hello. welcome. this is bbc news. the headlines: the president of sri lanka has not honoured his promise to resign. gotabaya rajapaksa flew to the maldives around 2a hours ago. but in a public letter, he said he was appointing the prime minister to be the acting head of state while he was absent. president biden�*s arrived in israel at the start of a landmark regional tour which will include a visit to saudi arabia. on his first trip to the middle east since taking office, he was met by israel's new prime minister. mr biden will also meet the palestinian president. the first round of voting to decide who will be the uk's next prime minister has reduced the field to six candidates without throwing up a clear favourite. the next vote takes place

on thursday and the process will take until september to come up with a winner. i'll be back at the top of the hour. now on bbc news, it's ai tennis, robot footballers and body—tracking tech as click serves up a sports tech special. this week, we're at wimbledon to find out if ai can predict the winners, although spencer's concentrating on the more important parts of the event. choose my blanket design. got to get the food sorted first.

lara gets her trainers on to put some of the latest fitness devices through their paces. they say that i run like an elephant. the question is, is it true? probably! cheering it's men versus machine as omar and paul kick off against the robots. and we check out the tools hoping to make sports more accessible. it's one of the biggest events on the sporting calendar. the players, powerful... ..light of foot... ..lightning—fast. it requires physical endurance and nerves of steel. and that's the reason that every year the crowds spill out to watch wimbledon. you see that there? that is centre court and it's been in that spot now for exactly 100 years.

a centre court centenary. indeed. nice line. i know how much you love wimbledon, but are you like my aunt who shouts at the tv for two weeks? i absolutely love it, and i absolutely am like your aunt. this is the most stressful two weeks of the year for me. my heart rate goes through the roof and i'm just watching the thing on tv. oh, you need one of my activity trackers. i've got a few to spare to track your heart rate. oh, yes. how did you get on with those? well, i'll tell you, and you, about that in a bit. right you are. yeah, wimbledon has been at the forefront of trialling new tech, both on and off the court, and we've been lucky enough to see a fair bit of it over the years. so there is no better place to anchor our sports tech—themed show. and we're going to start with something for the fans. tech giant ibm has partnered with wimbledon for more than 30 years, and this year, it's upgraded the official wimbledon app to tell the future. so for each singles match here, match insight is going to try and predict the outcome of that match, who's going to win, yeah? it is, indeed. it's using, of course, the players' performance,

but it's also looking at what the media buzz is. we combine that with other stats, other data, like the player tracking and ball tracking that hawk—eye are doing, players' form, momentum, performance in the lead—up to and now during the championships. the brains behind this app belong to watson, ibm's artificial intelligence. and after absorbing all the data and the chatter, it'll make a prediction that's totally separate from the official seedings. these predictions are not going to just favour the person who's the highest ranked. no, and that's where it actually gets interesting because ours is very much of the moment, it's updated daily, so it enables us to surface ones to watch. helpful if, like me, you really only know your rafas and your raducanus. but that's not going to stop me from using the app to make my own match prediction. ok, here we go. burridge versus tsurenko. 0h, blimey, that's uk versus ukraine. it's eurovision all over again. the trusted media, the experts think that tsurenko is going to win.

the fans predict that burridge is going to win. no surprise there. i think burridge has a better chance, slightly, and watson says that tsurenko has a better chance. i guess we'll see. now, sports like lawn tennis can seem like they're mainly aimed at older spectators, which, of course, is nonsense. look at me, for example. but wimbledon has always tried to engage with younger audiences, and this year, that means putting it in roblox. this is the first time that centre court has been built for digital tennis on the platform, which means its 5a million daily active users can knock up on the world—famous grass. nearly half of roblox users are under the age of 13, so this could catch young minds. let's create my avatar. meanwhile, if you can't get one of the prized courtside seats, or even if you can't be here in person, you can still wander round wimbledon�*s famous hill on the official website. choose my blanket design. fine.

visitors can complete daily challenges while they learn more about the tournament. i'm wandering around now. refreshing drinks are not included, sadly. and i have to say that wimbledon�*s digital fans do appear slightly odder than their real—life ones. there's someone there with an ice cream on their head. right, so, earlier, i used the app to make a match prediction, and so did ibm's ai watson, and the results are now in, and... ah. well, i hope i didn'tjinx it, but tsurenkojust beat burridge 6—2, 6—3. which means that prediction i made earlier... yeah. watson is currently beating me one—love. and throughout the fortnight, that al should get even smarter because it's going to be reading all of the discussions and the media coverage about injuries, players�* health and their general performance, and that means we can do something quite exciting. now, i'm filming this quite early in the wimbledon fortnight, but we're putting the finishing touches to this

programmejust before the singles semifinals, and that means that we can put on screen for you who watson thinks is going to win those matches. i've got no idea what you're looking at now, but by the time you watch this, you will know how it did. now, some might find apps like this a bit gimmicky, but if they can get fans of all ages engaging with tennis, well, that can only be a good thing in my book. but let's change sport completely now, because omar mehtab has been competing in a very different kind of tournament. numberfive, going fora kick| at the goal, but they lose full ball control, and - the second attempt... omar: every year, robot football teams from more than a0 countries compete in robocup, with different leagues for different types and sizes. and tries to pass to... tries to pass to... cheering this is tech united — home of msl, the five—time

robocup champions from the eindhoven university of technology. now, everyone knows how much of a football fan i am, so i can't wait to see how these little guys fare and also what kind of applications they can have outside of the sport. but first up, penalties. music: match of the day by barry stoller. 0h! oh—ho! oh, hey! i'm not saving with the left hand any more. argh! a mirror helps these robots to see the pitch in 360 degrees... ..with cameras for object and colour recognition. so they see where the field lines are. right. and then relative to that, you can see, for example, the yellow ball, you can see

a robot and then calculate where, absolutely on the field, their position. wheels spin to pull in and hold the ball while a magnetised lever can launch shots at ten metres per second. we can move it up and down to give a lob shot or move it all the way up to give a flat pass over the ground. is it the case that you preload a certain tactic based upon your opponent, or is it that these bots just completely make up whatever they want as soon as they get on the field? we do prescribe them what we think are good strategies, but at the time during a match, they determine themselves what they should do. but we're also looking into using machine learning to find faults in the play and before we actually go on to the real field. at what point do you think that they probably would be ready at some time to face humans competitively? so, hopefully, we can use these robots to win from the human

world champion in football in 2050. not too far away, then! we're going to give it a go now, though. so i've flown in a couple of people to help me out, namely paul carter. paul. i'm here, man. i'm here to save the day. cheering nice to meet you. paul, nice to meet you. how are you doing? omar laughs whistle blows i think the odds i are in our favour. i think we'll manage this as we have some good talent on the pitch. the bots kick off with some swift striking. oh, my...! that came out quick! oh, ho—ho—ho! oh—ho!

only the goalie differs in form compared to the rest of the bots, as it has extendable arms. but it couldn't stop sharpshooter carter. the robots communicate with each other up to 60 times a second, working together to pull some questionable moves. whistle blows but between fresh batteries and...bananas, i learned this isn'tjust about man versus machine. robocup actually lays the foundations for serious collaborative robotics. integration of robots and humans within the same team remains limited nowadays. but if we look at the future, we will see more and more collaboration between robots and humans at team level. this type of set—up could allow us to develop techniques, methods, algorithms to make interaction meaningful.

how difficult is it to transfer what they're doing as tasks into other robots from other industries? easier than you think! really? yeah, i have a robot that needs to recognise balls on a field, and if i have a service robot, it needs to recognise faces in a home environment. they are both computer vision tasks and the methods that you use to address this task are more or less the same in two different contexts. the open source project has already helped inform this home health assistant, modifying with a handy gripper. paul laughs tech united branded cola. and after some refuelling, i did eventually find the back of the net. but given how fluid these robots are getting, it's good to know, in homes, work or play, we'll be on the same side together soon enough. we did it.

yeah, smashed it. time for a look at this week's tech news. the european parliament has approved two bills, designed to strengthen the rule book for tech giants like meta and google. it includes standards to tackle the spread of illegal content online, with firms facing huge fines for violations. researchers in finland say this battery could crack the problem of how to store renewable energy long—term. the special ingredient is sand. it stores the cheap energy as heat, which can warm people's homes in winter. if we have some stations that were just there for a few hours and weeks in the wintertime, when it's the coldest, it will be extremely expensive. if we have solutions providing flexibility for the storage of heat, that would help a lot. a ukrainian tech start—up has launched its metaverse

educational platform, despite having to staff move out of the country due to the war. dan.it will use the platform as a virtual classroom, offering training in tech skills. silicon valley—based firm mojo vision says it has completed the first successful on—eye demonstration of a smart contact lens. the prototype contains a micro led display that the wearer controls with eye movement but the biggest challenges for designers is making sure the power and communication work wirelessly when it is actually on an eye. several years back, i tested what were then four of the leading activity trackers. even though i'm wearing them all, all the time, they don't have the same view of how many footsteps i've taken. so i decided it was time to put some of the latest devices to the test to see how they fare. i have the apple series 7

watch, the fitbit sense, and the oura third—generation ring. i'm going to focus on steps, sleep and calories. but of course, devices can do so much more now — measuring heart rate, temperature, taking ecgs and judging how stressed or ready for the day they think we are. it's day one. last night, i slept with the devices on. i thought the two smartwatches were going to feel a bit bulky but actually, i slept really well — i didn't even notice them. it's too early for me to think too much about the data but already, throughout the day today, there has been quite a difference in the number of steps that the apple watch and fitbit think i've done. the apple watch thinks i've done fewer, and this does seem to be a bit of a theme with people that i know who wear both the devices. so, let's see how that plays out throughout the week. i knew that my husband's fitbit was counting too many steps!

i even swapped the apple watch to my dominant wrist and changed the settings suitably. it did slightly reduce the discrepancy, but the fitbit and the oura were still a bit more generous on step count. it's day three now and i'd like to talk about sleep. the oura ring seems to think that i've had a similar amount of sleep to the fitbit — just about a ten or is—minute difference. but the apple watch thinks i've had nearly an hour less, so there is quite a substantial difference in count there. similarly, the oura ring thinks that i've done the same amount of activity as the fitbit. it's the apple watch that thinks that i've been a bit lazier. all three of the devices break down your sleep quality. the fitbit�*s timing and scoring on deep and rem sleep, as well as your level of restoration, were really clearly presented. but the oura took this to another level, warning me to pay attention and adding a sleep score. apple tracks all of this too, but digging out the data retrospectively did feel more effort. it's day five now and i

definitely feel like i need to do more activity than usual because you're watching! but the results do seem a little bit more consistent between devices than the last time i did this experiment about seven years ago. i've put all my data so far on a spreadsheet, so i'm really able to compare them, and the thing which is particularly similar is the number of calories burned. really, the differences between them on each device is pretty negligible, even if sleep and steps do vary a little bit more. and one thing i'm rather enjoying is the readiness score that the oura ring gives me. it's based on all of that data and effectively just tells you how much energy you're likely to have, but it seems pretty realistic. and by the end of the week, the data told the story that sensors have improved over the years, as have the algorithms. seven years back, there was a difference of 3,000 calories between devices at the end of the week. here, the difference was more of a bowl of cereal, rather than a whole packet of it, and i am assuming that if they all say something

similar, that that is pretty accurate. overall, the fitbit counted around 4% more steps than the apple watch. and the oura ring, another 1—2% on top of that. the sleep data had varied between devices. adding it all up over the course of a week, there was a two hour, 17 minute discrepancy between the fitbit and the oura, with apple somewhere in between. the fitbit sense�*s electrodermal sensor is checking for even the tiniest bit of a sweaty palm to provide data that contributes to a daily stress score. it correctly — yes, correctly! — found me to be very calm. meanwhile, the apple watch is keen to tell me every time that i need to breathe when i may knowingly feel a little bit flustered. this time around, i've come away from the experiment feeling a little bit different. instead of it being a question of are they accurate or not,

it's more a matter of which device would you rather wear? it's definitely easy to track your sleep in a ring, whereas if you want to see your data throughout the day, well, i personally like to be able to look at my wrist, rather than my phone for it. the apple watch, well, it's a perfect player in the prism that is the apple ecosystem, so if you use apple, well, it fits very well with that. but i can't really knock the interface on the fitbit. but not all wearable trackers are where you think they'd be. more later for those who want some more in—depth analysis on their steps and their step. but for now, here's paul, who's been exploring body tracking for everyone. beyond wristbands and wearables, artificial intelligence is often now used to also help athletes understand and improve their game. and in london, one start—up has developed a smartphone app to make this kind of training more inclusive. can you tell me a little bit about what teamsportz is and what it is that you do?

i grew up playing basketball in a very deprived environment, so i built a technology for anywhere else in the world where you might have very limited access to technology. training is for individuals and teams, using artificial intelligence to detect disabled and non—disabled users. where are your arms, where are your legs, and where is your torso? and if you don't have the arms or the legs or the movement on those limbs or whatever it might be, the model will still be able to render a human body. movements are then interpreted as activities like squats or push—ups. you don't suffer from the same bias that al often brings. so i guess the big question is, do you reckon the system will be able to track me? i'm confident that it will. look at that! it's got me! yeah.

i didn't think it would. helpfully, the app can link to a big screen. so, those targets will appear randomly, so you can't guess where they are, so you actually have to exercise. god, i wish i could — i am so unfit! the skeleton overlay, over your body, that's the a! model. i don't think it's having to work too hard to know i'm going not very fast at the minute. rep counts, speeds and scores can be shared to gamify the experience, with new possibilities for schools, too. for the first time, they can give homework to kids to do it at home. kids across this country are going to love you! laughter. wheelchair user karina has been testing the app in exercise sessions with disability sports uk. cheering. go, karina! a music lover, karina certainly has the moves, though i'm not sure we agreed on everything. laughter. coach emma's classes combine all kinds of movement, dance and ball activities with this new technology, and settings can be adjusted to suit each person's motor or cognitive needs.

a lot of members, when they first come, are quite in their shell and not very confident, but using that technology, we could see even playing it or having a go at it a couple of times, actually, how it improved. and with hopes for this to roll out to more clubs and members at home, it's notjust about bringing physical games. honestly, different things like this that our members get a chance to have a go at really makes a big differencejust to their overall outlook and their belief in what they can achieve. everyone needs that human connection as well. you've got a mixture of both that, i think that's, yeah, that's the ideal. technologies like the ones seen today aren't the answer for everyone, but for disabled people who traditionally have been excluded from access to sports and fitness, the benefits are obvious. if it can get me off the sofa,

it's doing something right! and the class does seem to think so, too. we want more of this one day, i hope. when you try hard, you can keep getting better, better, better. lovely to see everyone getting involved. meanwhile... now, i'm a keen runner but i'm not particularly good or fast — although i have been running about 5k five or six times a week for the last two decades. the issue is, though, if anybody runs with me, they do say that i run like an elephant. the question is is it true? these nurvv running insoles aim to prevent injury and improve performance by tracking how your feet touch down. with 32 sensors, your power,

step length, pronation — that's the way your foot rolls inwards — training load and more are being measured. any runner knows the importance of wearing the right trainers, so i always wear ones for over—pronation because that's what i was told i needed, and i thought that they'd level things out. but it seems that i'm still a bit wonky. the app confirmed, if not overstated, how absolutely awful my balance and foot—roll are, whereas it suggested my cadence — the number of steps i take per minute — is a lot better. the app also provides real—time data through your phone or a smartwatch, and i discovered that when i'm running outside, i'm always in the challenging or extreme zone, whereas i'm never close to that on the treadmill. so, i guess i've discovered that i need to work a bit harder indoors. i was more interested in the post—exercise data, though, but can i really change the way i run? like other foot—worn running trackers out there, the data is useful, and these ones were surprisingly comfortable to wear, and the results do come with some tips for better

running and fewer injuries. but when it comes to improving style, even when making a concerted effort, the moment i get evenjust a little bit weary, the elephant is back in the room, or on the running track, straight away. can ijust say, doesn't run like an elephant. that's not what an elephant running looks like. no, but it's not about what it looks like, it's the risk of injury. if you don't run properly, you're going to hurt yourself. i see, right. meanwhile, iavoid running injuries by not running. shall we leave it there? yes! that's it from wimbledon. thanks for watching. we'll be back next week. bye. bye— bye.

hello. for quite a few of us, it isjust a little cooler and fresher than it was 2a hours ago. and we do have some slightly lower temperatures in prospect over the next couple of days, but that is not the end of the heat, farfrom it. look at this on wednesday afternoon in southern spain. we saw temperatures up to 45 degrees, and some of that heat is on the move thanks to this area of low pressure to the west of iberia. as this drifts northwards, it will act as a pump. the winds around that low will pump that hot air in our direction. the heat likely to peak around monday or tuesday with temperatures in the mid to possibly high 30s celsius. hence this amber extreme heat warning from the met office covering large parts of england and wales. the risk to health, the risk of disruption to transport and infrastructure. but in the shorter—term, yes, we do have some slightly cooler conditions out there, 10—16 degrees for thursday morning. through the day, we will see some spells of sunshine,

the best of that down towards the south, where it should stay dry. parts of north wales, the north midlands, maybe east anglia could catch the odd shower, and certainly there will be some showers for northern england, for northern ireland and for scotland. the odd one of those could be on the heavy side. temperatures, well, 17 degrees for aberdeen and glasgow, 19 in belfast. still some heat in the south east corner, 27—28 degrees, but probably not exceeding 30. now, as we go through thursday night into friday, again, relatively cool and fresh. we will see more cloud, though, rolling into northern ireland, parts of scotland with some splashes of rain. and friday morning, temperatures generally between 10—14 degrees. through friday, then, we have this frontal system pushing its way south—eastwards, quite a weak affair. it's running into an area of high pressure, but it will still bring some cloud and some outbreaks of rain. these cloudier skies pushing south—eastwards as the day wears on. the odd splash of rain here and there, but north—westerly winds keeping the most intense heat away to the south for the time being. still 27 degrees there for london, but a little cooler and fresher further north and west. however, watch those temperatures climb through the weekend and into the start of next week.

scotland and northern ireland around the middle 20s, northern england into the middle 30s. and further south, well, this is the forecast for heathrow. it'sjust an example, highs of 37, but we could get a little higher than that. we could get quite close to the all—time uk record.

this is bbc news. i'm kasia madera. our top stories. chanting. chaos reigns in sri lanka. after fleeing abroad, the ousted president goes back on his promise to resign. the security forces, the police, all the armed guards — they are nowhere to be seen. another public building here in sri lanka which has now been occupied by the people. and then there were six. two candidates are eliminated after the first vote to choose the uk's new prime minister. joe biden insists america's commitment to israel's security is "unsha keable" as he arrives there on his first middle east tour as president. and the man who owned

new york's legendary studio 5a nightclub dies by assisted suicide in switzerland.