a fairly quiet start to the new week for many, dry with some morning sunshine once the mist and low cloud breaks, but thunderstorms never too far away, always hit and miss, not everyone will see them. in fact, where we dodge them and get the best of the sunshine, we could see highs of 25—26 celsius across parts of england and wales, but cooler for scotland and northern ireland. further showers, though, in the week ahead, and feeling cooler both by day and by night.

hello, this is bbc news with lukwesa burak. the headlines: team gb have won their first medals at the end of the second day of action at the tokyo olympics. chelsie giles took bronze in the women's judo before bradly sinden won silver in the men's taekwondo. three people, including a nine—year—old boy, have died at loch lomond after getting

into difficulty in the water. a second boy was rescued and is in intensive care at the royal hospital for children in glasgow. the health secretary sajid javid has apologised for — and deleted — a tweet in which he said the nation should stop "cowering" from coronavirus. campaigners for people who've died during the pandemic had condemned the remark as "deeply insensitive" and "distasteful". british mps have warned that taxpayers will bear the cost of the government's coronavirus spending for decades. a report found £372 billion has already been spent, pushing government debt to a rate not seen since the early 1960s. 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.

now on bbc news, the travel show. 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, host city for this summer's olympic and paralympic games, and thronging with tourists and sport fans from all over the world. ok, 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. nevertheless, athletes, 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 in

the minority, as some recent surveys 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. and 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 rates. for me, like many people here in tokyo, the olympics has been a real rollercoaster. in 2019, i got tickets for athletics and diving events in the first round of the lottery. and then last year they were not even sure we were not even sure if the olympics would happen. and then we were told this year that our tickets would have to go back into another lottery because of limited capacity at the stadiums and then finally, two weeks ago we were told that there would be no spectators at all at any tokyo events. and here at yoyogi park there was meant to be a fans zone with big screen tvs, but that idea was quickly quashed.

pre—covid, 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 the 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've had to make 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 too, in readiness for some extra tall special guests.

we had some requests from some athletes to make larger beds. 0h! so here they are. these are wooden bases for the extension and we will make 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. yeah. good, hey? and you cannot notice where our carpenters have made the extension. very neat. and it is notjust a good night's 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, so it can be from

carrot, celery, cucumber, and broccoli, you know? they prefer to eat raw than cooked. 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 let us know if it is ok or not, if it has too much sauce. wow, it all has to go back to their nutritionist? yes. so i see we have salad, grains, is there dessert? a little dessert. they cannot have too much sugar because when you have sugar... you know, it doesn't help you. the dessert is more like a bite. a dry food bite. they call it energy balls. so what are we making today? apricot cashew bites. yes. this is what olympic athletes will be eating. mm! that is quite good. it is good, you know. very healthy.

superb. not quite the dessert i was expecting. i guess. 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. yeah. oh, great. 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. 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. that's great. this is a mega mecha. moving parts pin. wow, 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, for 16 nights and each spending around £11000, or $5500

us on their trip. arigato! 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 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 an 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 celebration 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 there have noticed enormous blast holes appearing on the 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 actually 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 eventually 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

to view these craters. 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. right? 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 from there once we have something that we think looks like a crater or could have been a crater, we are getting timed series of very high—resolution imagery to try and figure out where these forms. why are they happening now? it 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 are more an indicator of what is 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 is quite startling. the unfolding mystery of siberia's enormous blast craters. right, to spain next. and an art form that so many of us see on our holidays. flamenco happens in venues

called tablaos, which like so many venues have been forced 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 is here with some of our favourite memories of new york city... ..from historical landmarks to hidden treasures... 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 are on social media two. on social media too. just search bbc travel and you won't be far off. but until next time, keep planning, stay safe and we will see you very soon. goodbye.

hello. some of us have seen big changes in the weather through the weekend, from the heat to thunderstorms, and we'll all see something different in the week ahead, as the blue skies and sunshine are replaced with something cooler, frequent showers, but still some spells of sunshine, especially later in the week. and whereas last week the focus was on high—pressure, in the week ahead, it's all down to low pressure. and this has been generating plenty of showers and thunderstorms across parts of south—east and southern england through sunday afternoon. this is what's been happening. you can see this line of thunderstorms and showers developing really from east anglia all the way down to the isle of wight. the yellow and red flashes there indicating te frequent lightning strikes. and they'll be gradually fading away through the first half of the night,

may keep going all night across the far southeast of england. elsewhere, it's mainly dry, mist and low cloud pushing into north—eastern coasts, also across parts of northern ireland, but elsewhere, some clearer skies. it's still a mild, and in places, muggy night, with temperatures across the southern half of the uk not much lower than 111—15 celsius. it's a fairly quiet start to the new week for many, plenty of cloud across parts of scotland, northern ireland and north—east england. elsewhere, some spells of sunshine. we should all see some sunshine through the day, but also the chance of seeing a thunderstorm as well. very well scattered, very hit and miss, not everyone will see them, in fact, where we miss them and get the best of the sunshine, we could see highs of 25—26 celsius across parts of england and wales. but those showers never too far away, and starting to gather in the west as we head through monday night and into tuesday. so this area of low pressure is very much the dominant feature, and we also see these showers pushing their way eastwards through tuesday, so tuesday is quite a messy picture in terms of showers, always hit and miss, but equally, they could begin to merge to give

a longer spell of rain, and still the chance of some thunder and lightning in those showers. cloud around on tuesday, some warm spells of sunshine coming through, and temperatures around 17—21 celsius, quite a drop from the 31 celsius that we saw last week. through wednesday and thursday, this area of low pressure begins to deepen. it also strengthens the wind, so could start to see some wind gusts of 40—115 mph in some places on both wednesday and thursday, but the week ahead will bring some showers, also bring something cooler both by day and night. goodbye.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. at the toyko olympics, 18—year—old tunisian swimmer ahmed hafnaoui produces a major shock, winning gold in the a00m freestyle. the uk team claims its first silver medal — bradly sinden narrowly lost a dramatic taekwondo final. on a visit to kabul, a us commander says america has escalated airstrikes against the taliban in support of afghan forces. and we're prepared to continue this high—level support in the coming weeks if the taliban continue their attacks. counting the cost of deadly wildfires in the us — this one burned homes in oregon. more than 80 fires are raging in 12 other states.