this is bbc news. the headlines: a court in egypt has sentenced 75 supporters of the muslim botherhood to death, over a protest which killed at least 800 people, five years ago. the demonstration in cairo began after the military removed the then president mohamed morsi from office. amnesty international says the sentences are a mockery of justice. the united nations is warning of a humanitarian crisis in syria's idlib province as russian warplanes intensify airstrikes on rebel positions there. idlib is the last major rebel stronghold in northern syria. sweden's prime minister has issued a warning about the dangers of extremism, as the country prepares to go to the polls in its general election on sunday. opinion polls suggest that the anti—immigrant sweden democrats are likely to become the second biggest party in parliament. new powers have come into force designed to stop nuisance

calls from personal injury and claim management firms. you'll now need to opt in to allow companies to contact you. businesses that don't comply could face a fine of half a million pounds. manuela saragosa has the details. for many of us cold calls are a daily torment. the financial conduct authority says some 2.7 billion nuisance calls, texts and emails were made over the past year. that works out to be about 50 calls, texts and emails sent to every single adult in the country. many are made by companies offering to settle personal injury claims, or to claim back ppi, payment protection insurance. but from now on these companies will have to check first that the recipient has explicitly agreed to receive their calls and messages. companies that don't will face fines of up to £500,000,

and people are encouraged to report them to the information commissioner's office. some company will see the change in law and desist from activity. when they don't, i'm afraid people are going to have to complain. the ico does need the information from people about these calls, and she will then tackle, use her powers and slowly but surely, we will get on top of it and they will completely cease. campaigners say the new rules don't go far enough. they will not for example stop calls from fraudsters, and note, too, that firms based overseas are not covered. the issue of consent, they argue, is a red herring and they would prefer to see the authorities rule that unsolicited direct marketing calls are not a legitimate way of doing business. now on bbc news, click. this week, video gaming addiction. lego roller—coasters. and poetry — straight from the lion's mouth. this weekend, at the vna museum

in london, a new exhibition opens celebrating the art and design behind video games. design play disrupt tries to unpack some of the processes which have given rise to some of of the biggest game titles in recent years, like this, nintendo mega—hit splatoon, which somewhat refreshingly has squids firing ink rather than bullets in their quest to paint the world with colour. so here you can see the various stages of the game's design and what's interesting is that you have your concept arch and fashion design and set design,

what came first was this early prototype which features none of that and was simply designed whether to see whether the gameplay would be fun. video games are, without doubt, one of the most ubiquitous cultural and design forms about time, but there's an estimated 2.2 billion people in the world who play video games, almost a quarter of the world's population so it's important that cultural institutions and spaces of design embrace and explore and elevate this design medium. of course, as video games have become enmeshed in culture, so their role in society and their potential to influence individuals has come under increasing scrutiny. and there have been few bigger concerns than those surrounding gaming addiction. recently recognised by the world health organization as a mental health condition, the national health service here in the uk has announced it will set up its first treatment centre and that means the media, hello, hasjumped on the issue. butjust how concerned should you be

about gaming addiction? is it a growing concern or a moral panic? marc cieslak has been investigating. in the last few months, headlines about video games have been dominated by negative stories about the effect of games on mental health. a hit with younger gamers and the most popular title in the world right now, fortnite has been a lightning rod for these stories in the press. this, combined with a recent report by the world health organization in geneva which classifies gaming disorder as a mental health condition, has created a perfect storm in terms of press outrage. but how big a problem are we talking about? games industry trade bodies dispute the world health organization's findings, suggesting more research is needed and the who has been premature in deciding that video games disorder is a mental health condition. we have documented evidence

that the same problem and the same conditions are being observed in countries of africa, of europe, of americas, so it's really a global phenomenon. how is the world health organization defining video games disorder? as far as specific definition, you need to have three essential features. one is that there is an impairment of control over gaming behaviour, the second one is that this behaviour takes precedence over all other activities, previous activities and hobbies, and third one, when this behaviour continues or is even escalated in spite of the negative consequences for a person. additional extremely important criteria is that this behaviour should be observed for at least 12 months and it should result in significant impairment in important areas of functioning of a person. could some people worry that someone they know or perhaps their child has video games disorder when, in fact, theyjust play games for a very long time?

first of all, we need to make it very clear that playing video games doesn't mean that all that this person, even if intense playing, intense gaming, has a gaming disorder. according to available scientific evidence, we may think that the proportion of people who actually develop gaming disorder may be even less than i%, or very few per cent, of those who are engaged in video gaming. but of that small number of gamers affected, what help is out there? in the uk, help for video games addiction is available and, in extreme cases, treatment can be sought in private rehabs like this one. situated in a quiet part of surrey,

primrose lodge is a residential rehab which treats people with drug, alcohol, gambling and video games addiction. have you noticed an increase in the number of people that come for treatment for a problem with video games addiction? it's quite interesting because initially we saw people coming in with what i call an additional addiction, so substance and gaming, but over the last 18 months or so, we've seen an increase in pure gaming addiction. peter in in his 40s. he was a lifelong gamer until his entire world fell apart as a result of his addiction to playing video games. i liked action and first—person shooting games, half—life, unreal tournament, counter—strike, and team fortress — team—based shooters. i'd come home from work and play pretty much all night and pretty much all weekend as well, and it started causing big problems at home with my family. i had two children at the time.

what effect did that have on the people around you? eventually, due to the amount of time i spent on there, i did lose myjob. i was so tired all the time, i got the sack from where i was working. i do feel a lot of shame around it, you know? i hurt people very badly and i though until i came into treatment and into recovery, i thought it was because i liked gaming. because it is online gaming and i'm not sticking needles in myself like a heroin addict, i can kick it and it's no big deal. peter spent a month in rehab and has been in recovery forfour years, abstaining completely from playing games. so how do you treat people that have a video games addiction problem? it's more closely aligned to gambling addiction. the treatment is very much the same. group therapy and one—to—one counselling sessions to strip away the addictive process and look to what's underneath and driving that process. residential rehab treatment can cost thousands of pounds. in the uk, the national health service is taking video games disorder seriously and is in the early stages of trialling its own treatment programme. but does the games industry itself have a role to play in light of the world health organization's bindings? drjo twist ceo of the uk games

industry trade body. it wholeheartedly disagrees with the world health organization, questioning the scientific evidence provided by the who. our view as an industry body and in line with many, many academics from research, psychologists, social scientists, lots of academic practitioners who feel that there is no consensus around the evidence based upon which this is being drafted. we believe that this is premature, to include this as a gaming disorder at this stage. and we believe that the evidence is confused and there just is no consensus at this time. one thing that i would put straightforward, i think what we can expect is that the gaming industry would recognise the arguments that public health professionals present on the existence of gaming disorder as a new, relatively new health condition, which becomes an issue for healthcare systems in many countries, and just acceptance of this fact would be an important step in addressing the problem. the games industry takes its responsibility to its players very, very seriously indeed,

but it is a shared responsibility. we can't tell parents how to parent and we don't dare to. what we want is to be able to support parents so that they understand how to protect their children, how they can use the parental controls, how they can set time limits, how they can talk to their children about what it is that they are doing and what draws them to particular kinds of games and to actually play with them. for most of us who play games, the negative headlines in the press don't reflect our experience. for us, games are an entertainment form as creative and vital as movies or music. but as games have become more popular and widespread, new problems are emerging, problems which we will have to address. yeah, indeed. so, marc, is this whole thing a moral panic? it is.

every couple of years this was rolls around, the newspapers like to give games grief and this time, the massive success and popularity of fortnite has focused a lot of parents‘ attention on how much time their kids are spending playing video games, and what games they are playing. and on that subject, would you say there are certain genres of games that cause particular problems? well, this is interesting. i asked the world health organization about this and they were really vague. they said, "online multiplayer games." you couldn't be more vague because a wide variety of different games which are online multiplayer and ultimately, when pressed, they said more

research needed to be done. in your opinion, if they can't talk about the genre of games, other certain things within games, certain things that gamers do that trigger these problems? again, i asked them about that and they said that they were concerned about certain mechanics in games. they were particularly concerned about monetisation and anything that resembles gambling, for instance. so this could be micro payments, where you buy a little thing ina game. absolutely, they very, very concerned about that. loot boxes, where players can pay many or pay for a key which opens up new skills, new outfits, that kind of thing. that was very much a concern. and it's been a concern for certain governments around the world who are starting to look at banning loot boxes in games. welcome to the week in tech. it was the week that mercedes launched its first all—electric car.

despite no official price tag yet, thousands have been pre—ordered. sony finally ends its repair service the bestselling games console of all time, playstation 2. it's been six years since they stopped making them. and these have been banned in schools in france. the new law will affect pupils up to the age of around 15. the government hopes it will reduce distractions during class, encourage more physical activity and help tackle online bullying. and the head the uk's largest police service wants access to facebook profiles within minutes of starting a serious crime investigations. it comes after a suspect in the fatal stabbing of a 13—year—old girl was sentenced to 14 months behind bars forfailing to hand over his password to officers. and last, ‘boat‘ not least — for the first time, a robot boat has made it across the atlantic. taking 80 days and sailing over 5,000km, the unmanned and slightly

small vessel made the arduous journey from canada to the coast of ireland. powered by batteries that are recharged by its solar panels, the vessel isn't finished yet and is currently making its way towards norway. sarah?! sarah!! lady, hey, lady! sarah! i found her! it's every parent's nightmare. losing sight of your child, even for a few seconds, can be terrifying. and in the dystopian future of black mirror, it leads this mother to implant her child with an all—seeing monitoring device. one slightly less invasive solution is to give them a smartphone, which means they are contactable and trackable using gps and, in fact, 83% of young teenagers in the uk now own a smartphone

which, of course, raises that spectre of device addiction from an early age. so what if you had a way of knowing your child's location and communicating with them without the need for a smartphone? enter the norwegian xplora smartwatch, a children's wearable with an inbuilt sim card and a gps locator. parents can keep track of them on their app and will get an alert if the child leaves a pre—defined safety zone. it also acts as a phone, allowing a child to ring and receive calls and texts from trusted contacts or send an sos if they feel in danger. sounds like a good idea, but wherever there's tracking, there's the worry of hacking, and the boss, jesus llamazares, admits it's a very sensitive issue. as a parent with young kids myself, i want to know they are safe and i want to know where they are, but i also don't want anyone else

to know where they are. there is the worry of hacking with any kind of location tracking. yeah, we have been working intensively with the data protection agencies in norway and germany, and also with a third party, tuv, which is a very world recognised certifying partner for security services. do you think there is a danger that we are moving towards a society where we are happy to constantly surveil our children and family? and are we moving towards a world where there is no privacy? and do you think there is an age at which kids do not need to wear this kind of device? these devices are designed for kids below the moment they have a smartphone. there are also some new cases that we try to promote all the time —— there are also some use cases that we try to promote all the time around health, that is, if your child is going for a football match or doing some activity out

there, sometimes a smartphone is not the best thing to wear, but a smartwatch is able to keep you connected, right? so there are some use cases, even for teenage years, where the watch is quite useful. the increasing worry is that the kids have all the time with the tablets, not the parents, and we want them to go out and play, notjust be connected, with the family, no access to social media, etc, but as well, the outside, injoy and experience out of your home, right? with your friends and your family. not being all the time with their tablets. of course, they will still have a lot of time with the tablets, smartphones, consoles, et cetera. but this is something we cannot avoid probably. this is nelson's column in trafalgar square, and for over 150 years, its base has been guarded by four giant lions. but soon, these guys will be joined by a fifth,

and a rather unusual one. it is arriving with the help of google, and paul carter went to find out more. protests. celebrations. mourning. trafalgar square has long been a place where voices come together. the lions that have sat in the square since 1867 have heard them all. but what if they could speak? as part of the london design festival, a fifth lion will appear in the square, powered by machine learning. the result is an interactive sculpture called please feed the lions, a collaboration between designer es devlin and google arts and culture lab. members of the public will be able to feed the lions with words which, in turn, will generate poetry created by an artificial neural network. it uses an algorithm known as long short—term memory recurra nt neural network. snappy. it has learnt how to write by reading millions of words of i9th—century poetry relevant

to the time the lions were first installed in the square. machine learning becomes a way not to replace human poetry writing, but a way to allow people who wouldn't normally be able to write a poem, or wouldn't normally think of writing a poem, but to enable them to gather their words together and form a collective stream of thought, to add order to what could otherwise be a chaos of people's jammed—together thoughts. and you don't have to go to the square to take part in this. you can go on to the website and contribute online as well. it is notjust for londoners — that is important to me. the algorithm works by learning to predict the next text character over and over again, always taking into account those that came before — similar to predictive text, it repeats this process until the condition accurately sequences words hasn't seen before. when members of the public feed in their own words, the machine will expand them into its form of poetry. once the poems have been generated, they will be projected onto a screen

in the mouth of the lion, and when it gets dark, onto nelson's column. but hang on a minute. isn't asking members of the public to input their own words asking trouble? we have applied filters, so, filters where all of the words have to be in the oxford english dictionary, and then there are filters against offensive words. and if you try to enter words that the lion is not happy with, it will simply tell you, "i am unable to digest those words. please try again." so with al and machine learning becoming more commonplace in the arts, what does the future hold for the relationship between art and technology? does technology make sense? does it add a value? because if not, then, you know, leave the art alone. but if it can be a tool, a creative tool, perhaps, or perhaps a collaborator, and i would say with the case of the lions it is both a tool and a collaborator, or perhaps it enables the arts to be accessed

and experienced more broadly. that was paul carter. now, i think it is fair to say we have a pretty fun job here at click. but there is one company which dedicates a whole day every year to letting its employees simply play. and kate russell went to see just what difference that can make. the late great sir george bernard shaw is said to have said, "we don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing." i came to lego headquarters in london to find out more about the science behind play. for lego employees, the seventh of september is play day, when they take time off from their normal duties to have fun with the products at the heart of the business. i think the play day is a time for us to get back to understanding our own motives, get back to understanding why we are here, whichver department that you are in,

to think about the fact that i might be in r&d, i might be in finance, but at the end of the day, i am here for getting the smile on kids‘ faces. you'll get no argument from me that day of play is good for the spirit, but is there a scientific reason why it could be good for our health? that is the question scientists at the university of london goldsmiths want to answer. so this is a unprecedented exploratory research project to try to understand the effect of play on workforces. we have a controlled environment at the beginning, a regular workday, and then we have a play day where they are exposed throughout the day to a variety of interventions. then we have a day after, in which we can examine the residual affect of the play day on the individuals. today, they are running a proof of concept pilot to see what results a serious study might turn up in the future. a small group of volunteers have been connected to heart rate monitors to measure the physiological effect of stimulating play throughout this series of different activities. they will also be self—reporting the psychological effects

by answering a series of specially designed questions through a chat bot. so, ian wynne is the man with the tech. what is that? this is a high—resolution heart monitor. it's 1,000 hertz. you just put it under your top, in contact with the skin, put that around the back, and clip it on. brilliant. and go play. if i must! i am a big roller—coasterfan, and what better way to get your heart racing? so i recruited mini me and mini spencer for some good old —fashioned play. whee! critics claim that the brain controls the speed of our heartbeats based on what's going on around us. when we need greater concentration or to handle stressful situations, it speeds up the heart, increasing blood flow. then the heart slows back down again when we enter a period

of rest and recovery. it looks like mini spencer might need a longer period of convalescence after that right. —— of convalescence after that ride, though. spencer: yeah, i was bricking it, to be honest. what are the results you expect to get from the baseline versus the play day with our lego people? so what we're expecting to see is really good engagement. the scores will go down as they need more energy, more concentration on the really difficult tasks. but really good recoveries as well, because they are enjoying it. so once they have had that stressful ,moment they should be able to bounce back and recover quickly for the next one. if you are constantly stressed and on edge, you won't experience the peaks and troughs associated with healthy brain—heart activity. there is a different between acute stress and chronic stress. acute stress you'd expect. if a lion pops up behind you, then fight or flight is the right response. if you have long—term stress, chronic stress, that can be much more negative indication. whoa! i think everybody is really excited now. there is a whole renewed energy worldwide around well—being in the workplace and trying

to understand how we can better motivate and engage with workforces and employees, and i think play is an interesting and innovative way to do that. the results are in from this pilot and suggest certain types of play could help workers recover more quickly from stressful periods. and crucially, might help raise levels of confidence and creativity in certain personality types. i guess i am the type of personality that would quite happily sit in a spinning top all day. spencer! can we get one of these in the office, please? so that is what is rofl means — rolling on the floor laughing. yes, we will get one for you, kate. that is into this week. don't forget, we live on facebook and twitter. thanks for watching. see you soon. the weekend weather has had a pretty

mixed flavour and i don't think that will change much on sunday, some outbreaks of rain at times and breezy and windy weather in the north but amidst all of that, still some spells of sunshine. dan across western england and wales northern ireland first thing. the rain will tend to peter out of a heavy breasts will continue to drift north eastwards a cross will continue to drift north eastwards across scotland and by the afternoon eastern scotland, northern ireland england and wales are fine, the odd shower and some warmth across the south—east corner. 22— 23 degrees. if the show was returned to western scotland perhaps with thunder and lightning through the night and richard the gusts reaching 50- night and richard the gusts reaching 50— 55 miles an hour, and lost to

resell across northern areas, even further south the king read it is by clear skies temperatures shouldn't fall too far. but fortunes of the start of the new week with rain in central areas, call to the north, further south on sunshine and some warmth as well. —— tool. —— cool. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is lebo diseko. our top stories — a court in egypt sentences 75 people to death over a huge anti—government protest in 2013. human rights groups call the trial a mockery of justice. syrian and russian airstrikes on rebel positions in idlib intensify, after calls for a truce are rejected. sweden's prime minister issues a warning about extremism as the country prepares to vote in a general election. and japan's naomi osaka

wins herfirst grand slam at the us open — but her opponent serena williams clashes with the umpire.