this is bbc news. the headlines... a growing number of foreign diplomats flee sudan's violence. a french plane carrying around 100 people of multiple nationalities landed in djibouti. meanwhile, the british government says its evacuees will first stop in cyprus before heading back to the uk. the us military has sent three chinook helicopters to evacuate its embassy staff from khartoum while germany has confirmed its first army aircraft arrived in the capital. in the uk, labour opposition mp diane abbott has been suspended pending an investigation into a letter she wrote about racism for the british newspaper, the observer. the dutch siffan hassan

and the kenyan kelvin kiptum have won the race for female and male categories in the london marathon. in short change to the advertise programme, heroes click. from the moment we arrive on this planet, we are all hiding in the same direction. i could come up with the date predicting when you are dry. well thanks, but may be the way that the years play out isn't inevitable. how about the idea of being able to increase our house band? live the better years of our lives for younger, feel like we are 40 lives for younger, feel like we are a0 and 60. there is 15 to 17 years of healthy life that is up for grab for all of us.

this chronic disease of ageing. so by targeting it, we target all disease together. but how do we separate science from snake oil? the longevity industry is worth billions. with hopes of delaying disease, extending our sprightly years, and maybe even throwing in a few extra. i years, and maybe even throwing in a few extra. ., ,. . ., few extra. i let our science and data system — few extra. i let our science and data system run _ few extra. i let our science and data system run my _ few extra. i let our science and data system run my body. - few extra. i let our science and data system run my body. it i few extra. i let our science and i data system run my body. it does a better_ data system run my body. it does a betteriob _ data system run my body. it does a betterjob taking care of me than i can. maybe even our furry friends can be with us_ maybe even our furry friends can be with us for— maybe even our furry friends can be with us for longer. find maybe even our furry friends can be with us for longer.— with us for longer. and the thing some people will _ with us for longer. and the thing some people will do _ with us for longer. and the thing some people will do to - with us for longer. and the thing some people will do to stay - with us for longer. and the thing i some people will do to stay young.

do you consider yourself a guinea pig? no, i do not. i consider myself to be an explorer on the frontiers, trying to find out what is possible. tech entrepreneur bryanjohnson is spending millions trying to turn back time on his body. i refer to myself as a professional rejuvenation athlete. it is a new sport i want to create. i'm not a bio—hacker, i'm not a health enthusiast, i am a professional rejuvenation athlete. i love it. working with a team of 30 scientists, his daily life is dictated by an extreme regime of fitness, diet, tablets, tracking and treatments. i am chronologically a5 years old, biologically i am a few hundred ages. my left ear is 6a. my fitness test say i'm 18. my heart is 37.

my diaphragm strength is 18. and i playfully say i am trying to become like an 18—year—old. my son is 17, so i always tease him and say, "when i grow younger, i want to be like you." where is he taking me? wow. where to start in here! what is this? this is high frequency electromagnetic assimilation. ——this is high frequency electromagnetic stimulation. we got this machine because we were trying to solve a problem. every night i was getting up one time per night to go to the bathroom. and when i do so — that is actually normal. but when i did so, it produced less quality sleep. so, i wanted to see if i could get up zero times, so we got this machine to trial could we strengthen my pelvic floor and my bladder so i would not have to get up at night to go to the bathroom. do you want to try it out? do you want to just sit down? 0k. is it going to vibrate or something? a lot of women use this

after having babies to rebuild the strength of the pelvic floor. a lot of women do kegel exercises. this is basically kegel through stimulation. right. i'm going to turn it on and the feeling is going to be a little foreign, and it might be shocking initially. 0k. it is like pins and needles. it is sort of tickling, but tickling in a quite hard aggeessive way. how long do you do it for? the session is 30 minutes. but it has been successful. is this one of those devices that measures the age of your skin? that's right. how is yours doing? we have made about 22 years of progress in reversing the age of my skin. it takes all these images of your face and you get about ten reports on pore size, uv spots, red, brown. your skin is amazing. is this just from your regime or is there other help? other help too, we have some lasers over there. there are no injections — that's just from everything in here? that's right.

what do we have next? this is something that also tells you the health of your cardiovascular system, so your age. it looks at advanced glycinated products in your skin. if you want to try it, you can put your arm on it and it will tell you your age. ideal score would be around two. right. so i am only a little bit too old for my age, it could be worse. what's next? 0k. this is an ultrasound machine, medical grade. this is what you see in a hospital. are you having a baby? laughs who knows with what you're getting up to already! what are you actually using it for? we look at the brain, the lungs, the heart, the pancreas, prostate, tendons, ligaments, everything. it is really a useful technology to have in the clinic to do on a routine basis. how do you feeljust before you do any of this tracking? do you get a bit nervous, hopeful? do you have expectation? it is a game. some of my most happiest days are when we do these full measurement days. what is your motivation? are you doing this for

yourself or for humanity? when i was 21 years old, i decided that i wanted to spend my life doing something meaningful for the world. and i didn't know what to do so i said, "i'm going to make "a whole bunch of money being an entrepreneur "by the age of 30, then i'll decide what to do." since i sold my company, braintree venmo, i made $300 million and the question was, "what could i do that would matter in the year 2500?" and right now it could be ageing. if we slow the speed of ageing and even reverse it, it would change what it means to be human. do you think you are risking your health here? in all the things you're doing to protect it, do you think there's also some real risk? certainly, there is always risks but there is potentially an argument that we are being more safe than anyone else because we have the rigour of measurement. whilst bryan signed his life away to experimentation, i visit the buck, the world's first institute for ageing research.

these scientists are working on drugs that they hope could delay age—related disease. i have two of my postdocs. would you say there has been huge scientific advancement in this field recently, or is there just a sudden trend for investment and interest in it? the science has matured in terms of we have been doing this for close to 30 years, understanding the basic mechanism of ageing, number one. number two, the societal needs are there, you have a rapidly ageing population with an increasing burden of chronic diseases. this place is huge. this is one of about 20 labs. three, two, one, squeeze. it is notjust drugs and supplements being put through their paces here though, it's also exercise.

what kind of exercise, how much, how often, aerobics, anaerobic, lifting weight, yoga, balance, swimming — which one of these interventions actually works the best? but one really important discovery in mice here was the ability to reduce what are called senescent cells. these zombie cells play a useful role throughout our lifetimes. but as we age, we acquire many more and as they also lead to inflammation, that increased number ends up providing a hotbed for cancer and all sorts of disease. so biotech companies are trying to create drugs that will reduce that cellular senescence. i'm adding my reagent to the eye tissue so i can understand

which types of cells are senescent. unity is using this science, and it has now achieved small early—stage clinical trials for eye injections to treat macular degeneration — that is failing eyesight that glasses can't fix. we stain these cells purple so i can visualise spatially within the eye where senescent cells reside. once you get rid of one of these cells, it is gone. this would be a small number of treatments over a limited amount of time. one of the things we started to see is because the fda will not approve drugs just for anti—ageing, companies are looking for a specific problem to treat. alzheimer's disease is an important one, cardiovascular diseases, kidney diseases, liver diseases — all of these are diseases that are more prevalent as we get older, and to the extent that they have

a basis of cellular senescence, these agents we are working on could have applicability in other diseases. what have you got here? that looks like it is connected to an eye? yeah, we get normalised and diseased eyes. we can section the eye, a cross—section of it, very thinly and put it on a microscope slide. here we are testing different drug candidates on our animal models. so we test in a diseased animal model, does our drug actually inhibit or get rid of it once it is already formed? a lot of mouse trials have not translated well into humans? we believe it translates relatively well compared to a tumour of cells, and a tumour in a human. quite creepy when you know what it is. yeah, i think it is quite cool. but maybe we are missing something.

lifestyle is responsible for about 93% of your longevity. only about 7% on your genetics, so you can't blame your parents. a lot of exercise, some fasting, a lot of good sleep, a lot of social connection, very little alcohol, try to spend at least ia hours of your 2a—hour day without ingesting any calories. this has profound effects on your metabolism, on many of the pathways. based on the data, i would predict that most people could live to 95 in good health if they did all of the things that we know will promote a healthy lifespan. but if they work, why do we need to deal with this bigger picture? senescence is still going to happen. hopefully if you exercise, it's going to be delayed by 10, 15, 20 years. i don't mean to be saying that lifestyle intervention is all that needs to be done, there is a need for science for the future.

what is that thing that people do where they sit on the floor and try to get up without using their hands? whatever eric has been doing seems to be working. this is supposed to be some sort of sign of youth, if you can stand up by not using your hands. how can anyone do that, pushing yourfeet down, how is that possible? how do you do that? i don't know. i think it means you are under 20 or something. exactly. i can't do it! our furry friends could get their paws on a life extending pill first though. # i love my dog to bits...# you'll notice there are no great danes here, there are no large dogs here, and it's because they can have a lifespan of six, seven, eight, nine years,

almost half of what a little guy like this could be expected to have. our hypothesis is that the short lifespan of big dogs is a disease. # he's my honey, sweetie, sugar canine, my number one pal...# we are a senior dog rescue, and when we take in dogs, like a great dane for instance, at five years old, they are already starting to age so much, and it would be like a miracle cure if we could have some of our big dogs live longer and live as long as our small dogs. ms robinson, that's for you. where are you at now with the trial? we are kicking off our big, pivotalstudy. we are trying to understand does our drug extend life span and quality of life? it's a preventative drug, inhibiting the protein that we believe drives big dogs to age fast. and if everything goes to plan, we will hopefully have a drug on market in 2025.

if successful, loyal�*s drug could hasten the solution for humans as well. has there been any sort of scientific breakthrough that has made possible what you are trying to do? the thing that people don't realise is there have been hundreds of drugs that have shown lifespan extension, health span expansion in mice. the issue is that you can't develop a drug for people today for a purely logistical standpoint. if i gave you an ageing drug, it would be decades before i would know if you develop age—related diseases, and decades before i find out your eventual lifespan. dogs eat similar diets to us, they live in the same environment, and they also develop the same age—related diseases as we do, approximately at the same time in their lifespan. so if a drug works in a dog, it is not i—to—i as any human but it's much more likely versus, we do a lot of research on mice and that does not translate at all. back to humans, and if we want to reduce the age that our bodies seems rather than is,

well, we need to find a way to measure it. i was really put through my paces with this test, assessing my baseline, then pushing me to my physical limits. was this really necessary? really nicejob. you got this! good job. thank you. what a relief to take that off! i've recovered, so how fit am i? you've done a really nicejob, nice test. at least i discovered at the end that i have a fitness age of 36 — that's seven years lower than my years. but there is an easier way — a few drops of blood and this scientist's invention, known as the epigenetic clock, can assess my biological age and possibly the date

of my demise. this is grimage which is our best mortality predictor and unfortunately you are a little bit older than you should be. it says a9 years. that's unfortunate! it's very important to have a sense of humour when one looks at these reports. what about death? i could come up with a date almost predicting when you would die. when do you think it is going to occur, according to this? we don't give people this. but you know, you know the answer to that question? i have a way to calculate it. can you tell me? no, i won't, and the reason is things change, you know, people develop healthy habits or bad habits, bad luck, so it's actually not very informative for you. you can't even tell me the likelihood of which illness it is, it is just that my body is ageing a bit faster?

i don't mean to go back to this, but it's a bit concerning. the question is really why. we have a lot of good news for you. i wanted to start with the bad news. look at that, your phenal age is 36.5, seven years younger than expected. right, my biological age is 36, my chronological age is a3, and my disease risk is a lot higher than it should be... i won't worry too much though, it's very early days for these tests. how about this one? in fact, i'm keeping my spirits up and i'm off to a longevity meet up. are these brainy scientists living the longevity lifestyle? there are still unopened bottles of wine, so probably! here tonight we had a longevity

friendly mix of food, seaweed and fish. other parts of the industry have not been quite so wholesome, though. for decades there has been a lot of snake oil, a lot of miracle pills, the god pill, all of this stuff. many have been desperate to believe — just ask this leading silicon valley doctor. i don't know why people want to gamble with their health. i understand gambling with money, so if it is safe and not effective, like a vitamin, some vitamins, then you are gambling with your money. but if it is not proven safe, and it is not proven effective you are gambling with your health. and then there are people spending a lot of time doing these things and they are not living their life, they are living the version of their life to give themselves a future life, but what happens if that future life never materialises?

the repurposing of current drugs may actually hold some promise to preventing age—related disease, and some don't even want to wait for the clinical trials. especially in silicon valley amongst techies, it's hard to find somebody who isn't taking metformin, which is this diabetic drug — and these people are not diabetics, and they are typically quite healthy, but they have seen some of the studies and even though it has not been approved as an anti—ageing drug, they are taking it, the same with others, so you have a lot of people who are going off book, going doctor shopping, looking for those doctors that will give them the pills that might be for something else, but have shown an effect in extending life, at least in animals. i get asked by young men in their 40s, should i take metformin? and my first question is, are you ready to lose half of your testosterone? there are no medicines without side effects. the good news is with all these blood tests, new breath tests, urine tests,

wearables, apps, there are so many things to track things, so if you really want to... like if you are overweight, and have high blood pressure, and you love your wine and your life, but you want a pill to make you live long, guess what? you can't stop the wind with your hands. it's probably getting close to this lot�*s bedtime — they really value sleep. i want to wake up naturally, because your cortisol levels, which is your stress hormone, go down as you sleep. and right up when you wake up, they spike. a lack of good sleep can disrupt them and in turn lead to unnecessary inflammation and a higher risk of disease. it's like inflammageing, so you want to do everything you can to decrease the inflammation in your body. the pills and supplements and the cryo and all this stuff, they tout it does that, but show me

the measurements outside of people saying i feel better. because by the way, placebo, people feel better. and i'm not saying that is placebo because there is lots of interesting science in there. whether pills or procedures are proven or not, there are a whole lot of people who are really obsessed. some of this stuff seems a bit cult like, this stuff. very culty, and i try to protect my people against that culty. we try not to let it become that way. there is one issue that none of this can resolve, though. in the united states, the single biggest determiner of your life expectancy is your postcode, where you live. that is a problem that cannot be engineered. once drugs are developed, will they not further enhance the inequality, because who is going to get access the drugs and when? the model, the way it works, the drugs

become valuable if they actually are demonstrated to be valuable to insurance companies, and we expect the same thing to happen with all drugs that we will develop together. so where does this leave us? there is exercise, but... exercise's hard, magic pills are easy. one pill gets us six months, another gets a year, and you piece this together and we are living to the age of 80, 85, 95, healthily. will the drugs come? there are a ton of companies who are trying to capitalise on this enthusiasm, raising a lot of money, but then you get to the very hard yards of actually science, bench science, putting something in a human body and actually having it work. and there are bigger questions over how we may need to work longer, the unexpected diseases that will emerge at these older ages, and our planet is already pretty busy.

first thing to consider is, these changes that we are talking about are not going to happen tomorrow, they are going to be happening slowly, the same way we have doubled our lifespan over the last 150 years, and we slowly adapted. as for bryan... what has the reaction been from doctors and scientists to what you are doing, because i guess it has probably been kind of mixed? the reaction has been very mixed. there are quite a few people who are excited that this is happening and it's a good blueprint for them. there has also been a colossal amount of hate, which i love. i love every bit of it. i think bryan is a true pioneer. is there not a bit of a risk in what he is doing to himself? there is a concern, we will see what happens to him in the long—term. so far, his numbers look good, he claims to be extremely happy, it's an interesting experiment for us to watch. delicious!

the reality is that we know a lot about the science of ageing. squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. but the big scientific breakthroughs are just not there yet. so i guess i come away from this feeling more than ever that it is so important to live your healthiest life, just maybe not quite to the extent of bryan johnson. lucky us, we exist. let's play the most fun games we can for as long as we can. hello. quite a marked change to come in our weather for the start of the new week. through the weekend, most of us have seen some cloud and rain at times.

it is actually looking drier, more settled to start the new week, but it will be turning markedly colder. this area of low pressure that brought the weekend's unsettled weather heads off towards the continent for monday. as it pulls out of the way, we engage a northerly airstream and arctic air floods all the way south across the uk through monday and it will stick around for tuesday and wednesday as well. winds gusting a5, 55 mph around the coasts of northern and eastern scotland into the small hours of monday, the cold air pushing in, turning showers here increasingly to snow. further south, some rain for wales and the south—west of england overnight. a frost for scotland. elsewhere we should see temperatures holding up in the mid range of single figures. and there we are again, monday daytime with that arctic air gradually running its way south. you can see some milder airjust about clings on to the south. that is tied in with this area of rain moving across from wales and the south—west

into the south—east for the afternoon. that northerly wind, though, really adding to the cold feel as the arctic air pushes in. we will still see temperatures in double figures to the south of the uk, but we are looking at a high ofjust 6 degrees in aberdeen. but we have to factor in that strong wind, particularly monday afternoon, and for aberdeen, it is going to feel closer to freezing. perhaps the wind becoming just a little lighter, though, as we look towards tuesday and wednesday, and that comes into play for monday night. as the wind becomes lighter, clear skies and arctic air, a widespread frost developing. gardeners beware, any tender plants out at the moment obviously will be particularly vulnerable. the winds fall lighter because we start to see this ridge of high pressure building for tuesday and wednesday. so still a northerly breeze, but as not as strong as it will be to start the week. still a few wintry showers possible for northern and eastern scotland, but for tuesday, actually quite a lot of fine weather. sunshine turning hazy as the day plays out. temperatures just about in double

figures across central and southern areas of the uk, but with the wind a little lighter, it should not feel quite as cold as it does on monday. wednesday, a very similar story. later in the week becoming more unsettled, but milder again.

live from london: this is bbc news. i'm rich preston. foreign diplomats escape sudan's violence — these are europeans flown by the french military to djibouti, while in another operation, uk embassy staff have been evacuated via cyprus. it was dangerous and precarious, but nevertheless, we managed to use both aircraft to go in and collect our diplomats and residents and fly out to safety. this was the alarm that sounded on almost every uk smartphone earlier — part of the new emergency alert system being tested by the uk government. the british labour opposition mp diane abbott, has been suspended pending an investigation into a letter

she wrote about racism for the british newspaper,