and unnamed bbc presenter is facing allegations from the sun newspaper after claims he paid a teenagerfor newspaper after claims he paid a teenager for sexually explicit photos beginning when he was 17. the bbc is investigating the claims. us presidentjoe biden will arrive in the uk later i of a meeting with the prime minister rishi sunak amid a different agreement between the two allies over a decision to send cluster bombs to the ukraine. the us treasury secretary janet yellen is leaving china after a visit she said put relations between the two countries on surer footing after a long period of tensions over trade and other issues. and goodbye yellow brick road, sir elton john has played the final show of his farewells or in the swedish capital, stockholm, saying that his fans are in his head, heart and soul.

now it's click. lara is creating something from nothing. it looks like powder, but it sort of disappears. alistair is seeing how people can disappear into thin air. i want to make it look like i am the only one here. and paul is watching day fading in to night. the light is changing and we moved to sunset. first up, it is movie quiz time. what dojames bond, star wars and the latest indiana jones film all have in common? correct, they were all filmed in part at pinewood studios, a brilliant place, totally iconic,

with loads of stages and sets which have doubled for some of the most famous worlds in the world. and now, the studios in buckinghamshire have moved into the virtual world. in collaboration with sony, they have created a whole new filmmaking space, and paul carter has been to find out more. at the world—famous pinewood, sony have created a space to show off the potential of a new kind of studio known as virtual production. it utilises a high—resolution crystal led screen to display the sets and environments actors will work in. it combines the screen and lights with a cinema camera, but also a virtual one. cool the lights are changing and we have instantly moved to sunset. it is an evolution of traditional green screen — a well—established method in modern filmmaking — but also one that brings particular technical challenges.

anything that is reflective or transparent on a green screen environment is counterintuitive. it is a composition nightmare in postproduction. this is where the led technology complements. you can simply see through the glass and see the reflections of what is happening. the difference it makes in perception and how it affects your view of reality in terms of what is being shot is dramatic, isn't it? the studio lights adapt with light from the screen in the virtual objects on it can change with the click of a button. all designed and rendered on the game platform unreal engine. the backdrops are not photos. filmmakers are already using virtual production to make environments more immersive for those on set. from the perspective of a cinematographer, virtual production offers us a completely new approach to what would traditionally have been green screen. the key difference, of course, is that we can actually see on set in real time the environment, and famously that is what filmmakers have always tried to do,

to try and shoot as much in camera possible. it always seems to be the best result. but the coolest trick is that the angles shift dynamically, an effect known as parallax. we can get an understanding of how the parallax works as the camera moves. and you can see background moving with the camera. yes, to try and maintain the realism of us being in a 3d environment. at the heart of the space is one of sony's cinema venice cameras shooting in resolutions up to 8k. it is important to know what the virtual camera needs to do in order to make the real camera as believable as possible. to achieve this, a tiny camera sits on top of the big camera. tracking a smattering of infrared dots around the room. because there is a pattern, they know exactly where the camera is. and as for the virtual side of things? the virtual camera

and real camera work together in harmony. we know where the camera is moving, and if the focus is changing, and that will tell the screen how to look. the white rectangle shows where in the scene the virtual camera is pointed and marks the area displayed on the big screen. all of this coming together is what makes it look believable when you use a real camera to record anything. behind the screen is where the processing power takes place. it is also where you can see how these high—res screens are put together. here we are in a little dark room and it is not quite what i was expecting because there is a lot of smaller panels joined together here rather than being one big screen as you could see from the front. you can modulise it. the more screens you add, the more pixels you add, the more high—res the screen you get. the modular design helps

quick repairs done on the fly. this is how we put things together. i canjust pull and then everything is connected by a single connector so if anyone has an accident, hit something on the wall, or you might destroy or break one of the panels, we can replace the panel elegantly and quickly. i thought the whole screen would go off. no. that is amazing. the expandable resolution of the screen means that vast virtual worlds can be replicated in a relatively small studio like this one. this space is currently only being used to demonstrate the potential of the technology to filmmakers and others in the industry. but sony has a full—size vp studio up and running in paris, the first of its kind in europe. and on a considerably larger scale than the one at pinewood. with new technology also comes new challenges. the main skill set is problem—solving. you cannot search on the internet why this does not work because you may be the first person doing it. what is the future for technology like this? used to preview visual effects

on set, if you have a virtual creature, a monster, and you need to see where your eyeline is. so it is a family of technologies that combines virtual and real world to aid filmmakers in the creative process and reopen a collaboration that may be lost in a green screen environment. in a few years i'm sure we won't even have the led wall anymore because we'll be taken out automatically. we will all be in vr or something. exactly, yes. this has only been a small—scale example of what virtual production can do. it is unlikely we will see the end of green screen or cgi in movies anytime soon but it does provide another tool for directors and cinematographers to achieve their vision. lara: staying with the creative industries, lots of people working in the artistic space turn to software from adobe to edit video, alter pictures or enhanced sound. the company, like many others, is adding artificial

intelligence features to its products and in this case, photoshop, to let designers make changes injust a few clicks. alistair keane has been to take a look. it will be super helpful for photographers. it's speeding up the process. it is really, really impressive. these designers and photographers are trying out new features in the photoshop software. one video i posted on tiktok was just adding a little extra to the edge because i had not quite cropped the image exactly how i wanted to, so ijust added some additional canvas on the side and it also filled in the bottom of the woman's dress. it uses artificial intelligence to change how a picture looks, adding bits, taking stuff away or even creating a whole new parts to the background. it is the latest software putting ai into people's hands. we are accelerating faster than we thought.

project firefly, our foundational model for imaging is often the fastest beta start that we have had. we added that into photoshop with a feature called generative fill and adoption has been absolutely inspiring for us and you will see as we keep introducing it. i think the pace of adoption and acceleration is something that is very exciting. this is some of the new ai tools that we have in front of us. i'm in photoshop, and this is amazing. anybody can do this. i have been waiting for this. as a photoshop user it usually takes a lot of work to remove all these people from vacation photos. i just want to select everybody i want to remove, that is all i'm doing right now and i don't have to be exact, which is nice. i get their shadows, these people over here. again, super loose, all i'm doing is selecting them. i want to make it look

like i am the only one here at this historic site. so i want to use what is called generative fill. i won't put anything in there, i just want to remove it. so this magic happens on the backend to remove these people. with a good internet connection, it takes just 20 seconds or so for these changes to take effect. not only is he able to take away from his photo, he can totally change the appearance, and in the adobe express app, he can even create unique images and graphics like this cake from just words. you have been a designer for years. how long would it have taken you previously to put together something like that? it would take all day and again i've been doing this for 20 years. where we are at now, generating this type of co nte nt,

i've not seen it in 20 years. so you don't worry that this may deskill people? it could but at the end of the day i am a designer so i feel like i know what choices to make. personally i feel like i have spent less time pushing pixels around and more time making creative decisions. i've never met anybody, whether they be a knowledge worker or a creative professional, who has told me that they would like to take an hour to do something that they can do in five minutes and i am a firm believer in human ingenuity and this will augment human creativity. it's a co—pilot, that is the appropriate expression for this kind of technology. i think it will allow millions if not billions of people to engage in the field. but opening up this level of photo manipulation to millions of people comes with concerns about disinformation. fake and altered pictures being used to trick people and cause harm. there has been a huge acceleration in this

and it will keep exhilarating. are you worried about where it is going or are you confident that you have the right safeguards in place? in all of our products, we have content credentials. so when you create a piece of content, you can digitally sign it. i think the last step in the process, which we still need, to do is engage with the customer, the consumer who is consuming the content and training them to look for that content credential and understand who created this content and where that might have been altered. but the consumer has to say i want to see, i want to verify and then i will trust, so i think that is still education ahead of us. but the good news is that the building blocks are in place. for the photographers and designers that we have been speaking to, there is a nervous excitement about what they can do with this tech. it will be interesting to see where it goes from here.

i still think that there will be a need and a want for people to have natural—looking images, though. i don't think, like, family photography is going to go away because, like i said, we are documenting memories and genuine emotions. maybe moreso now. and that trend we have things like ai photographers, where everything is more documentary style, that is what people are looking for. it will be fun. i am shona mccallum with this week's tech news. and sticking with adobe, the uk's competition watchdog says its initial probe into the company's purchase of design firm figma has found it may reduce innovation. the merger of the two design giants sparked a regulatory review, but adobe says it has no meaningful plans to compete in the product design world. meta has revealed threads, a twitter—style app from the team at instagram.

it lets users connect with instagram followers and friends, post text and video photo updates and may interoperate with open social networks like mastodon in the future. it is similar to and operates similar to twitter and that is strategic because it wants people who are coming away from twitter, who are fed up with elon musk, to find something familiar and take on what they started elsewhere. the chinese government is tightening controls over the export of two key materials — gallium and germanium — that used to make computer chips. it comes after us efforts to curb chinese access to some advanced microprocessors. and finally, a robot conductor took to the stage in south korea to lead the country's national orchestra and its 60—plus musicians for a live performance in front of a sell—out audience. billions of people around

the world are now using apps to send super secure messages every day. whatsapp, imessage, android messages and signal all use a remarkable piece of technology called end—to—end encryption. other popular apps like telegram and messenger also offer the feature. but by the end of 2023, meta says messenger will switch over to full end—to—end encryption as standard. so all text, media and calls will be end—to—end. a privacy focused messaging platform has to be encrypted. meta also plans to roll it out for instagram direct messaging too, and twitter is also building end—to—end in its app. but as privacy experts celebrate the trend, governments are increasingly worried. so why are they so worried about it? well, it's because of how clever this secure technology is. let's say that i'm the server of an internet company and these people

are trying to send messages. sending readable information over the internet is a pretty bad idea. anyone that intercepts the messages could read them. so these days, nearly all the information we share over the internet is encrypted, which means it's scrambled, and, therefore, protected from prying eyes. a bit like putting a note in a locked box, the messages are protected when they leave us, processed by the apps server and then sent on to the recipient. but with most forms of encryption, the company can unscramble this data — they have the keys to read our messages. at any point, the company can open up our chat history and share them with others — for example, the police. criminals are routinely caught and prosecuted because police are able to access messages in this way. hackers or bad actors too are sometimes able to access our unsecured data. end—to—end encryption goes a step further. messages are encrypted, but only the sender

and the receiver have access to the keys. it's like sending a box that only you have the key to open. the messages are protected, even from the app company, which means that end—to—end encryption protects your texts, media and calls from everyone — internet companies, hackers, even police. this means that people can truly exercise their right to freedom of expression, right to privacy without fear of unwarranted surveillance, whether by the private sector or the public sector. at the moment, we allow any kind of access to encrypted communications. there is no way to ensure that only the people that we want to be accessing these communications will do so, because it is, effectively, a security vulnerability could be misused by a range of bad actors and malicious actors, whether state or nonstate, which is why it is important to not enable any kind of access at all.

but as ever with technology, privacy and security collide. the so—called five eyes countries are all against the technology. japan, india, turkey, bangladesh, brazil and the european union have all expressed concerns too, with some exploring laws to control the apps. in countries with strict internet rules like china, many end—to—end encryption products are already banned. what's concerning is that if platforms make the design choice to roll out end—to—end encryption, we risk losing the vast majority of that data that is used to find perpetrators and protect children. it's a debate that has raged now for years, with neither side wanting to budge. you concede that there is harm, correct? i concede that there are trade—offs and that there are challenges to law enforcement, and of course my heart goes out to the victims... well, i'm not so interested in your heart, actually. many security forces and politicians around the world are calling on tech companies to introduce some

sort of technical back door into end—to—end encrypted apps. a way for police to gain access to messages if they suspect criminal activity. another solution is something called client—side scanning. pictures and videos are scanned by an app while on the sender's device to check the content against a database of illegal material, for example, child abuse material. client—side scanning was famously suggested by apple on its devices to combat the spread and storage of child abuse material. but the idea was dropped after a huge backlash from privacy campaigners worried about the misuse of potentially invasive technology by criminals or even oppressive governments. in spite of the concerns, more and more companies are turning to the tech, saying it's crucial to protect customer data. and one thing that is true, but never really talked about by the technology companies is that end—to—end encryption takes away a big chunk of the thorny and costly

issue of content moderation. if they can't see what their users are sending to each other, they can't moderate it. that was joe. now, no matter how well—intentioned our reuse and recycling programmes are, we're still creating hundreds of millions of tons of new plastic every year. so we're clearly quite a long way from solving our plastic problem. there is definitely no simple solution, but what some companies are doing with a spot of science can be pretty mind blowing. we are a generation demanding change. whether we like it or not, we're going to have a lot of plastic for the foreseeable. whilst it definitely has its negative side—effects, it's also important to recognise that it's a pretty amazing material that has enabled so much. a major issue is that all of the plastic that's ever been created still exists in some form somewhere. one of the companies that's revolutionising plastic

has been creating products that will biodegrade in certain conditions. like in heat, air, moisture or sunlight. the aim is to return the material back into nature — well, as much as they possibly can, anyway. polymateria's plastic alternative has been around for a few years now. it's used for food packaging and some cups. but now, the company is moving into a slightly different type of material. in fact, replacing what's used in some products that you might not even know was plastic in the first place. think face masks, women's hygiene products or wipes. what we're doing for wipes, diapers, teabags, they all have their unique use case, if you want, and also time frame within which we would want biodegradation to happen. how does the transformation process actually work? there's three core things. the time control piece, that's the self—destructing part, so that's something that at point of manufacture, we can dial that up or dial that down.

so literally within a couple of weeks, it is taking it from its plastic—like state into its wax—like state. but that's not where it stops. the third thing we are doing as we make that wax draw in microbes and fungi and bacteria, and that is the way we are able to get those materials fully back to nature in less than a year. well, they seem just the same as the plastic version. they feel the same, they look the same — but once they start to transform, that's when things are very different. beeping and this is what it looks like. it's very, very soft and, apparently, is completely harmless. it looks like powder, but sort of disappears. i wanted to show you how a biotransformed wax looked like and felt like versus a microplastic. and that's what you've touched a bit before, and we've put that in this vial to show you how it behaves when you heat it slightly.

now, it's completely melting and you can see that the other bit of plastic is completely the same. as i would expect — it stays just the same. itjust looks the same. and now, if i take this one, and i tilt it, it flows like a candle. what you will have in nature is that you will have a bottle, biotransforming and becoming a wax, and that wax will then be fully biodegraded, like a banana peel or apple core, by nature. we've looked at other companies before who are trying to solve the plastic problem. what is it about your products that means they can actually do the job? we've published more papers in the space than anyone else, so we put our data out there to be rigorously reviewed by other experts in the field. but what we're trying to do is create something that is capable of moving the needle on a 100 million ton per annum problem. they are continuing to develop the technology, and while there's no silver bullet, there are alternatives being worked on. founded by 22—year—old jacob nathan, epoch biodesign is looking to change the way

plastic is broken down. we design enzymes that break down plastic waste. and the resulting chemicals that we make from that, we can manufacture into all sorts of new products like paints, coatings, fertilisers, cleaning products and, ultimately, new plastic. the beauty of biology is that it enables us to carry out chemical reactions at very, very low temperatures, and so we can use enzymes that enable these sorts of chemical reactions to happen at very low temperatures and pressures to break down those plastics into those building blocks to make those new plastics again. there are two sides to this equation — one is we make way too much of this stuff, but the other is we don't actually know what to do with most of it once we're done using it. even if we stopped making plastics tomorrow, we still have 10 billion tons that are just sort of sitting around, taking up space, and we might want to do something with that. wow, that's pretty impressive to see bits of that cup just turn to wax like that.

i know, when it was still in cup form, i kept tapping it to check it was really solid, and it was, it was a normal cup! alright, well, that's it for us this week. thanks for watching and we will see you soon. bye. hello there. it was a very thundery start to the weekend, and particularly so across parts of the west midlands into northwest england. and later, those storms spread their way northwards, into scotland during the overnight period. part two of the weekend looks a little bit better. there will be sunny spells around, but further showers too, low pressure always close by, and these weather fronts, which will continue to generate these showers and thunderstorms. now, we start sunday off on a bright note, plenty of sunshine. that's the overnight rain — thundery in places, clearing northwards, so it could be quite wet in 0rkney all day.

an area of rain, some of it thundery, could affect east anglia and the southeast for a time through the morning. then that clears into the afternoon, and then it's sunny spells, scattered showers. most of these, northern ireland, wales and western england. now, it's going to be a cooler, fresher day across the board. top temperature around 23 degrees in the southeast. so we could have some disruption at wimbledon for that early rain. but then, into the afternoon, it does look like conditions will improve, with increasing amounts of sunshine. so as you move into sunday evening, most of the showers fade away — not completely, but most of them will. we'll see lengthy, clearer skies, but across the southwest here, we'll see some cloud thickening, with increasing breeze too. temperatures lower, fresher than what we've had over the last few nights. range from 10 to 12 degrees. cooler than that out of towns and cities. this area of low pressure will throw out further weather fronts into the southwest. this area of cloud will thicken up further. we'll see outbreaks of rain, strengthening winds — southwest england, into wales, pushing into the midlands. some of this could be quite heavy. elsewhere, it's sunny spells,

scattered showers. so we could be up to around 2a degrees in the southeast, given plenty of sunshine. a little bit lower than that further north. but as you move out of monday into tuesday, this area of low pressure sits right on top of the uk, so a really unsettled day, i think, on tuesday. it'll be quite breezy. there will be some sunny spells inbetween, but showers or longer spells of rain, and some of these showers could turn out to be heavy and thundery in places. pretty much anywhere could catch a shower. and temperatures will be lower, 16 to 21 or 22 degrees. that's below par for the time of year. and temperatures fall further as we move deeper into the week. this area of low pressure pushes towards the north of the uk, bringing some cooler air down on a northwesterly wind. so it stays unsettled for much of this upcoming week, with temperatures below par for the time of year. there will still be some sunshine in between the showers.

to breakfast with ben thompson

good morning welcome and luxmy gopal. 0ur headlines today: new allegations concerning a bbc presenter accused