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. lara: this week, we're walking on sunshine. i spencer: yes, paul carter and the ways of catching some rays on the water.

mark bangs the drums as he gets lost in the latest ps vr2 headset. and zoe's walking on broken glass. but don't worry, she's on the mend. do i get the job? er, yes. ido! . fantastic! are you sure?! they laugh here on click, we've been lucky enough to visit some of the most beautiful parts of the world. yet what goes on beneath the surface in some of these places can serve as the starkest reminder of the effects of pollution and climate change on our world. and sometimes it's also places like here, the fjords of norway, where some of the most inspiring ideas come to life, like this island of floating solar panels. oh, thank you. i've made it! wow. we're walking on water. i remember you wobbling

about on that solar array in the fjord. it was only like a few millimetres thick under your feet, wasn't it? yeah, it was all about the material. it had to be light enough that it could do the job, whilst also being strong enough to be able to withstand any weather conditions. well, fortunately, today's one is much sturdier. and just to prove that you can build little islands of nature anywhere you want, we're currently at the camley street nature park here in the very heart of london. and now paul carter is taking the next step in floating solar farms. he's been to portugal to see the country's latest innovation. paul: over the past two years, energy prices have soared to record levels, leading to some countries increasing their efforts to harness the potential of their available renewable power sources. blessed with its sunny climate, portugal is perfectly placed to accelerate its shift to solar. although you may not have seen a solar farm like this before. i'm on the alqueva reservoir

in the south of the country to see a solar array from a different perspective. it's the size of five football pitches and is home to more than 12,000 photovoltaic panels. so you'd normally expect to see something like this taking up lots of space in a field. this is actually a floating solar farm and it's the largest of its kind in europe to be located on a reservoir. and it can generate enough electricity to power 1,500 homes in the local area. and it's a pretty impressive sight. construction of the platform began in january 2022 and was finally moored in place five months later. byjuly, it was supplying power to a quarter of the population in the neighbouring portel and mourao regions. with a price tag of six million euros, the solution isn't cheap. but energy firm edp estimates the solar farm will recoup its investment in a decade.

but there's a particular reason why the solar farm was built at this spot. namely, its proximity to the alqueva dam. the hydroelectric plant only use one third of the capacity of the power line. so we have two thirds available. and then we, the objective was to use that available capacity to inject an additional renewable source, in this case solar. so we created this hybrid concept. so we combine solar and hydropower on the same power line, sharing the same infrastructure. but there are other benefits to having the solar platform on water. being closer to the water surfaces, we reduce the temperature of the panel and then we increase the efficiency of the panels. we observed an increase in efficiency up to 10% and annual average increase of around 4% increase of production.

large platforms like this one also cool water temperatures by shielding the surface from the sun. this not only reduces evaporation, but prevents the growth of blooms of blue green algae, which can produce harmful toxins. but there is one rather messy downside to having such a large platform on the water. and one thing that i couldn't help but notice when we were looking at the panels is the local birds leave some gifts behind. what kind of impact does that have? and how do you manage that? when they are very dirty, it has an impact on the efficiency of the panels. we are doing some proof of concepts with the robot. we have the idea to have autonomous robots doing these clean—ups with some artificial intelligence also predicting when is the best time

to do this clean—up. and with thousands of panels, that's potentially a lot of clean—up. but that begs another question. with all these panels sat on a concrete platform, what's keeping the platform afloat? this is it? there you go. it's pretty mind—blowing to think that this can support hundreds of tons of concrete and solar panels. that's right. it doesn't seem like it, but it works! it's amazing. these floating systems, they will have to last around about 20 years, more or less. you have a lot of mechanical stress on the platform. so essentially what we tried to do is to design a compound that can have the best of both worlds, so recycled polyethylene and cork. but despite their advantages, it's estimated that currently less than i% of the world's solar installations are floating. this is in part due to cost and being able to position panels at an optimum angle to maximise their output.

but already, new tech is being developed that allows a solar farm, like this one in the netherlands, to track the sun throughout the day, rather like a sunflower does. it's claimed that sun—tracking installations could increase energy production by a third, and so the future looks bright for solar, where every country, landlocked or not, can become its own energy island. that was paul. isn't it interesting that those solar platforms were floating on old bits of plastic and cork? i mean, normally we want to get that sort of stuff out of the water, don't you? absolutely. and we've been speaking to a company that's gained a lot of attention and investment by using giant nets and ai robots to deal with the global problem of plastic pollution. obviously it's been way harder than i ever imagined it to be. it's the immensity of the problem.

there's a lot of plastic that's already in the ocean. there's 60 years of legacy in these ocean garbage patches that needs to be cleaned up. my name is boyan slat, and i'm the founder and ceo at the ocean cleanup. there's two things that we do. on one hand, we clean up the legacy pollution in these ocean garbage patches. we develop these very long u—shaped barriers that we pull forth through this patch at a very slow speed, so that it's safe for marine life and filters out the plastic, retains that, and then every few days we take the system out. periodically, we take the plastic to land for recycling. the current system that we have out there, 800 metres in length. but already it has cleaned up almost 200,000 kilos

of plastic, which is 0.2% of the whole great pacific garbage patch. we are still developing the next generation of cleaning technology, we call system three. we're deploying that in the summer of 2023. we are making the system three times as big, so 2,400 metres. this will clean up at thrice the rate. and then our models show that if we then deploy roughly ten of those systems, we can actually clean up most of the great pacific garbage patch by the end of the decade. so rivers really are the arteries that carry trash from land to sea. so when it rains, plastic washes from streets into creeks, into rivers and then ultimately to the ocean. so we have developed a collection of technologies we call interceptors, which are automated systems that we put in the mouth of rivers and that catches the trash before it reaches the oceans. kind of our flagship tool in our toolkit is what we call

the interceptor original, which is this solar—powered autonomous robot, essentially, that has these conveyor belts to automatically scoop out the trash. distribute it in dumpsters and then when it's full, you can empty it and essentially keep cleaning. we've developed these ai—powered cameras. and what we do is we attach these to bridges, and what it does is it automatically scans the amount of plastic that's flowing through a river. then we actually have a very similar technology that we use on the oceans, where we attach cameras to the bows of ships, which allows us to automatically scan the surface of the ocean. so far, with our ocean clean—up system in the great pacific garbage patch, with our fleet of interceptors and we have collected more than two million kilos of trash, which on one hand is quite satisfying. on the other hand, of course,

we know it's stilljust the very beginning of this journey because our ultimate goal is to collect and stop more than 80% of all the plastic in the oceans. twitter has announced that two factor authentication will only be available for subscribers. elon musk said it would remain free but experts are concerned it could open up potential security threats and after twitter initiated a blue premium version, instagram has followed suit. they will now be able to pay for a boutique verification and it will cost $11.99 on the web or $14 for iphone users. it $11.99 on the web or $14 for iphone users.— $11.99 on the web or $14 for iphone users. it was be seen as an extra source _ iphone users. it was be seen as an extra source of _ iphone users. it was be seen as an extra source of revenue - an extra source of revenue

because matter and other platforms have really been struggling because of the drop in advertising revenues. microsoft has defended its proposal to purchase candy crush and call of duty saying the $60 billion deal will bring more choice to gamers. this was the last chance to persuade regulators that the largest deal in gaming history would not harm competitors. wilson has designed a first of its kind 3d printed basketball which was introduced during the first round of the 80 and his slamdunk cost test, it is made using partner and lasers annually nearly fits performance regulations, however, nothing will change for the official game ball! as the name suggests, psvr 2 is the successor to 2016's 06 playstation vr. still got it! cosmetically, it's

a pretty sleek headset. it does away with the jumble of cables and post—processing box that made the original playstation vr such a pain to set up and live with. instead, it has just one cable which connects to the playstation v console via a usb—c. that is it. thanks to the addition of four cameras on the outside of the headset, the player can see the space around them if they need to and the device doesn't need the same sort of extravagant webcam and coloured light set—up that was the hallmark of the original. it comes with a set of headphones, although you can plug your own headphones into it if you want to. and then we have the two dedicated wireless controllers. they pretty much mimic the kind of features that you find on a normal playstation controller. so you've got your thumbsticks here, triggers. to put the headset on, you have this button on the back, so it's adjustable, and then this little dial here allows you to get a perfect fit. inside it sports a 4k oled display, with 110 degree field

of view, and there are two more cameras inside the headset for eye—tracking. it also makes use of something called foveated rendering, which uses the eye—tracking cameras to focus on where the player's eye is actually looking, maximising resolution in those areas. there's a small amount of haptic force feedback via the headset and controllers, but that can be a hit and miss affair. the virtual reality landscape has changed quite a bit in the last few years. there's now a wide variety of different headsets. as a result, there's a decent number of vr games actually available and quite a few of them are being ported over to this device, which is a good thing, because the old vr back catalogue isn't compatible with the new headset. perhaps the game that shows off the potential of psvr 2 best is horizon call of the mountain... that woke �*em up! ..a home grown effort from playstation, imagining its popular horizon zero dawn

franchise with its post—apocalyptic humans versus robotic dinosaur action. you can see how the combat really, really works. using a bow and arrow, you have to aim in exactly the same way as you would in the real world. the clue is in the name, call of a mountain, this game involves a lot of climbing. there's a little bit of haptic force feedback, but it's not as successful on this device as it is on other vr headsets. sometimes with the little bit of feedback you get is a bit on the feeble side. the world is populated with things you can interact with. so, for example, i can bang this drum like that. or i can pick up this over here, throw it, and it alljust adds to the level of immersion. one of playstation�*s great strengths has traditionally been in exclusive titles — games that can only be played on its platform.

there's a massive question mark hanging over this bit of kit. how many third party developers will make really, really great games specifically for this device? this is certainly a good vr headset, but i think on this evidence, one of its biggest stumbling blocks will be its price. at £529, it's more expensive than the ps5 console. meta's quest 2 is wireless and cheaper, but it's less powerful than playstation�*s offering. however, at this price point, i'm not convinced this device will take vr mainstream. now back to sustainability, and one thing we can all do is re—use the materials that have already been created. yeah, recycling's part of all of our lives these days, but of course it can go a lot further than just milk bottles and cardboard boxes. yeah, you can recycle so many different things — clothes, mobile phones. and one academic in zurich has even bigger ideas — whole buildings, as l] rich

has been finding out. it's an apocryphal story that the first time paper was recycled was way back in seventh century japan. then, alongside disco, the 1970s gave us the idea of sustainability for environmental reasons and the birth of this iconic logo. since then, in our individual efforts to help the planet, we've been recycling our glass bottles and paper waste one piece at a time. but one academic and entrepreneur believes we should be thinking bigger, a lot bigger — recycling entire buildings! urban mining is really about mining the city for building materials rather than mining the earth. # you'll see me getting back up, up # even when i fall- down. ..# professor de wolf is working on a project -

to document and re—use parts of buildings for the construction industry. in the construction industry we have a lot of waste, a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, and a lot of resource depletion. so we use a lot of raw materials to build our buildings. we also use a lot of energy and greenhouse gases to produce our building materials. we also waste a lot of our materials when we demolish a building to build a new one. so, instead ofjust bringing this waste to landfill and then extracting more raw materials to build the new buildings, why don't we try to deconstruct the building carefully so that we don't damage the materials and then build new buildings with those materials? to do this, all the individual materials need to be carefully documented. sounds like the perfect task for a machine — faster, more accurate, and less human effort. we go and scan the buildings. we make photos of the buildings.

we use already existing photos like google street view, for example, so that we can use the algorithms to automatically detect which materials are in the buildings. and so we digitise the building stock. it was a summer project for her students which really brought this idea to life, giving rise to a dome entirely built from waste materials. they disassembled an entire building in two days only, and they also assembled this dome in only two days. and then in between the two, we taught them about digitalisation for circular constructions. so it needs a process to put an identifying mark on each piece as it's extracted from the building. the answer? qr codes. so first we're going to take the wood that we designed for the dome and we'll put it inside the laser engraver.

so this should take us to the data base of the component that will have the information. it doesn't always work though, as phones prefer qr codes on pieces of paper or screens, not necessarily etched into wood. so, a little bit of tlc later... oh, there we go — perfect! despite this concept being in the early stages of development, professor de wolf believes that this tech could change how buildings are designed. all of these technologies can really help make it faster and better and more convenient and so also cheaper. so hopefully all of the research that we do in these technologies can help us make the circular construction model more competitive than the linear one. with construction growing throughout the world, reusing materials does seem a sensible solution to creating new buildings sustainably and cheaply. the next mission is to see if it will work outside the lab. around 10,000 broken mobile

phones make their way to this repair lab every single month. and one of the main reasons is we keep dropping them! oops! lots of us have a story to tell. well, i dropped my phone before and completely shattered it. and then i dropped it a second time on the same day, and it was completely broken. i was coming out of our club and i was trying to text one—handed, one eye open, and i dropped on the ground and it smashed. my best friend, like bailed on me the last moment. l and i got super furious, - super angry, and because i was on a call with them and ijust hung up on them and ijust. smashed my phone on the wall. the staff here at tmt first in the uk are hard at work trying to repair broken gadgets, but the company's had trouble recruiting technicians, because while there are lots of phone repair courses, there's no industry standard. there's 33 million cars

on the road and there's over 80 million mobile phones out there. there's an apprenticeship to be a car mechanic, but not an apprenticeship to be a repair technician. so there's already demand today for a mobile device apprenticeship. to deal with the problem, this firm has set up its own academy for trainees who can soon find themselves in demand. i'm going shopping or something, everyone is like, "are you working on that company? "can you just tell me how i can fix this device?" 0r, "what's wrong with my software? "something is weird". experienced technicians can do up to 20 repairs each day and the average repair costs between £150 and £200. the most common fix is, unsurprisingly, smashed screens. so we have here a device where i will show you how to disassembly and assembly the device back. yeah. and you need to replicate

the same process. 0k. questions? erm... i'm not sure i'm going to remember everything, but i will try. 0k. this is fiddly. you need a steady hand and plenty of patience. you also have to wear special accessories to make sure you don't discharge any static, say, from walking on a carpet. a small amount can brick a gadget. does it work? yes! success! how long did that take me? it's taken me about 40 minutes, but i have managed to take this apart and put it back together again. wow! do i get thejob? yes. ido! fantastic! are you sure? we asked the institute of apprenticeships and technical education, a uk government agency, whether there are any plans for a phone repair apprenticeship in england. there is a proposal that's already been developed and fully approved. what we would need is a group of employers to come forward to take that forward, to further develop it.

we would absolutely support them to do that, but we need the employers to be at the centre of it to make sure it's fit for purpose and suits their needs. back in the lab, repaired phones are checked and return to their owners. tmt first is trying to be more environmentally sound with its repair methods. it can now replace the screens on some handsets without having to discard the battery and the outside frame as well. and those phones that really can't be repaired, well, they get taken apart and put in the shredder. the aim is to get all of the precious metals, which includes gold, out of this shrapnel, and then re—use — it possibly in your next mobile phone. and that's all we've got time for. yeah, thanks for watching, see you soon. bye— bye.

good morning. not a lot happening in any great hurry in terms of the weather across the uk in the days ahead. a big area of high pressure centred to the north of scotland has been with us so far this week and it stays with us right the way too into the weekend. you can see it wobbles about a bit in the next few days. but to the changes really that that will bring about are going to be very subtle in the next couple of days, very much like it's been just start the week. there'll be a lot of cloud across the uk, but it will bear very little in the way of rain. it's the wind directions, if anything, that will shift about. and that could just bring about some changes where we see the showers. a northeasterly, again this wednesday favors the northeast of england, parts of the midlands, maybe south wales picking up some showers, a few for east anglia to the far south east of england, maybe a bit more brightness

than we saw on tuesday. again, some decent sunshine, i think for western scotland. temperatures on the thermometer, 8, 9 degrees. but in that northeasterly wind, it's going to feel closer to five or six. plenty of cloud drifting around again overnight, wednesday into thursday, perhaps the skies becoming a little clearer towards the southeast across southern counties of england, greater chance of catching a frost here and also again, clearer skies for western scotland, allowing it to turn chillier. but any breaks where we've got some shelter could mean we catch a frost for first thing on thursday. subtle change for thursday. well, there's the high picture. doesn't look too different, does it? but those ice bars are further apart. further apart, they get the lighter our winds become. and lighter winds for us on thursday may mean itjust feels slightly less chilly. so our temperatures will feel closer to the figures that we'd read on the thermometer. feeling around the nine or ten degree mark is an improvement by three or four degrees really from earlier in the week. still a lot of cloud drifting around, perhaps a little more in the way of sunshine on thursday, friday into saturday. the high wriggles a little bit further westwards, though.

and look how those parallel lines start to track from north to south. that's the indicator that towards the end of the week and into the weekend, we could well be pulling in some arctic air. so, yes, it's felt chilly with the breeze off the north sea recently, but come the weekend, we could be pulling in some much colder air. and later on in the weekend, into the start of next week, signs it might become a little bit more unsettled as well. so there's just the possibility of something a little bit more wintry in our outlook.

welcome to bbc news. i'm lisa—marie misztak. our top stories: at least 16 people are killed and dozens more are injured after two trains collide in greece. the governing party candidate wins the most votes in nigeria's disputed presidential election but his victory hasn't been confirmed. all chant: hey, hey, ho, ho! student debt has to go! president biden�*s plan to cancel the student debts of millions of americans faces a challenge in the supreme court. it isa it is a form of economic enslavement that does not have to be in a country that says it is about free people.