for years, we've talked about how drone deliveries were around the corner. i think one of the main reasons that the idea of drone deliveries

is in the public consciousness is because an image went viral — quite a long time ago now — of an amazon drone delivering a parcel, which kind of suggested to us all that drone deliveries weren't so much over the horizon as they were literally around the corner. but when was the last time you had anything dropped off by quadcopter? never — deliveries still come in vans around my way! we're just not there yet for that kind of last—mile delivery. there are trade—offs between the weight of what can be transported, and battery life. but aside from that, what about the safety? the idea of having all of these spinning blades above our heads, and then they've got to bring a pizza down to the pavement? now, apparently, last year there were almost 2,500 drone deliveries every day — but that was worldwide. so if you think about it in the grand scale of things, that's...that's not much, is it? and i suspect that most of those would be specialist deliveries in really remote areas. yeah. so...amazon, what gives? emma simpson has been to the company's research facility in seattle to find out what the buzz is all about. you know what it's like — waiting for an online order,

wondering when the van is going to turn up. but look into the distance. drone buzzing. this one's coming by air. in the small town of lockeford, california, amazon is using drones to deliver packages to customers. and this service is coming to the uk and italy, too. jeff loves it. it's fun. i never thought i'd be getting packages delivered in my backyard. so when you order it, we see it within 20 or 30 minutes. so, obviously quicker than having to run to the store and getting the stuff. buzzing. what about the noise? the noise is... it's a little loud, but it doesn't disturb me. so how does it work? we're the first to see behind the scenes at amazon's launch facility. and here they have thousands of products on site. this particular one here is an eight pack of aa batteries, which is our most popular one in the entire location. is that cos people want them quick? yeah, you know, it is. batteries are one of those things — when you run out, you know you need

them, and you want them very fast. how fast can you get them? so within 60 minutes. no order can weigh more than five pounds, and it has to fit into this box. it's all about speed. so this is the exciting bit. correct. this is where we get to load the package into the drone. in that? in that exact drone. this feels like science fiction a bit. it has that feel. a few safety checks, and the parcel is loaded. mission accepted. pre—flight checks complete. cleared by all, launching. a flying robot that can deliver 3.5 miles away and knows exactly where to go. it will locate a qr marker that is on the ground at the customer's home, and it'll identify that the package that is in that drone belongs to that marker, which belongs to that customer. it'll descend to 12 feet, release the package, can take off and then return back to its home base. how does it know not to bump into anything?

great question. so if you look over here, you've got our front—facing sensors. there's also sensors in the rear part of the drone. and when this drone is in flight, it is consistently looking ahead and behind to determine that there are no obstacles or threats that would prohibit it from making a safe delivery. and it's watching all the time. correct. and what it's doing is it's looking not just for static objects — so that could be a tree, a home, power lines — it's also looking for dynamic objects, which could include birds, helicopters or even other drones. amazon won't reveal how many customers are using this service, saying only that it's made thousands of deliveries across its two sites here in california and in texas. drones are never going to replace vans, but this is a glimpse of the future — online deliveries in just minutes. and in seattle, this is where the drones are designed and built. this is our headquarters for prime air. so this is our manufacturing and assembly area — manufacturing, assembly and test.

and you can see we've got some of our mk27 drones staged here that have been completed. yeah, we saw this flying. yeah, well, it's pretty cool, isn't it? it works. there's now a new one being rolled out. here's the first glimpse of the mk30. this is a drone coming to the uk. it's smaller, it's lighter, it travels further and it's, most importantly, at least 40% quieter to our previous drone. is that safe? it's absolutely safe. it is hundreds of times safer than driving to the store, and that's straight off national highways statistics. along these corridors you can see the story of amazon's drone programme, how the technology has changed. progress hasn't been quick, though. experts say amazon's fallen behind rivals in getting its service off the ground. no, they're not.

you know, we... we are... um... we're not into the hype. what we're into is creating a product that is the safest, that can scale to where we want to go, and that we look at the long term in terms of our customers, what they need, and when they need it. it's still early days, though, for all drone operators, with tight rules and restrictions in place. but this online juggernaut believes the demand is there for ultra—fast deliveries from the skies. that was emma simpson. now, if you're one for a quiet life, then you may enjoy what lj's got here. the modern world can be really loud! it's no wonder so many of us try to make things...softer. i've always been fascinated byjust how much sound is cut out using noise—cancelling headphones. but have you ever wondered

how they actually work? while it feels like modern—day technology magic, the idea is...quite old. way back in 1936, paul lueg patented a noise—cancelling system in a tube, using an intricate set—up of microphones and speakers. by the 1950s, noise—cancelling systems were developed in the usa for pilots to hear better over the aircraft noise. but noise—cancelling really took off in the year 2000, when dr amar bose, of bose headphones fame, created the quietcomfort for passengers yearning for a break from the engines. now, big companies like apple, sony, sennheiser and more all create headphones with active noise—cancelling tech inside. to see inside how the technology works, i'm heading over to nothing, one of the newer phone and headphone companies in the market, for a quiet chat all about noise.

hi, lj. hi, how you doing? welcome. thank you. great to see you. great to be here. welcome to our design studio. yeah, it's really cool. yeah. this is the workshop area. so there's lots of machines, lots of things going on. nothing's big obsession is with transparency — a perfect opportunity to get really close with the components. yeah, something to play with here. i just want to pick each thing up, and... you can, you can. this is our ear (2) set of tws headphones. i can see the battery. yeah, so you can see how... ..absolutely tiny all those components on there are. so whereabouts is the active noise—cancelling technology here? yeah, so that's happening on this pcb that sits within each earbud. so this is only one side, but there's almost one of these identical on each side. and do they work together to cancel the noise, or is it each side does it individually? yeah, individually, and they need to be really tightly synchronised. there's three microphones on each

earbud and then a little chip, which is going to take the sound, from the microphones, of the world, do some processing to it, play it into your ear, and that will cancel the noise. so the microphone picks up the sound and plays some different sound into your ear at the same time? yep. and that cancels out the noise. yeah. it sounds insane. joseph chuckles. so it relies on a core concept about waves, which is how they interfere with each other. pure tone plays. so when two sound waves are playing, if they're out of phase... tone stops. ..they�*ll meet and cancel each other out. if you play some... some sound waves. . . pure tone plays. these are two sine waves at 250 hertz, playing together. so if you put them slightly out of phase, the volume drops slightly. a bit more out of phase... volume drops further. ..it drops a bit more. and then... tone stops. so the two sound waves are still playing at the same time, but one of them is doing that while the other one is doing that. yeah, so they're perfectly out of phase now. so that's kind of like...

so we can't hear anything. and that's how noise cancellation works. yep. thank you. but noise cancelling can do more than improve our headphones. before my haircut, i went to zurich, where research scientists are experimenting with using the same technique to hide objects. hang on — what?! this really does sound like magic. the black dots here are loudspeakers. and what it allows us to do is then to predict an anti—sound that will cancel any incoming sound and emit it on the other side. so sound waves will come here, hit this target, but it will be cancelled in any kind of echoes, and then it will propagate, it will be emitted on the other side, as if this object hadn't been there. and you can obviously put anything you like inside here. it will not give an acoustic footprint. look at it this way. if we make a noise in front of a building... tone plays. ..we can hear its reflection and know where and what it is.

echoing tone plays. but this device acts like a sound invisibility cloak. in a fraction of a second, it catches the original sound and then alters it, returning a new sound, as if there's nothing there. one of the major sources of noise in the oceans is what's called pile—driving. when you build big windmills offshore, or any kind of offshore construction, you drive down pillars into the seafloor. and that produces a lot of noise that hurts marine life. so we can also use this technology to cancel the sound that comes out of this pile—driving. this sound invisibility cloak is clearly still in the experimental phase. so, until there's a better solution to the loud, loud world, the headphones stay on!

live from washington this is a bbc news special report over growing concerns regarding the rise of anti—semitism and islam up rise of anti—semitism and islam up a bit in the wake of the israel — gaza war. a stark warning from the head of the

fbi regarding anti—semitism in the west. i fbi regarding anti-semitism in the west. ., fbi regarding anti-semitism in thewest. ., ,, fbi regarding anti-semitism in thewest. ., , the west. i would say this is a threat that — the west. i would say this is a threat that is _ the west. i would say this is a threat that is reaching - threat that is reaching historic levels stop meanwhile, the white house settled international strategy to combat infant and slimy phobias. combat infant and slimy phobias-_ combat infant and slimy hobias. , ., , phobias. the lives of dues beinu phobias. the lives of dues being affected _ phobias. the lives of dues being affected as - phobias. the lives of dues being affected as a - phobias. the lives of dues| being affected as a number phobias. the lives of dues - being affected as a number of hate incidents spike. thanks forjoining me next week marks a month since thomas carried out his attack in israel, in response the countries military has been targeting gaza to root out new or, named a terrorist group by several western countries. cases of anti—semitism and islamic phobia have risen since

this. tonight, we are taking