this is bbc news. the headlines: president donald trump has visited california to survey the damage from the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in the state's history. he praised the efforts of local police, politicians and the teams searching for survivors. the campfire, in northern california, has killed at least 76 people. about a quarter of a million people have taken part in demonstrations across france against a further increase in fuel tax and the rising cost of living. one demonstrator was killed when a panicking driver drove into protesters. there were more than 100 injuries nationwide. a senior member of the british prime minister's cabinet has called for changes to her brexit plans. andrea leadsom who's the leader of the commons, said there was "potential to improve" a draft deal, before the prime minister presents it to european leaders next week. now on bbc news, it's time for click. this week: robo—surgeons. swinging superstars.

and sean bean toilet duck. here on click, we are constantly coming across jawdropping medical marvels. from robo—nurses, to ai which can outdiagnose experts. we have seen the future of medicine evolving before our eyes. it is fair to say medicine has come a long way. this is the old operating theatre museum in london. of course there is an old operating theatre museum, why wouldn't there be?

back in the late 1800s for example, this was the cutting edge — literally. and in the 130 years since, surgery has changed beyond recognition. but, as with all technology, we mustn't become overreliant on it. we mustn't think that it will do everything and we mustn't think that it will work every time. last week, we were given a sombre reminder of this when an inquest found that a cardiac patient, stephen petit, had died as a result of undergoing pioneering heart surgery using a da vinci robot. had the surgery had been of the traditional kind, he almost certainly would have survived. i think it is surgeon is going to use a robot, and use is the right technical term, he has to be very well practised with it. i think that was an example where the team were not sufficiently trained or prepared to do that operation.

and therefore, it was a very, very, very long operation that ultimately went badly. we reached out to intuitive surgical, the company behind the robot used in the stephen petit operation. they provided a statement expressing their condolences to his family and reiterating that patient safety is their priority. but they said they don't provide and can't enforce a mandatory medical training regime before a surgeon uses their robotic system. this training and validation remains with hospitals. they say that more than 5 million da vinci robot procedures have been performed by more than 40,000 surgeons trained worldwide. so, where now for robotic surgery? well, paul carter has been to see some robo—manufacturers centre of operations, as well as getting an inside look at real—life surgery. at london's royal marsden hospital,

we have been allowed to see the surgical robots in action. following the death of stephen petit, it was interesting to find out all about how surgeons are trained in vr and how they overcome the sense of touch they would have if they were using the hands. before anyone goes anywhere near a patient they are expected to do a good deal of training on that system in virtual reality beforehand. yes, you lose the tactile feedback but you have got very clear imaging and you can very clearly and precisely define your dissection. i think that is important, we call that haptic feedback, tactile feedback, and it is something that is very important in certain circumstances. it was something that i worried about as i started my training in robotics, but i developed a visual feedback, you can tell how much tension you are putting under the tissues just by looking at them. in this procedure, robotic

technology will be used to remove a cancerous tumour in the patient‘s stomach, with fluorescent dye used to light up the area. during the procedure, surgeon miles smith, assisted by assad chowdry, controls three robotic arms which he neglects to remove the tumour. the aim is to greatly reduce surgical trauma as the robot method is far less invasive than more traditional surgeries. the da vinci robot makes it possible for surgeons to operate deep inside the body through microscopic incisions. can you keep your voice down a little bit because this is quite a critical part of the operation and what is actually happening behind me is that they are put imports into the patient‘s stomach where the robot will dock onto in order to perform the actual operation a little bit later on. the robotic console actually uses keyhole surgery, whereby instruments into the patient‘s body through small holes instead of large cuts. that means less blood

loss, less trauma and also quicker recoveries. the robot has four arms, three of which carry tiny surgical instruments and one of which sports a camera. ports need to be put in place before the robot can be wheeled in to dock its arms. after the robot arms have successfully been attached, the surgeons relocate to consoles in a different part of the room. what is remarkable about this system is it is generally remote. you can see the arms moving behind me and they almost look like they are moving independently, they are actually being controlled by miles, who is sat a console several feet away from the patient. the remote consoles provide the surgeon with 3d visualisations

and magnified images allowing complex dissection or reconstruction. so, through these eyepieces here we can actually see a 3d representation of the inside of the patient‘s abdomen, which is slightly not what i was expecting to look at this morning. compared what we are looking at before on the screens is much more vivid and you get a sense of depth in terms of what they are actually operating on. the surgeon controls the arms through finger loops that mimic the hands of natural movement. the hand gestures are translated into smaller, more precise motions while filtering out tremors. they move naturally and then what you can do is to move forward, it is like pulling a newspaper towards yourself. the cameras can also switch from black and white to colour, meaning that fluorescent dye can be used inside the body to isolate tumours. so the tumour has just been cut off, for lack of a better phrase. it is just extraordinary, put in a little tool and bagged it up. yes, that's it. let's take it out of the ports. intuitive surgery, who make the system used at the royal marsden, have almost complete market dominance. but now, new robotic surgery players

are starting to emerge. we've come to california to visit alaris health, who are developing robotics for a different type of surgical procedure. alaris‘ monkier platform concentrates on endoscopy, a procedure which allows treatments to be given to organs through natural openings, such as the mouth, meaning no incisions are required. it can manourvre through patient‘s airways, even into the far and narrow parts of the lungs, and combined with ct scans, it can provide a gps map of the patient‘s internal organs, allowing surgeons to operate precisely on areas of concern. so it is notjust a case of a surgeon blindly navigating their way through until they find it. this is actually following a map. exactly right.

that's exactly right. and an allergy like use is this is my windshield, i keep my focus on the patient‘s anatomy, this is my map, they will inform me as i go. what is remarkable about this system is that it is taking something that is actually quite complex, this is the representation of the insides of a person, and it is taking it down to something actually quite intuitive and quite simple. i am using what is essentially a modified games controller to operate this scope here. and i am no surgeon, i have been using this for a couple of bits and i am able to make quite precise movements. it's pretty extraordinary. it's clear that robotics finding different surgical niches is one area of growth, but what else does the future hold for surgical robotics? it's no reason why in the future we shouldn't be able to train robots to differentiate between structures that we want to preserve and structures that we want to remove. perhaps a bit like driverless cars, but in this case a surgeonless robot.

possibly under the control of the surgeon. perhaps certain parts of the operation might be automated, as you might set things up in a certain way and almost press play so it great a separate programme. i don't see them taking over from us, but i see them certainly assisting us. hello and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week that amazon announced the location of its second headquarters. well, second and third. it will be split between new york city and arlington, virginia. and the new york times has accused facebook of having a pr firm to discredit critics and competitors. facebook has responded by saying that there are a number of inaccuracies in the report and that they have since cut ties with the company involved. brace yourselves people, we can see this one going on for a while. and china's sunwei supercomputer has been pushed off the top place

of world's most powerful machines. the new one is summit by ibm. scientists in bristol have developed a game lab to better entertain our second closest relatives, gorillas. cameras, sensors and microchips are hidden in an interactive unit, which is providing researchers greater insight into the enjoyment and help them better understand how primates solve complex problems. and just when you thought the world couldn't get any more bizarre, check this out. it is the happiest day of this 35—year—old man's life as he lifts up the veil of his bride to kiss her. the only snag is she is a virtual reality pop star. hatsuni was represented by a stuffed doll during the $18,000 tokyo wedding. back home, a holographic version of her literally lights up when her husband gets in from work.

yep, it is a weird, weird world. now, we dedicated much of last week's programme to issues surrounding fake news. we took you to kosovo to look at the fake news factoryies based there and found that facebook did seem to be having some success in taming the problem. well, this week we are off to india, arguably the new epicentre of fake news. there, it travels largely on another problem, whatsapp, which means it is a lot harder to police and it is having some really severe consequences. david rees has been investigating. i am on the prowl for cheap mobile data. so tell me, what is the deal? 149 for one month. how much data do i get? 1.4 gigabytes a day. 1.4 gigabytes a day, 149 rupees a month, come on, that is just... 42 gig of mobile data costs $2 in india, in the uk, £40 or £50, in the us, $100. obviously people here

earn far less than they do in the us or uk, still, mobile internet is so cheap here that it is knocking up around 500 million users. and that is throwing up issues. the most serious of which, is fake news. this man runs a site that is debunking the rising tide of fakery, evidenced earlier this year when every story on youtube‘s india trending feed turned out false. scroll through his site and much there is clearly fake, but for many who are new to modern media, it is believable, even important. nowadays if you look at a lot of content is getting crated all in indian languages and that reaches out to the entire spectrum of people in india, not just the educated class. and it is in sheltered, rural communities where sham stories do most damage.

many have been killed this year in mob violence triggered by false rumours of child abductions. so, how do you deal with this? well, you have to act quickly, because according to recent research, bad news travels fast, fake news travels faster still — and further. and we can all spread it when we rub up against one another in public, online spaces, each of us can carry or catch the contagion. researchers at delhi's indian institute of technology are using the same maths for modelling epidemic disease to understand how false rumours spread. the main driver is trust. i believe what you say because i know you, or i know that you think like the way i do. the same trust we want to use in the opposite direction. if you trust me and you tell me something i know to be fake, if i told you that is fake,

stop spreading it, there is a chance you may stop spreading it. we are talking about innoculation of sorts, using the trust that is already present. you can just see how a trusted community leader in the loop could help quell panic from a mischievous rumour. but you cannot help wondering whether the tech companies could do more. in your tools, do support other languages, the answer is ' they have a local team who sells ads out here, right? so it's not that — sales happens out of the us or uk place. you can put a sales team out there, why can't you put a fake news direction team out here as well? google likes to wave algorithms at issues. it is now highlighting authoritative sources for some countries and also trained localjournalists to fight local fa kery. we'll have to wait and see whether its hands—off approach stems the fake news epidemic. that was david in india. next we're going to talk golf — a stubbornly traditional sport,

but one which is ready to embrace the newest technology, as lara lewington has been finding out. this is wentworth club, which in just a few years is going to be celebrating its centenary. but over that 100 years, a lot has changed. in recent times, much of that has come down to technology. so we are going to go and see how both amateurs and professionals in the making good use of that. lasers, radars, sensors, and motion capture have transformed data collection. and analysing these statistics means training and play can be more precise than ever before. and who better to show us in one of the greatest golfers on the planet? francesco molinari, fresh from wins this year in both the ryder cup and the open championship. one of the difficulties of golf is that there are so many elements, and even so many parts of the body moving through the swing,

that any little difference, any little difference makes a change. those tiny differences are captured by the kind of tech usually reserved for big budget hollywood films. 27 reflective markers over his body helped to create a digital double francesco's swing to be analysed in detail. this will pick up endless, endless parameters, in terms of his alignment, how his body is moving and his flexibility, his weight movement. the system has picked up hundreds of thousands of swings and goal shots, which has become a database. optical motion capture analysis uses high—speed cameras to capture every movement in the body and club.

this provides francesco's team with data that would have been impossible to measure a few years ago. this is trackman. the radar basically picks up all the data surrounding the golf course, surrounding the golf club. it picks out points of that will stop and that gives us the data that we can see. so we have ball speed, we've got launch angles, we know how high the ball launched out of the golf club. 15 years ago he would have been in the field watching the ball, whereas now we can physically see. slightly intimidating being this close, but i guess he does know how to hit the ball the right way. the technology tracks the distance, power, and trajectory of the ball, using a combination of hd cameras and a doppler radar. it also registers microwave transitions that move away from a golf club and ball. you hear it where you say

players have a good feel. we're putting numbers of the feel. in a way we're calibrating feel. without the technology will we would have no benchmark. it would be one of those. this gives us hard data. it is a crucial measuring tool. otherwise, if you think about it, old school, you would hit all five balls and go look at them and measure them and write them all out. that's the only way that you are going to learn — to have immediate feedback — and this is sensational for that. but is this in some ways ruining the game? before it was a lot of guessing going on, and really going on the feel of the players, and ourfeel. there is now just a lot more feedback. these people with lasers zapping our ball after every shot so we know exactly how far we hit every shot, how far off—line, how farfrom the flag. so far, it has been impossible to track everything, but with the technology you've seen

today, we're getting closer and to getting exactly an idea of what is going on. definitely technology has been a massive help in tracking every bully getting immediate feedback, so i would would not be as good a player, for sure, without that knowledge. and that may well be true. but ultimately the player has to be skilled enough to act on the data that is being recorded, and, of course, this is not there to turn just anyone into a star player. that was lara with one of the biggest sporting stars of the moment. and we're going to continue that theme, now, kind of, because mark cieslak has hooked up with sean bean, who is appearing in a videogame near you soon. star of stage plus the big and small screen, sean bean has kicked the bucket a lot of

roles he has played. so much so that it's a thing on the internet. and now gamers are going to get the chance to digitally do in the legendary actor when he appears as a special guest at target in the videogame hitman 2. good morning, 47. the target is mark faber, also known as the undying. the hitman games cast the players agent 47, employed by a shadowy organisation to dispatch a series of individuals across the globe, employing a wide variety of weapons, from explosives to seafood. boom. as well as donning deadly disguises to take out their target. it's using your head. while the main game hangs off a single player story mode, it also features a variety of online modes, including targets which only appear for a short period of time

and which the player will only have one attempt to kill. so—called "elusive targets". sean bean is one of these. he plays ex—mis agent mark faber, known for his ability to fake his own death. it's not that death i have cheated, just humans. sean, can you tell us about mark faber, the character you play in hitman 2? he's perfect. he is very particular. he is skilful, intelligent, he has imagination, above all. he has a price on his head, and he is forever devising new methods — very extravagant methods — of assassination. so he's — he's quite arrogant. he's quite lonely. but he has a certain amount of charm, i think. is there any difference to you in playing a character at a videogame as opposed to playing a character in a movie or tv show? yeah, it was good. it's something i'd never done before.

a character in a videogame, we only filmed for one day, so we have got a small kind of area of being able to develop something, some kind of personality. but i think we did, and i did a lot of voice over for a previously, and you get some idea of who he is, and i think we captured that within a day, and it is out of my hands then. it is different in that you don't have the film for weeks or months and you canjust — i did the initialfilming, then the motor capture, they decided they didn't need me after all, and they have done it, and i thought, "great, that's it, ok. " you have played lots of characters which have met a sticky end and not got to be into the movie or tv series. is going to be weird being in a game where thousands of players across the world are going to be the ones that are dispatching you? i guess so. i mean, you know, i guess it should be strange to me, but for some reason it's not. i think i have a lot of fun and i'm

a bit cocky and arrogant in it. so, you know, i'm kind of asking for it. laughter. if you play this level, killing yourself... ifi... yeah, yeah. ..killing a virtual version of yourself, what method would you choose, out of all the methods that you got that you can kill the character with? probably something drawnout and bloody and comical. because the true assassin knows the world is always your best weapon. cheers. cieslak and bean, what a double act. and that's it for this week. but don't forget we can be found across social media, youtube, instagram, facebook, and twitter. all you need to do is say "bbc click" and we will be there. thank you for watching. we will see you soon. hello there.

the second half of the weekend is looking fine and sunny for most areas of the uk, with a chilly wind out and about. yesterday we had some sparkling visibility, clear blue skies across the highlands of scotland. we had a number of beautiful weather watch pictures sent in to us. but you know what? our weather patterns are all interlinked. what happens to the north—west of us, near the arctic circle, north iceland, we had to temperatures up to 17 celsius. just astonishing. 14 degrees above normal. it has set in place a chain reaction. the warm air will go in to the arctic and the arctic responds by chucking cold air out across northern europe. that ultimately is heading

to our shores in the next couple of days. a change in the weather is just around the corner. before we get that it will be a chilly start to the day this morning because we have had these clear skies for most of the night. that has allowed temperatures to plunge. because the breeze has stayed up there is not too much frost out and about. temperatures in the towns and cities have got down into low single figures. in some of the deeper valleys in the highlands of scotland, the grampians, there are patches of frost where the winds have managed to fall light. here is a weather chart through the rest of the day today. high pressure still influencing the weather, dragging the dry air in from europe. that is significant because that is why we are not seeing much in the way of cloud. that said, there may be patches of cloud through the vale of york and eastern areas of scotland to start the day. these will probably thin and break up to give sunshine. a much sunnier day for northern ireland. most of us it will be fine, settle, and sunny. a chilly breeze blowing throughout the day. temperatures near normal for the time of year, 10—12 degrees, perhaps feeling cool

around the coastline of east anglia, southern parts of england as well. we start to see those changes taking place with the weather as we look at the chart for monday. more cloud moving in. it will be thick enough to bring light rain or drizzle around some of the western coasts of scotland. the western areas of england. lots of cloud around, cool winds. temperatures starting to edge down a little bit. but the really cold air doesn't arrive until we get on into tuesday. temperatures will be struggling. six degrees or so in london. notice we still have some spots of blue on the charts. some rain and drizzle across england and wales. a cool down for scotland and northern ireland. the coldest bit will be further southwards. this is the outlook. not a bad day for today. a downward spiral with temperatures. looking into the middle of the week, cardiff, just five degrees by wednesday. winter is coming. this is bbc news, i'm reged ahmad. our top stories: president trump visits the site

of californa's deadliest wildfires, as the death toll and numbers unaccounted for continues to rise. more than 250,000 people have joined protests across france in anger at rising fuel prices. a senior member of theresa may's cabinet calls for changes to her brexit plans, piling more pressure on the british prime minister. message in the snow. the world's largest postcard aims to highlight europe's shrinking glaciers. fire authorities in california say five more bodies have been