public transport has been closed down in the chinese city of wuhan, as the authorities attempt to control an outbreak of a new virus. nearly 600 people have been infected. 17 have died. flights and trains out of wuhan have been cancelled. people living there have been told they shouldn't leave the city, but millions have already chat, travelled for lunar new year. in washington, the democrats are presenting their arguments that the impeachment trial of donald trump. they've accused the presidents of using his powers and obstructing justice. mr trump's defence team will later resent their arguments. the president has described the proceedings as a sherrard. authorities in spain are searching forfour authorities in spain are searching for four people since storm gloria caused widespread destruction across the east of the country. the storm has so far killed nine people and has so far killed nine people and has brought flooding to southern france.

it looks as though britain in the us ona it looks as though britain in the us on a collision course over the chancellor's plans to impose a tax on big tech companies such as facebook and apple which make profits in this country. the tech taxes due to come into force in april. we report from the world economic forum at davos in switzerland where the argument came toa switzerland where the argument came to a head. are there is a sales tax on the likes of google, facebook and amazon. the virtual business giants of the tech world have a very physical presence on the streets of davos at the world economic forum, where they need to keep the world's powerbrokers on side. taxing them has been tricky and is now a global diplomatic

incident, with britain committed, in april, to a 2% tax on the uk sales of the likes of facebook, google and amazon. as we leave... here, the chancellor under pressure internationally, in particularfrom president trump's treasury secretary. can they get a trade deal with you if they insist on introducing a digital tax in april? well, we will be having some private conversations about that. i'm sure the president and boris will be speaking on it as well. you know, if people want to just arbitrarily put taxes on our digital companies, we will consider arbitrarily putting taxes on car companies. another trade power play from the us. the chancellor, for now, sticking to his guns. we plan to go ahead with our digital services tax in april. it will fall away once there is an international solution. brexit next week means freedom to do international trade deals. what we are seeing here is that freedom is constrained. it requires trade—offs and choices to get those deals. the americans, in particular, piling on the pressure for a u—turn on the digital sales tax. the united kingdom dropping hints that it will prioritise an eu deal before a us one. that was welcomed by the eu commission president who said a quick deal needed quick choices. do you think a real deal can be done by the end of the year? we'll see. it's a question, of course,

of what the uk chooses for itself. so how close it wants to be to the single market — this is better for good access to the single market — or they do not want a line, do not want to to have a level playing field, then of course they will be more distant and it will be more difficult. everyone here says they want to trade deals, but it's trade barriers on the rise at a time when the uk now needs to make fundamental trade choices. now, click. this week, we are staring into the future. we are self—driving around china. that is a bit creepy. and we are flexing our... that looks painful! not quite. give me the chime, i'm doing it!

ca rs. they are always one of the biggest draws at tech shows and last week's ces was no exception — there were plenty of innovations inside the vehicles and out. say you wanted to rent this beauty for the weekend, and when you returned it there were a few dings in the bodywork — how do you conclusively prove that you didn't do them? what you need are a pair of these. these are check scanners. a french innovation that can inspect a carfor damage in the time it takes to drive through them. there are ten cameras on each side and machine learning has been trained to spot dents and scratches

that can be compared to those that were there when you picked the car up. it is also useful for manufacturers to spot any imperfections in new cars, and in a world where we are buying more and more things online at a distance, these could be useful for producing condition reports for second—hand car options. but much of the car innovation on display at ces was of the self—driving nature. after all, whoever steals a march in this area will be in the best position to tap into the billions that this sector offers. it is taking longer to perfect them than some realised — it is all about data from testing, testing, and more testing. which is why, although private companies are at the vanguard, behind the scenes, the big nations are facing off to provide the most favourable regulations. the big rivals here? you probably guessed it... the us and china.

the us was initially quicker to grant licenses to companies like waymo, but its superpower rival has also woken up with big deregulation plans of its own. the huge corporations on the front line, alibaba, google, ford, tesla, tencent and more are now battling to capitalise, to hone their algorithms and create the first truly autonomous road vehicle. stephen beckett went to guangzhou to visit one of the global leaders in autonomous vehicles to find out more. this is guangzhou in the south of china. about 75 miles upriver from hong kong, it is one of china's biggest and most developed cities. home to around a0 million people, and now it is one of a handful of cities in china running large—scale trails of self—driving cars on public streets. this is pony.ai. you may not have heard of them,

but here their cars have become a common sight in the area around their head office. over the last year they have been running an autonomous taxi service in the city. at the moment, the trial is only open to selected family and friends of pony.ai employees. pretty good deal though if you can get access, as it is completely free. with just a few taps on an app, an autonomous taxi will come straight to you. so this autonomous taxi service is operating all around the district of nansha, in around a 100 square kilometre area, mainly the urban bit. so we have quite a lot of choice of where we can go. where shall we go? that is a bit creepy. the driver has got his hands in a kind of ready to go position. there is some chap driving on the wrong side of the road just there. the car did slow down a little bit. braking...but seem to have got through that one unscathed. what is interesting is some of these things just don't happen in other

places in the world. if you are building a self driving car in the us, then your car might not know what to do if it sees someone driving on the wrong side of the road for the first time. but here, fortunately, people are driving wherever they like. but making sure vehicles like these are safe enough to roam free without a back—up operator is the next big challenge for autonomous car companies around the world. this man leads the engineering operation here at pony, so it's his job to try to make that a reality. sometimes in each different city, the traffic pattern and driving behaviours are totally different than, say, in the us — usually they obey the traffic a lot more and tend to yield to lane change, but in china the driving behaviour is more aggressive, so it is sometimes unpredictable, especially for cyclists, so you need to put everything into consideration.

it's something they keep telling me here, chinese data is richer than data in the us. right now, most self—driving car companies are focused on getting their vehicles to work in their home countries, but once that is figured out, the rest of the world is next. and it could be that cars trained on unpredictable chinese roads will stand a better chance in places like india and africa. pony.ai was founded in december 2016, it is only three years old. we are almost as good as the best autonomous driving car companies in the us. because the roads in america are a bit more predictable than they are here in china, do you think they will get to the self—driving dream first because the problem is a bit easier in america? actually, we think differently, because in china it is more of a challenge.

i would say we drive one kilometre on chinese public roads — it is like ten times more value than driving one kilometre in united states. that is why we can improve faster. this screen here is designed to give the passenger an idea of what the car itself can see. that car, this car in front of us, is represented on here as a different coloured block. oh, you see, that was an interesting situation. these guys are pulling up, this car is coming up on our right, but the car managed to handle it stopping — the driver didn't have to step in. we want to go here, i think that is why it is confused. this is a pretty confusing situation, even for a human. you can see why it is confused because it wants to go in here, and there is a lane of traffic there, so i think that is probably what i would have done as well. i am pretty impressed, it handled a few tricky situations,

we had a guy on the wrong side of the road, but it didn't do anything that felt dangerous, which i think is the main thing. it wasn't exactly like a human driver, still some of the way it moves, the decisions it made, probably would feel a bit unusual to you if you were used to a human driver, but it is on the way. when it comes to technologies that are consumer—facing, they don't have any obvious political impact or anything to do with content, the chinese government is very relaxed about letting entrepreneurs innovate first, seeing what happens and maybe regulating later. and that often is the opposite sequence to what happens in the uk or the us, where governments will get ahead of potential problems — for example, self—driving cars — and permit regulations first and then the industry follows. the reality is that for a long time, china was lagging behind in autonomous technology,

but as we know, when china makes a decision to do something, as it has here, things can happen very quickly. at the southern end of the las vegas strip is the mandalay bay hotel. on october 1st 2017 this was the scene of a tragedy. the us‘s deadliest ever mass shooting. a gunman in one of the rooms opened fire on a crowd of concert—goers across the road. he killed 58 people and injured more than 400. the incident sparked a review of security across the city, but now it is being taken further. richard taylor has been looking at whether technology can stop would—be perpetrators in their tracks.

here's the dilemma. how do you keep the world's entertainment capital safe without turning it into a party pooping security fortress? patriot 0ne believes it has the answer, using unobtrusive sensors which generate information feeds which can be assessed to see if someone is carrying a weapon. this vegas casino resort is now rolling out the technology, which has been in testing for the past two years. we have got various bits of hardware here... the system can be placed in a building entrance or a turnstile, and unlike a metal detector it creates an invisible fence. you wouldn't even know it was there. if i am carrying a concealed weapon on my person, or worse still, intent on an act of violence, the system as it is deployed here invisibly in these planters, can kick in, the ai making a determination of whether or not

this is benign and alerting the security authorities to take the relevant action. it works on several livers. microwave sensors bounce off objects creating resonance frequency patterns that identify the shape of an object. another sensor creates a magnetic field and detects disturbances as an object passes through. but the real smart lies in the ai algorithms. within seconds they assess the data against that already in the database to figure out if weapons are being hidden. with daily shootings in the us and a knife crime epidemic in the uk, the law of a system to keep us safe is seductive. we wa nt we want to be in primary schools and hotels, on campuses. the uk market

will be extremely important to us, particularly when it comes to knives because of the nice time crisis and the fact that they are being used by terrorist groups for mass attacks. but ground—breaking as the tech is, it is largely unproven. how accurate is your system? because when it comes to ai, the machine is only as smart as the data that you are feeding it. we have been out for a long time with tremendous partners who have allowed us to get a lot of data here. the university of north dakota has been hugely supportive in that way. we have built sufficiently large data holdings that we now have confidence in the accuracy of our systems. enough confidence that we are now into our first commercial deployment. 0ur early adopters also understand that the systems get better and better, the more data is fed in, so they are equally allowing us to ingest data for training the system. the system isn't100% accurate or foolproof, and an assailant may well get into the premises another way

entirely or the weapon may be hidden in something different like a metal box. an additional security layer is needed. so if i'm openly brandishing a weapon, that is where the eyes of the system kick in, a so—called machine vision where a security camera can make an assessment based on what is in my hand, against on what is in its database, and if it finds it is likely to be a weapon, it will trigger a relevant alert. the idea of augmenting human eyes with the smarts of computer vision is catching on globally. a number of outfits promising enhanced security through person and object detection. but understandably, that leaves many people uneasy. we are very conscious of the fact people don't want to live in a mass surveillance society, and so, there are very different ways in which you can gather data. we don't capture any personal information or we don't store or distribute personal information. we are looking for objects. people are of no interest to us

unless they are carrying a threat object. so what our ai has been trained to recognise is the threats. it is not making any determination on people or capturing personal information or body image. and that, i think, puts us on the right side of that line between too much surveillance and not enough security. hello and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week that us president donald trump clashed with apple over the tech giant's data encryption rules. apple refuses to unlock iphones to assist in criminal investigation, citing privacy concerns for users. microsoft ends its support for windows 7 after ten years, meaning users will no longer receive security updates. the uk's national cyber security centre is recommending that windows 7 users replace their unsupported devices as soon as they can. london's heathrow airport is installing a new anti—drone system that will allow it to pinpoint unauthorised aircraft,

as well as their pilots. the move comes as airports are looking to increasingly prevent drone disruption following a temporary closure at gatwick in 2018. tesla cars are being enabled to talk to pedestrians in a baffling british accent. car: well, don'tjust stand there staring, hop in! in true knight riderfashion, tesla ceo elon musk tweeted a video of a car speaking to passers—by. the feature will apparently be used to talk to other road users and pedestrians, as well as provide a flatulence function. what a time to be alive! and finally, if you've ever wondered whether your pet pooch would enjoy a podcast, spotify has introduced a new range of personalised playlists for pets. pet playlists is a new experience where spotify users can get curated playlists for their pets based on their tastes and character attributes. pet sounds, anybody?

there isjust so much to see here that i've been getting my hands, ears, eyes, nose and mouth onto wearables. first up, no, this is not a pair of goggles. it is the prototype of an air—purifying mask. the finished product will look like this. with claims it is 50 times more effective than the market—leading cycling mask, the a0 air uses nanotechnology and air pressure to filter out harmful particulate matter. what's described as a multi—stage filtration system provides the process of air being sucked in. that air will then be cleaned and pushed out at the front, creating your own environment of pure, clean air. currently, the prototype is a lot less comfortable than the finished version, and this is a size large — i need a smaller one. ifeel like my nose is being held, and i probably sound like that. it will take some getting used to,

but it is actually adjusting according to my respiration rate, so right now, the fan speed is at 16%. i can make the fan go up more if i want more air to be pumped. i feel like i'm at the dentist! imagine what i could do. i certainly couldn't run like this but maybe i could ride a bike. i don't know. it is notjust about the device. this is also about collecting data, localised air quality data and also respiratory information. there are some plans to use that for some health tech in the future, particularly maybe in meditation. it has five hours' battery life and in time, the device will be miniaturised. but despite the fact that i thought i looked completely and utterly ridiculous, it has actually made it to the catwalk, featuring in new york and seoul fashion weeks. back on the show floor, there was also the sixth finger. sixto is a device for people who have limited mobility in one hand, so it could be due to a stroke or something like that. now, the way it works is that

you position the bad hand where it needs to grab hold of something and this joystick, which will be held in the good hand, is used to be able to close the device so that you can actually pick something up. one of the other benefits of this is that it actually encourages somebody to use a hand which isn't functioning properly, rather than holding their arm in a position where it is likely to get stiffer. but in the depths of one slightly more secret meeting spot came this view into the future. this is a contact lens that provides augmented reality. apparently, it fits like any other scleral or semipermeable contact lens. now, this could be used for something like translation, where the words would come up in front of when you are having a natural conversation with someone. the idea is that this is all about invisible computing, that something like this should be less intrusive than having your phone in front of you. wow! that is incredible! in a way, the fact that there is little enough information for it to not be totally

distracting makes it better. i think if they put too much up, it would become too overwhelming. whilst i wasn't allowed to actually wear it, just holding it up, i could see some simple stats right before my eyes which, having been sceptical in advance, i was pretty blown away by. so how is it possible to fit all of this into the lens? we had to build our own wireless protocol between the contact lens and another wearable accessory, because we had to manage power and data and size of chip, and that accessory connects to your mobile phone or the cloud, to access additional computing resources and information. it is very comfortable, it fits to your eye, it corrects your vision when you wear it so if you have a prescription, we build up your script into the lens. heart rate data, speed, and even with your eyes shut, you would able to see this because it is lit up and obviously the lens is sitting beneath your eyelid. it feels seriously sci—fi. and there you have it —

what to wear, to see and feel in the future. there! never taken that photo before! the thing about coming to las vegas straight after christmas is you eat lots of food, followed by lots more food. and chris fox has decided that he is going to use technology to help knock him back into shape. this is what he has found. these three new apps are designed to help with your fitness goals using image recognition, machine learning and motion sensors. but are any of these apps advanced enough to replace a personal trainer? i've come to the gym to find out. first up is vay sports, which uses image recognition and a selfie camera to make sure you're doing the exercises properly.

you choose a trainer and put the phone a few metres away and follow the instructions in your headphones. 0k, great, i can see you. here we go with push—ups today. get into the starting position so i can see you at all times. based on what the camera sees, the app gives you feedback to correct your form. you call that a rep? your hips are a bit too high up. it also counts how many reps you do properly so you can track your progress. nice work! how are the back of the arms feeling? at the moment, the app only works with body weight exercises so to move on to weight training, i'm trying gymfitty, a virtual trainer you can talk to. i'm done. rest for two minutes. how many reps did you do? 10. well done! let's do another set. the app creates a bespoke work—out tailored to your goals and it remembers how well you did last time, so you don't have to log your work—out or write anything down. i want you to add another five kilograms to each side of the bar. ping me when you are done.

to relax, i'm finishing off with some yoga. this is yoganotch, which uses motion—tracking sensors to detect my position and correct my form which, fairwarning, is going to be terrible. not quite. give me the chime, i'm doing it! chime. oh, i gota chime! i did it right. i'm not sure whether setting up these sensors every time will take some of the zen out of yoga, although the company says it is more accurate than using image recognition. oh, come on! these apps certainly add a layer of interactivity to a work—out but can they match the kind of encouragement you get from a human personal trainer? you can train just as effectively but near in mind that it is able to process huge amounts of information that is very specific to you, and it's with you all the time. and there you have it — a downward —facing dog from a forward—facing fox. was that cheesy? i know, we're in vegas! although next week, we won't be —

we're going to la! and with 0scar season just around the corner, for us, that means we start our very special look behind the scenes at the best, most innovative work in visual effects that's up for awards this year. i cannot wait. what? please do join us then. in the meantime, you can find us all across social media on youtube, instagram, facebook and twitter at @bbcclick. thanks for watching and we will see you in la. hello there.

it was a settled start to the week this week with plenty of beautiful winter sunshine. the skies have turned cloudy and we have more to come over the next few days. thursday starts with patches of fog that could be slow to care but brings plenty of cloud. here is why, high pressure sat across the uk and has been with us since the beginning of the weekend with us over the next few days. north and west, a cold front will bring outbreaks of rain for north—west of scotland and away from that, a lot of cloud and the cloud could be thick enough for the odd spot of light rain and drizzle. we will see the best of the sunshine for north—east scotland north—east england once again it will mild when this weather front brings outbreaks of rain to the north—west of scotland. temperature wise, eight, nine degrees for most could see ten or 11 nine degrees for most could see ten or11 in the nine degrees for most could see ten or 11 in the north—east of scotland. that front pushes further southward, fizzling out and leaving a legacy of drizzle. windy and showery for the

northern isles but elsewhere through thursday night it will be another cloudy and largely frost free one. for friday it is a similar picture. again we hold onto a lot of cloud, mist and murkiness so there will be drizzle in places in the winterfor most of us will be light. that is the last of the cloudy days. we start to see a change to the weather as we move out of friday into saturday. i pressure begins to retreat towards the near continent and you see low pressure pushing in from north and west. with the breeze starting to pick up particularly across scotland and northern ireland we will see some sunshine but also this weather front bringing some rain to the hebrides and the north—west mainland of scotland later in the day. elsewhere, a bit of cloud around the because of the breeze picking up we will see glimmers of brightness here and there and temperatures ranging from 7- 10 there and temperatures ranging from 7— 10 degrees. as we move through saturday night, low pressure pushes across the country along with this weather front bringing a band of rain too many with more isobars in the charts. 0n rain too many with more isobars in the charts. on sunday it will be a windy day for us all, whether from spreading eastwards with patchy and heavy rain as it moves across

england and wales. the scotland and northern ireland it is a day of sunshine and blustery showers, some will be wintry on the high ground of scotland. heading into next week it remains u nsettled heading into next week it remains unsettled early in the week with a deep blow that will bring a spell of gales and heavy rain.

welcome to bbc news, i'm mike embley. our top stories: a city in lockdown. as they struggle to contain a deadly virus, chinese officials say the 11 million people of wuhan must not travel. at the trump impeachment trial, the prosecution sets out the case against the president. the president was the key player in this scheme. everyone was in the loop. he directed the actions of his team. he personally asked a foreign government to investigate his opponent. now, you listen here. he's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy. tributes have been paid to the monty python star