the headlines... authorities in greece say all the migrants and refugees left without shelter after a fire that swept through their camp on the island of lesbos will be able to move into new accommodation this week. five days after the fire, 10,000 people are still living rough. voters across russia are casting their ballots in dozens of local elections that are seen as a big test for the ruling pro—kremlin united russia party. nearly 160,000 candidates are vying for seats in local parliaments. the afghan government calls for a ceasefire with the taliban as the first—ever peace talks between the two sides get underway in qatar. negotiators are working on an agenda. president trump has gone to the west coast of the united states where fires have now destroyed close to 5 million acres of land, including numerous towns. oregon and washington states are also badly affected.

now on bbc news, click takes a look at how virtual reality is being used to solve this problem by transporting the emergency services into the digital world. this week, taser training. helpful humanoids. and. ..connected cows. moos hey, welcome to click. hope you're doing 0k. if you've got kids, then i hope the whole back—to—school thing is going as well as it can do. to be honest, here, it is a little bit like that. how's it going with you, lara?

it's tricky, isn't it? i remember going back as a young child as though it was yesterday, when clearly it is not, and i think, as parents, we relive that experience through our children. we certainly do and, let's face it, education is just going to feel different this year. it is also going to be different depending on the age of the kids, really young children will probably be asked to bubble within a year group, older children will be asked to follow stricter rules, and universities, well, they're facing a whole world of challenges. yes, they're getting set to reopen and, for many, there will be some in—person education, but the role of remote learning is going to be more important than ever. for some courses, it's notjust about listening to a lecture — practical is just as important. so i took a trip to an empty university science department to see how virtual labs could transform education as we know it. let's go. please wear a lab coat before entering a lab.

where's my lab coat? oh, there. most will be learning via a laptop, but, for some, virtual reality will place them in the experiment. and today, i get to be a science student. what type of molecule is shown in the picture above? i'll go for dna. you are a genius. i'm a genius! 0k, it was one question. i just want to press all the buttons. but not everything goes right first time. modules like this can let students learn about dangerous subjects safely. meanwhile, others let you bend the rules of reality. let's use an inverted microscope to have a look at some cells. i'm actually inside a cell, which is, of course, not something you could do in real life. weird. and the simulations give students access to expensive kit that not all universities could afford. in real life, this microscope

would cost around £150,000. at least this means more people can actually interact with this, albeit virtually. the vr experience was a bit glitchy, and another obvious issue is that not everyone has a vr headset. but for universities like this one, it's the pc version that's proving vital through the pandemic. this lab would be normally filled with 2a students but, because of social distancing, we can only have eight students. a mini—study that showed us whether students interacted with these virtual labs in situations, that their recall of the subject matter was really improved. so obviously, when covid came along, we wanted to bring the virtual lab into every student's home in the context of an online seminar where it's led by an academic, and they're asked questions, they're checked on their knowledge as they go through the workshop. globally, over1 million students have already accessed labster‘s tools,

and the company says the pandemic is accelerating adoption. as an example, the california community college system that has 2 million students, based on the urgent need, we entered a partnership with them in less than one month, and now they're rolling out to hundreds of thousands of students right away. whether donning a headset or on a screen, users could also do a spot of surgery, go on a field trip or even visit mars. if you want to keep exploring the lab, feel free to do so. you can say hello to our iguana or have a look... there's a rodent. is that a mouse? 0k, there are some things i'd rather only see virtually. and learning through vr isn'tjust for students. professionals have been doing it too. 0mar mehtab‘s been finding out how the emergency services have been putting these to good use. whether it's saving lives in health care, battling blazes as a firefighter or keeping people

safe as a police officer, the pandemic has made thesejobs all the more difficult to carry out. but what about those that need to learn how to do the job in the first place? with emergency services being stretched thin, and social distancing in place, it means face—to—face training isnt as easy as it used to be. but that doesn't mean that they can't still be trained. sure, people have been using video calling or slide presentations, but what about. . .virtual reality? first up, firefighting. vobling have created a platform where you can customise a fire training scenario by specifying the environment, the type of fire itself and how to put it out. this extinguisher that they provide has been fitted with trackers to make it feel like you are operating

a real one, and notjust a couple of controllers. aside from firefighters, it's designed to train office workers, so they can also learn how to tackle workplace fires. but what about the more serious scenarios? rivr have created a way for firefighters to learn almost on the go. by filming 360—degree videos of various set—ups, firefighters can put on a headset and go through the training as if they were there. now, looking at this, i thought, isn't this just playing a video? how exactly can this be any more useful in virtual reality? simply, we can't get those venues on a day—to—day basis ‘cause we can'tjust set fire to buildings. that also costs us in the region of between £10,000—15,000 at a time. so we ran a brief feedback session this morning with the crews that actually attended the scenario, and a number of other people who didn't go, and they were really engaged, almost entering the scenario

themselves, verbally talking about what they would do and how they do it. right, that is what is going on with firefighting. let's move on to health care. fundamental vr systems help train surgeons and nurses on how to perform certain tasks during procedures. by using haptic feedback through the tools, the user can feel how they are doing in the virtual procedure. is this on something, is it...am i touching something? no, it's in the air. and the system is also accredited, which means it is also a way for some in health care to earn credits for the course. and their multi—user system means students can remotely patch in to virtual surgeries to watch and learn, an alternative to traditional learning and examination. so the pandemic has just accelerated, in my view, a trend that was already taking place, and that is about being able to go 2a hours a day into a learning environment, now that they can't get into the operating room as easily as they used to, the numbers of cases are dramatically reduced.

people don't want to come into hospital at the moment, and this is an opportunity to fill some of that gap. but for more covid—19 specific scenarios, a ospital in taiwan is already trailing another system. created by simx and htc, doctors can use this vr set =up to train how to interact with patients who may have covid—19, such as putting on protective gear, taking temperatures and gathering medical samples, so there's less wastage of real ppe and no risk of contracting the virus. that's health care done. so, finally, let's look at the police. we went out to the police constabulary in derbyshire where officers are learning how and when to use a taser in virtual reality. normally, you'd be taught in a room where someone in a big blue padded suit would approach you with a rubber knife, and officers would use mock taser cartridges to secure the bad

guy, like this. but these cartridges are expensive, around £30 a pop, and being in a room in your workplace isn't exactly the same as a life—threatening scenario. so virtual reality company avrt have created a massive space using these sensor mats where officers can put on a headset and roam around a virtual environment. would you mind just stepping onto that side for me? they can be transported to a normal street, an alleyway or a rooftop to create a more realistic feeling. and an instructor even adds a voice so it feels as though you're dealing with a real person. and things got intense. put the weapon down, put the weapon down! stay on the floor, stay on the floor! stay on the floor, please! it highlights a few flaws that we have in sort of real—life training in terms of, obviously, people come to do a role play and there is somebody in a big blue suit, there's a taser suit,

and it kind of gives people a precondition of what the things going to happen. so in the vr world, it's just nice that we can input certain scenarios we are not aware of. i completely mirror that. you do get fully submerged into the scenario which you don't think you will by putting something over your face and ears. but as soon as that headset goes on, and the headphones go on, you do get straight into it, and you forget about everyone else around you, and you just deal with what you're seeing. then it was time for me to give it a go, to test how immersive it really was, and see if it would affect whether i pulled the trigger or not. put the knife down, hey, take a step back! david, david, go back! 0h, hey...david! drop the knife, drop the knife! david, stop, stop where you're standing! i've got a taser! do not get any closer, put the knife down! put it down! that don't feel good, honestly. honestly, i...twice, twice i've gone into that and i have purposely not fired this,

and the third time i forced myself to fire it, forced myself, and i hated it, i knew i would hate it, and i did hate it. i really did feel stressed, and the instructors' personal responses to what i was saying piled even more pressure on me. i really did think about the gravity of actually firing that taser. i think that's enough, i think we've done enough now. yeah. we happy? cool there is, i think, an issue with trust between the public and the police force, and a lot of that is down to how force is deployed by the police force. there is a huge story that goes on before the deployment of a weapon, before a weapon is even drawn, before any use of force is engaged. we can really capture, right from the start, that first interaction with someone, measure what sort of empathy we're getting from our police officers, and actually make officers accountable for the training of their decision—making process, right up to, and including,

that use of force. but do these simulations actually help people to learn effectively? one of the research challenges is proving the effectiveness of the training. so you're training for a dangerous situation and making sure that transfers to the real world is a challenge because you can't ethically or safely expose people to this dangerous situation to see how well they perform. what i've seen in this area is that people have a tendency to be very excited about this technology, and perhaps not ask to see the evidence that it's effective. i think it should be used cautiously until we have the evidence to use it to a greater extent. so crossing from the real to the virtual world may seem like an obvious alternative to traditional training, but, given how much is on the line with the work of these emergency services and how new this all is, perhaps it's better to use virtual reality to complement,

rather than replace, for now. hello and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week that ghost robotics teamed up with the us air force on exercise to database with robot dogs. google abandoned plans to lease an office in dublin for over 2,000 staff. and microsoft revealed the smallest xbox ever — the series s would go on sale in november alongside its most powerful console, the series x, and $200 cheaper. it was reported this week that south korean semiconductor manufacturer samsung and sk hynix would no longer be selling components to huawei. new orders would not be ta ken after september 15. the move follows us sanctions on the chinese tech giant. american car manufacturer general motors took a 11% stake in electric vehicle company nikola. gm will help make the badger hydrogen—electric hybrid pick—up truck. the badger is expected to go into production by 2022.

uber laid out plans to go fully electric vehicle fleet by 2030 in north america and europe with the rest of the world coming online by 2040. the company says it will spend $800 million to help drivers switch to electric cars. and finally, the consumer tech show efa took place in berlin this week, bit online, bit in person, far fewer spectators and, unsurprisingly, highlights included coronavirus—related tech, including this mini—dishwasher called bob, adapted to sterilise face masks with uvc light, and wearable air purifier from japanese company creative technology. now, in recent years, technology has played a big role in making homes more accessible for older people and those with care needs. smart devices, for example, which we now take for granted. but one university in scotland is trying to take things to the next level, and paul carter has been to find out more.

you'd be forgiven to thinking it's regular saturday morning, i'm at home watching click. but actually, i'm not at home, i don't usually have three robot friends in my house. pepper's here, pepper's watching click as well. i'm actually in a laboratory that's made to look like a home, and what you can't see is it's absolutely fully kitted out with sensors and internet of things devices to enable people who have care needs at home to live more independently. some you might recognise, you might have in your own home. alexa, turn on the kitchen lights. but there are also a raft of other things embedded all throughout this set—up to detect the various needs of the people that might be living in somewhere like this, including some help from these fellas.

hey, pepper. part of the wonderfully named national robotarium, based at heriot watt university in edinburgh, this so—called ambient assisted—living lab is almost fully functioning, and includes a lounge, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. it uses a combination of sensors, cameras, internet of things and cloud technologies to provide a space where researchers, care providers and end users of assisted—living services can co—create technologies and solutions. but why does this need something built to look like a flat and notjust a conventional lab? it's very important for us that it looks like a domestic environment, where people can actually carry out the normal activities because one of the reasons is that we want to collect the data about those activities and we wanted to do it in an environment that is as naturalistic as possible

so that when we use the technology in the real world, in the real environment, we are more sure that that technology will work. this laboratory is designed to be used for real—world research by postgraduate students, using data to study what applications and solutions can be used by care providers in the future. it's also experimenting with robotics to see how these can be used to complement existing care services and to test the interaction with people using them. we are testing rfid, radio—frequency identification. you may see some of the tiles on the floor that we are testing at the moment, and they provide the information on whereabouts of humans, and that we can also understand that by using machinery techniques and detecting disturbances in the radio frequency environment that tell us where people are in their home and, again, to understand how well they are moving about, if they have fallen down,

if they need any help. normally, this lab would be working with the most important people in this process, the end users of services. however, coronavirus, like most areas of life, has impacted the lab and its ability to carry out its work. however, one phd student has created a 3d model of the facility and, through cameras already installed, it's hoped it can be used remotely. the fact that there's a real focus on the end user and this being a collaborative process is really positive, and i think also the lab has remote access so, even with social distancing in place, more and more people can become involved, and the more people that are involved, i think the more suited the tech will be for meeting individual needs. now, smart homes of the future concepts aren't new. indeed, on click, we've seen many iterations over the years, but the people involved in this project say their aim is to create

and provide realistic, affordable solutions that aren't just a concept. that was paul. now, you may remember that, just before lockdown, our very own nick kwek moved to australia for a year, and what a year it's turned into. not one we expected, i can tell you that. but we do occasionally check up on him to see how he's doing. and he's been keeping well away from other people, as he should have been doing, but he seems to have been spending some time with some cows. yeah, right. so behind brazil, australia is the second largest exporter of beef in the world, and the farms there, they're just enormous. some are the size of small nations. so nick's been looking at the tech that helps keep the cows happy and healthy whilst keeping track of their movements. rockhampton, the beef capital of australia. home to many a head of cattle, some more static than others.

cow moos in the remote farms around here, producers frequently can go a full year without manually checking on their livestock. but now 0ld mcdonald is using tech to get daily status updates. no, the cows haven't started their own whatsapp group. they are part of a system that uses a field full of gizmos to inform farmers all about their herd's health. at its heart are these solar—powered walkover ways. so the cows walk along here and they get weighed on this smart scale. they're identified through an rfid tag on their ear, which is read through a sensor on this wall, and it means that the cows need never leave their paddock, the farmer need never leave their office. they can sit back and remotely monitor the growth of their livestock. the scales could save time and money, alerting the farmer of cows ready for market, or, if they've lost weight, which ones needs a feed

supplement to beef them up. sometimes you'll see, during a drought period, that weight line will start to go down, and that's a good indicator that you're not getting enough nutrition to your animals, and you can get that early indication from the weights much quicker than you can if you were doing it by the naked eye. 20% of the calves don't turn up at weaning, and there's a whole range of different causes — it might be disease, it might be wild dog attack, but we don't actually understand that. so we're using the calf alert devices as a research tool, and so that goes into the back end of the cow, and sits there quite happily until that cow's about to calve, and, as that calf is pushed out the back, this thing pops our and hits the ground, and then the radio signal being transmitted out of that is picked by some antennas that are placed around the paddock, and tells us that cow has actually had that calf. of course, not every farmer wants to implant devices into each of their cows.

some may prefer earings and necklaces, wearables that can track specific behavious and, crucially, monitorfor disease. they could even reveal eating habits and prevent overgrazing by inferring how much grass is left in their paddock and, depending on how the cows move, if they are in labour or if they're being stolen by rustlers. we've developed algorithms that can actually detect when an animal is moving in a paddock, such that it's being interfered with by somebody trying to muster it up to a set of yards to put it on a truck. researchers have also developed smart water pumps so troughs can be automatically refilled. farmers can gauge how hydrated their animals are, and how much water they're actually using, crucial in periods of drought. properties can be measured in the square kilometre instead of a hectare an acre, so we're dealing with thousands of animals spread over very large landscapes, and so you could be driving four hours every day,

just to check on whether there's water in a trough, whether the fences are broken, and you may not even see an animal during that time, so if we can provide an automated way of getting them information, without leaving the homestead, that's a massive saving in time and labour. stud producer geoff maynard is a local third—generation farmer who's been trialling central queensland university's technologies on his prized livestock. preventative measures, which this greatly helps, if you can prevent that from happening, identify it early, you are so far in front, the cattle are in front, and if you're trying to be on the back foot and react to something. you know, if you can make your cattle happy and content and healthy, your production, your rebreeding, the quality of your product is all connected. that was nick, living his best life in australia. and don't you think you managed to smuggle this shot past us

wiithout us noticing, mr kwek, you prime stud of ideal weight. ah, briliiant. i miss nick, not that most of us get to see each other anyway. that's true, that's true. and that is it for this week. as always, you can keep up with us on social media on youtube, instagram, facebook and twitter on @bbcclick. thanks for watching, and we'll see you soon. bye— bye. hello, there is a burst of september heat on the way over the next couple of days. temperatures starting to lift through the rest of today. a warmer day than yesterday, a dry day for most, but not for all of us. let's look back at the earlier radar picture.

you can see where it's been wet so far this weekend across parts of northern ireland, northern england and particularly scotland. and the rain just keeps on falling across western and particularly north—western parts of scotland. there is a met office yellow warning in force for the risk of some localised flooding and travel disruption. elsewhere, a lot of dry weather around. fairly cloudy across parts of northern ireland, southern scotland. eastern parts of scotland should brighten up a little bit with some sunshine. the best of the sunshine today through east wales, the midlands, towards the east and the south of england. quite windy through this central slice, through northern ireland, southern scotland and northern england. gusts of around 45 mph. and temperatures a little higher than they were yesterday — 21, for example, in belfast. parts of eastern england likely to get to 25, maybe 26 degrees. through this evening and tonight, the rain will slowly peter out across the north—west of scotland. a lot of cloud still filtering in for many areas and some patches of mist and fog developing down towards the south on what will be a relatively mild night —

lows of 11—14 degrees. so, into tomorrow, a weather front still up to the north—west. that'll be bringing some patchy rain. not as wet across parts of western scotland, certainly, as it is at the moment. but for most of us, we start the new week on a very warm note. in fact, temperatures will approach 30 celsius. we haven't been up to 30 in september since 2016, but we may get there during tomorrow, particularly where we see the best of the sunshine across england and wales, towards the south—east. that's where we'll see values of 29, maybe 30 degrees. a bit cooler further north and west where we have more cloud and still some spots of patchy rain. we look ahead to tuesday — a similar weather story, still a bit of rain up to the north—west. some extra cloud creeping its way eastwards across england and wales with the odd shower. that might just suppress temperatures a little bit. i think we'll still get to around 28 or 29 degrees and a little bit warmer by this stage for parts of scotland and northern ireland. but from midweek onwards, those temperatures will fall away. it will start to feel cooler but,

for many of us, it will stay dry. that's all from me, bye for now.

good afternoon. two former prime ministers have condemned a plan by the government to override elements of the brexit withdrawal agreement signed with the eu. in a joint column for the sunday times, sirjohn major and tony blair called the proposal — which would break international law — shocking and irresponsible. thejustice secretary robert buckland this morning dismissed the criticism, saying the country is facing an unprecedented situation. 0ur political correspondent, helen catt, reports.