of his own mps to end covid restrictions by the end of april. government ministers, however, urge caution. we are not going to be able to give certainty unless we are basing it on the evidence we have got that the vaccine is doing its job. so far the prognosis is pretty good but we have to keep monitoring it as the roll—out proceeds. rolling out to the under—705 in the uk. more than a million people aged between 65 and 69 are to be offered a coronavirus vaccination. president trump suggests he could make a political comeback after he's cleared of inciting insurrection in his impeachment trial. democrats are furious with the verdict. despite the results of the vote on donald trump's conviction in the court of impeachment, he deserves to be convicted. i believe he will be convicted in the court of public opinion. thousands of protestors in myanmar return to the streets for a ninth

day of demonstrations against the military coup. now on bbc news, click gets exclusive access to the british army to see a pilot scheme using virtual reality to improve the training of soldiers. this week — the robots helping children through lockdown. robot: this is a penny. love is in the air. omar is helping you keep it there. and remember — hands, face, space.

hey, welcome to click! hope you're doing 0k. now, for many people, the change in our routines over the last year, our working arrangements and our personal lives has been pretty challenging. speaking personally, i have a massive fear of change, and i don't know about you, lara, but even when i was a kid, going from school to the school summer holidays was pretty daunting, just having six weeks of no plans, and then going back to school after the holidays, that was pretty terrifying too. oh, i remember it well! changes in routine can throw any of us, whatever they are, and it can take a little while to get back into the rhythm. yeah, and for neurodiverse children, this whole thing has been so much more difficult, and the last 12 months has affected each and every one of them differently. yes, and the differences can be really extreme.

i have heard stories of autistic kids in lockdown who have really struggled with the lack of a structured school day, but i have also heard stories of those who have really flourished without the pressures of an unpredictable day at school. and when you cannot go out and see people, you also cannot get the professional support that you might have been able to get before. you cannot even see familiar faces and familiarfriends. now, we are learning more and more about neurodiversity and would you believe that robots are now helping some children on the autistic spectrum? new devices can speak, play and teach kids and help them to learn practical and social skills, and paul carter has been finding out more. woman: oh - he came towards ya! ooh! whoa! wow! say "go, bubbles!" this is ethan. he's nine years old and is autistic.

is he your friend? yes. lives with his mum christina in pennsylvania. bubbles: hey, ethan. hi, bubbles! this little robot entered his life three years ago. it's been named bubbles. this is one of my favourite times of the day, when i. get to play with you. the kebbi robot itself was built in taiwan but it has been programmed with more than 100 special education lessons and games by movia robotics in the us. all clean! very good! they put everything in the system but i get to choose what he does that day for the session. um, mother pig. mother pig! nice talking, bud! ethan was non—verbal until aged six but can now say several words at a time. a lot of the times when bubbles speaks and he asks ethan something, ethan will actually repeat what the robot said or he'll repeat what the answer is. let's do a new activity. oooh! one coin exercise has gone down particularly well. this is a penny. he is able to recognise what coins are and what they are called,

so there was four different coins. nickels, dimes, nickels. yes! and sojust like that, we had never taught him that, and so he is learning that directly from bubbles. and dance parties help break up tasks — complete with robot dance moves, of course. i like it! now, it's bubbles�*s physicality that makes the difference. ethan hugs the robot, he will say good morning to it, he'll say good night and "bye—bye bubbles" as if it is a friend or a family member, so ijust don't think you get that relationship and that connection through an ipad and i don't know how you would get that from a flat screen. but bubbles is not the first robot used to help autistic children. the last 20 years has seen a growing body of research with bots in all shapes and sizes. what we do know from a great many small—scale studies is that human—robot interaction — in particular child—robot interaction — with well—designed robots can result — and often does result — in improved verbalisation, improved social skills, improved learning, initiating play, initiating showing attention.

this robot has been specially built over the past five years to teach social and cognitive skills. and, yes, it is an owl! owl giggles. we wanted it to not evoke humanity in particular because that could be off—putting for many children on the spectrum. we also wanted it to look like something that could be very smart. owls are thought to be smart. the child would listen to the robot, trust it as an authority and engage with it, because the robot was a tutor and a friend. kiwi does notjust look smart, it is smart. it teaches kids maths while responding to their behaviour. kiwi: where are the happy faces? can you count them? to interact with any human

for any period of time, it takes intelligent ai. sojust to know if the child is even in the frame and has not walked away takes intelligence. how do you know that the child is engaged? are they performing? are they taking turns? are they making eye contact? this is all ai. a pioneer in herfield, maja also co—founded moxie, a soon to ship robot that has been backed by amazon. it is nice to meet you riley. i love stories. would you read a story to me? what we have not seen yet is real—life products in the home with evidence over a period of let's say a yeah — riley, we have a new mission. would you make a drawing for me? ultimately, that evidence will end up coming from products likely sooner than it will come from research. but bringing robots out of purely academic settings is expensive. ethan's robot from movia robotics starts at $800 a pop. the moxie comes with a pre—order price tag of $1700. and softbank robotics' nao robot, first used by autistic children around a decade ago, costs more than $8,000. so are they really worth the expense?

so there are more and more of these innovations hitting the market, so when you are dealing with another human being, you have to think about their tone of voice, you have to think about their body language. there's lots and lots of information that is involved in an interaction with another person, so tech can help by simplifying those things. but importantly, no—one should see a robotic aid as a silver bullet. just because something worked for one family, it does not mean it will work for someone else. do not take really rash decisions because you could be using that money on a piece of tech when actually, what your child needs is more support from an occupational therapist or a speech and language therapist. maybe that it's helpful for special schools to try out some of this equipment before parents rush in — rush to purchase them. movia robotics has rolled out 160 systems across schools, therapy organisations and homes around the world.

the team says early testing in us schools has seen some kids improve by up to 20% across their verbal, attention and academic skills. for ethan and christina, bubbles has been a worthwhile purchase. so for us, it has been extremely life—changing — i mean, there is really no other way to describe it. one, two, three. 0h, four! he gets four thumbs up from us! hello and welcome to the week in tech. it was a week that brought more bad news for beleaguered games outfit cd projekt red. on top of cyberpunk 2077's bug—laden launch, the company has been hacked in a ransomware attack. in a statement, cd projekt said "we will not give into the demands or negotiate". a rogue zoom filter made a us lawyer in texas appear as a cute little kitten during a live court appearance.

i'm here live, it's not — i am not a cat. i can — i can see that. and in the uk, mps are wading into the playstation 5 — xbox series x debate. they're not bothered which one is better, though. scottish national party mp douglas chapman is proposing making it illegal for online scalpers to use automated bots to scoop up next—gen consoles from online retailers before genuine customers have clicked add to cart. reddit claims it has blown its entire marketing budget taking out a blink—and—you'll—miss—it five second ad during the us super bowl. the ad tips a nod to the gamestop stockbroking amateurs who organised via reddit to outwit professional hedge funds. and finally, the value of bitcoin has risen dramatically with one bitcoin now worth more than £34,000. this week, elon musk�*s car company tesla revealed it had purchased £1.1 billion worth of the cryptocurrency earlier this year. the auto maker plans to accept bitcoin as payment in future. the move has raised eyebrows in some quarters, though. with industry observers questioning tesla's green credentials after investing in a currency which requires a lot of energy to produce.

the skies above mars are about to get even busier... mission control: engine ignition. two, one, zero... ..as three different spacecraft from three different nations close in on the red planet within just over a week of each other. in pole position, the united arab emirates' first interplanetary probe hope arrived in orbit on tuesday, met by huge celebrations in the region. close behind was china's tianwen—i, arriving just one day later. it's their first successful journey to another planet. and while the uae�*s probe will only orbit mars,

china's will detach a lander and a rover to head down to the surface in may. and finally, on the 18th of february, nasa's perseverance rover will attempt to make a daring landing. but landing the rover is a massive undertaking and so much needs to go right. this is what is known as the �*seven minutes of terror�*. the spacecraft will hit the top of the martian atmosphere at 12,000 miles per hour, but it needs to come to a complete stop and then lower the rover gently onto the ground just seven minutes later — and all completely autonomously. but to find out more about all of these missions, i spoke to elizabeth seward, airbus defence and space's senior space strategist. so we've got three spacecraft all getting to mars at pretty

much the same time. why is that? so as mars and the earth orbit around the sun, you can imagine them like racers on a racetrack. earth is the inside and it's going quite fast and mars is the outside one and it's going quite slowly, and so every two years, they line up. so just before they line up is when you want to launch from earth and then the spacecraft catches up with mars and then it can land on mars. if we tried to do it any other time, the distances between the planets would be so great that we would not be able to put enough rocket fuel on the rocket to get them there, so we have this two—year window and so every two years, we can launch spacecraft and so there is often a queue — it has happened before in the �*70s as well, four at once, three at once, and so this time, we are seeing three at once. so china has now landed a probe on the far side of the moon and now it's landing its first rover on mars — it sounds to me like china's catching up with the us in terms of space. the chinese space exploration is — has just hugely increased

in pace recently. you could say "catching up", you could even say "outpacing" — nobody else has landed on the far side of the moon yet, so that was a world first. they're not the only ones entering into space, though. we saw the indian nation launch a probe to mars, and so they have their satellite in orbit already. and we're talking about the uae today and there are many other countries now able to access space, so yeah, it is really exciting. there's a real fleet of spacecraft in orbit around mars now, isn't there? there's loads of them! the future is full of mars missions and the perseverance rover that is landing is going to collect samples and leave them in little caches, little field tubes, wherever it finds them, so they will be dotted around the surface. and then in europe — in fact, in stevenage in the uk — we are currently designing the sample fetch rover — which i'm sure will have a snappy

name by the time it gets to mars — and that is going to go around and trundle after it and pick up all of these samples. after the rovers pick them all up, it will put them inside a baseball—sized canister, it gets shot off the martian surface by a mars ascent vehicle, and then the baseball canister has to be captured by our spacecraft, called the earth return orbiter to bring them home, and so what you will have is — is literally a baseball catch in orbit, so that it can bring those samples back to earth. getting spacecraft to mars is an incredible achievement, but with the perils of exploration, sample returns and data collection still to take place, these these missions arejust the beginning. keys, phone, hand sanitiser, and face mask. face masks have become one of the essential items for when we leave the house, so i've been taking a look at some of the more unusual ones.

first up is maskfone. it's got built—in earphones and a microphone, so you can make phone calls without sounding muffled by your mask. i often catch up with friends while i'm out doing my exercise, so if i'm going to be wearing a mask, then of course i could wear separate earphones, but it was quite convenient to have them built in, and the person i called said i sounded good and not at all muffled. on a windier day, it may have helped with that too. but in terms of the fabric mask itself, great that it is machine washable and you just slip in an n95 filter but personally, this isn't my chosen type of mask. and i thought it could do with being a bit longer so i could pull it further under my chin. next up is airpop's active+ halo smartmask. a lot of people who wear single—use masks don't actually dispose of them

after every use and likewise, a lot of people wearing masks that need the filters replacing aren't actually replacing the filters as often as they should. this mask has sensors inside this silver button that measure your breathing rate. the app then combines that with local air quality data to alert you when you need to replace the filter. before putting in a new filter, you need to use the app to scan the qr code — that will both ensure that the filter is genuine and also make a note of when it has been put in. the mask itself feels very much like the 3—d knit fabric of high—end trainers, so it's tough and it's breathable. now, i'm told that it will offer n99 protection — so that is greater than n95. it will keep out aerosols, liquids and pollution. the app was only in beta when i'd tested it but it accurately recorded how long i had been wearing the mask. i've personally found the mask itself a better fit than the maskfone one and, longer term, the focus on this product is to protect you from poor air quality.

that is, of course, a smaller mask—wearing market, although it could be a growing one. next up is uvmask. now, i was quite surprised by how bulky this mask was when it arrived as it feels rather hefty to wear but that's because inside, it hides ultraviolet uvc leds. they aim to kill bacteria and viruses for up to eight hours of wear. the company has assured me that the uvc is safe as it never reaches your skin, and also that the device doesn't create any ozone, so it is not going to be causing a problem for air quality. now, when i first put the mask on, it was actually surprisingly comfortable. the only thing was that it does make a bit of sound and i've felt a little bit of air coming out here that was tickling my eyes. i was very conscious of all of that while i was indoors, but as soon as i went outside, i did stop noticing. at that point, it was just a matter

of having to get used to wearing something so solid on my face, and there did come a point where i was quite relieved to take it off. and here's a prototype by gaming company razer. it's project hazel mask was revealed at ces injanuary. its see—through design has what it calls �*active ventilation' to prevent c0 2 build up in the mask. it also has a microphone and its charging case has uv light inside for sterilisation. for many, these ideas might be a bit of over—engineering, but if you are looking for a mask with a difference and you are willing to pay for it, then one of these mightjust appeal. being in lockdown can have its challenges, either because we are forced together for much longer than usual, or because we are away from our partners. so this valentine's day,

i'm going to be spending it with... no—one! i'm single right now. but i'm baking myself a valentine's cake — lemon flavour — just to, you know, give myself some love. but even if i found my soulmate tomorrow, i don't think it would be all happiness and roses forever. i reckon it probably takes quite a bit to keep the flame alive. alex and i have been together for ten years in total. we have lots of adventures together normally, but obviously under lockdown circumstances, you are experiencing the same thing together all day, every day. we were renting a property and i knew that we couldn't afford the next month's rent, had to quit the house. jess's parents were great. they let us stay there as long as needed. that helped us financially get back on our feet. so since beginning of lockdown, we have been together for about — we have spent no time apart. it got to a point

where we were just — everything was annoying each other. we were in each other's way, a lot. well, as gloomy as this may seem, there is an app out there that can help you keep the communication alive. paired launched last year with a basic and the premium version that you have to pay for. you are given topics to chat about each day. it's only once you have given your own answers that you can see your partner's, prompting the conversation about it afterwards, gamifying the experience, to help you get to know each other better and how you are feeling. it makes you question it, it makes you ask it, it makes you talk. it asks your thoughts. it reminds you that you have so much more in common and that you enjoyed each other's company pre—children, because it's so easy when you've got young children to only talk to each other about your children. for tom, who has cerebral palsy,

the stresses of lockdown caused him to suffer more pain than usual. that and restrictions have meant that he has not always been there to supportjess during her pregnancy. we come from different backgrounds. i've got a family but i'm not as close so to me, i thought she was just weird and she thought i was weird. i like gaming, pc, playstation, which jess understands and she is actually — she is willing to give it a try — that's our next big thing. it has made us understand each other. and then, if you understand something, it doesn't upset you. for felicia and alex, it has prompted a different level of conversation and seeing what they can do for each other during lockdown. i think when you first start dating someone, you have lots of kind of philosophical or theoretical conversations — you know, what would you do if this happened, or what would be your last meal? i remember asking alex that. and, actually, it takes something external to prompt you into engaging in those kind of conversations again. it's kind of a fun tool but also, it prompted me to appreciate

and realise that i actually hadn't done any meals for felicity or the kids during the whole week and therefore, it kind of prompted me to make sure that i made an effort. but why do you need technology to tell you what should really be common sense? you should always continue to work on your relationship as a couple. otherwise, you know, stagnant becomes not exciting and potentially dangerous. this app made me see differently. i like the way it- kind of prompts you. and if i don't do it, _ the app's prompting me and jess is prompting me to answer the question, so i don't- know where we'd be. i'd hate to know. we got a baby here now, - so i'm happy we are together and we are a family. it seems like in the best circumstances, this kind of app can help people both have their cake and eat it.

but from what i've seen, this is just one of several out there trying to get couples to communicate more. for instance, the toucan app, which claims it can take the pulse of your relationship, map it out, and give couples practical tools. and there is between us, just launched by couples therapy organisation tavistock relationships. it is set to dig a bit deeper to help couples better understand the root of their problems. but can these apps really help solve the deeper issues of a relationship? the apps are very good at prompting communication, it doesn't really tell you how to do it, and it can't replace the therapist who is actually in the room noticing the dynamic between the couple and helping them to take care of themselves and to improve the way they communicate by actually coaching them through that. so these apps may not be an instant fix — they still require a lot of effort and communication from the couple to get the best out of them — but they still can be useful. i might give them a try

myself one day — well, when i'm taken again! that was omar. you can find him on social media and all good dating apps! both chuckle. i don't know! anyway, i'm afraid that is it from us for this week. as ever, you can keep up with the team throughout the week on social media. find us on youtube, instagram, facebook and twitter at @bbcclick. thanks for watching and we'll see you soon. bye— bye. hello. it was a cold start to the day but i think today will be the last day of those cold, chilly, icy starts.

through this week things are changing in terms of weather type. much milder, largely frost—free overnight, but quite unsettled, with rain at times and often windy this week. today we are seeing those strong winds — whenever you are it is a cloudy and windy today. outbreaks of rain moving west to east, fairly patchy rain. some of that rain may fall as freezing rain, falling into sub—zero air and onto freezing surfaces which can create some really treacherous, icy conditions for parts of scotland and northern england. east anglia and the south—east remaining dry for a good part of the day, outbreaks of rain elsewhere, strong, gusty winds of 60—70 mph through the irish sea, big waves for antrim and down, the western isles. mild in the west, colder in the east. into the evening, cloud and patchy rain sweeps across much

of england and wales, followed by clearer skies moving in for scotland and northern ireland and later on for northern england, but there could be scattered heavy downpours for the far north—west. overnight temperatures 5—9 celsius. significantly warmer than even during the daytime this past week. into monday, here is that front lingering initial in the east, that should slowly clear and we are left with the winds from a south or a south—westerly direction. the cold air mass is clearing toward the east and these much milder yellow colours coming in from the south or south—west. monday, rain initially for southern and eastern england and that should move towards the east. further scattered showers for northern ireland, scotland and northern england. they should ease later and some sunshine breaking through. in the sunnier spells in the south—east, perhaps london reaching 1a celsius on monday — much warmer than recently. even 8—10 celsius

for parts of scotland. through the week ahead — fairly unsettled, rain at times, some sunshine in between, but not as cold as it has been lately. bye for now.

good afternoon. the government is under pressure from a group of its own conservative backbench mps to give more clarity on a roadmap out of lockdown. the mps — known as the covid recovery group — want all legal restrictions on people's freedoms to be eased by may. but the foreign secretary dominic raab has rejected their call. he says easing the lockdown has to be done cautiously and be based on the success of the vaccine in bringing down deaths and hospitalisations. here's our political correspondent nick eardley.