this is bbc news, the headlines: australia has claimed their first games gold, breaking the world record for the women's 300m freestyle team relay. the hosts, japan, also won their second gold, in the pool. while the tunisian teenager, ahmed hafnaoui, stunned the field to win the men's 400 metre freestyle gold. thousands of people in the western united states are spending the weekend in evacuation centers, as wildfires continue to burn across the region. more than 80 large wildfires in 13 us states have burnt around 1.3 million acres in recent weeks. thousands of people have marched through the streets of the hungarian capital budapest, to mark the largest gay pride gathering in the country's history. it comes after viktor orban's right—wing government pushed through a law banning the portrayal of homosexual or transgender content to people under—18.

now on bbc news, the travel show�*s in tokyo, host city of the olympic and paralympic games, to find out how its hotels are dealing with the influx of athletes and trainers from all over the world. this week on the travel show: outrunning covid at the olympic games. the big names rocking central park this summer. siberia's mystery blast craters. to have an exploding crater on land is not something i imagined. and the fears for the future of flamenco.

hello and welcome to tokyo. the host city for this summer's olympic and paralympic games and thronging with tourists and sport fans from all over the world. maybe not. the state of emergency declared earlier this month following a new wave of covid cases means that international and now local spectators are not allowed in to any event in and around tokyo. nonetheless, trainers and medical staff have headed here from all around the world for a more subdued games. there were plenty of people here in tokyo who were delighted to see the olympic opening ceremony on friday.

even if they had to resign themselves to only being able to watch it live on tv rather than in person at this vast stadium. however, they could be a minority as recent survey showed thatjust over 50% of people here did not want to see the games go ahead. japan has declared a state of emergency for tokyo that will run throughout its hosting of the games. a public concern has grown over what impact the influx of thousands of athletes, support staff, officials and press from overseas could have on the infection rate. for me, like many people here in tokyo, the olympics has been a rollercoaster. in 2019 tickets for athletics and diving events were quickly allocated. and then last year they were not even sure if the olympics would go ahead and then we were told this year that our tickets would have to go back into another lottery because of limited capacity of the stadiums and then finally, two weeks ago we were told that there

would be no spectators at all in any tokyo events. and here there was meant to be a fans zone with a big screen tv but that idea was quickly quashed. precovid, japan was originally expecting around 35 million visitors in 2020. but now only vaccinated athletes and officials can attend the tokyo games this year. that number has been massively reduced. and with a capacity of the olympic village limited, many of tokyo's hotels are playing host to athletes and sports support staff from all over the world with strict sanitising protocols, regular testing and in some cases, curfews and other restrictions now in place. this hotel was not allowed to tell me which teams would be staying here but they were willing to show me some of the adjustments they had made to ensure that their

sporting guests have a happy and healthy stay. in addition to ensuring the hotel is covid secure, the carpenters here have also been busy at work in readiness for some extra tall special guests. we had requests for larger beds so these are wooden bases for the extension and we will have 12 of them. so i can assume you will have some very tall athletes staying? you are correct. the normal size bed is two metres so we're extending it by 30 centimetres. here we are. this is the room where we have put a larger bed for our guests. wow. this is a big bed. good, hey? and you cannot notice where our carpenters have made the extension. very neat. and it is notjust a good night

sleep that the olympic competitors need. nutrition plays a vital role in their performance so the kitchens here have had to adjust their menus accordingly. they want at least eight different salad bars, celery, cucumberand broccoli, you know? i have designed a menu, here i have added three carbs, five different vegetables. the nutritionist and the chef look at it and they come back to us and see if it is ok or not. so it all has to go back to their nutritionist? yes. so i see we have salad, grains, is there a dessert? a little dessert. we cannot have too much sugar because when you add sugar... the dessert is more like a bite. energy bowls. so what are we making today? apricot cashew bites. this is what olympic athletes will be eating. that is good.

not quite the dessert i was expecting. i think everybody is getting used to the new normal, getting to ease with the fact that these olympics are now without spectators so there is a drop in demand. however, everybody is still preparing for the groups that are coming, the people they have to look after and making sure the event is well executed. traditionally, every olympic games always now has a small army of local volunteers who sign up to help ensure that visitors have the best experience possible. but with the ban on spectators and overseas tourists, many of the volunteers have either been stood down or seen their duties changed. where do we get the bus from? you are here now.

mak san was looking forward to meeting travellers from all over the world, but now he is using his english to help out at the press centre instead. i wish the olympics would succeed without any problems. are you looking forward to seeing some athletes and some olympic events? yes. i love sports. i was a pe teacher. so this is your dream job? yes. my dream job. of course, a modern olympic games is not just about sport. there is usually a whole host of marketing opportunities, corporate events and collectables associated with each games. daniel, tell me about these pins. every national olympic committee likes to have their own pin and athletes, it gives them an opportunity to give them, a gift from their country to somebody from another country that they may not necessarily interact with.

this rwanda versus godzilla... what is? we have the rwanda team mascot against godzilla. it is an epic pin. this is a mega mecha. moving parts pin. that is great. there is an entire network of collectors from all over the world. it is known as the unofficial olympic sport, collecting pins and trading pins. so, unfortunately, there are many collectors who would normally come to the games just to go pin trading and just to collect. it will be a little more difficult this time around to get their hands on some of these prized possessions. it is estimated that back

in 2019, over a quarter of a million fans from overseas travelled to japan to see the rugby world cup championship. staying, on average, a16 nights and each spending around £11000, or5500 us dollars on their trip. so hopes were high that the postponed olympics would bring in even bigger numbers, more revenue and greater positive publicity for the country. i don't think there has ever been any event that had the demand that the tokyo 2020 had. they really wanted to come and experience japan. the japanese hospitality, the food, the culture. it is only the fourth time in history that there has been a summer games held in asia so i think itjust provided a unique catalyst for the entire world to go, "i want to be there." and, i guess, that is what makes it incredibly disappointing.

so no matter how you feel about the games, tokyo 2020 is happening at a unique and historic moment in time. and many people will want to capture that and reflect on it. the shops here are still full of memorabilia and souvenirs. how much will be sold, however, is unclear given the lack of overseas tourists. one thing is clear, however. you can expect souvenirs to maybe become items in their own right. because they certainly represent a very different olympic games. the edinburgh festival looks a bit different this year. they are going ahead. the international festival has moved many of its performances outside and kicks off with a three day event in the royal botanic gardens.

the fringe, meanwhile, mixes its socially distance live in person shows with a live online offering that starts on august six. new york is planning what some people are calling a mega—concert on the great lawn of central park. bruce springsteen, paul simon and jennifer hudson will headline the event, which is part of week—long celebrations of the city's reopening. 60,000 people are expected to go, with different sections allocated to vaccinated and unvaccinated spectators. berlin's museum island has a new landmark, the humbolt forum. this vast building brings together the ethnological museum and the museum of asian art in one enormous reconstructed baroque palace. its remit is to be a symbol of tolerance and diversity, but there has been controversy over its decision to house artefacts looted from parts of the world once colonised by europe.

and barely a year goes by without dubai opening something enormous. this time it's the world's deepest pool. deep dive dubai goes downjust over 60 metres and holds enough water to fill six olympic—sized swimming pools. they have built an abandoned city at the bottom to explore, along with a library and an arcade. still to come on this week's travel show: the blast craters causing confusion in siberia. and with one final click of the castanets, a flamenco venue saying goodbye for the last time. so don't go away. next this week, we are in

russia on the remote siberian peninsula of yamal. scientists they have noticed enormous blast holes appearing in a landscape and it has had them scratching their heads. so we thought we would catch up with them to find out more. i first heard about these craters when i was contacted by a reporter in 2014, i came back to my e—mail and thought this is a crazy e—mail i got, this person is talking about these craters and i didn't have accessibility to the news, ijust didn't believe it. i got back to the us and i read a little more and wow, this is a thing that happened.

the fact that there could be a new geochemical process that we never imagined would happen, have an exploding crater on land is just not something that when i think about the processes that can happen on the earth, is not something that i imagined. how important are these? so this idea that what is the cause of these, is this something that is new that is happening, is this related to climate, is this something that is a risk to people who are in the arctic, to the gas and oil infrastructure, which is quite

close to the area where these craters have been occurring? and then is there some long—term impact on global climate, because there is methane that is coming out of these craters? it is an area where there is very thick layer of ice called tabular ice, and there is also an area where there is a lot of cryo—pegs, which is an area of ground that is within the frozen permafrost, so it is an unfrozen sandwich, it is surrounded by permafrost, it is unfrozen ground, and the idea of how these forms is that these very deep deposits of gas are sort of finding their way to this unfrozen pocket, this cryo—peg or italic, and then as pressure builds up it raises the ground up, and it explodes. how many more of them are out there?

what we're trying to do is use satellite data to view these what we have first done is create a change detection map which is an automated method of picking up pixels on the peninsula that have changed in some way. that algorithm was built based on sort of what we know about the craters. so once we have this change in texture map we have a team who are using high—resolution imagery to look through each one of these pixels and say, does this look like a crater, does this look like something else, and we're classifying it. and from there once we have something that we think looks like a crater or could have been a crater, we are getting a series of very high—resolution imagery to try and figure out when these formed.

yeah, why are they happening now is really tricky to identify. i would not be surprised and i do think it is likely that warming temperatures are at least in part contributing to making the ground unstable, allowing these explosions to happen. to me they're more an indicator of whats happening, and a very shocking indicator of what is happening in the arctic. and there is nowhere else on the planet that i know of where climate change is causing the physical structure of the ground to change. it's quite startling. the unfolding mystery

of siberia's enormous blast craters. right, to spain next an art form that so many of us see on our holidays. flamenco happens in venues called tablaos, which like so many venues have had to close the good. ——so many venues have had to close — sometimes for good. we have met some dancers in madrid who are now facing an uncertain future. that's it for this week.

coming up next time: christa's here with some of our favourite memories of new york city. from historical landmarks to hidden reasures. and the time she was made to face her public speaking demons once and for all. and i was like, oh! don't forget you can catch up with our more recent adventures on the bbc iplayer

and we're on social media too. just search bbc travel and you won't be far off. but until next time, he planning, stay safe and we'll see you very soon. goodbye. good morning. the heatwave is now behind us. and a bit of a change to the theme to the weather in the coming days. more unsettled conditions on the cards. really, through the week ahead we're looking at that gradual change to cooler conditions. still some heavy showers around at times but also some spells of sunshine in between as well. we have had some fairly heavy downpours over recent houi’s. you can see on the satellite image, this area of cloud that has been moving its way up from the south has produced already a few heavy showers in the far south and some

thunderstorms as well. as we head through the course of today, be prepared for more thunderstorms across parts of southern and particularly south—east england. if you do catch one, there could be some localised flooding and potential for some disruption to travel as well. the zone likely to see the heaviest of showers today is across parts of south—east england, east anglia, perhaps into the midlands as well. elsewhere across the uk, a lot of dry, settled weather and the cloud will be breaking up through the day so some long spells of sunshine. not quite as warm as recent days but still temperatures in the north—west getting up to 25, possibly 26 degrees. if you have got these showers down towards the south—east, though, it's only going to be about 22 or 23 degrees. again some of them quite torrential as we head into the evening hours, the odd rumble of thunder into the evening. but most of the showers are easing somewhat through the course of tonight. so largely clear skies for most of us, fairly cloudy, low cloud mist and murk for parts of scotland, north—east england as well. temperatures overnight getting down to around about 13—16 degrees. as we head into monday, low pressure still with us, just pushing

its way a little bit further northwards through the north sea. so still some showers around on monday but different areas, i think, will be seeing those showers and they will be fairly few and far between so can see quite a bit of sunshine through the day on monday. one or two heavy ones, potentially some thunderstorms cropping up for parts of eastern scotland, a few for parts of western england and wales, but a little bit warmer than sunday in the south because there'll be more sunshine so temperatures generally between 21 and 25 degrees. low pressure still not far away as we move through into tuesday as well, drifting its way northwards and then this frontal system works into western parts of the uk. that's going to bring us a fairly unsettled theme and that's really going to hold on through much of the week ahead. plenty of showers, some of them heavy at times, especially in the north and west, and perhaps something a little bit drier and brighter further south. bye for now.

this is bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in the uk and around the globe. our top stories... africa wins its first gold medal at the tokyo olympics, as a tunisian teenager stuns the field to win the men's 400 metre freestyle. two huge disappointments for team gb as double olympic champion andy murray is forced out of the tennis singles with injury, while jadejones is beaten in the taekwondo. wildfires in northern california force thousands into evacuation centres while a covid outbreak in oregon puts firefighters into quarantine. thousands take to the streets across brazil for the fourth weekend in a row, calling for a faster vaccination programme and the impeachment of president bolsonaro.

0h! and the uk army safely detonates a world war ii bomb on the site