democrats in the us congress have announced they will begin public hearings on impeaching president trump next wednesday. so far, witnesses have been behind closed doors. the inquiry centres on mr trump withholding military aid to ukraine, a us ally under threat from russia, and whether he made aid dependent on ukraine investigating joe biden, one of mr trump's rivals for the white house. doctors in chile say they have treated nearly 200 people for severe eye injuries caused by police action against anti—government protesters. weeks of unrest have also left at least 20 people dead and prompted a un investigation into human rights abuses. the uk's election campaign is formally under way, prime minister borisjohnson calling on voters to give him a majority so he can take britain out of the european union. the day was overshadowed by two resignations, welsh secretary alun cairns and labour's deputy leader, tom watson.

now it's time for click. taiwan. an island shaped like a leaf but the meeting point of four seas. many around the world came to know it from the words made in taiwan stamped on electronics, toys and bikes. it became a brand people recognised. but the world has changed again. hardware is out, software is in. ai is the future, handsets are the past. stephen and i have been to find out what ‘made in taiwan‘ means in the 21st century.

welcome to taiwan. 500 years back, taiwan was known as a pirate kingdom, a base for chinese and japanese entrepreneurs who traded in the south china sea. but more recently, it's chased legitimate business but still with an entrepreneurial zeal, leading the world of technology manufacturing since the 1960s. over 30 years, taiwan underwent massive industrialisation in what has become known as the taiwan miracle. huge tech firms grew, becoming household names. asus, htc, acer.

at the centre of this was the semiconductor industry, led by a company you have probably never heard of... ..tsmc. it is the one of the largest semiconductor manufacturers in the world, producing chips in some of the best phones, including the iphone 11. it is most likely if you have a smartphone, you have something made by tsmc. and these chips were only made possible thanks to the discovery of semiconductors. why semiconductors are important or interesting? because it changes your life. with factories, or fabs as they are known across the globe, the largest is here in taiwan. and we have been granted exclusive access to see just how those chips that form the heart of our electronic devices are created. but before we can go

into the fab, there was quite a process to undergo. i have to take my shoes off on the carpet. then put them in a locker, it seems. and that was just the start. i had to put on a hairnet, wash my hands and wear this to keep the dust out. phew, but it is time for an air shower. i feel like i am in a tumble dryer! the manufacture of wafers has to be extremely precise. they cannot tolerate any particles because they fall onto the wafer then damage the chips. so finally, we were allowed in the factory and there was a good reason for all that faff. the speed of these chips relies on how many transistors you can cram into a tiny space. and when i say tiny, i mean tiny,

i am talking nanometres. i don't really know how to describe how fine that 5—nanometre or 7—nanometre is but people often say if you look at 28 nanometres, it was like 1,000 of the diameter of a human hair. in this fully automated factory, the lights are kept yellow to protect the product and the machinery is moving all around but there are quite a few things in here we are not allowed to film because this is seriously cutting—edge technology so it needs to remain pretty secret. we have to protect our customers‘ information. whichever way we can. so basically, we do not allow cameras to freely roam inside our fabs because, inevitably, they may pick up customer information.

between all the automated devices in this facility, they travel 400,000km a day. to put that into context, that is ten times around earth. all of this is about the concept of keeping up with moore's law, as predicted by intel engineer gordon moore in the ‘60s. it refers to the doubling of transistors on a chip every two years whilst the cost is halved. a concept increasingly hard to keep up with, despite us expecting a lot more from our ever connected lives. the next driver is what we call ubiquitous computing. it is computation everywhere at any time. all the devices are connected. billions and billions of devices that are smart, that can compute at any time and communicate and link and that

will be the future enabled by semiconductors. it's a future that's not too far away for taiwan. ai is making substantial progress here, especially in health care. i am here at taipei veterans general hospital where they are already experiencing the benefits of ai. whilst many ai systems are hidden behind closed doors, in this hospital, we were given behind—the—scenes access. we have a patient actually inside the tunnel and he is scanned for his brain, to see any brain metastasises coming from the lung cancer. many of the patients who come here already have preliminary diagnosis of cancer so they come

here with anxiety so our purpose is to diminish the guide anxiety, to treat anxiety and shorten the process. in the real world, i have to read the images one by one. it's pretty heavy physical loading work but with al systems, i can ask alto help me read the images. but what could take a doctor a couple of weeks can be done by the ai in seconds. you can see how quick the images are uploaded for the system. and from the ai, you can see the lesion already there. and another one here. that time can make all the difference. beyond diagnosis, the ai is also assisting the surgeons with surgery decisions.

already the patient has been stage four lung cancer. so he shouldn't be operated. why, though, has taiwan and this hospital managed to lead the world in al? people in taiwan, we're proud of two things. one is computer science. the other one is medicine. all of our medical affairs was computerised for more than 20 years. is the fact that you've been collecting data over a number of years what puts you in a really good position to be able to put into practice a lot of this ai? oh, yeah, because we can train the machine. they can learn to write, make the diagnosis. so the imaging is the same you would have used before but it's at the point of diagnosis and the computer can now diagnose that instead of a doctor. oh, yes, yes. it's kind of a deep learning.

everyone in taiwan has a health care card which is used to access medical records. basically, once you have a card, you can use it everywhere because i think 99% of people actually use our health care insurance system as a means to see doctors so that makes all the data central in one place and you can imagine that if there is a database that has all the medical records, no fragmentation, that is the first step of ai. but the data can only be read if the doctor also inserts their card into this device. it is also like a key. and authorisation by the patient. otherwise i cannot access her information without her improvement. you can see this information. i can put my card here. you can see the ct,

see that information. we also upload the image within 2a hours after starting. that's very convenient. so if she visit the other hospitals or the primary care physician office, the doctors there can also access the same information like me. but it's notjust big hospitals using ai and health care. i travelled across town to a small start—up at the cutting edge of medical science. this brain tracking system is used to assess stress in the brain. and the likelihood of someone being susceptible to depression. over the last decade, many, many neuroimaging studies have proved that the brain activity of patient with depression have some abnormal condition. but this evidence is found by mri, not eeg. for mild depression, mri cannot find anything, but we can find the mild depression from eeg signal. that is, the brain wave signal.

the cap is cheaper and, unlike an mri, portable. it aims to allow doctors to diagnose depression in a more scientific way. and we use the ai analysis method to analyse the patterns of the data from the patients with depression and finally, we found some biomarkers and we can detect whether the person has depression or not with about 80% accuracy. the company hopes to launch the product next year and is also looking at how it might be used to identify alzheimer's, attention deficit disorder, and susceptibility to insomnia. welcome to the week in tech. it was the week that a device dispatched by samsung to send selfies to space came back

to earth with a thud, crash—landing in a back garden in michigan, usa. thankfully nobody was injured. on a slightly safer note, the korean tech giant has teased a flip phone — how very early noughties of them, with a foldable screen. let's hope this one's more successful than its last attempt at a folding phone. twitter has banned all political advertising worldwide on its platform, saying the reach of such messages should be earned, not bought. the move puts pressure on rival social media outfit facebook, which recently ruled out banning political ads. in other facebook news, the social network has agreed to pay a £500,000 fine issued by the uk data protection watchdog over the cambridge analytica scandal, ending a year's worth of legal wrangling over the issue. as part of the agreement, facebook has made no admission of liability. facebook subsidiary whatsapp is suing the nso group, an israeli surveillance company,

alleging it created various whatsapp accounts and caused malicious code to be sent by its servers to over 1,400 mobile devices for the purpose of spying. the nso group said it disputed the allegations and would vigorously fight them. and finally, an american company has developed a pair of smart glasses designed to improve concentration and prevent distraction. narbis claims sensors in the smart specs measure the wearer's brain activity. if they decide the wearer isn't paying attention, the glasses darken, preventing them from seeing the distraction. the glasses will cost $690 when they launch in december. back in taiwan, one of the biggest causes of healthcare problems is pollution. back in taiwan, one of the biggest causes of healthcare problems is pollution. and there's a lot of it — as stephen can smell and see. this is taipei's famous, or perhaps infamous, scooter waterfall. it's one of the main routes

into central taipei for thousands of commuters every day. it is mind—boggling how many mopeds there are here. thousands of them, and theyjust keep on coming. and you know what? you really get a sense ofjust how much pollution that these guys are probably causing because it stinks, it's horrible, and i think when you're walking around the city, you don't notice but here, you really get a sense of it. it's really quite disgusting. it's not often that you can see, smell, and even feel the pollution in a place. this is an extreme example of a problem that's a growing issue not only in taiwan, but around the world. imagine sitting at a stop light behind a gas scooter that is puffing, you know, puffing just toxic gas into your face just every day. this is what people have to go through every day

because they didn't have any other option. air pollutants will affect your health, especially for the respiratory system. pollution and congestion is becoming a very big problem for us as everybody is moving into cities and living on top of each other. so i've come to taipei's institute of information science to find out how they're tackling air pollution here in taiwan. dr chen is one of the founding researchers behind airbox. the idea is pretty simple — help people better understand and tackle the pollution around them by teaching them to make their own diy, low—cost air sensors. since launching in 2015, they've built a network of thousands of community—run air—quality sensors across the island. initially, when people started to use the local sensors to sense their environment, they found a lot of interesting findings which are never reported by the governments. so, initially, the government doesn't like the results. but finally, theyjust realised, well, this is the real environment

people are living in. today, there are over 4,000 of their pollution sensors around taiwan, including one in every primary and secondary school. some schools may change the schedule, so if the air pollution is more severe, then they will cancel the outdoor activities. research like this has revealed that there are a few major sources of pollution in taiwan. the usual suspects like industry, power generation, and transport, but also a few surprises — things like pollution blown across from mainland china, and some sources you might not expect at all. in changhua, also in central taiwan, there are some new devices that always show you a purple colour. that is very bad. and the reason? so someone reported the reason is the temples. 0h! they went out to investigate and they found the source. yes. so what was going on in the temples?

well, by going out and taking a look, the community discovered the culprit — traditional incense burning. you know, in taipei, the two major temples, the longshan temple and the qingshan, there is no incense burning any more. 0k. yeah, because they also install airbox. and then after some observation, they decided to cancel. so it makes a real difference, knowing about the impact? yeah, right. solving a problem like pollution almost certainly means changing the way we do things as humans. remember this place? well, this is the same spot a few weeks later. believe it or not, a big chunk of those bikes are not producing any pollution at all. this is a publicity stunt for gogoro, a taiwanese start—up that is pioneering the uptake of electric scooters in taiwan. taiwan has the highest density of scooter per capita anywhere in the world. as everyone‘s moving into cities and living on top of each other and the need for adopting electric transportation as a cleaner mode of transportation. but here comes the problem —

chicken and egg, right? without the proper infrastructure, nobody would ever adopt a mobility solution that is electric, because charging in these big cities is next to impossible. and this is gogoro's solution to that problem. riders own special electric bikes, but not the batteries inside them. instead, when they're running low on power, theyjust visit a station like this to swap out their flat battery and pick up a fully charged one. a subscription of around $10—$30 per month gives you access to any of the 1,400 swap stations around taiwan. the more you pay, the further you can go. so eric here has very kindly agreed to give me a ride around the block on one of their scooters. and you know what? it does feel a little bit different. the sound is slightly different, there's kind of a higher pitched whine, rather than the chug of a motor. and otherwise, though, it feels pretty much

like a normal moped. i visited gogoro's head office, just as they were getting ready to launch their latest, top—secret scooter. this is our new baby. right. with a lighter weight, colourful designs, and a grab bag of accessories, gogoro is trying to expand the reach of scooters beyond traditional riders. but, with a price tag of around $2,000 and just one battery instead of two, it might not be for everyone. the fact that the range is a bit smaller, do you think that matters? we see people riding about 15—20 kilometres a day on average in taiwan. this vehicle can provide about 70—80 kilometres. so you are talking about three or four days between swaps. we think that's plenty. gogoro estimate that their customers have saved 80,000 tonnes of c02

between them — that's roughly 25,000 across—the—world flights. there's no one magic solution to society—wide problems like pollution, but it's encouraging to see how taiwan is leading the way on finding some new ideas. taiwan doesn't look like a place with a population crisis but for many, too much hard slog has meant too little time for family. some hope for a traditional solution. in taiwan, the children are getting less and less, so we worry about that. so if we want to be a family, you want to find a boyfriend or a girlfriend and get married. this is city god temple, where we've got a famous guy, he's a matchmaking guy for love. so that's why so many young people come here and pray for a good marriage, happiness.

every year, we got 6,000 couples, they success. others have turned to tech. the hugely successful singaporean dating app paktor has been going strong here. in taiwan, people have no time for their personal life, especially in the tech company. during work, they are not even to bring their phone in their company, either. so it's really hard for them to have a normal social life. as i met some of those leading the way in taiwan's start—up scene, it became apparent that, especially in the hardware business, historically, expectations on staff have been high. any call you receive, you probably need to answer the call and go back to the fab. most of the time, you're working six days or six and the half day, and the others you still need to be on call, so it's more like 24 hours. but times are changing. the work—life balance is very, very

important for this young generation. and international influence is often at loggerheads with maintaining taiwanese tradition. taiwanese people are humble at heart. it's built into our confucius belief system. when you manage a us engineering team, what happens is usually yourjob as manager is to try to get everyone to argue and agree on something. in taiwan, the issue is trying to get people to argue in the first place, just because they don't want to offend people. they think that their boss should be smarter, more intelligent than they are. but that's just not the case. there have been many positive steps forward, though. the education rate is rising, especially for females. so females are more getting to theirjob, rather than family. we're starting to see this very interesting cultural shift where entrepreneurship, starting your own business, is actually a viable pathway

to actually sustain a family here. but even for those who have made it, innovation still comes with its challenges. the shared economy, when it first evolved in the bay area, you know, with airbnb and other types of businesses, it was more of a disruption kind of statement — you disrupt the kind of existing economy, or existing infrastructure. it's much more difficult to do that in taiwan because it's very frowned upon. because there's not a law for it. you don't try to disrupt the industry first. that's it from click in taiwan. it seems that exciting

times could lie ahead, plus hopefully a solution to this pollution problem. throughout the week, you can keep up with the whole of the click team, wherever they are in the world, on instagram, facebook and twitter at @bbcclick. thanks for watching. hello there. parts of england and wales look extremely wet on thursday with the risk of localised flooding in places and the risk of some travel disruption, all courtesy of this new area of low pressure which is going to park itself across the uk and this very slow—moving front will bring some

very wet conditions through central portions of the uk. early on thursday, that rain band will be slowly spreading its way northwards so some places quite wet. blustery showers across the southwest and some showers across scotland which will be wintry over the high ground. a little bit of sunshine around and not quite as cold a start as what we have seen the last few nights because we have cloud around. but through thursday morning, that rain band will almost grind to a halt across parts of north wales, the north midlands, northern england and the rain will be heavy and persistent at times. like i said, producing some localised flooding and travel disruption in places and we'll also have quite a keen east—north—east wind, making it feel pretty raw so not very pleasant conditions throughout the day on thursday here. to the north of it, bright, probably the best sunshine for western scotland. a few showers which will be wintry on the hill but quite blustery here and some heavy, maybe thundery showers across southern and south—western parts of england and it will be quite blustery here, too. but into the midlands and the south—east we should see some sunshine, slightly lighter winds.

it will be a chilly day wherever you are, just about 10 degrees across the south and single figure values further north. and like i mentioned, feeling really chilly underneath that cloud and rain. through thursday night, a slow improvement. that weather front with the band of rain continues to ease down and push towards the south and east so it will be a dry and chilly night across many northern and southern areas but where you have the cloud, not quite as cold, ranging from 2—6 degrees there. the pressure chart, as we head into friday, shows this area of low pressure slipping off into the near continent. a handback across the eastern side of the country with this weather front which will continue to bring a fair amount of cloud and one or two showers, but a ridge of high pressure builds across the north and west, so after a chilly start, should be a fine day with plenty of sunshine around. much of the country should see a bit of sunshine apart from the eastern side of england where it's going to be another chilly day. through friday night, eventually we'll see the cloud and the rain in the south—east clear away, it's going to be a cold night

under clear skies with a widespread frost. the next weather front arrives across the west, not quite as cold for northern ireland as it will be across much of britain. into saturday, a cold, frosty start for many but rain will spill in from the west to many areas and on sunday, a gradual improvement with some sunshine developing.

this is bbc news. welcome if you are watching here in the uk, on pbs in america or around the globe. i'm mike embley. our top stories: president trump's impeachment inquiry goes public. after weeks of testimony behind closed doors, hearings are set to be broadcast live. tear gas and rubber bullets take their toll in chile. nearly 200 people are treated for severe eye injuries following three weeks of protests. the uk's election campaign gets formally under way, but prime minister borisjohnson‘s big speech is overshadowed by resignations from both main parties. and, levelling the playing field, australia's female football team