to try to murder a former russian spy and his daughter. sergei and yulia skripal have been critically ill in hospital, along with the first police officer on the scene, since they were found slumped unconscious on a bench on sunday. russia has denied involvement. the white house says some countries could be excluded from president trump's planned tariffs on steel and aluminium imports. the proposed measures have led to concerns about a potential trade war, but the president is expected to go ahead with formally approving them before the end of the week. counting is under way in sierra leone after more than three million people voted for a new president and parliament. president ernest bai koroma is standing down after serving two five—year terms. a run—off vote will take place if no presidential candidate wins 55% of the ballot. now on bbc news: click. this week, 108,000 people landed

in barcelona with one thing on their minds — mobiles. and confetti cannon. this week, 108,000 people landed in barcelona with one thing on their minds — mobiles. welcome to the mobile world congress. the enormous annual expo where we get to hear about the latest in phones, tablets and, increasingly, anything that moves. a smartwatch with a built—in projector, anyone? the mobile industry is increasingly important to the economy of the world. last year it was worth $3.6 trillion.

5 billion of us have mobiles, 3.3 billion use the mobile internet. and despite it being the coldest mwc we can remember, the halls were still packed with thousands of exhibitors showing off their wares. this one definitely looks weatherproof. roaming the floor for us this year, lara lewington. despite talk of how many of the big players are not releasing new phones at the show, there are quite a few new phones on display. and the cameras were often taking centre stage. this is bothie mode. we saw how we might interact with our devices in the future. who needs buttons when you can gesture? and the way they might interact with us. a phone screen that bends. could a bendy phone be the future? to really get to grips with the latest news here, ijoined forces with a man who seriously knows his phones. hmd, who brought the nokia brand a few years back, are again embracing nostalgia

with a 2018 twist with its 8110 ag. no, you do not need to have it in banana yellow. would you feel silly to take that out of your pocket? absolutely in that colour. i would need it to be black or any other colour except bright yellow. its operating system can only run a few apps. they will include google assistant, google maps and facebook although not twitter nor whatsapp. but with a battery life of 25 days, albeit on standby, and a pricetag of 70 quid, it does sound like a decent proposition. it has ag. that is all of the data connectivity you would want at a ridiculously low price. and how nice is it to hold like that, frame like that and then use centre button to take the it?

0ne manufacturer managed to create an exclusive world of their own. hi there. i feel underdressed. i am sorry. you need a special blue card to enter this hall. thank you. i'm notjust underdressed, i cannot enter. even though they were not releasing a new phone. the biggest announcement came from samsung with news of the release of their s9, and spencer got his hands on one of those devices. even here at the big reveal of a phone it was the camera that was very much front and centre. for a start, the galaxy s9 and s9 plus shoot better pictures in low light, reducing grain by taking a burst of 12 shots at once. the larger s9 plus actually has two lenses that work together to produce photos with a blurred background, in the same way that the iphone 7 plus has done since 2016.

this, however, is quite new here in the west. it is the first phone i have seen that has a mechanical aperture which can switch from f2.5 to f1.5 to let in more light. last year, we saw a sony phone that could shoot at a0 times slow—mo. that is 960 frames per second. as we predicted then, that feature is now starting to migrate into other phones. one problem i had with sony's super slow mode is that you have to be incredibly precise in order to start the recording and capture the 0.2 seconds of action. not so with this phone. it waits until it detects motion in a certain part of its viewfinder and then it fires the slow—mo mode. so... that should mean you don't miss those of milliseconds

of slow—mo magic. the video is of the lower 720p resolution but that is still acceptable on a phone screen. the results can be shared as gifs or used as wallpaper on your lock screen. anyone got a towel? hot on the heels of apple's iphone animojis, the s9 lets you create and send your own emojis. they look a little like you but quite impressively they will copy your expression using live face tracking. or you can use a preset created from your, ahem, likeness. 0verall, both phones look and feel like their predecessors. the same size, they're dust and water resistant and they still have a headphone socket. hurrah. but the screen is ever so slightly longer. they will now accept sd cards of up to a00 gigabytes and they play dolby atmos sound. and where the s8 could be plugged

into a special dock to connect to screen, mouse and keyboard, the s9 can become a trackpad. this will soon also double as a keyboard. even with the s9‘s better tech specs, critics say that the improvements are not massive. they do think the camera and the sharing functions are sure to be eyecatchers. and no super slow—mo shoot is complete without lots and lots of confetti. well, only one day after samsung announced their phone and their slow—mo camera, we found out that sony have upgraded theirs to 960 frames per second and in full hd which makes it better.

so, what do you think of the situation? you tried it earlier. i did and it really is better than the effort from samsung. sony has experience. this is the second time they have done this and full hd, when you see it, it is glorious. glorious in comparison to the 720 noisy pixellated version on the galaxy s9. will this really sell phones? no, it's not. it's a cool feature and you'll use it once and if you get it right, it is brilliant. but you will get frustrated during the ten times it takes to get it right. the phone is also optimised for sony's entertainment suite, a feature they are going big on. the phone features what they call dynamic vibration. no matter where you stream from, or what you are doing, similar to a playstation controller, it uses the audio path to provide haptic feedback. holding it for two hours like this,

would be quite excessive. aside from the phones themselves there was a of chat about 5g's commercial roll—out. amongst it, t—mobile‘s plan to launch it in four us cities by the end of the year. a commercial service is also expected to kick off in south korea, proving that 5g was notjust for the winter olympics. huawei may not have wanted me on the show floor but they did invite me to go for a spin. if you can call it that. huawei have come up with a novel way of testing a phone. they have connected to this vehicle and the phone is actually going to drive the car. this being an attempt to show off the processing power and image recognition of their mate 10 pro, which was released last year, rather than something they actually plan on executing in the real world. not that they trusted the inbuilt camera for thisjob. they've attached

a large external one. the phone uses artificial intelligence to process what it sees. i am told it recognises around 1000 objects. in turn, it will send signals to the vehicle via wi—fi which will then control the car through a robotic system. the technology that we are using to power this actually exists within the phone already. the artificial intelligence that sits at the heart of what we are showing here is part of the everyday experience of your smartphone. there we go. i'm in gear. in a way, this feels quite strange at the moment. people are just moving around things. that is a very big ball. how often do you see one that size on the road? now the phone has had a chance

to learn, it's time for round two, where it should instruct the vehicle to react to any hazards it identifies. here it goes. it feels slightly nerve—racking. for a bit of fun, if we detect a bicycle i will swerve right? the giant ball, i'm going to brake. just a word of warning, this will take off a little bit quicker. it's not really that dramatic is it? we're not on a racetrack. 0k. i am holding on tight. that is quite weird. that was chosen at random. the phone recognised the object that was put out. it said, it asked you what you wanted to do if you saw that. it saw the object and then commanded the manoeuvre. and it avoided it. and it brought us to a stop. oh, well. i guess it did what they promised. and for them, well, it got us talking about a phone that isn't even new.

hello and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week that drones replaced models on the catwalk in milan, carrying the latest dolce & gabbana handbags. 0neweb and airbus announced a network of 900 satellites to provide next gen 5g mobile internet to aeroplane travellers by 2020 while vodafone and nokia plan to go one further and deliver mobile internet to the moon. albeit using ag. the network would provide a way for lunar rovers to stream data from as early as next year. snake robots have slithered out from the labs at harvard university. the robots move using laser—cut scales which expand and contract to propel them. researchers are perfecting this way of moving to help tackle difficult terrain and to be used in intestinal surgery. it was also the week that amazon purchased ring, the smart doorbell company. this adds to their growing

collection of smart home products and paves the way for deliveries not only to your door but even inside your home. that may ring alarm bells for those concerned with privacy. and finally, california hasjoined arizona and removed the need for driverless cars to have a human behind the wheel. companies still need to retain the ability to control the cars remotely, and a plan for how cops can pull the car over to speak to the car. this is possibly one of the more surprising things on the show floor. i am currently in a holoportal. the setout has four kinect sensors, five laptops doing the grunt work and once a person has been created in holographic form they can be seen

on this, the microsoft hololens in real—time. i have been to see a family who are really putting this setup to good use. harrison has something called duchenne muscular dystrophy, which is a fatal genetic muscle wasting disease. every single muscle in his body is deteriorating over time and that means he loses the ability and strength to do a lot of things that we take for granted. simply walking, giving your parents a hug, things like that. theyjust go in time. he has a life expectancy somewhere between 20 and 25. that is when the heart and lungs, they are also muscles, that is when they give up. since harrison came off his feet at the end of last year, being able to create stimulating and engaging experiences at home have become more important than ever. and today, he has a virtual visitor. this research prototype

is currently being perfected at doubleme‘s ravensbourne college base. harrison, hi! 0k! i see the holograndpa. are you in charge of cooking tonight? yep. your dad would like a steak that big! he's only allowed one that big. next tuesday is pancake day. what will you have on yours this year? definitely maple syrup. along with this mixed reality setup, there are are ar and vr versions. eventually, more than one person could be holoported at a time, or 2—way audio and video could be possible. but right now it is about giving the basics right. while this is not a true hologram, the headset displays holograndpa as a 3—dimensional projection, as if he was in the room. there was when we tested it a bit

of a time lapse due to a lack of processing power and connection. it is all done in the spirit of being inspired by star wars, using the tech as we use it now. so we knew that it would not be the most amazing fidelity, but it was always the magic of how would harrison feel in his home when grandpa holoports in and says hello. that tag line for house of charity is make time. we know time is precious so this transcendence of time and space with technology, to be together is potentially very powerful. arsenal beat tottenham. never in a million years will that happen. 3—1 to tottenham, and harry kane scores two. yeah! one of the themes this year is what mobile connectivity can do to transform lives. the company case for change

is documenting projects around the world, hoping to inspire others. whether it is empowering women in india, or giving farmers in mexico resources to grow crops, most of the projects could be replicated on a world scale, something the world bank thinks could be possible very soon. we are seeing tremendous amount of access to the internet. in africa, for example, we will see 220 million smartphones in 2015, to 700 million in 2020, in just five short years. we think very soon, everyone will have access to the internet, and have access to smartphones. but we know that unless the industry, working with groups

like ours, thinks specifically about taking these applications are making them work at scale in developing countries, it will not happen. whilst getting connected for many is the start, this drone for deployment during large scale disasters is part of nokia's saving lives project. as well as providing views that would not be possible from the ground, the full kit creates a network bubble of up to four kilometre radius, where connection would otherwise be unavailable. real—time video streaming, gas and heat sensing, mapping and analytics could help rescuers respond better and more safely. it will be sent for its first real—world exercise in the philippines with the red cross this summer. this display illustrates a smart farm setup that went live in turkey last month. the idea is that censors are placed around the farm, and they sync up to an app, providing information about, for example, how healthy the crops are, the condition of the soil and humidity. that way the farmer could be alerted if there is a problem.

that information can then be provided to the farmer through the low—power network it's connected to. so if there is a fungal disease, for example, it can immediately be identified and dealt with. it's all very well collecting a lot of data, but what we actually do with that data is really important. every year in india alone, 2.8 million people are diagnosed with tuberculosis. this map aims to use predictive modelling to find out the areas that are most at risk. so the red parts that you can see here are where the disease is already prevalent. it is possible to add an extra layer to that data by tapping on here, and we can see mobile phone usage, which of course represents where the people are. by identifying these areas at the highest risk, it means that awareness can be raised, clinics can be ready, expecting there to be

more cases of tb, and, of course, immunisations can be given to hopefully prevent some of those cases from even happening. and that's it from mwc this year. after all that, it's time to take a relaxing trip elsewhere. ah, the winds blowing through my hair. amazing to sit down and relax. stunning. that was lara in barcelona. now, after weeks of build—up, the oscars are finally here. the 90th academy awards are this weekend. over the past few weeks, we have been going exclusively behind the scenes with some of the nominees in the best visual effects category. this week is the fourth in our series, the ninth in theirs — otherwise known as episode 8.

of course i am talking about star wars: the lastjedi. let the past die. kill it. we aim to do as much as we can in camera. the reality is there will always be big moments that will need visual effects. on a film like this, it's a star wars movie, we ultimately ended up with over 2000 effect shots in this film. you have too much of your father's heart in you. it took almost a year to get to the final look for snoke. it is an organic process. we started with a maquette. we digitised it, brought it in, we started to paint textures and build the internal controls and anatomy of the character. and as the editors, ryan and bob, were working together, they brought together sequences only using andy's reference. and he had this incredible performance — a resonant, powerful voice.

fool! it was i who bridged your minds. the amazing thing about andy is that he is very skilled at doing this and is unafraid of technology. so we were able to suit him up in an active motion capture suit, so that we could actually film with infrared cameras from the ceiling of the set. that allowed him to walk around and perform unhindered. we also put a helmet on his head with four hd cameras, so that we could get clear definition on his face. as then as we started to do animation tests on the early material, we got a few weeks in, and rian came to me and said, "i'm not sure that the voice is matching the anatomy of the character that we've designed," and we realised that there was an issue there. the initial design made it look like a very fragile, frail, older character, and andy's voice is this lovely booming big thing.

so we had to change some things, open his chest and take scoliation out of his spine, and made him about 1.5 feet taller. he is about 8.5 feet tall, the character. and then we knew we had done right and we could move forward. the bombing run was in the original script, almost exactly as you see it in the film. we did bid how to execute the bombing run in a few different ways, practical pyrotechnics, that sort of thing. and the schedule and cost of that was too prohibitive. but the important thing to me is, when working with a director like rian, is that we can make our cg look like any particular style of thing at the moment. we can make it look like anything. a balsa model, a shiny—looking cg—looking ship. we have that control over the way that we can render things, now. and after a time, rian became confident in what we could do, and actually, it was a liberation. we could achieve anything. and the explosions and pyrotechnics we achieved, i think,

have taken us to a new level. i think they have pushed us to a new level of believability. we modelled not outside first, but from the inside out. so as you destroy a ship, you are opening up holes, and the audience can see in, the viewer can see in. it was exciting to do it. i think it took the destruction to a new level. i think our contribution to film is getting more and more invisible in certain cases. when they are not invisible because you know they cannot be real, they are getting more believable. globally, the visual effects techniques are so advanced, now, that it is now important to tell a good story, and it's important that story has good ideas and creative challenges that push us to create visuals that have never been seen before. and we wish the entire crew of the lastjedi, along with the other nominees, the best of luck for this week's oscars — because they're

all fantastic. that is it for this week. you can find us on twitter and facebook. thank you very much for watching. we will see you soon. temperatures are on the up this weekend as it turns milder but we are not there yet and snow is still part of our forecast for the first part of thursday. here's a look at the recent satellite picture. this area of cloud pushing in from the south—west, bringing in some rain, sleet and some snow to parts of england and wales as thursday begins. a fairly messy looking picture, by no means everyone seeing snow. you're more inclined in the higher ground of wales,

midlands, into parts of northern england but, in heavier bursts, even to lower levels, you could see a bit of snow. maybe a few centimetres, a brief, light covering out of this. here is how things look during the first few hours of the morning. behind the area of rain, sleet and snow, further wintry showers coming into parts of wales. but in parts of northern england and the midlands, as thursday begins, we could see some snow falling to relatively low levels. it is a good idea to just check the situation before heading out, to make sure you do not going to encounter too many problems. bbc local radio station, of course, a good source of information. this latest weather system begins to pull its moisture away, eastwards, from england and wales as we go into the afternoon. for scotland and northern ireland, a mainly dry but frosty icy start to the day. good sunny spells to come as it stays mainly dry. but towards the western isles, far north—west of mainland scotland, northern isles there'll be some showers around. following our weather system for england and wales, one or two showers, wintry on hills but some good sunny spells to come here.

most places, a chillier day, especially in the breeze, across southern parts, with temperatures in single figures. fine thursday night as we see a frost settling. chance for a few icy patches. of scotland, particularly into the hills. a lot of fine weather to come during friday but cloud increasing to southern england and south wales as we start to get outbreaks of rain moving in through the afternoon and the evening. it turns wetter from the south. as we look at that big picture going into the weekend, this weather system here, still as it edges its way northwards, on it leading edge, there could be some snow, especially to higher ground. this is a warm front, this the leading edge of milder air, warmerairand you can see that on the colours here, for saturday. that gradually edges its way further northwards as we go through the weekend. we know the weekend, temperatures are heading up. not the whole story. it's going to be milder, yes, but there'll be some rain at times and most of us will see some rain at some stage of the weekend, thankfully not all the time but here's an idea of what we might expect over the weekend,

at least for the capital cities. gives you an idea of what many of us can expect. some rain at times, not all the time but temperatures are creeping up. that is your weekend forecast. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is mike embley. our top stories: it's confirmed, a toxic nerve agent was used to poison a former russian spy and his daughter. sergei and yulia skripal and a police officer are still critically ill. police are now treating the attack as attempted murder, but they're not giving any more details of the substance used. president trump pushes ahead with his metal tariff‘s plan, but there could be exemptions for canada and mexico. more than three million people cast their vote, and now counting begins in sierra leone for a new president and parliament.