this is bbc news. the headlines: the american secretary of state, antony blinken, has touched down in beijing for high—stakes talks, the first visit to china by the us top diplomat in almost five years. the ugandan military says it's pursuing the militants who attacked a school on friday night, killing at least a0 people. the rebels from an islamist group known as the adf, also kidnapped six students. the latest temporary ceasefire between sudan's rival military factions is meant to have just come into effect. the 72—hour truce was announced on saturday by us and saudi mediators. and brazil's national football team have played in an all—black strip instead of their classic yellow—and—green as a protest against racism

in the sport. they beat guinea 4—1 in a friendly in barcelona. one of the goals was scored by vinciusjunior, who's faced frequent racist abuse while playing for real madrid. now on bbc news, click. this week... three, two, one... cheering ..the battle is on as we go to the uk's first—ever live fortnite tournament... this is a sport where every player is in their own world, their own zone. ..marc speaks to xbox's big boss about what's on the horizon in the next few months... can you give us a sign that you can hear us, please? please. ..and we're hunting ghosts with

some terrifying tracking tech. in amongst edinburgh's elegant architecture stands the iconic mcewan hall. in 1897, it was gifted to the people of the city by philanthropist william mcewan and throughout its life, it's been the home of graduations, concerts and even edinburgh fringe comedy gigs. but i wonder if william mcewan ever thought that his hall would be used for this... it's been turned into a fortnite den. four, three, two, one... it's the best feeling ever. basically the only game i've been playing for five years. i'm addicted to it. to win in any sport, you need to believe in yourself. - in a game like fortnite, anything can happen at any time. welcome to red bull contested,

the first—ever major live fortnite tournament in the uk. today, 100 of the best players will battle through eight rounds of gameplay. the highest scorer will lift the trophy and walk away with £100,000. the very first—ever fortnite major lan event here in the uk. this is a sport where every player is in their own world, their own zone, hardly moving. fortnite is huge. it's only six years old, but it has 400 million players around the world. its battle royale tournaments allow up to 100 players to join each online world and then have it out with each other to be the last one standing. i grew up playing shooter games, so i feel like my aim is really, really good. ijust focus on hitting my shots and that works. irina is a streamer with tens of thousands of followers who can watch her playing

fortnite online every day, and this event is a reminder that gaming is also a massive spectator sport. it's being livestreamed to fans everywhere, and the set—up is comparable with some high—end tv programmes. for the players who have experience with physical events, that has a big advantage because there's lights going on. it's not your home chair, it's not your home desk. i always compare it to a professional football player — he plays on a pitch if it's rain, snowy, and you have to do the same in fortnite. so these may be some of the best fortnite players in the world, but what's really interesting is a new version of fortnite drops the day before this tournament, so there are new weapons, new skills to master, a brand—new area of the island that's unfamiliar to everyone, and so i think that does level the playing field. what they're saying is this really could be anyone�*s game. playing field is not that level — of the 100 players, irina is the only female. we haven't really had girls stand out in the biggest fortnite tournament.

fortnite competitive requires a lot, a lot of effort and we have yet to see some girls making it to the top. we actually invited five women to come and play here, but, for different reasons, they couldn't show up, unfortunately. how do you think you can make tournaments like this more attractive to women? traditionally, girls were never that interested in games, like in my generation, and i think, you know, more and more women have taken it seriously in the recent years. and i think it'sjust, like, a thing that takes some time and it will definitely come where you're going to see more and more women on the stage. she's definitely holdingj it down for the women. we love reddysh, right? it can be difficult to get your head around the fact that esports is such a big deal, and these players, aged 16 to 27, have certainly found something that they can excel and, arguably, these alternate worlds can provide safe spaces from the stresses of being a teenager. when i have problems, ijust put the headset on and it's just like

a different type of world. it's kind of playing a different game. you don't have to focus about what's happening in real life. esports have definitely proved that they are worth the investment of big sponsors — big audiences mean big profits mean big prizes. when i was 15 years old, i went to the fortnite world cup. i played second in duos with my partner and we won about 2 million combined. it takes a lot of work to definitely become a professional gamer because you have to put in so, so many hours. after eight gruelling battles, the tournament is over and the prize goes to wave vico. what are you going to do with the prize money? i'm going to save the money and i'm going to save up for my graduation. and the 16—year—old austrian is humble and measured in his victory. i'm just at a level of happiness where ijust can cry all day right now. 0k.

let's do it. fiery spells... ..sneaky stormtroopers. .. ..and space. lots and lots of space. a big bunch of new games have been showcased in los angeles this week. 0rdinarily, this time of year would see the games industry descend on la for one of the biggest events on the gaming calendar, the e3 convention, but it seems e3 has been indefinitely postponed. this is awkward. that didn't stop some of the biggest names in games throwing their own events, though. we are not stopping, whatever lies at the end of this road. ubisoft gave us a glimpse of gameplay from its new star wars open—world adventure, 0utlaws, as well as a return to the world of james cameron's big, blue feline folk in avatar: frontiers of pandora. lam na'vi.

living it up with the common folk... xbox had a couple of aces up its sleeve. a larger—than—life richard ayoade gave us an early look at the next game in the fable fantasy franchise. you see, i'm not here to slay legendary beasts. i'm here to conquer the vegetable. not a euphemism. more fantasy action from developers 0bsidian with avowed. you're either- hereto save us... ..or destroy us. ready? i love this part. least surprising of all, we got a long look at the latest game from legendary roleplaying developers bethesda and their epic space exploration title, starfield. with a massive number of customisation options for characters... ..and ships, the ability to play in third orfirst person, a vast array of missions and quests, and over 1,000 planets to visit, everything about this

game screams "epic". there's a lot riding on it. i caught up with microsoft games�* head honcho phil spencer to talk about the weight of expectation and what's next for xbox. starfield looks incredibly ambitious. lots of big, blockbuster game launches have stalled due to buggy titles arriving on day one. what kind of pressure is there to get it right with this game? you're definitely right that the bigger the game is, the more of a task it is to test the quality of the game. i've been playing starfield, as has the team back in redmond since, kind of, mid—late last year, so we've been playing for a long time. we've got a lot of testers on the game. we're spending the right amount of time iterating on both quality as well as the fun, right, in making sure that we've got a great, consistent game. now, microsoft, the wider company, has a significant stake in al. it's notably invested

in 0penai, the company behind chatgpt. how do you see ai affecting xbox? one of the areas that we think — well, we definitely are already employing it — is in our safety security of our network. when we think about all of the conversations that are happening on xbox live, human moderation is there, but there's only so much capacity we can stay up. from a creative standpoint, you know, i'm always creative—led, i'm not technology—led, and i think we're quite a ways away from these technologies impacting the core creative, which is very human—led today. microsoft's acquisition of activision blizzard has hit a major stumbling block with the uk competition and markets authority effectively blocking the $69 billion deal. what can microsoft do to convince regulators in the uk and the us that the deal should go ahead? i think we have, if you include all the european union countries, we're approved in about a0 countries right now. and we got to that point through listening to regulators, coming up with solutions that can work

for their market and the concerns that they bring forward. having open discussions with regulators in the uk, in the us, which you mentioned, two specific markets we need to work on specifically, listening to their concerns and that back and forth dialogue that can lead to good outcomes to get this deal closed. we are very focused on that and very committed as a company. ar is now very much a hot topic. does xbox have any plans to look at what it might be able to do in the ar space? i do like watching the innovations that happen in the ar vr space. i thought apple's announcement was really interesting. obviously, it's not really at a consumer price point today, but we'll always keep our head up, look at what's happening, listening to players, listening to creators, and make sure we're responsive to what's happening in the market. phil spencer, thank you very much indeed.

now, let's pop outside and get some fresh air and some fresh water. 0h. we had 700 reports in this year, people getting ill from swimming in these waters. over half of those reports were from "excellent" rated beaches. we are collecting all of the data sets to understand the patterns of where the peak pollution events are. sewage and the damage it's doing to our environment is suddenly a hot topic. who among us doesn't want our rivers, lakes and beaches to be kept pristine and clean? in the southwest of england, an innovative project using artificial intelligence has started, using the latest technology to try to limit the damage. so, if you get a prediction of a pollution event, what can you then do about it? so, depending on what we expect that source of pollution is going to be — it could be something that the farmer has been doing. we say stop doing that or sort

of do x, y or z to try and stop that runoff happening. so it could be slurry spreading, for example. it could be the condition of the soil. and that's where we're trying to build in that longer—term sort of prediction, sort of say, well, so he or she has got time to react. it does have a big impact because if there was massive nutrients in the stream here, it gets diluted a lot by the sea here. but, you know, you could get the beach covered with algal mats of, you know, what we call sort of gut weeds, which is just gets sinky, but it also means it's suppressing life. it gets what we call eutrophic, it loses oxygen in the water. and that, again, has the impact of the biodiversity within the water itself. steady it from your side. 0k, got it. 0k. this water sensor is one of a network of sensors that have been deployed in the catchment area. they include soil sensors

and rain gauges as well. the idea is that all that information is brought together to try to more accurately predict when and where pollution events and sewage spills are likely to take place. my name is glyn cotton, i'm ceo and one of the co—founders of. watr. so, this is one - of our watr pro units. in the top, we've got our solar panel and a battery in here. i and then in the bottom, we've got our sensors. i we've got dissolved . oxygen, ph, ammonia. with these units, we actually infer e coli levels. _ so, with the data that we've i got, using the biosphere's ai system, we can give e coli levels to a pretty accurate | percentage. and that means whether it's going to be safe to swim - in the rivers or not, - whether people are going to potentially get ill. tech firm cgi brings all the data together from the sensors to help create an ai model. we'll give it all of the geographic information,

including watercourse, elevation, vegetation — so, do we have communities living in specific areas? rainfall patterns. so it is every single geographic data set, as well as data sets from the sensors in order for it to learn and develop the predictive mechanisms to be able to inform where these incidents are occurring and the likelihood and, indeed, when they would occur as well. it's one thing to be able to predict a pollution event, but do you think we're really in a position then to try and stop it? it's a lot easier to prevent it than actually try to sort of deal with it once the incident�*s occurred. we are planning to showcase this model as part of cop28. at the moment, we've launched a project in south africa that will use some of the data sets here and the learnings from this project to roll out a similar project in south africa. and so, we want to very much

showcase the role of technology for climate action, not just mitigation, but adaptation as well. the task is huge, but here in the uk, it's proposed that £10 billion be invested to upgrade the sewage network. much of that will be spent on infrastructure like pipes and treatment plants. but the point of this project is to prove that the technology does now exist to warn us about pollution before we see it and smell it on the beach. there's a global race on to meaningfully regulate artificial intelligence. thousands of reddit communities when dark to protest changes to the platform and pack in third—party apps. moderators of the sites many forms made their

public facing communities private in thejob support for developers facing high cost to developers facing high cost to develop the data. a machine has been trialed to aid reforestation of the amazon. machine is being used three days a week by american non—profit organisations at its nursery in the peruvian jungle. this robot is incredibly agile. it is able to plant all of our seeds for our nurseries, freeing up our ranges to do other tasks.— freeing up our ranges to do other tasks. amazon says it is usina other tasks. amazon says it is using more — other tasks. amazon says it is using more sophisticated - other tasks. amazon says it is| using more sophisticated tools instead of ai using more sophisticated tools instead of al to tackle fake product reviews, it says it is interested in machine learning models to analyse thousands of data points and help detect fraudulent behaviour. and at the technology conference in paris, l'0real debuted a range

of hearing beauty gadgets including a smart hand—held make up applicator helping people with limited hand mobility apply lipstick and other cosmetics. this week, the eu parliament, in strasbourg, passed new rules to regulate the industry, which could set the yardstick worldwide. its plan is to try and categorise applications of ai into levels of risk. at the low end are ai—enabled video games or spam filters. high—risk ai systems include those which evaluate credit scores and access to loans and housing. this is where the focus of strict controls will be. at the totally unacceptable end of the scale are uses like facial recognition systems in real time in public places, something already deployed in china. i sat down with margrethe vestager, who's leading the eu's position on al.

us lawmakers in congress have said that they're worried that they're not up to the job of regulation because it's such a complex area and it's moving so quickly. do you think the eu is better prepared? regulating technology is extremely difficult because a legislative procedure is per definition much slower than innovation. important thing is, how do you use it? if it's a customer service robot, i want to know that i'm not talking to a human being, but what are the risks? but if it's a bank using it to decide whether i can get a mortgage or not, or if it's the social services of your municipality, then you want to make sure that you're not being discriminated. is it possible that 0penai could turn around and say, "well, we've released chatgpt, "we can't be responsible for somebody using it "to decide somebody�*s mortgage?" well, there must be a relationship between developers and those who uses the technology to make sure that if you release it and say it's perfectly fine, it will not discriminate

anyone, that the user cannot then, you know, just twist it and say, "well, yeah, but in the real world "we only want to lend to men." and since it will take a bit of time before the legal obligations comes into force, we are trying to do sort of a broader, international, voluntary ai code of conduct. what do you think is the biggest threat that al poses? there are many. i have listened a lot to those who said that there is a threat of extinction and probably that may exist. but i think the likelihood is quite small. i think the ai risks are more that people will be discriminated, they will not be seen as who they are. what does success look like? we want to put in guardrails so that what we believe in as humans is still there in a more digital world. but that there is a sense of... uh, this is... this is actually quite amazing.

like mcewan hall, many arts venues are moving with the times, trying to accommodate new forms of entertainment. for example, i wonder whether you've ever tried immersive theatre, drama productions where you become part of the action and get pulled into the world that you're watching? well, alasdair keen has been to see how one performance in glasgow is using technology more traditionally associated with warehouses to bring a haunted house to life. can you give us a sign that you can hear us, please? please, give us... 0h, did you... did you see that? in this play, things are going bump in the night. this is ghost hunter, a theatre experience where the audience are taking on the role of those finding paranormal activity. going down the way, you are heading in that direction. for this show in particular, you are the show. it's tricky to do without the audience. so there is a sort of set story and a set path that does need to be followed. but within those sort

of set destinations, anything can happen. like, we don't know what's going to happen each show, which is kind of terrifying. an epp, i've never heard an epp before. "for my son frank, to be opened upon my death." i still get scared. there are still points where i know what's coming and i still jump. ihope... i hope that they're going to feel scared and feel a bit nervous. but then i hope when these things happen, that there's also a little bit of, like, laughter, you know, there always is. and ijust... i really hope they have fun. director: opening again, please. - the set is a house, complete with living room, kitchen and bedrooms. radio crackles but the real secrets here isn't the ghosts. it's the tech powering it. this is the behind the scenes of this huge set. it fills this entire warehouse. but look up. you can see lots of little sensors. they allow the crew on the outside to know what's happening on the inside and control the different spooks. turns out ghosts are really difficult to employ.

so instead, we've got an array of computers that are hiding behind the walls of the house that deliver a lot of the haunting, along with a lot of people who run around the walls of the house and deliver it as well. but the main element of the game is that these audience members have to hunt down these ghosts, which they do, using a couple of devices that we've called the scanner and the amplifier. and those devices conjure up these ghosts through using a number of different pieces of technology. flashing lights is good. i've got it here. it's searching for the rift, but the rift is in the house. toby, could you close that door? james, you come straight back in. all right. there's a rift out there. are you thinking what i'm thinking? let's go find it. so this, over here... ..this is a posex tag. this allows the computer to see exactly where you are within the space at any time. these tags are constantly transmitting location information to all the anchors, which use it to work out where they are in the space.

and so we can track the audience as they move round the space in this map of the house. the tracking tech the team are using is vital to let them bring the performance to life. but it wasn't designed for theatre. this combines both a real actor and technology. how unusual is that in theatre? it is quite unusual. what we're finding is that there is increasingly a role of theatre looking to the technological world and what it can bring in. and there's quite a lot of interest in how you can mesh those two worlds together. i think the interesting thing about the show is it's also a mixture of theatre and escape room as well, which is a really interesting melding of two different worlds that hopefully will appeal to people who might go, well, theatre's not my thing, but i really enjoy solving puzzles and getting a little bit scared at the same time as well, hopefully. do0r creaks 0k, my heart is still absolutely racing. after that, i've got goosebumps all up my arms.

that was a play like i have never experienced before. i'm not sure i'll sleep tonight, but it's been years in the making for the team that put this on and they're really hoping this is the kind of technology that can help to bring new people into theatres. brilliant stuff. that was alisdair. and i'm afraid that's it from us here in edinburgh. thanks for watching and we'll see you soon. hello there. we saw a lot more cloud around on saturday and it signals a change in the type of weather. we did manage some sunshine, mind you, in temperatures — 27 celsius in the south—east of england, where it is much better weather for a fly—past this time. but things are really going to kick off on sunday,

especially later on in the afternoon, through the evening. a lot of rain developing, could be some large, damaging hail, torrential rain likely to bring some flooding and a lot of thunder and lightning as well. we start the day with some sunshine but may well be some sharp showers from overnight in south—east of england and east anglia. and as temperatures rise, so the cloud builds up and we'll see more of those downpours developing, particularly across england and wales and into northern ireland. probably not so many showers in scotland. more in the way of sunshine here and temperatures around 22—24 degrees — and, again, it'll be quite muggy. now, we may well have some thunderstorms across northern ireland but the worst of those will be developing across parts of england and wales. and through the latter part of the afternoon into the evening, really wet weather will push its way northwards, up into northern england, away from southern england and the midlands and wales and, eventually, that wetter weather arrives overnight into scotland. some torrential rain likely to bring some flooding, a lot of thunder and lightning in there as well. that wet weather still across

northern scotland on monday. it does tend to ease off. following on from that, there'll be some sunny spells. a scattering of showers, one or two of them on the heavy side, perhaps. many places may well be dry. still quite warm — temperatures again around about in the mid 20s, more likely across the midlands and eastern parts of england. now, instead of high pressure that's brought dry weather for some areas of the country for so long, it's going to be low pressure that's sitting close by over the week ahead which will bring the threat of some more heavy and thundery downpours. there'll be some sunshine around as well on tuesday and it should be quite warm. many eastern areas likely to be dry. it's out towards the west that we've got most of those thunderstorms developing and, again, there could be some localised flooding. so, temperatures around about 22 or 23 degrees on tuesday. and we're going to keep temperatures over the weekend around the mid 20s or so. there will be some further heavy, perhaps thundery showers over the week ahead. maybe turning a little less humid, a little fresher and perhaps some south—eastern parts of the uk later in the week will be

a bit drier.