above the crescent of copacabana beach in rio attended by hundreds of thousands of people. in london, big ben, the great bell of parliament's clock tower, was brought out of repair to ring in the new year. the north korean leader, kimjong—un, has warned that he may change course on denuclearisation if washington continues to demand unilateral concessions. in his new year's message, he said the us would have to reciprocate. he also said he is ready to meet president trump at any time. three people, including a police officer, have been wounded ina stabbing in the northern english city of manchester. one man has been arrested. a witness of the attacks said the suspect shouted allah and slogans criticising the actions of western governments in the middle east. almost two—thirds of councils in england didn't prosecute a single driver for misusing a disabled parking permit over the past year — that's according to figures

from the department of transport. during that time, more than 4,000 blue badges were stolen. the organisation representing local authorities said tough decisions had to be made about enforcing the system when resources were limited. john mcmanus reports. they are a lifeline for around 2.4 million motorists who have some form of disability. blue badges allow holders to park free of charge in pay—and—display bays, and for up to three hours on yellow lines. that makes them potentially very valuable, and the number of badges reported as stolen rose to more than 4,000 last year. yet data from the department for transport shows that most councils in england, including middlesbrough, nottingham and shropshire, failed to take action against a single motorist for misusing the permits over the last 12 months. of those that did, the largest number of prosecutions were in three boroughs — hammersmith in fulham, newham in london, and leeds. the body says tight finances are at

problem, but prosecutions have almost doubled over the last four yea rs almost doubled over the last four years and at some help from the vigilant public is welcome. not everyone has a visible disability. there might be a misunderstanding why somebody might have a blue badge, but it is best for the council to investigate. they are a lifeline, they are not a luxury. they enable people who have conditions to be able to get closer to buildings, to go around more easily. since the 70s, the colour has changed from a lynch to blue and had been widely accepted from the public. police must crack down on

this abuse. john mcmanus, bbc news. now, at this festive time of the year, it's time for a very special edition of click, filmed live before an audience who were treated to the very latest in technology including augmented reality, drones and dancing robots. shhh! why, hello there, little bedbugs. you're so sweet. i can change my face completely to match what i'm supposed to do. for example, i can be a woman like this. it's a bit creepy. we have got an informal queueing system going on here, like a pub. ah, hello! 0h,17 minutes to go until the show begins. and we're just writing the script. we should start with "welcome." then busk it. spencer kelly is really funny. ha—ha—ha! better than some actors, anyway! technology's moved on quite a lot

since i was at school. there weren't any computers then. you don't get nervous. he does, all the time! just getting in the last touches. are you looking forward to it? yeah. welcome to click live. from broadcasting house in london, this is bbc click live. please welcome your hosts, lara lewington and spencer kelly. applause. good afternoon, london! and welcome to click live! we're going to start with something truly magical. i would like you to put on your headsets and we will show the magic image. we're going to show you part of a show about gulliver's travels.

gulliver and his daughter gilly are in the land of the giants. they've been brought to the queen to entertain her. enjoy the show. why, hello there, little bedbugs. i hear you have prepared a special song for me? like we had a choice. your highness, i'm afraid there's been a small misunderstanding. you see, we do know how to play the piano, but we're not used to such a big one, you see. the peasant promised you'd play the piano for me. yes, but... and when promises are not kept, it makes my heart so sad, and when my heart gets sad, i start crying, and when i start crying... please, don't cry. forget what i said. we will play a song, just as you were promised. 0k? you may. thanks. here we go. ready? ready. 0k. piano music. applause.

i'm going to call up one of the people behind this ar show, from israel, please welcome sasha kreindlin. applause. thank you so much. can you explain whatjust happened? what we did is we created the tools to incorporate ar in the live show, and this tool allows the artist to focus not only on the stage, but the entire venue as your canvas. if everybody turned their head while the scene was going on, there is a whole castle around you. and the second revolutionary part is the interaction part, because they have buttons on their headsets, they can interact with the live show and it gives a world of possibility.

0k, cool. part of the magic is going on in the glasses you are wearing. if you could put the glasses on now, and we're going to hear and see some more tech, because half the magic is going on in the goggles and the other half is going on in the gallery backstage, which is where lara is right now. that's right. throughout the whole of click live, a lot of the technical stuff is happening back here. before the ar show you have just seen, isaac has been doing something here on a computer to make it happen. what have you been doing? well, actually, what i'm doing is controlling everything that happens in the ar, all the headsets, so i can play god. have rain on them, do things to the actors on stage, set the monitors so they can know what's going on, synchronise everything with the sound and lighting. please give it up for the ar show! applause. so, we're just getting the robots ready. aj is getting his laser tag guns ready, because he will trigger the robots to dance.

at mekamon hq in bristol, 30 robot toys are being taught to tango. well, sort of. to get the bots to bust a groove simultaneously, they all need to be set off at exactly the same time. so the team behind them had to get creative. so, this fires infrared at all the robots, and the robots get the signal, and they know it's time to dance. 0k... now. a tv remote was just really boring, so we thought a laser gun would be cooler. and it makes cool noises. it is cool, when it works. does it still need reloading? you have to reload the laser gun? yeah. and we can reset that 0k. it's a cone of light that comes out, not a single beam. if you get very, very close to our robot, it's a net

that's more narrow. the further back you are, we find it's a better, wider tack. but it's the same with the robots — they fire out a cone. they are shooting at each other. they have used video animation software to choreograph the custom dance routine. i make one animation and that will be distributed to all 30. but the way that we did the mexican wave was we put it into grids so that the last bit has a staggered animation, so for that bit, they all have their own little animation they're running. so here, i've got six animations for the big finish. so, that's how you get this kind of ripple effect. because the robots don't know where they are in relation to one another, they have to be positioned in precisely the right place. but when it's done right... music plays. and i'm joined here

by their proud father, ceo and co—founder of reach robotics, silas adekunle. thanks for having me. but if robotics can already do this for fun, there must be some exciting prospects about what they're going to be capable of soon. definitely. with mekamon, we are about education, so you can learn to code and learn some stem skills with mekamon. but on top of that, you have robots starting to go into the home. i think the next phase for robotics, especially consumer robotics, which will be a big part of that, robots that can go to our houses and help us. some of you may have smart devices, they can speak to you and ask questions of you. the next stage is for you to be able to say, "get me that," and it will get it for you. can you tell them a bit about your story? you have an interesting background. yes, that's a photo of me from nigeria. i was born in nigeria,

moved to the uk when i was about 11, 12, but before that i had been interested in science, engineering, stem. so when i moved to the uk, to cut a long story short, i went to university to study robotics and during that time, i saw that when you combine consumer robotics with gaming, it creates a really powerful engagement. it's a lot more interesting, as you can see. these robots are a bit like videogame characters in real life. they get better all the time, they get stronger over time. that was the inception of the idea behind mekamon. my question is — how do you get the motion so realistic compared to other products? there are two ways we do that. one is something called kinematics, where the robot is actually figuring out where it's moving to, and the second is we have amazing, talented animators who work on it digitally and try to make motion as realistic as possible. so what you're looking at here is years of lots of research into behaviour and motion that is translated into the real world. finally, it is the mechanical engineering aspect. we have some proprietary technology that allows the robots to move like this. great, thank you so much.

a man who wants to take over the world, but before we go, because we have this amazing routine taking place, we didn't want just you lot to see it. so earlier today, they had a little activity outside the bbc building. take a look at this. music plays. give it up one more time for silas and the mekamon robots. applause. hands up if you own a phone. hands up if you have a phone with you. yeah, 0k, keep your hands up if you have a camera on the phone. yes, pretty much everyone, of course. and i would say the average phone photo has about 8 or 10 or 12 million pixels in it. ok, so it's about a i2—megapixel camera.

but what would happen if you had more megapixels in your image? well, maybe you could do this. and it could zoom in — this is new york we are looking at — and you can zoom in... and you can zoom in. this is an image not with a million or so pixels, but a billion. it was created by a device called a gigapan, which takes lots of zoomed—in shots like this and stitches them together. it's one massive image of a billion pixels. but what would you do if you had a device that could take a billion—pixel image in one go? well, obviously you'd put it in space. and that's what our next guests have done. from the institute of astronomy at the university of cambridge, please welcome dr giorgia busso and dr anna hourihane. applause. so, um, this is the gaia satellite that's currently in space. this is a model of it, is it? yes, that's gaia. it's a space telescope.

it's one of the cornerstone missions of the european space agency. and, as you say, that's a model. the real one is ten times bigger. what have you been trying to find out using gaia? well, with gaia we're trying to discover the the shape of our galaxy and how it formed. and we need gaia's measurements to pinpoint exactly where the stars are and what the structure is. for example, how many spiral arms there are in our galaxy. it's crazy, isn't it, when you think about it. i grew up thinking that we knew that the milky way was a spiral with two arms. but what you're saying is, of course, we don't actually know because we're in it. we just think we know. exactly. so what kind of things is gaia measuring then? gaia is repeatedly scanning the sky and it's taking images of the stars at different times. and then, with these, by processing these images with a very complicated software system we can figure out how far away the stars are and how they move and with that we build up a map of the sky. it's basically like google maps for the galaxy. and you've made some remarkable discoveries already, haven't you? yes.

one thing we recently discovered is that the milky way was involved in a head—on collision with another galaxy early in its lifetime, about 10 billion years ago. we see that the stars are on these and elongated kind of sausage—shaped orbits that show they've come from another galaxy. for that reason, the galaxy that crashed into us is named the sausage galaxy. they've called it the sausage galaxy. would you please thank georgia and anna. that was fascinating. thank you very much. applause. camera clicking. and what show is complete without a cheeky selfie? if you were there, well, see if you can spot yourself here. three, two, one, there we go. so i have a background in technology and magic.

and magicians are interesting. their allusions accomplish what technology cannot. but what happens when the technology of the day seems almost magical? what happens when you can do this? now, 100 years ago that would have been the magic of levitation. now, is it possible to create illusions in a world where technology makes anything possible? jump. now, 100 years ago that would have been the magic of levitation. now, is it possible to create illusions in a world where technology makes anything possible? jump. now, if you know how the trick is done, where is the illusion? but still, our imagination is more powerful than our reasoning.

and it's easy to attribute personality to machines. these are quadcopters. but they are more than mechanicalflying machines. they analyse the environment around them and react to everything i do. advanced algorithms allow these autonomous machines to fly in close formation, aware of each other, aware of me. mathematics that can be mistaken for intelligence. and intelligence for personality. anthropomorphism — that's the illusion. an illusion created by technology and embroidered by our imagination to become an intelligent flying robot, a machine that appears to be alive. i think they say hello.

hey, guys. that's it. all right. time to go home. come on, everybody. right over here. there you go. everybody, come on. you can fit in there. go on. there you go. everybody, no pushing, no pushing over there. everybody, there you go. marco, you said you were a magician as well as a technologist. how much of that was an illusion? there was a little bit of trickery involved. so they're not really following my gestures or my commands. they're preprogrammed. and the way they work is to have tiny little cameras inside them and they track that pattern on this magic carpet we see

around the stage. 0h, magic carpet! that is how they self—localise know where to go. say a big thank you to marco tempest. thank you, everybody. thank you. after almost seven months and 350 million miles, nasa's insight finally entered the martian atmosphere in november this year. what followed was seven minutes of terror — before touchdown. it is only the eighth time that nasa has successfully landed on the surface of mars and follows on the footsteps, so to speak, of rovers like opportunity and curiosity. rovers that have helped to radically change our perception and knowledge of the red planet over the last 15 years. and we were lucky enough to have a member of nasa'sjet propulsion lab with us to speak on all things martian. what have we learned over that

course of time that wasn't apparent when it first landed? well, we have learned that there was a lot more water than we originally thought, and it is much closer to the surface than we had thought. so if we were to send humans there at some point we would be able to extract that water, turn it into energy, turn it into drinkable water, and be able to establish a habitat. so finding the water was, of course, a huge moment. what other exciting moments have you had more recently? the most recent discovery on the curiosity mission is the discovery of ancient organics, right. what this means is that we have discovered methane—like products, which means it could have potentially been hospitable for life on mars at some point in the distant past and maybe at some point in the not so distant future. nasa has also been hoping to educate people about its work on mars, using virtual and augmented reality. i am going to turn on the app. select all the mars missions.

we've got curiosity here and insight, of course. get a good feel about what the spacecraft looks like. take a picture and selfie with it. it's a great time learning about the spacecraft. so some of the details we are looking at, what are the parts and it they go wrong, you can't send someone to fix it? you're right. if anything breaks we cannot send a repairman. so we have to make sure everything is triple redundant. absolutely fascinating stuff. victor, thank you very much. ai. that's what the future's about, if you believe the hype. computer programmes that learn from past experience, that improve, and that sometimes learn to solve problems in ways that even we hadn't thought of. it's learning to drive, to play games, it's learnt to paint, it's learnt to understand what we say. and it is certainly true that al is already replacing

us in particularjobs. now, for many that thought is quite a scary prospect. not, though, for sachin duggal, who runs a company that uses ai to help design apps. we've created a platform that allows anyone to build software. so when you think about the thousands of applications, hundreds of thousands, the millions of applications out there, they all have common building blocks. how many people have an app that uses facebook? how many people have more than one app that uses facebook? and yet when you're building software, people are rewriting the same thing again and again. so we said, well, that doesn't make any sense, why don't we do it like cars, you know, where we have these common building blocks, you can use them again and again, and it means we can build it faster, cheaper, and better. and you want anyone to be

able to build an app, even if they can't code. that's the idea, isn't it? right. and if you think about the fact that everyone in this room must have had an idea... so what we found is 90% of people who have an idea don't even go past the stage of an idea, because it seems overwhelming. we're so much cheaper and so much faster because we're just using the code once and machines are basically finding where this has been done before, pulling it out of a library, putting it together, going to 32,000 people around the world, seeing who is available, choosing people for an hour a day or a week and putting it together. so, i mean, what's weird is we talk about some jobs possibly being replaced by ai, but i would imagine there are computer programmers in here and students who would like to be computer programmers for the next 20 or 30 years, and i guess they thought they were safe from the ai revolution, but what we're saying here is that even those jobs are not safe from al? and, again, i think it's nuance, right. so what you think students should be studying at college now? are they studying the right things or those things going to be replaced? if i'm slightly controversial i would say the whole idea of stem

and learning to code and that becomes like this overarching thing and everybody‘s gonna become a developer, i feel like that's so oversold. why do you need to be able to be in the digital economy, you know, build ideas, build software, why do you have to learn how to code? you should be taught how to be creative. how to think about product, how to think about problems that need solving, whether it's at a micro level or a macro level. and that's a much more important. sachin duggal, everyone. thank you very much. thank you so much. thank you. and a click live show wouldn't be a click live show without some lasers and a game that involves lots and lots of applause. well, you've gotta get it somewhere, haven't you? three, two, one — go! being clapped off stage. a fitting end if ever there was one. all that remains is to thank everyone who turned up to see us live and, of course, you at home for watching. all: goodbye! hello.

the closing stages of 2018 brought a lot of cloud across much of the uk. however, some clearer skies across northern scotland, and it's these clearer skies which will slowly filter their way southwards through new year's day. so increasing amounts of sunshine, but also a colder feel behind this weakening cold front, running into an area of high pressure, so that all that's going to be left on it is just a band of cloud. and think of it really as a dividing line between the milder airfurther south and west, and something colder further north and east. combine that with a brisk north

or north—westerly wind along eastern coasts and it will feel quite chilly to start new year's day. but plenty of sunshine for most. more in the way of cloud across northern ireland, wales and south—west england, could just bring the odd spot of rain. and a peppering of showers, perhaps wintry, across the northern isles and the northern half of scotland. still quite windy here for a time, but those gusts will slowly ease down. a noticeable breeze across northern ireland, northern and western england, southern scotland. much more in the way of cloud across wales, through the midlands, down towards south—east england and the far south—west of england, maybe giving the odd spot of rain, but that will soon disperse, and through the day, increasing amounts of sunshine from the north, say for the far south—west of england, which may hold onto a little bit more cloud into the afternoon. now, these average wind strengths are through the afternoon. you can see that they started to ease across northern scotland but a fairly brisk breeze blowing along eastern coasts, with a little bit more cloud here, a fairly chilly feel. we're looking at highs for new year's day between five and 11 celsius for most.

so, going through new year's day evening, for most it will be fine and dry, but we will continue to feed more cloud along eastern coasts. now, what that means overnight is that will keep temperatures above freezing, at around three orfour degrees. but further west, under clearer skies and with lighter winds, it's going to be a chilly start to wednesday, with a widespread frost. bear in mind these temperatures are in the centre of town. out in the countryside, they'll be a few degrees lower. but midweek, it's looking dry across much of the uk. plenty of sunshine, save for some eastern coasts, still drawing more cloud in from off the north sea. that will keep temperatures here up to around seven or eight celsius, tempered by the strength of the breeze. further west, despite some sunshine, not much higher than five or six. so, for the first week of 2019, turning colder, overnight frost and fog, but by day, more sunshine. happy new year. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is duncan golestani. our top stories: huge crowds on the copacabana beach as rio dejaneiro becomes one of the latest cities to see in the new year.

a warning for washington — north korea's leader says he may change course on denuclearisation. a man is arrested after stabbing three people in manchester. counter—terrorism police are leading the investigation. 6.5 billion kilometres from earth, nasa prepares for the furthest flyby ever performed in space.