fighter planes launched bombing raids across the border following the shooting down of one of its jets. israel says it's been targeting iranian positions on syrian territory used to fly drones over israeli airspace. the us and russia have expressed concern over the attacks while the un has called for an immediate de—escalation. the uk has threatened to cut funding for oxfam following claims the charity covered up a scandal involving aid workers and prostitutes in haiti. penny mordaunt, the international development secretary, condemned what she called the "horrific behaviour" of some oxfam staff. a double—decker bus has overturned in hong kong, killing 19 people and injuring 62 others. reports suggest the bus was going too fast. police have arrested the driver and charged him with causing death by dangerous driving. now on bbc news, click. this week — uber the top. old deckard meets new...who?

and smile, we're in dubai. this is how a self—driving car sees the world. lidar sensors feed the car with a continuous 360—degree view of its surrounding, along with crucial depth information. it is the key technology for a successful autonomous drive. and this week in the us, a mighty court case has begun which may take this key away from uber, stalling its progress towards the self—driving revolution.

it all revolves around this man, anthony levandowski, who left google‘s autonomous spin—off waymo and joined uber a couple of years ago. now, waymo alleges he took 14,000 secret files with him and that these were used to develop uber‘s technology. we expect the courts to take about three weeks to decide on the case, and what impact that might have on uber‘s plans to taxi us around without a driver. but undeterred, uber continues to look to the future of transportation which, in just a few years, might look very different to the way it looks now. dan simmons has been looking up. even self—driving cabs will get stuck in jams, so this is uber‘s vision. when you're tight for time, go by air.

it's ambitious and so is the time scale. our goal is by 2020 to launch our first demonstrator flights in dallas and la to show that, as a concept, this can work, and then work to scale by 2023 and 2025, so we're providing commercial flights to a lot of our riders, giving them a new way to travel. one of uber‘s partners, bell helicopters, has showed off its design for a four—seater cabin, which could include a pilot. here's their 360—view, with the alternative set—up — four seats, four passengers. the aircraft, like our cars, would navigate automatically. it's electric with a range of about 60 miles, they say. we've seen other designs for air taxis of late, including this chinese firm ehang's 184, which recently shuttled actual people in this autopiloted drone. and this air cab by german firm

volocopter, which uses 18 rotors and nine separate battery packs, just in case. while nasa and the faa are working on new traffic control systems for these types of craft in the us, it's the faa that will have to be convinced self—piloting electric air cabs are safe. we will ask the applicants to come forward with their engineering proposals of what tests will they propose to do so that we can ensure that if there's a fire or a short or if something goes wrong during a flight, that somebody can safely land and get away from that aircraft before it does damage to the people on board — or on the ground, for that matter. so, will it work? here's uber‘s case study. we've landed in la. traffic is a nightmare and a taxi would take us 80 minutes. whereas the air trip to the sky port, plus a small transfer,

is less than half an hour and uber said it could end up costing about the same amount. 0k, there are many reasons why self—flying electric taxis sound like a good idea, but when you're saving less than one hour, uber‘s dream will need to run smoothly to deliver. apologies, mr simmons, very busy airspace right now. it's blade to blade up there! unfortunately, the weather's closing in, mr simmons. i'm not quite sure we're going to get you in tonight. bleep. really sorry. we're just cleaning out the cabin. bleep. you're two kilos over, i'm afraid.

lose the penguin? bleep. ah, we're just recharging your taxi at the moment, mr simmons. it will be a while. at least that last one shouldn't be too much of a problem. uber have teamed up with ev specialists charge point and are predicting a four—minute juice—up time. now, that would be special! sorry, you're running 17.5 seconds late and the pilots had to cancel. please do book again via the app. but perhaps the most challenging part of this project is to get us, the public, comfortable with the idea of taking an air taxi. when we think about consumer option of new technologies, this is not a problem that is novel or unique to travel. we saw this with elevators when they first came out and actually, in order to get consumers comfortable with it, an elevator operator would remain in the elevator, even when it was made electronic,

just to give consumers confidence. we are going to be doing the same with autonomous vehicles right now, as we have safety drivers staying in the car, explaining this sort of technology to riders, and the same will be true with our pilots. we will be launching with pilots who will serve not only as the operators of the flight but as an ambassador to get riders comfortable with this new mode of transport, so soon enough, they'll forget about its novelty and be back to texting and making other use of their time while in transit. just like the uber—waymo court case over who owns the specialist tech that makes self—driving cars work, the creation of the flying cab will no doubt have its own dogfight in court. perhaps that's another reason why uber‘s keen to get in early. that was dan. now, the first place we are expecting these flying cabs to take to the air is, of course, the city of dubai, which always promises

to foster and allow trials of new technologies. although when we visited last month, it soon became clear that flying taxis there too are still a few years off. but one big change that is being unveiled is not to do with aircraft, but with its airports. kate russell has been looking at what's new in arrivals. dubai international is the world's busiest airport for international passengers. nearly 90 million people went through it in the last year and in the next couple, it plans to expand annual capacity by one third again. this airport has two runways, it has three terminal buildings and four major concourses, but we have room for no more. so whatever growth we take from this point forward, it has to be done within the existing infrastructure. so dubai international has decided if you can't get bigger,

you have to get smarter. i was invited for a peek inside its brand—new airport command and control centre, just before it becomes fully operational. this airport has been kitted out with the latest camera equipment to help staff predict the flow of passenger traffic. the technology is kind of cool. what it does is it uses 3d cameras in the ceiling and looks for the outline of humans on the floor, moving around, and then it tracks them through the whole process. airport staff can get this information on smartphones and tablets, which helps them to direct the crowd, open new gates, and even tell passengers where their baggage is. while all this data helps keep the airport moving, the amount being collected is also causing some issues. already, there's 7 billion data points in there and we've yet to connect it up to everything. so we've got baggage data and passenger data but we've yet to put in things like energy consumption and water consumption. and once we bring that together, we can really optimise the airport and make it more efficient and drive

for even more passengers. so, what do you do when you need a data centre in a hurry? well, building one inside shipping containers is definitely one solution. as dubai prepares to play host to a massive world expo in 2020, the airport had to do some quick thinking to be able to handle the extra 10 million passengers a month. this solution took just over 12 months to build. a traditional data centre, built out of bricks and concrete, would normally take about 2—3 years. next on the list of high—tech upgrades is face recognition, to clear immigration quickly, al to predict seasonal fluctuation in demand, and a system to tell passengers when their baggage will hit the carousel — all great news if you're passing through the airport, but there is a solid business case for these upgrades too. the more passengers we can put through this site, the more profitable this airport will become, and it's better for the city and the economy. so we're really working hard to make

sure we maximise the use of the dubai international site. with aviation projected to contribute almost 40% of dubai's wealth in the next couple of years, this airport will continue to be a vital part of the economy. flying high isn't fun for everyone, though. 0h. hello, world. acrophobia, or fear of heights, is one of the most common phobias, but this virtual reality therapy hopes to help. sweating again. chan here can confidently fly a plane, but when it comes to heights in general, it's a different story. oh, no... oh, i've got to move! come back, come back. no, i can't do it. come back. i can't move while i'm out there. i need to be back here to do that.

i couldn't go up a ladder. just couldn't go up a ladder. i couldn't go over high bridges. if i drove to wales, i went round the long way, instead of going over the bridge. ijust don't like open heights. but i canjump on an aeroplane and fly an aeroplane. that's a completely different environment — in my head, anyway, it is, that's for sure. welcome back. oh, god! oh, it's dark. so, how are you feeling? um. . .anxious, sweaty, nervous. even though you've been through the process of doing this before? yeah. you still feel the same level of anxiety, or is it dramatically reduced ? i'm way more confident. i've got much more confidence than when i did it the first time. i was on holiday with some friends. they were going on the roller—coasters and i talked about this vr thing that we were doing and they said "well, then , you should be

able to go on the ride". so i watched my family and friends go round a couple more times and then thought, "well, i can do this". if you look to your left, you'll see a basket of light balls. what i need you to do is throw the light balls down into the atrium. i think vr can treat pretty much any type of fear or phobia. it might be a fear of a cat or spiders or dogs. what vr can enable you to do is relearn that actually you are safe in those situations you fear. the beauty of vr is, in fact, that disconnect. when you're there, you know you're not really in that environment and that enables you to do things you wouldn't normally do in the real world. but all the scientific data shows that learning you make in vr does transfer into the real world. in this programme, you are going to try a series of tasks. earlier this month, it was announced the uk's national health service has invested this idea of using virtual reality therapy to battle severe mental health issues by putting sufferers in a virtual environment they would struggle within the real world.

this immersive approach, plus the availability of virtual therapists, could more readily provide more therapy to more people at a lower cost. at the heart of a lot of health problems are difficulties with interacting with the world, and with vr we can put people back in the situations that trouble them and coach them in the best ways to think, feel and behave in those situations. we've got to test it and trial it and make sure things work, but the potential is enormous. hello and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week police in china donned special sunglasses to catch crooks using facial recognition tech. british mps went to washington to talk fake news with facebook, google and twitter. and virgin moneyjoined lloyds bank in banning customers from buying bitcoin with their credit cards. the cryptocurrency had another fall this week, falling to as low as $6000, before recovering. that's down from a high of almost $20,000 in december. it was also the week that spacex rocket, the falcon heavy, blasted into space.

elon musk sent it off with his old cherry red sports car, a tesla roadster, a space suited mannequin, and a david bowie soundtrack on repeat. however, it wasn't all good news for tesla, as the electric car company also posted its biggest ever quarterly cost — almost $700 million. it says it's addressing production issues with its model 3 car. and finally, a 14—year—old has created an app to help people with alzheimer's disease. it uses facial recognition technology to help people remember their loved ones. they can scroll through photos of friends and family and the app lets them know who the person is and how they're related to them.

you can also take a picture of someone you don't recognise and the app will try to identify them. now, if you are a film fan, you will know that it is awards season, and over the next few weeks, we'll be chatting to some of the real heroes behind the movies nominated for the best visual effects 0scar. first up, blade runner 2049 — and spoiler alert, if you haven't seen the film, you might want to go and make a cup of tea for the next four minutes or so. still here? good. well, if you have seen it, then you'll know that the character or rachael, from the original movie, makes a surprise appearance, looking exactly like she did in 1982. we found out how. i had yourjob once. i was good at it. things were simpler then. a lot of the work we do in visual effects is kind of very broad and very strong, think about the monsters screaming towards camera. this was the complete opposite, it was very subtle stuff. so it was all in the kind of micro details of the face. so the biggest challenge is with the emotional performance

and in this case, she was talking, so she was delivering lines. don't you love me? we did three shots from the original movie. that was kind of like a proof of concept that our digital rachael was good enough. we showed it to denis, the director, and the studio, and they couldn't really tell the difference and then — or you know, they had to struggle to see which one was digital. that's kind of when we knew we had it in the bag and that she was good enough to hold up on the big screen. we had sean young onset in budapest, so we scanned her and get another photographic reference of her as well. and ehat that allowed us to do was to fit a digital skull inside the digital model we had of her. when you age, obviously your soft tissue drops down with gravity and you get wrinkles and so on, but you skull doesn't change, so your skull is pretty much the same. what that allowed us to do

was that we had a digital skull and we kind of built our 23—year—old sean young from 1982 around that skull, so the cheekbones, the forehead, the chin, the nose, so on, we could kind of fit it around the digital skull, which was invaluable reference for us. and that kind of ensured that we had a physically correct model to sean young's real skull. we also captured the performance of a body double, so it's her body that's used in shots. so we had a lot of kind of treated data to work from. the good thing about the treated data is we can rotate around it on the computer, we can look at it from all angles. when it came down to doing the actual performance, it was all hand animated because basically, denis, the director, he wanted to basically direct a normal performance, like he would do onset with a regular actor. we can make a still image look very, very photo real and good,

but getting that believable animation, that's still the biggest challenge. i know you're here. great film, and next week, we'll be talking to the 0scar—nominated visual effects supervisor of marvel‘s space epic, guardians of the galaxy volume 2. all i can say is, "i am groot". back in dubai, i'm really starting to see how determined this young country is to lead the world in everything smart. i have already seen the high—tech police force in action,

met the robocops, and the drone unit that will watch over everything from the sky. now, i'm meeting the world's first minister for artificial intelligence, and he's ambitious about what comes next. one of my favourite sayings from the tech industry is larry page of google said, "almost every time we do something crazy, we make progress. " do you find the same thing? many of the ideas that they come upo with, notjust silicon valley,

even the top tech companies from around the world, whether from the uk or china, the common denominator with all of them is that they do not fear something that seems impossible. so with that mentality and with the idea of let the brightest minds from around the world come, let them thrive here in the uae and let them create something for the rest of the world. how do you make sure that you bring all of the people of the uae along on thatjourney for digital change and innovation? the uae is very unique. we have a very young population, that population can be retrained and repurposed in positions that will be created, i think, in the future. we understand the opportunity for us to lead the future. we launched an initiative in 2017 called the one million arab coders initiative. we're teaching 1 million people how to code. this is the language of the future. i think making these coders into our special intelligence experts is going to be a difficult challenge, but it'll be something that's easier than training someone who does not have any understanding when it comes to the language of the future, which is coding. so think about what apple has done for the iphone and what google has done for search, that, hopefully, is going ot be what the uae is going to do for governance.

dubai is a place not scared to adopt new ideas orfail trying, so it's throwing all of its might behind leading edge innovations. concepts that may look outlandish elsewhere are all welcome here. and the dubai future accelerators programme is what the government hopes will take these ideas from page to stage. the government can drive the vision of where dubai goes next, i guess more like a company than a country. after all, the monarchy needs little in the way of democratic input. a majority of this can fail, but the moment you create one success story, the sky's the limit on where you can be. so as long as you have that kind of mindset — a ton of this will be a write—off — but once you have that success, the whole world will talk about it and you will become a platform. we believe regulations, or amending regulations, in favour of any innovation is a must. entrepreneurs struggle a lot to show their new technologies and whatever they work on, and to have those decision—making individuals and the government work hand in had with them to really disrupt, makes life — makes the growth process much, much faster. so dubai mayjust have the recipe

to pull it off, an accommodating leadership and a lot of cash. this may be the perfect place to fail and come back smiling, especially as the government is committing to make dubai the happiest city in the world, alongside the smartest. visiting the dubai smart office, i was suitably welcomed by farah... mrs kate from bbc click, your host is waiting for you. ..who took me to meet one of the leading technology champions in the country, and despite the reputation the country has on the outside, it made me very happy to discover she's a woman. the technology is not the end of ourjourney, it's only a means that will take us to improve people's lives and make them more happier.

by having artificial intelligence agents embedded in our government services, by having robots like our receptionist, this is the future — but yet we keep challenging ourselves. what is next? whether all this works or not, you can see dubai is dreaming big. this is a dynamic, modern city, built from the desert up. maybe its motto should be — if you don't try it, you don't succeed. that was kate in dubai, and that's it from us for this week. don't forget we live on twitter at bbc click, and we're also on facebook too. thank you very for watching and we'll see you soon. hello there.

it looks like sunday's going to be a brighter day than certainly what we had on saturday — all that cloud and rain. but it will be a cold — certainly colder than saturday. the gale force winds easing down in the morning. then we should see sunshine and wintry showers for many areas with snow, even falling down to lower levels as well. this is the deep area of low pressure which will bring these strong winds during the overnight period. and as we head into sunday morning, those gales will be easing from eastern areas. but it's going to be a blustery day with wintry showers piling into the northern and western areas. the gales easing away from the east areas, like i mentioned, but still quite a blustery day. it's going to feel cold. there will be plenty of sunshine around southern and central and eastern areas but i think into the afternoon, even a few

wintry showers reaching the midlands, maybe into the south—east of england as well, but certainly very windy in the north of scotland with snowfall accumulations continuing to mount up. it's going to be a cold day. as we head on in towards sunday night, much of the same, really. with further wintry showers or even longer spells of snow across the north and the west of the country and it's going to be a cold night. subzero values central northern areas, so there will be a risk of ice to watch out for first thing on monday morning. but actually, monday is not looking too bad. there'll be plenty of sunshine around. in fact, more sunshine than what we'll see on sunday. a few wintry showers across northern and western areas. the wind beginning to pick up here towards the end of the day ahead of the next weather front which will be moving in off the atlantic. another chilly day. temperatures five to around eight degrees. now, as we head through monday night into tuesday, this weather front will push its way eastwards across the country, encountering that cold air, so it looks like we could see some considerable snow on its leading edge, certainly across northern areas. over the pennines, central southern scotland could see quite a lot

of snow as this weather front moves through. eventually, it clears through as we go through the course of tuesday with skies brightening up behind, but we will see further wintry showers moving into scotland and northern ireland. and those temperatures again chilly — 4—6 celsius. a brief ridge of high pressure calms things down as we head on in towards wednesday. the next weather system moves in off the atlantic, and it's a repeat performance once again. it bumps into that cold air, we could see disruptive some snow across the northern half of the country. 10cm to maybe 20cm of snow over the higher ground of scotland, in fact, and even snow down to lower levels. further south, it will be mainly of rain. but it's going to be quite a messy day, i think, on wednesday. maybe something a little less cold across the south but it's still going to feel on the chilly side. as we head on through the rest of the week, thursday and friday looks much of the same — on the chilly side. welcome to bbc news, i'm nkem ifejica. our top stories:

the uk threatens to cut funding to charities unless they co—operate over safeguarding issues. it comes as 0xfam faces more allegations that overseas staff used prostitutes. there's mounting international concern after israel launched a wave of air strikes against targets in syria. britain's foreign secretary says myanmar must ensure rohingya muslims return home safely. a double—decker bus overturns in hong kong killing at least 19. the driver has been arrested. and six golds are to be decided on day two of the winter olympics. the first goes to sweden's charlotte kalla in the women's skiathlon.