on the top court. the conservative has sided with liberals on many decisions, including the 5—4 rulings that decided same—sex marriage and upheld abortion rights. more than 200 migrants on a rescue boat have been taken in by malta, following an informal eu agreement to share out those on board. seven european countries will each take in some migrants. the deal comes on the eve of an eu summit — aiming to tackle divisions over migration. german football fans have reacted with dismay to the defending champions‘ humiliating exit from the world cup. one newspaper called it a nightmare come true. the four—time winners lost two—nil to south korea. it's germany's earliest exit from the tournament since 1938. now on bbc news, click. this week: robot hunts killer starfish, hurricane in a tube, and gravity train runs out of steam.

florida, america's sunshine state — and home to the us's first sustainable town. this is babcock ranch. powered, befittingly, almost entirely by that big burning ball in the sky. it's 33 degrees. the humidity, i believe, about i,000,000%.

and i've come to a solar field, so you don't have to. 343,000 solar panel span some 440 acres, providing 75 megawatts of electricity. that's enough to power 15,000 homes. one of the big problems with solar energy has been when the clouds come over or especially when it gets dark, the whole thing effectively goes dead. and we haven't really had a way of storing solar energy until very recently. but over there, ten buildings full of batteries. so it's a start. a pretty good one, too. babcock has the largest combined solar and storage facility in the us. the batteries can store 40 megawatt hour of electricity, which is enough to keep around 2000 average us homes alight forfour hours. of course, lithium batteries are just one way of storing energy to use later.

we've seen other methods before. there's electric mountain in wales, which holds water at a top reservoir until power is needed, it then releases it back down to the lake below. switzerland's air cave fills itself with compressed air and then blows it out to turn turbines. now, over in california, kate russell is on track to see a new solution. since the oil crisis of the 19705, california has invested heavily into wind and solar power, with the latest state legislation calling for 50% renewable energy by 2030 and all new homes must have solar within two years. the state is way ahead of its target, so much so that they've had to start paying neighbouring states to take some of the energy from them. as we've heard before, the problem is storage. the grid was built to handle fossil fuel generated power and storage solutions like hydroelectric dams

are in short supply. batteries, too, are very bad for the environment, turning unused renewable energy into not such a green solution. california—based company aries have come up with one alternative. aries was really an attempt to think of a way to use the inexhaustible, always reliable power of gravity. we know gravity is going to be there for us. we don't have to worry about shortages or any of that. so how do we use gravity to store and then discharge power when we need it? one of the most efficient ways to move mass, which people have spent billions of dollars to perfect, are railroads. right. 150 years of experience, incredibly efficient, steel wheels on steel rails are one of the most efficient ways to move mass. dubbed the gravity train, energy is used in electricity to push its weight uphill.

when you want to take the energy out you let gravity pull the train back down, using the friction of braking to slow the train in order to make power. it's the same way hybrid electric cars like the prius work. you see those wind turbines behind me, they're completely still, even though there is clearly plenty of wind right now. it's not because they're broken, it's because there is no more room to store the energy they would create. and that's a problem the gravity train will solve. when you are into excess energy production, use it to power the train up a hill, when you want the energy back, send the train back down again. this demo train carries almost five tonnes uphill, storing energy as it goes. a full—scale installation will return 80% of the stored energy, which is not quite as efficient as a huge dam, but has a lot less impact. the amount of energy we store

is the weight of the train times the height of the hill. simple mathematics. so the more weight and the higher the hill the more energy we can store. we need long, gently sloping plains. we had clients who approached us and said i only have steep, rocky, craggy mountains, so we have developed a new variation on the aries technology at almost vertical. in october, the company breaks ground on the first full—scale aries in the state of nevada. it'll be used to fine tune the inconsistent energy flows that are a natural part of using solar and wind power. minute by minute it will trim the imbalance between load and generation on the grid, so our trains may need to go uphill for a minute, they need to go downhill forfive minutes, they are constantly acting like a large flywheel that allows the grid to stay at exactly 60 hertz. it's early days yet and the concept has still to be proved in nevada,

but it could help solve one of the renewable industries biggest conundrums right now, balancing the ebb and flow of nature made energy in a more substantial way. after we run 30 or 40 years providing energy storage and helping people we can remove all of our facilities very quickly, 96% of them can be either repurposed or recycled, so only 4% of our facilities could ever go into a landfill. we are trying to reduce that. we can then plant some native vegetation and six months later you would never know our facility was there. that was kate on a roll in california. back at babcock i'm going for a solar—powered speed in an autonomous shuttle, with its chief financial officer. i guess the motivation for having these autonomous vehicles is that you're encouraging families here to not have as many cars.

correct. 0ur thought is that over time most families in the us have a two—car family. our hope is that we can get from a two—car to a one—car family. where you have a car for the family, perhaps, but if you have it for a commuterfor work you won't need it any more, you can take an autonomous shuttle or an autonomous vehicle to work. over time, which will take a long time, perhaps, there are no cars. i think, realistically, within the next 10—15 years you can see a time when you go from two car to one car. you think the us government at the moment doesn't... i think they get it. i think they're getting it. the government's a little slow to move, typically. in major cities, major metros, where traffic and pollution are an issue, technology can come in and save a lot of that. i think governments are willing to step up and make sure this comes to fruition. we're seeing that slowly. what we're hearing and reading about is a lot of major urban cores are going to become, there will be restricted access, if you're driving your car

and you're trying to get there you can't get there — up to a certain mile, three miles outside of the city core you you can't get in to the city core without being in an autonomous vehicle, for instance. but outside of autonomous vehicles, building a city or a town that is sustainable, you're not going to be able to do this in colder, more crowded parts of the world. i think that's right. we have a unique situation here, we have the benefit of scale. there are not many people who have 1000 acres of land. that is a big chunk of dirt. along with autonomous shuttles, babcock has its own water and waste facilities, and as well as reclaiming water, there is a restriction on the amount you are allowed to use. the tin roofs reflect heat, making homes 10% better at keeping cool, and the ranch‘s on—site gym is environmentally friendly, too, it's powered by the treadmills. 0ne incentive to get off the couch, i suppose. it is a commendable vision to build a town with all these sustainable values, but i can't help thinking can only really do this when you are building a community from scratch. i mean, could you imagine trying

to retrofit an existing town with all of these technologies? you basically have to tear up the infrastructure and tear down all the buildings and start from scratch anyway. babcock has been built in the style of older towns, to attract those who aren't necessarily fans of a new build feel. hi. are you expecting me? people like the kinleys. do you mind if ijust step inside your air—conditioning and stay here forever? they've got a robot vacuum cleaner, a coffee making fridge.... it's set up so it won't spill all over the place. ..and an electric car. for richard, a self—confessed geek and a real fan of click, babcock was his calling. just reading tech blogs all the time on the internet and it sounded fascinating to me. i liked the idea that it was environmentally friendly and was looking forward as far

as energy solutions. in atlanta, we lived just downwind from one of the biggest coal polluting plants in the country. i thought that cannot be healthy. i think of it as guilt—free living. in the uk when you have a small town with a central area and you can walk to, it encourages walking, so it's the lifestyle. and while the buildings may look like historic florida, for me it was also all the technology, you know, having 1 gigabyte of fibre optic, internet in the homes... yeah, you definitely like that. hello and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week that the world health organization classified gaming disorder as a condition capable of causing debilitating addiction.

arguing with your malfunctioning tech could soon become a whole lot more intellectually stimulating. ibm put its project debater to the test this week. the system listens to the arguments of its human opponent and then scans hundreds of millions of documents in its memory to construct what it considers to be a sound and logical argument. having analysed the data, i will argue... ever wished you'd caught something in slow motion after you filmed it? well, chip designer nvidia shows us how ai could be used to fill in the gaps, turning 30 frames per second footage into 240 frames per second slick slow motion. and finally, the battle for our eyes and ears is hotting up. facebook has gone head to head with youtube, with plans to let social media stars into its previously high end watch programme. meanwhile, facebook—owned instagram revealed plans to host longer videos

on the platform, much like youtube. and youtube itself has been busy launching its subscription service, making content available off—line in 12 more countries, including the uk. confused? just go watch a video and relax. hurricane season is just around the corner in the us and that means that south florida is once again at risk from deadly winds and storm surges. much of it lies less than five metres above sea level. miami airport is just one metre. and in the further future, even moderate estimates of climate change will mean that the sea will swallow much of this area by the year 2100. it's probably no surprise that some of the most advanced hurricane research in the world is going on here at the university of miami.

this is a hurricane simulator. it is a 23—metre long glass tank filled with water and connected to an enormous fan, which means they can generate the strongest winds over water anywhere in the world. up there they can simulate a category 5 hurricane. a 1500 horsepower motor drives 65 metre per second winds, whipping up spray and smashing waves into whatever they put in the tank. the sensors in the tank measure how those waves behave and what they do to florida's buildings. because it's not so much the winds as the storm surge. the water driven inland by the storm that causes so much destruction and loss of life.

in a hurricane, two metres of floodwater is accompanied with large waves on top of that and the wave leading is really dramatic. it is what we are talking about, with waves that are quite often breaking and coming and hitting the structure. it's an impulsive force but it is repeated, many times, during a storm. even if it's only an hour, that can really do dramatic damage. and what have you found so far? how can you build houses better now because of what you have found? one of the key things we have found in some recent measurements related

to the structures directly, is that often, with decking, it is actually where the wave gets trapped underneath it. that is like an explosive uplift force. so you really have to look at how you engineer the attachments on things. 0k, we are about to go to full speed. ok, here comes the spray now. understanding the forces on these models will help develop new guidelines on what support structures would help a building withstand the onslaught of a storm surge. so if somehow you were under the sea during a hurricane, this is where you would see. it's better than being on top, i can tell you that. have you ever been in there when it's on category five, even in your christmas parties? no, we wouldn't go in there, because there's not much to hold on to and in the back of it it's like cheese slicer. so i don't really want to be turned into sausage or cheese. the team here aren'tjust trying to make stronger buildings. they are also testing ways of stopping the full force of the waves from getting to the land in the first place. here, they are looking at the effect of the seawall on protecting the house. further out in the water, something you might not expect. a coral reef. we've actually been reading some global studies which show that wave energies actually dissipated 97%, on average, as waves hit a reef crest and go towards shore.

so they act like 97% efficient wave break? that's right, if it's a healthy reef with a reef crest. it doesn't look to me like there's that much coral there. and it doesn't come to the surface. does that really do a good job? it can, actually, yes. with the waves you have the kind of circular motion that happens at the top, it causes circular motion all the way down, in a little ellipsis down to the sea floor. anything that disrupts that helps to slow down the wave. the problem is thatjust when we need coral to protect from climate change, climate change is killing coral. although corals, much like the trees in the rainforest, are the habitat builders of the ecosystem, it you lose the corals, just like if you lose the trees in the rainforest, you end up with no ecosystem. the corals building that habitat are very thermally sensitive. they are some of the most climate change sensitive species on the planet. the reason they are so sensitive to climate change is because they are very vulnerable

to small changes in temperature. an unusually hot summer causes a coral to turn white, in a process we call coral bleaching. that's a process whereby this symbiosis between the coral animal and this tiny single cell plants that live inside its tissue, that symbiosis breaks down and the coral spits out its algae, turns white, and unless it can somehow recover those algaes it will die. it starves, from lack of food. andrew baker has spent the last 25 years trying to create coral that's more resistant to increasing temperatures. we have found over the years that by gently bleaching corals deliberately in the laboratory we can encourage them to change their symbiotes in favour of this thermally tolerant type.

just now we are starting for the first time this pilot experiment of doing this out in nature, in the field, in reefs off miami, where it is what we are calling stress hardening these corals, encouraging them to change their algae in favour of the tolerant ones that will help them to resist bleaching and hopefully persist into the future. so beautiful, isn't it? and while they're working towards growing more resilient corals here in miami, there are of course projects going on across the globe to protect the coral we already have. nick kwek went to see one such project at the most famous coral reef in the world. the great barrier reef, australia, wonder of the world. earth's largest living thing, sprawling some 1600 miles. but this paradise could soon be lost at the hands of a very surprising vandal. crown of thorns starfish eat coral, and although they're found here naturally, recently too many have been pouring in at once due to major weather events and ocean pollution. you would think a starfish would be a cute, gorgeous thing you would see on the great barrier reef. the crown of thorns starfish, not so much. they're spiky, ugly,

they can have up to 20 or 30 arms. the biggest issue with crown of thorns starfish is that they can eat up to one metre of coral per day. when they're in plague proportions they can absolutely devastate a reef. to the rescue, the ranger bots. these underwater drones autonomously scour the reef starfish and prick them with a deadly dose of biosalt. the bots use an algorithm to identify starfish and then target them. their developers say they're 99.4% accurate. and they get smarter with time. traditionally, divers have monitored the reef by going out and doing a visual check. they record their findings on a slate — something time consuming consuming,

not to mention expensive. they can only be in the water for up to three or four hours a day. they can't dive at night. whereas the ranger bot has the capacity to be in the water for eight hours a day. it can dive at night. it also doesn't have some of the human failings that we know we have, where we see and miss things as we are getting dragged along under the water. working around the clock could make a big difference too. evidence suggests the thorny carnivores come out more at night. the ranger bots have lights, so their cameras can still see once the sun goes down. so inside these things you have got inertial sensors, pressure sensors, a gps so it knows where it's going. and it also has two computers working simultaneously. one to process the images, and one to know where it is going and understand the navigation route. the game changer is these thrusters, which allow it to go forward, backwards, up, down, leftand right, it also side to side, so when it spots the crown of thorns starfish it doesn't need to do a big loop—the—loop, it can just stop and zap them where they are. the bots are team players, too. the beauty of having this is that if we have multiple vehicles we put them here, we send them off in all directions, they pop up 500 metres away and they already know how many they've seen.

so we say, ok, zero, zero, zero, ten. that is our focus area. within 20 minutes we know roughly where we should be focusing our efforts. we will never outcompete a human and we are not trying to outcompete a human, but if we can give them the tools to extend their operational capability, that is a goal. constantly patrolling the reef, the rangers can also monitor water quality, measure coral bleaching and map the deep blue like never before. one of the issues we have about the great barrier reef is that it is so big we only know a fraction of what is going on under the water. without that information it makes it difficult for marine park managers to have a mature understanding of what's going on, and where they need to direct their time, management, resources and people. but they are still weather dependent. too strong a current, and the poor little ranger can be thrown violently off course. for all their ingenuity, isn't the relatively small work being done by these botsjust a drop in the ocean? the great barrier reef is facing many threats. there isn't going to be a silver bullet solution. but the ranger bot is just one step in that path we can take in terms of trying to make sure that we can

look after the great barrier reef on a local level while the world gets its act together on climate change. that was nick in queensland. that is all from our sustainability special from babcock ranch here in florida. we're staying in the united states for another week. next week we fly up to boston, home of mit, which always offers up 20 very, very cool innovations. the great barrier reef is facing many threats. there isn't going to be a silver bullet solution. but the ranger bot is just one step in that path we can take in terms of trying to make sure that we can look after the great barrier reef on a local level while the world gets its act together on climate change. that was nick in queensland.

that is all from our sustainability special from babcock ranch here in florida. we're staying in the united states for another week. next week we fly up to boston, home of mit, which always offers up 20 very, very cool innovations. looking forward to that. in the meantime, we live on twitter at @bbcclick. thank you for watching, and we will see you soon. hello there. it's a bit of a case of deja vu with the weather forecast at the moment. day—on—day, we're seeing those temperatures building. lots of sunny and dry weather during wednesday. top temperatures reached 32 at porthmadog in north wales. and we could see a similar story, i think, during the day on thursday. so high pressure well and truly driving our weather, keeping things dry and settled, with generally gentle breezes around. this was the picture in workington, cumbria during the day on wednesday. not a cloud in the sky there. i think we will have one or two areas of cloud around through thursday, particularly around the east, down towards lincolnshire, east anglia, some cloud around the coast that should thin and break during the day, but anywhere you could see fairweather cloud. as we draw in the breeze from the north—east, it's looking a little bit cooler around those eastern coasts. but, for central and western parts of the country, temperatures widely in the high 20s. some seeing top temperatures of 30 or 31, particularly for central scotland, but those temperatures

could just kick off one or two isolated showers. if you do catch one, could be a bit pokey, but most places will avoid any of those isolated showers through central parts of scotland. hot again for northern ireland, england and wales having a decent, dry and bright day. lots of sunshine, just that gentle breeze coming in, keeping things a little bit cooler around the east. now, moving through to friday, high pressure still with us, drifting a little bit further northwards. a similar day on friday. i think the best of the sunshine will be to the north and west. most places seeing clear blue skies, but in the east, with that breeze coming off the sea, it will be a little bit cooler and perhaps cloudier at times. i think the warmest weather during the day on friday will be further south—west, not quite as hot as thursday's weather across scotland and northern ireland. but further south, cardiff, bristol, for instance, we could see 29 or 30 degrees. looking to the weekend and saturday, we still got the warm air mass with us through the day. that's going to be bringing a fine weekend. through the weekend, again, mostly warm and sunny, just the small chance of one or two of us seeing some isolated showers. most places will avoid those showers. i think, through the day on saturday, it does look dry really across—the—board to start the day. later on, could just see one or two

showers creeping into the far west of scotland, perhaps western parts of northern ireland. not quite as hot here as recent days, but still a beautiful day. temperatures the further south could be 28 or 29 degrees. mostly dry for most places again on sunday, but notice these showers to the south—west could creep into south—western parts of britain. top temperatures, though, once again 29 or 30 degrees. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is lewis vaughanjones.

our top stories: all change at the us supreme court. as one judge steps down, president trump's choice of replacement could shape the political landscape for a generation. more than 200 migrants stranded on a rescue ship in the mediterranean are allowed entry into europe, but the row over migration continues. auf wiedersehen, germany. the reigning champions crash out of the world cup, beaten by south korea. there's despair and delight among the fans, and no small measure of disbelief. i'll be really honest, i thought deutschland would win because they're really good. but then i was really surprised when we scored two goals! prince william speaks of his hopes for lasting peace