this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines and all the main news stories for you at the top of the hour, straight after this programme. this week... ..as we're working towards the metaverse, we're at interpol to see how they're planning to keep it safe. we look at new software that's helping doctors perform delicate brain surgery.

lara's thrown her weight around again. watch it! i've got super strength. yes, that's definitely more powerful. and get ready to feel old. i never thought in my 205 i'd be romanticising technology from when i was 13. over the last 20 or so years, we've seen how difficult the internet and the web has been to police. it's bigger than any one country, and you can base your business in any one of them, depending on whose laws you want to adhere to. and it's opened up more ways for us to cause each other harm. disinformation, bullying, fraud. you name it, and you can do it online. so when it comes to the next generation of the internet, often referred to as the metaverse, we're going to have the same problems. and even though the metaverse doesn't even exist yet, there are those who are already thinking about these problems and trying to pre—empt

the troubles we may face. and marc cieslak�*s been finding out how the international police agency interpol has been training to fight real crimes in virtual worlds. terrorism... ..organised crime... ..and, increasingly, cybercrime. interpol�*s role is to connect police forces across international borders to fight these threats. from its headquarters in the french city, lyon, interpol fosters collaboration between law enforcement in 195 countries. while the people inside this building co—ordinate interpol�*s activities in the real world, the international law enforcement agency is about to expand into a newjurisdiction — the metaverse. the metaverse remains

a conceptual notion. the next evolution of the internet, where users experience their online lives represented by sd avatars. while the idea of the metaverse isn't quite ready for prime time yet, interpol is already experimenting with the tech. first, to provide remote online training, as well as researching threats the metaverse could pose. it even has plans to use it as an investigatory tool. what can we consider a crime in the metaverse? so, in terms of criminality, i would say we can broadly define it in two categories. some which are existing threats in different media and some are threats which may be totally new to metaverse — for example, things like financial frauds, data theft. those kind of things are already happening. then there are other crimes where we don't know whether it can still be called as a crime or not. for example, there have been reported cases of some harassment, sexual harassment.

now, if you look at the definitions of these crimes in physical space and you try to apply it in the metaverse, there's a difficulty. so those issues are yet to be resolved. interpol�*s metaverse experience has been designed to perform a wide variety of functions, including training or virtual meetings. i'm something of a vr veteran, so it's only right that i get to try it out. so, pop the headset on... ..outside interpol�*s headquarters in lyon. it's an accurate representation of a building that i was outside earlier. if we take a step indoors... this bespoke vr experience is only accessible via secure servers. one of this project's biggestjobs is to create awareness. if police forces and police officers get an opportunity to try these experiences out,

it helps them get a sense of what the metaverse could be and in turn helps them get a sense of the sorts of crimes that can occur or be committed in an environment like this one. jurgen stock is interpol�*s secretary general. he thinks law enforcement and governments will need a proactive approach to regulating any coming metaverse. criminals are exploiting any new technology that helps them in making simply money very quickly. naturally, sometimes lawmaker, police, our societies are running a little bit behind. we see that currently in the deal with social media, for instance. it is important, of course, whatever new technology is being developed, that we consider security by design. i think this will be a game—changer. consider ethical elements, but also consider regulatory elements and consider how criminals can use it. the kinds of crime and harassment this tool has been designed to highlight for law enforcement

are already occurring in forerunners to a proper metaverse experience. a worrying number of cases of harassment and abuse in social virtual reality spaces have come under the spotlight in recent months. nina patel is the founder of a metaverse company. she's experienced sexual harassment in vr first—hand. right now, today is the opportunity to lay the foundations for laws that apply to both the physical and the virtual world, and what is illegal and unacceptable in our physical world should be reflected equally in the metaverse. my particular experience was around sexual harassment in a newly launched social virtual space in which three male avatars surrounded me and continued to sexually harass me, verbally harass me. and when we think about children entering these spaces and people who are vulnerable in our communities entering into these social virtual spaces for the first time,

and this is an example of how we're supposed to behave in the metaverse? i shared my experience to highlight how much action needs to be taken to prevent this dysphoric future that we kind of are all afraid of. regulation, privacy, safety — all big metaverse challenges. interpol�*s experiment could herald the start of a new type of online law enforcement. right. time to come back to the real present now and ask — what have you been doing this week, lara? oh, i've just been testing out my superhuman strength in an exoskeleton. lara: forget man versus machine. at this curry�*s distribution centre, they're on the same team. some workers here are augmented by exoskeletons, giving them super strength. it's called the cray x and is a wearable robotic device designed to assist those who need

to do labour—intensive manual tasks. these guys work ii—hour shifts and this would generally be pretty heavy work. they can only wear the exoskeleton for eight hours of that, but if you watch them lifting, it does look pretty effortless. it aims to not only support up to 30kg of weight, but also to make the user lift more ergonomically, both of which should protect the area most likely to get injured in a place like this — the lower back. we are the biggest tech retailer in the country, so, therefore, using tech in our supply chain is kind of important to us. you can see the work that we do here, particularly on loading trailers, can be quite manual. so, therefore, anything that we can do to make thatjob easier for those colleagues has got to be a great thing to do. the instinct is to walk like a robot, but you don't actually need to.

i like the sounds it makes. exoskeleton whirs and it does take some getting used to. so if you come down, nice and slow. then come up nice and quick. whoa! 0k. feels like a bit of a shock when you do that. that's at 30% only. that's at 30% only? i'm testing 60 just to see what it feels like. yes, that's definitely more powerful. it's starting to feel a bit more instinctive. so maybe it's time to start doing some lifting. right, that's feeling normal. that didn't feel that different so far, but let me lift it again. ok, that's where i've got the power of the suit, and i feel like that's where it's protecting my back. i didn't feel that in my back in the way i normally would. now onto something heavier — just because i can. i feel like i'm half—robot and now i'm going to pick up a robotic vacuum. oh, that's the future. again, i didn't feel the strain of lifting it.

i'm going to try putting it up here. what's quite interesting is i can't really feel the difference in weight between any of the boxes, and i think it's because that's where the support is being taken in my back. what we combine in our product is the flexibility and the intelligence of a person together with the power and the mechanical endurance of a machine. i think the product is such that this is now ready for really widespread use for male and female users in the logistics and industrial environment. it's too early to know whether they're increasing productivity here, but they are expected to be reducing injury. you've just got to hope it won't mean that more is expected from the workers. next, these devices could make it into care homes to support carers lifting, but the company behind them dreams that one day they may become the norm for many of us to wear when we have a spot of strenuous work to do.

time for a look at this week's tech news now. bloomberg is amongst those reporting that the us government have stopped approving licenses for american firms to export most items to the chinese tech giant huawei. the us has previously accused huawei of being a threat to its national security and of working with chinese communist party. the company and the ccp have repeatedly denied these claims. emirates has successfully tested a flight powered by sustainable aviation fuel — or saf. the jet took off from dubai international airport and flew for more than an hour over the dubai coastline with one engine powered entirely by sustainable fuel. all ge engines currently are certified to operate with a 50% saf blend, and today we are doing a 100% saf flight in one engine. spotify has become the first music streaming service to reach more than 200 million paid subscribers, just one week after it announced plans to cut 60%

of its workforce worldwide. —— it announced plans to cut 6% of its workforce worldwide. and finally, media distributor fremantle has teamed up with uk artificial intelligence start—up papercup to translate hundreds of hours of tv talent shows into arabic, all using ai. the deal means shows like idols, got talent and the x—factor will be translated into arabic, but notjust the subtitles. there will also be dubbed audio. my dad died at 59 with an aneurysm and my two aunties have died. and i really wanted to just get it out so that i could carry on and enjoy my life. maria is undergoing brain surgery at leeds general infirmary. i want to go back dancing, like i was dancing before. she's getting a procedure to control an aneurysm, which could lead to her having a stroke — the fourth—biggest

killer in the uk. dr patankar will place a springlike mesh known as a flow—diverter stent into maria's brain, but it's a risky business. the stent is a foreign material and if you don't get it right in a blood vessel, it will irritate the blood flow and it will cause thrombus, and that can block the blood vessels, and then you can get a big stroke and possibly die. so, ensuring that perfect fit is vital. each individual has extremely unique configuration of blood vessels. some people even don't have certain blood vessels. this is how unique the configurations are. so it's like a retina in your eye or fingerprint. and that's why no two people are the same. so that brings the problem with — what is the best device in all those different parts of the body? because once a device is in, you can't actually get it out. well, now, there's an app for that — presize by oxford heartbeat

automates the stent measuring process and suggests the best stent for the job. this is one of the very first surgeries to use this new software as part of the nhs trial. maria is going to be patient numberfour. and i've been granted exclusive access to see how it goes. this one? yeah. 4cm. right, 0k. that's one of the biggest ones i've treated. wow. with almost 20 years' experience behind the knife, dr patankar is the chief investigator for the pilot. no one aneurysm is similar to another. they have different problems. the access will be a problem. they can have different comorbidities. some can be ruptured, some can be unruptured. some can be 4mm, some can be 4cm, you know. so you have to focus and tailor your treatment depending on the aneurysm. do you have a 3.5 by 10? so, initially, iwill deploy it a bit further up.

there has to be a technical position in dropping these stents into the brain vessels. quarter of millimetres in the person's brain can make or break the procedure. for human minds, it's actually impossible to compute which one is best and what's going to happen if you put a particular one in those wiggly kind of structures, as you saw, those spaghetti kind of structures. there is, like, 102 different variations of diameters and lengths. tells you automatically, it has reconstructed the data for you. it's telling me that the artery, the stent is going to be small. it takes away all my pain away of trying to think and measure. the computer automatically tells me, "just use this." perfect. nice, yes. it's perfect. yeah. up until now, stenting procedures have been around 75% successful, but this is a possible game changer. katerina says her solution is almost foolproof. this trial is first of its kind. we're building the software, so it's a software product,

but it's considered to be a medical device. so it's treated as if we were developing implants, manufacturing implants. so, it has to be the same level of scrutiny and certification. but, with all new tech, there's room for improvement. it needs more stents on the shelf. people don't have to have one stent, like, today i used one, but using presize i could have used four or five different types. but what i did was ijust gave a bit of a kick to the stent. how important is the work you do to you personally? it was... it was not a brain surgery, it was eye surgery. frankly, like, those fracture of millimetres meant that i could see versus that i could have gone blind. those pivotal seconds or minutes or hours in the surgical theatre, that will define the rest of the person's life. you know what? that was pretty amazing to witness, and it makes me think that any sort of new technology that can help those guys do a betterjob, it's pretty worth it. lara: now, let's talk retirement. for some, it's the golden years but,

for others, getting older can be a lonely experience. yet it's estimated that in the us a quarter of over—65s are socially isolated. but as ben derico has been finding out, a new type of in—home chat bot might have a role to play in changing that. ben: this is beryl, aged 90. she put off retirement untiljust five years ago because she loved the community her work gave her. in retirement, she's kept busy volunteering and chatting with former colleagues on zoom... are you there? i'm here! i'm here. ..but living alone can be isolating, so she allowed us to bring elliq, an ai digital companion robot, into her home. she reminds me of that pixar logo. when i come out in the morning, i want to get my cup of tea and sit down with my newspaper,

and elliq says, "good morning, beryl! "how are you? "how did you sleep last night?" i'm fine, thank you, elliq. thanks for asking. i'm going to read the paper now. 0nce set up, elliq helps its users track their health, send messages with family and play games and trivia. like alexa or siri, it works by voice command, but, unlike those voice assistants, this device was specifically designed for older adults who spend most of their days alone at home. we started this company to help older adults deal with loneliness and social isolation. you know, it's not a simple task, it's quite a hard one, and what we found is that the way to do that is notjust to provide utility. because, as humans, we have a lot of social needs. we have a need for companionship, we have a need for social interaction, and we felt that technology has reached a point where actually an artificial enabled robot can do that. the product is sleek and beautiful to look at, but some parts are still a bit rough around the edges. would you rather have more meaningful conversations i

or stick to small talk? two. please state the number of your choice. - two. 0ne ortwo? two. some worry that computers that pretend to be older people's friends can actually make things worse. there's a human inclination to anthropomorphise interactive digital devices, like robots, and that is often encouraged explicitly by robotics designers but in a way that also encourages... ..the illusion of empathy and the illusion of a real social connection with that device. elliq, however, say the device isn't meant to replace humans, but instead act as a filler between human meetings. so we definitely believe that human contact is much better than interaction with an ai. if it comes from a loved one, it's much, much better. the problem is, the older adults around us are alone

for a significant part of the day, maybe four days at a time, and, in that period, we think elliq's much better than the alternative. james wright, however, worries the lines between what elliq is and isn't can be much less clear, particularly for older adults suffering from cognitive diseases. do users really understand that this device that they're interacting with is a corporate product? it doesn't care for them, it doesn't empathise with them. you know, it may be able to converse with them and telljokes, but that doesn't mean that it actually cares for them. as for beryl, for now, she's parting ways with the elliq we delivered to her — but she isn't ruling out letting the robot return one day. i, as far as having elliq a permanent resident in my home, i think i would prefer not. maybe sometime in my life. i think that whoever created her really was... ..you know, ithink

it was a brilliant thing to do. time to go retro now. this is a digital camera. when did you get your first one of these? early 2000s? i only ever had one. i mean, they were a real breakthrough at the time, but, oddly, they only lasted a few years because smartphones have already taken over, haven't they? yeah, it also felt like such a palaver to get the photos off it — which it shouldn't have done. it should have been simple. it should have been, but it was new, it was weird, it was complicated. i mean, who on earth would want to go back to those days? tiktok — and 200 million views of #digitalcamera can't be wrong. shutter clicks i never thought in my 20s i'd be romanticising technology from when i was 13. i have probably 30—odd cameras. i mean, i've put some... i've got a small collection there that i have. - they're all shapes and sizes. so, yes, it's becoming a bit of a problem. - that's the other thing with these is that they break. sometimes, if i like hit it against my palm, it'll

start working again, which is such a foreign thing to me. like you can'tjust like bang your phone against your hand and then, like, hope that it works again — but with these, you kind of can. my name's scott ewart. i live on the isle of arran- on the west coast of scotland. i'm 32 years old and i i take photographs with old digital cameras. i'd seen someone else doing it on tiktok, and i was like, - "why am i not doing this? "this looks brilliant! " i'm katie glasgow and i'm 25, so i'm like on the top end of gen 2. i live in brooklyn now. the cameras i have now are ones that my older sister took to prom or, like, my brother had in college or that, like, my young childhood memories were recorded on. so, like, the sounds — like the sound of the zoom, especially, on my camcorder, i actually have it here, but, like, the zoom on this thing makes this,

like, rattling sound which you don't get that on an iphone. my oldest camera i've got, this one's from 1997. - this one seems to get a lot of attention because of - the picture quality — ironically because . it's so bad quality. a lot of folk find them quite comforting and quite warm. a lot of folks say it reminds them of their childhood. . it reminds them of simpler times. it's like this entirely different past era that they get to glimpse through, through these cameras. with your phone, like you can take video and pictures of literally everything. so, your library is huge, versus you kind of have to decide, "oh, this is a moment that i actually want to preserve," or, "this is something i want to remember." with older cameras, you have to kind i of work with them a bit more to geti a good photo or get the most out of this old camera. _ i always say it's like a labour of love. because every smartphone andi every brand—new dslr you buy, you can't take a bad shot, almost. in some ways, i almost have a sympathy for these abandoned little gadgets. so, i think a lot of the like engagement that i'm getting has been younger teenagers asking me, like, what they need to make these cameras work. if they can use it for, like, prom and how they can use it for these special memories from there, like,

as they're growing up. i got a few folk ask, "0h, - where do you edit these photos? "are they edited?" and i always say, - "these are never edited." i want to show exactly how they come out on every camera, _ because it would completely defeat the purpose. - it looks like memories, like, i think because it's so blurry and it's imperfect, it looks more like how we remember things. oh, it's all right. tech moves fast. the thing is, i used to talk about film cameras in the way they're talking about digital cameras. mm. at least they'll feel old one day, i suppose. it'll happen to all of us eventually, and that's all we've got time for. thanks for watching. see you soon. hasn't even got a selfie mode!

hello there. high pressure is going to continue to bring a lot of dry, unsettled weather for the rest of this week, throughout the weekend and indeed into much of next week as well. there will be a little bit of rain, i think, next week from wednesday onwards. tonight, it's largely dry, clear spells through central and southern areas closer to this area of high pressure. further north, the winds will be stronger. there's more isobars now the charts, and there will be more cloud weather fronts tending to bring outbreaks of rain or showers to the north and west of scotland, maybe the odd one for northern ireland. but most places will be dry, breezy and cloudy across the northern half of the country. hence temperatures not falling much below three or four degrees under clearer skies towards the south, it's going to be another cold one with some frost, maybe some fog. but i think there'll be enough of a breeze to move that on. friday, high pressure to the south, lower pressure to the north. again, it's going to be breezy across the north. weather fronts bringing outbreaks of rain. and we're into a milder air mass, i think, on friday. 0urairsource coming in off the atlantic.

so a lot of cloud around, it starts off sunny and cold in the south,