greater number of users. microsoft this week launched its education offering which includes a new version of windows called windows s, a budget surface pro in various colours and some tweaks to its office applications. apple's teaching tool classroom had a face—lift last month and now offers more tools for teachers. but before both of these came google classroom. and today i'm finding more about it from mr lickfold, director of learning at tring secondary school. they have been using this online system for the past 18 months to teach and monitor the students‘ progress. today i'm learning about the galapagos islands and i have to say the lesson that chris has constructed certainly looks more engaging than my old textbooks.

but tech can do a lot more than just provide media rich lesson plans. we're able to personalise what we do far more than we have ever done before and take them to different resources that are available in the system. every student's learning journey will be different. taking teaching online also means teachers have a lot more access to children's individual learning data and even their thought processes. for example, this browser extension draftback lets the teacher watch how an essay was written and refined. if i've got a student who in preparation for their exams is not constructing their paragraphs correctly, i can say, "ok, let's look at how you constructed your particular paragraph. what did you do? where did you develop it? what can you do differently?" if it's maybe two or three paragraphs and they spent so long on the first one then i can also just say, "look, this is how long you spent on this first document, it's like half an hour. you only spent five minutes

on the second and third one." the kids also seem to like the learning experience. lots of time there will be teachers at home and we can still do work at home and teachers can still be there and they can see actually see how much we've actually done. if your teacher does not believe that you have spent the amount of time required on the homework, then you can say, "actually i did because look at the edit history." it's so much quicker than handing in work waiting until another lesson to get it back whereas now you can just hand it in and in 20 minutes you can have it back. using online tools and data is one way to enhance learning in schools, but lara lewington has been looking at other tech that promises to change how children learn completely. vr, robots, holograms, it wasn't like this in my day. i am robot. at the bet education show earlier this year we saw some of the most cutting edge ideas heading to the classroom soon. over the past few months i've seen quite a few devices that bring together the idea of kids coding and toys aiming to make the activity more fun.

but good old lego here have gone a step further. they are trying to recreate real life situations where robots would be used so that children can find problems and then find the solution and the mission we have here is for a space robot which needs to move around the space base collecting these theses all together and taking them back to one place. but obviously the coding should do that bit. using the drag and drop blocks to create sequences that carry out actions is just part of the learning process as science is being taught at the same time. but brickso's vision of what could be learned through these small plastic blocks was quite different. look at this. this is a way to bring your existing lego set to life. it has got a couple of led lights, a sensor, and these blocks actually conduct electricity. from there you can create

whateverspinning, moving, lighting functions take your fancy. but this use of technology isn't just about teaching ict. this adaptive learning is also about employing new methods of teaching traditional classes. the teacher guides with experience but as a student you can really roam about. this is google expedition. now, jen here is going to play the part of a teacher. she will be talking through what we are all looking at through the goggles at the same time. that actually represents all of you. the pictures are amazing. i mean, looking at the difference between the healthy lungs and the smoker‘s lungs i definitely think we should stick with the kids. the idea of an image in your mind is certainly something that could be easier to maintain than just someonejust talking. but my issue is actually with the idea of wearing the goggles. they're fine for a couple of minutes but then i do feel the urge to take them off so i can't imagine actually wearing them for a full half—hour lesson or beyond.

many of these ideas will be picked up by individual schools, but although the ideas and devices are out there, the challenge comes in making them available to the masses and that is something which one not for profit in finland, a country considered to have one of the world's best education systems, is trying to overcome. i would say that education is one of the few big industries that is still waiting to be disrupted. one of the biggest challenges in our education system is that it is based on the ideals of the industrial world, so it is kind of like teaching everyone to be the same. and in tomorrow's world it is crucial to be individual. one idea turns things on its head though, focusing not simply on new ways of teaching, but firstly analysing how we learn. well, i am on my way to maths class which should cause me a bit of concern because i am not sure i remember that much from school, but with this class everybody is having their own private lesson. the teacher doesn't stand up and project their voice to start the session.

the kids take their places at computers were century ai will take you through the lesson. this artificial intelligence system aims to teach each pupil at their own pace and in a way that suits them best, constantly getting to know them better and tracking their progress. the entire purpose of this machine is to learn how your brain learns and then utilise that data, and it constantly adapts, to provide them with a top—tier education at any single moment and then takes that data and offers it to the teacher in real—time. here the students generate the data. it's provided by real—time teachers and they can intervene when necessary and they can spend more time on the human interactions with the student, the pastoral care that they need to provide to that individual. teachers can share their content around the world with other people using century, so any given subject could have numerous options the machine could select from based on a student's focus

and learning levels. and if they choose to manually switch, then it tracks and considers their preferences too. what do you feel are the challenges? sometimes like if you are not too sure on a question and you've watched the videos and stuff, it's easy to like have a human explain it to you, but the computer does make it as easy as possible. whilst of course i can see the benefits of personalised education there is one thing playing on my mind. that is the amount of screen time. we have had plenty of teachers, notjust parents, saying do you really want them staring at a screen or an ipad? and it's not the answer and it's not binary and i think that's really important. we don't think teachers should be replaced, we think we need more teachers, we just think teachers should be spending their time teaching and inspiring and imparting knowledge of the subject that they really understand. there's no shortage of ideas yet naturally putting them to the test requires people willing to take a chance on them.

but clearly the idea of technology giving an overhaul to how we educate our kids doesn't seem far away. hello and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week that tesla boss elon musk talked about tunnels again. he's proposed an underground network where your car gets shuttled from a to b on an electric skate that could go up to 130mph. the name of his new venture? the boring company. it was also the week that users of messaging app whatsapp were left asking what's ‘appening? after the service mysteriously went down for several hours around the world, and the bank accounts of 02 customers in germany were drained after the ss7 mobile telecommunications system was hacked. we covered the ss7 vulnerability on the show last year. over in sweden the world's fastest camera's been developed. lund university's camera can capture 5 trillion images per second whilst other conventional high—speed

cameras typically capture 100,000. instead of capturing images one by one this captures several coded images at once and pieces them together into a video afterwards. it will be used to film things like brain activity and chemical reactions. and finally, in an effort to help robots run better in the future this ostrich—like bot can spread up to iomph and has been cleverly designed to self balance without the need for sensors or computer processing. a single motor drives the bot‘s legs forward in an elliptical motion, injecting more power when it feels resistance. look at it, it's got a mind of its own. right, everyone down to the pub for a swift half, a game of bar billiards and a battle with some giant bugs. sounds like the perfect evening for mark chislak. there are a couple of things that

you always find in a british pub. number one is pints of beer. in some drinking shops there are distractions like darts. and of course virtual reality headsets. vr in pubs? how ever will you find your pint? the big problem for most people with virtual reality is space. you just don't have the space in a normal sized living room to play vr games properly. the headsets have got cables attached to them which you can easily trip over and then you've got furniture and walls that you can bang into. that is where pubs come in. pubs are generally bigger than the house that you live in so there's no problem with space and they afford you the opportunity of a truly social virtual reality experience because people can see what you're doing.

so, the walls in here are green and that means the spectators that are watching me can see the environment that i am in and also if i back myself up to them i feel that they're soft, they're padded so players cannot injure themselves if they get a little bit too energetic and throw themselves around in space. it's like a soft play area for adults. the combination of public house and virtual reality is the brainchild of these guys. they've used their background in satellite technology, it and engineering to create this setup. so what made you guys think that vr and pubs went together like a pie and a pint? we thought we wanted to do a vr arcade, but arcades have a stale and outdated image and so we were looking for a good venue to do virtual reality in public. when you're involved with alcohol there's always a degree of risk to the gear and the equipment overall, so we have had to rig up harnesses so if people fall over

they don't damage themselves. the harnesses also protect the headsets so they don't fall on the ground. enough talk, it's time to try out the specially designed vr rig. we've got the vive plugged into the seat belt arrester system which will catch you when you fall. in order to make players safe it is crucial that the cables for the headsets are kept out of the way. i have a harness that i have to put on. it goes on there. and then you put this in at the back here. and now no matter how much you turn around this cable is not going to get caught in your head or on your back. an ingenious solution to the cable problem that everybody finds with vr headsets. ok, now i've played tonnes of games in vr before and as always i'm immediately transported from the space that i was in, this pub, into this sewer and zombies are coming from pretty much every direction. reload, reload.

0h! you don't really notice the cable that you are wearing and the harness. i thought you would, but it's kind of... i don't notice it is there at all. what have you discovered about the type of games that are best to play in this environment? our rule of thumb is basically any more than one button is too complicated. most of the people who are playing have never played virtual reality before. and it's enough of a surprise for them to find themselves in a computer game. you don't want them to then have to remember six or seven button combinations as well. double your gun, double your fun. so this is where nice, simple games can easily be demonstrated. it's a wave shooter, and so i have just got waves and waves of bad guys trying to attack me. the aim is simple — fight them off. how do people fare when they have been in the vr when they have had a couple of drinks?

it's a bit like playing pool. you get progressively better, and then you get a lot worse all of a sudden. it's really, really frantic. i don't think i can stand more than five minutes in here, simply because i'm getting really hot! 0h! and i am done. well, it's somebody else‘s turn, and it's my turn to order at the bar. 0h. now, does this look like a race track to you? does this look like a car? well, last weekend, six teams took to the track in toulouse, in france, for the world's first nanocar race. the nanocars are specially designed molecules which are invisible to the human eye. nano things are very, very small. one nanometre is 30,000 times thinner than a human hair. in ideal cases, we try to build

molecules which have the shape of a car, that is some kind of a chassis and four wheels, six teams competed, representing france, switzerland, japan, germany, the usa, and there was a joint us and austrian team. the tiny racetrack for most teams was made of gold. now, this is because gold is so soft its surface can be made extremely flat, as in, there is not even an atom out of place. and that does take some time to prepare. once the nano cars are in position on the track, the teams use the tip

of a scanning, tunnelling microscope to propel the vehicles with tiny electric charges. they have 30 hours to race 100 nanometres and back. six teams started, with no guarantee that they would all finish. but there is historical precedent here. “118911, there was the first ever car race in the world. in the end it took one team only 19 minutes to finish the race, but they did use a different track.

if we had used the gold, it was going to be uncontrollably fast. so we used a silver surface, which is actually a slower surface. so we slowed it down so we could control it better around the pylon. we never revealed the structure of our car until race day. there was no requirement to reveal the structure of the car. because we worked so hard to come up with these design features, we didn't feel that we wanted to reveal that to the world until race day. and looking at their cars we knew that they were going to be a little bit slower because number one, they were very big. the higher the molecular weight, the harder it is to move it. number two, they had aeromatic wheels. we knew that was going to slow them down. even though it was originally deemed a 36—hour race, we knew that we were going to be able to finish much faster than that. the second team to finish raced on the standard gold course, and took over seven hours. the organisers decided to declare both the swiss team and the us—austrian team joint

winners, as they had raced in different circumstances. the tech used in the race will help improve the imaging capabilities of the world's most powerful microscopes, and the car design process has pharmaceutical applications for making designer molecules. as it was, in the world's first nano race, every team will have plenty of thinking to take back to their tiny drawing boards. now, you may remember last year we tickled your earbuds with something called binaural sound. now, this is a way of recording audio so when you listen back through headphones, the sounds actually sound like they are coming from the right place in 3—d space. well, it turns out someone was listening. notjust someone, but the doctor, and he invited kate russell to hear all about it. go and have a look. why me?

you're physically bigger. maybe it'sjust the central heating. oh, sorry, didn't mean to scare you. unlike a new episode of doctor who, that uses binaural sound to really get inside your head. i have come to south wales, where the episode knock knock was filmed. in this spooky—looking house, the doctor investigates some strange noises. what's going on? using binaural sound, the show‘s producers are able to ramp up the fright factor by placing sound effects all around the listener, so they feel like they are actually inside the room with the actors. so if you see a normal, digital audio workstation, everything is layered up in tracks. but actually, we can see those tracks on the computer as little objects, like you are looking

down on top of a room. so you can see these dots with a cross showing where the left and right is, and the up—and—down axis. when the sounds are then put through into the bbc renderer, which is a piece of software that the r&d team have made, then you can see where those sounds are hanging in 3—d space. to experience the binaural effect you must be using stereo headphones. even a top—of—the—range 5.1 surround sound speaker systems will not deliver the results, as the microscopic time delays in sounds arriving at your ears are vital to creating the 360—degree immersive effect. that was super, super scary and spooky and atmospheric. very subtle. if you are expecting the kind of like sideshow act ofjumping around sound that really wows you, this is not what this is about. this is about a subtle experience of placing you in a three—dimensional soundscape. the reason why this episode lent itself so brilliantly

to the binaural mix is because of it being a kind of horror — playing with the horror genre, and the tropes of that, and a lot of what makes things scary is what you don't see, and building up the atmosphere to that moment of scare is really what the audience are looking for. we were told 3—d tv was going to be the next big thing. well, that didn't happen. so why should this be any different? the reason why binaural is really taking off now is because we're in the age of the smartphone and the tablet. people are consuming their media with headphones. the headphones are hugely popular. we've got — even in my family, my kids will sit down watching their own content, that they're interested in, with a pair of headphones so as not to disturb each other. i think what will happen when people experience binaural audio with tv content, radio content, and then they go back to stereo, they'll feel a little bit — it's quite a claustrophobic feeling.

and you think i want that other sound, please. what was that? it was binaural, let me have some more of that, please. i think that is where we will start to see binaural really take off. this spooky episode will be broadcast with regular sound on uk tvs this weekend. i'm afraid viewers from the rest of the world will have to wait. for the binaural experience, watch it on iplayer. i recommend a darkened room, some decent stereo headphones, and a steely nerve. and remember, if you do hear knocking sounds in the night, it's probablyjust your pipes. probably. wow, can't wait to see, and more importantly hear, that episode. but then i love doctor who. can't wait to see every episode. that is it for this week. follow us on twitter throughout the week. thank you for watching, and we will see you soon. hello there.

after the dry weather that we have been experiencing for days and weeks now, there is finally a change on the way, courtesy of these lumps of cloud, which have been bringing some quite vicious thunderstorms across spain and portugal, now on the march northwards. so many of us will see some showery rain and perhaps some thunderstorms over the next couple of days, and with that, a feed of warm, southerly winds, some humid air moving in our direction for the end of the week. so yes, those temperatures climbing. quite a muggy feel to the weather, with the risk of some thunderstorms. in fact, there could be the odd flash of lightning as some showers approach the far south through the first part of thursday morning. so, down towards the south coast, one or two showers to start the day. further north, for the likes of london, east anglia, should be a fine and sunny start.

could be one or two thundery showers across the channel islands, into the south—west of england. not expecting huge amounts of rain at this stage, but could just be a few sprinkles, and the odd flash of lightning overhead, some of that getting into the south of wales. but north wales, the west midlands, north—west england, starting the day with some sunshine, and actually a relatively chilly start to the day here. a fine start for northern ireland and much of scotland, but some extra cloud across caithness and sutherland, fringing into parts of aberdeenshire, certainly across the northern isles, where there will be the odd spot of rain. much of northern england seeing fine weather, with some sunshine to start off the day. now, as we go through the day, there will be a lot of dry weather once again. some spells of sunshine, but we will see this very patchy, showery rain moving its way northwards, and then into the afternoon, the chance that we could spark off some really quite vicious downpours and thunderstorms. not everywhere, but if you catch one, well, you will know about it, a lot of rain in a

short space of time. temperatures in the south up as high as 22, maybe 23 degrees. a little bit cooler, still, further north. but, as we go through thursday night into the early hours of friday, that humid air continues to trundle northwards. some hit—and—miss, showery rain, and it will be a much, much less chilly night than we have had recently. eight to 13 degrees, those are the minimum temperatures. friday, well, a bit of a mishmash, really. yes, there will be some spells of sunshine. there will also be some of these showers drifting northwards. still the potential for the odd rumble of thunder, flash of lightning, and still feeling pretty humid for many. 19 degrees there in london, something cooler holding on across the far north of scotland. saturday another fairly humid and showery day, some sunny spells between the downpours. but then, through saturday night, a change. a weather front moves its way in. behind that, some fresher air pushing in from the west. so temperatures on sunday will be a little bit lower. a fresher feel to the weather, with a mix of sunshine and showers. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name's mike embley.

our top stories: president trump defends his decision to fire the director of the fbi, saying he'd lost confidence injames comey. why did you fire him? because he wasn't doing a good job, very simply. he was not doing a good job. nearly a0 dead in more than a month of demonstrations. we're out on the streets in the midst of the protests in venezuela. as forces backed by the us drive more of the so—called islamic state extremists from their strongholds, we talk to the foreign fighters trying to get back to europe.