is being hailed as a success by humanitarian agencies. they are aiming to immunise more than 600,000 children under the age of ten against polio. people are voting in regional elections in eastern germany. the anti—immigrant alternative for germany party is forecast to win its first state, in a ballot labelled a litmus test for next year's federal election. airports in nearly 30 european countries, which had scrapped limits for liquids in hand luggage, are being made to reinstate the restrictions from sunday. the eu says the reversal is a "temporary" measure to address a technical issue with new equipment. now on bbc news — click.

this week, lara's sniffing around the scientists who are bringing historic smells back to life. so, i guess ijust put my nose in here. yes. hmm. delightful. we're on the high—tech farm in iceland where they're turning algae into something more appetising. this is hummus, and it's blue. it's not a bad thing. but it is blue. anyway, we'll also meet the actors who say their voices have been manipulated by ai.

this is formula student, a world series of events that took place this summer, featuring electric cars built by teams of students from 100 universities across the globe. 0n tracks throughout europe, the cars competed in disciplines including autocross, racing through formula 1—like twists and turns as fast as possible... ..an endurance trial through more than 20km of track to push the limits of battery management... ..a test of grip and downforce by...basically going round in a circle as fast as possible — and then there's acceleration. it's a drag race, basically, and it's this last challenge that one team, amz racing, absolutely blasted last year, going from 0 to 100km an hour in... well, i'll let

you know a bit later. amz includes students from lucerne university of applied sciences and arts and eth zurich, and i dropped in on the team's swiss hq. and up here is the electronics department at amz racing. we're going to meet lara. not that lara. for one car to excel at all of these events, it not only has to have a powerful motor, but also computers have to control the traction and fine tune the speed of each wheel individually, and somehow it has to stick to the ground to give the tyres more grip. amz achieved this with powerful fans that actually sucked the ultralight vehicle to the tarmac. are you building on last year's design, or have you completely reinvented anything? every year we design a completely new race car.

i mean, of course we orient ourselves on the design from last year. as you might have seen on the car, the downforce with the fans we had, we improved... ..not the same concept, but kind of is based on the same... ..on the same physics behind it. is this something you want to do in the future? do you want to work on, like, racing cars? i mean, it'd definitely be fun and really interesting, but i'm not sure yet. we'll see. it depends how it goes this year, right? yeah! and, yeah, the point of this competition is less about the winning and more about the learning. getting to work on such a project during your studies is an incredible knowledge gain. i mean, if i compare myself three years ago, before ijoined the organisation, i know very little about engineering compared to what i do now. there are some things that might get adopted in industry. however, i think the main thing is just to really get those engineers already to have some practical experience during their studies. so, about that

acceleration challenge... now, after last year's formula student competition, the team decided to specifically re—engineer the car to try and break the world acceleration record and go from 0 to 100km an hour in the shortest time for an electric car. this was the vehicle, and the target time... well, that was already astonishing. so, in 2016, eth held the record — 0 to 100km hour in...? 1.513 seconds. 0k,1.5 seconds. 1.5 seconds. 0k — and then, in 2022, stuttgart came along and did it in...? 1.46. so, about five hundredths of a second. and then last year you came along and did 0 to 100km an hour in — how much?

a bit less than a second. 0.956. applause. 0 to 60 in less than a second. what does that feel like? it feels insane. so, you just feel this — this push, and you can't even blink. it's already over. do you have time to do any steering, or do you have to hope it's pointing in the right direction? you have to hope that points into the right direction — but this we control before every start, and there is maybe a little bit of steering, but it's just intuitive. now, when i visited amz a few weeks before this summer's competition, i got to witness the very first day of testing this year's brand—new car. expectations were high. all our cameras were set to catch the high

speed action — and... was that close to the world record? i'm not an expert, but... 0k, look, this was actually just a test to see if all the computers and sensors were talking to each other. the fact that the car moved at all was considered a success. but come the formula student tournament itself, amz did brilliantly, winning events in switzerland, hungary and the biggest one, in germany — and, equally importantly, the next generation of engineers has done its qualifying lap.

with short summers and a cold climate and a landscape of lava fields and glaciers, iceland's not the first place you'd think of for farming... ..but pioneering entrepreneurs are growing some surprising crops — and doing it sustainably. inside this warehouse on the outskirts of reykjavik is a verticalfarm. vaxa means "grow" in icelandic, and they're cultivating leafy greens. more like a lab than a typical farm, this is what's known as controlled environment agriculture. here we have whole head lettuce, baby leaf, a lot of herbs, and these mini microgreens. almost every detail is precisely fine tuned. we can optimise everything. humidity, water, light hours, nutrition. we do not have to depend on sunlight here in the farm.

the plants have high quality led lights where we can use the green energy of iceland to grow the plants. that means they can produce salad year round, even in the darkest winters — and there's no soil here, just water. this is like a hydroponic system. we actually can circulate, re—use the water again. so we need, like, 90% less water than in an open field farm. outside of reykjavik, this is the country's most powerful geothermal plant. while iceland's northerly location and climate may seem a disadvantage when it comes to farming, it's the limitless supply of clean energy that's also helped it to innovate. the glowing lights take a little getting used to — and, inside, it's like nothing i've seen before. this tech firm has invented what it calls an energy to food platform.

now, this place is not your typicalfarm. it's super high—tech, and growing inside these units is microalgae. algae is not something that many of us eat today, but it could well be a food of the future. it's rich in protein, iron and fatty acids, and vaxa technologies, unrelated to the salad producer, hopes to make this algae an everyday part of our diet. it's a new way of thinking about food production. i this system uses a fraction of the land, a fraction - of the water needed. it's carbon negative. energy, c02 and water — that's all that's needed for this aquatic organism to grow. it photosynthesises. the algae is eating j c02, or it's turning the c02 into biomass. it's all tightly controlled using artificial intelligence to find the perfect conditions.

this pink—purple glow comes from the tiny red and blue lights. instead of spending our electricity and making i wavelengths that they don't i use, we are only giving them the light that they use to photosynthesise. . this system gets clean electricity from the neighbouring geothermal plant, as well as water for heating and cooling — and even the c02 that the algae take in. algae, they are extremely efficient in changing - light into biomass. we can use 100% of this biomass for food. - it also grows very fast, and once harvested it looks like this... ..which to be frank, doesn't seem hugely appetising. so, time to give it a try. this is hummus... blue hummus! ..and it's blue. it's not supposed i to be a punishment.

it's not a bad thing. i suggest you try this here. 0k. it doesn't taste unusual at all. but then there's a surprise. i'm not sure how i feel about this! but, er... try it. it doesn't taste of much. i think it's more the texture. i think it's going to take a bit more to wrap my head around this one. maybe it will catch on — but i'm not sure i'm ready for blue food just yet. documents leaked to the washington post revealed the extent of amazon's planned rebate of its virtual assistant alexa. the release will include a new smart briefing feature

and a chatbot aimed at children. access to the upgraded version of the system will require a page description. a us energy firm says it has made a major breakthrough in producing power from nuclearfusion breakthrough in producing power from nuclear fusion which replicates the same natural processes found within the sun, the biggest obstacle so far have been getting plasma to a high enough density level and then containing it within the reactor long enough rate to be useful. generalatomic reactor long enough rate to be useful. general atomic say it has successfully used magnets and deuterium gas to contain superhot plasma at 20% above the current plasma density limit without it escaping for just over two seconds. finally, the barbie phone has landed. the pay handset, a joint project from the company behind nokia and the toy maker mattel has no app store and is limited to basic texting and phone calls. the flip phone does come with a range of stick—on crystals. manufacturers says it

has made the phone in response to parents wanting to reduce the digital impact on their kids' lives. a tech company stole our voices, made clones of them as ai clones, and sold them possibly hundreds of thousands of times. this is paul and linnea — voice—over actors based in new york city. last summer, they were in the car listening to a podcast about the hollywood writers' strike and how it might affect v0 artists like them when something strange happened. the specific episode, the host was going to interview an ai entity about the potential harm that ai will have on the entertainment industry, and he is interviewing my voice. how disturbing and terrifying that moment was is hard to articulate. i spent six hours on the internet that night searching as many text to speech products that i could find, and listening to all of the voices that they offered

until i stumbled upon lovo. lovo are this company, a berkeley—based text to speech platform. just type what you want to hear... ..but once she started poking around the company site, linnea said she found an a! voice that sounded just like paul. i mean, i was stunned. i couldn't believe it — and out of pure curiosity, ijust started listening to the other voices thinking, maybe i'll recognise someone i know, a colleague from the voiceover world, and that's when i stumbled upon my voice. so, in may, pauland linnea filed a class action lawsuit against lovo, saying the company illegally stole their voices and identities without permission or proper compensation. the company has not yet filed a response. so how did this even happen? so in october of 2019, a freelancing site that i'm on where i regularly procure voiceover work reached out to me asking if i would record some scripts for them.

the couple say the scripts were generic radio ads, ones the user said would never be broadcast, so they didn't need expensive usage rights. they were quite generic — you know, "do you need a dry cleaner in idaho? "we're here right around the corner. "your. .. your neighbourhood dry cleaner. " paul says about six months later, he got a similar request to record dozens of generic sounding radio scripts. in messages the couple shared with the bbc, you can see the user appears to say the audio will be used for research into speech synthesis. paul follows up to clarify whether the audio will be used for anything other than their specific research. in the next message, the user then appears to confirm the audio will not be used for anything else. and then i asked, "will you be changing the order of my audio "or using it in any separate way?" and they said no. as for linnea, she says the users she spoke with deleted part of the conversation, but in the communications that remain, it appears the user presents the scripts as test radio ads, ones that will not be

disclosed externally. the couple said there was no formal contract, just these messages they've shared with us. we can't, however, verify if these are the complete conversations. in both cases, though, the couple recorded the audio, sent the files and moved on. the voice you're hearing is tom lee, co—founder of lovo, speaking on a business podcast about how their voice cloning technology works. we reached out to lovo on multiple occasions to request an interview with mr lee. we also asked for any correspondence or conversations they may have with paul and linnea. they did not respond to any of our messages. so what's going on in the voice actor cases are a field of law . known as rights of publicity.

the thing that's being copied is not a piece i of copyrighted work, - but a piece of someone's personality, right? and so then we get these personality rights, - or rights of publicity, - where the allegation is not, "you copied my song," or, "you copied my drawing,"| but rather, _ "you copied my voice." professor garcia also says the licences the couple granted the user who contacted them may have also been violated. licences are permission for a very specific- and narrow use, right? i might give you a licence that| you can swim in my swimming pool one afternoon, but that doesn't mean you can - come whenever you want and have a party in my. swimming pool, right? that would exceed the terms of the licence, and i think- that would be the argument for these voice actors here. | the voices have since been removed from the company's website, but an ad still exists online where paul's supposed voice clone can be heard. so, i sat down with the couple to take a listen myself. video: introducing genny, by lovo - artificial- intelligence that makes it fast and easy to create voiceovers

for marketing, e—learning, documentaries, animations, games, audiobooks, and more. introducing genny, by lovo — artificial intelligence that makes it fast and easy to create voiceovers for marketing, e—learning, documentaries, animations, games, audiobooks, and more. when we all thought of ai in the future, we thought ai is going to be folding our laundry and making us dinner. we didn't think ai is going to replace human beings' creative endeavours. this case is just one of many being brought against a! companies by artists who don't want to lose control over their work and livelihoods — and more are likely to come. we really have no other choice but to stand up and give our energy to this, because when companies develop technology that way, it's not innovation any more, it's just exploitation. imagine if you could recreate any smell that you wanted, so you could take yourself back to your youth, or you could even go back hundreds of years in time.

well, that's just what they're doing here in this lab. hi, i'm lara. hi, i'm cecilia. nice to meet you, cecilia. the smells that we all experience are a mixture of chemical compounds and our perception and memories. in this lab, they're trying to bring those things together. here on your computer we've got a whole lot of types of reaction you could have to the smell, i guess. does everybody react in the same way, or do you think people have different ideas of what smells of ammonia? that is a very good question. we're not trained to talk about smells in the same way we are about visual arts, for example, or music — and therefore we have to develop these vocabularies and train ourselves to know that when we say a word describing a smell, we mean the same thing. if only there was a nose machine to do all that hard work. so, i guess ijust put my nose in here. yes.

slightly sweet. delicate and sweet. there's almost something soothing about it. this is actually frankincense, a tree resin that's been used for thousands of years in religious ceremonies in the form of incense and in traditional medicine. i think my description was terrible. what do you think? i think you did very well. how about recreating smells from the past — ones that no longer exist, or may never have existed — just from the words used to describe them? one of the things we're really interested in is bringing back the smells of the past and presenting them to people, communicating these smells. using ai, they're mining 60,000 historic texts and 13,000 images for references to smells — with some astonishing results. i have one more smell for you to experience today. thank you.

oh, that's quite fierce. it's also quite bad. it smells of burning mixed with poo. ugh... absolutely revolting. quite frankly, now, that's awful. what is it? so, this is the smell of hell. it's the smell of hell? yes. we don't have a recipe for this, obviously, so it was inspired by a painting — and in this painting we see christ descending into limbo to save the souls that have gone to hell, and as he descends, we see a dragon blowing smoke and fire in his face, and there's the smokiness. there's also notes of sulphurous smells. ok, that's the bad bit. yes. ifeel quite sick. then you'll have to make sure you go to heaven! this is very true! lovely. thank you. well, all i can say is you've

done an amazing job of creating this scent, because it's absolutely horrendous. yep, it's been made using synthetic versions of compounds from faeces and rotten lilies. they've used it at museum ulm in germany, where the picture is on display, and this can enhance the visitor experience. yuck. the petrie museum of egyptology in london is also working with smells. as an archaeologist, how important is it to you that lots of museums would embrace this sort of technology to enhance the experience? well, that's a very good question. obviously, places like these, they are important resources. traditionally in a museum you can see the objects. you can be provided with information. sometimes, if you're lucky, you may have sessions where you can touch, handling objects, depending — but what about smells? maybe we can be transported to a city, a village,

the workshop of a person who's working leather or wood, or the kitchen, food, what people ate, how they did food. why is it so important to be able to recreate these smells? this is important because many of the smells that we focus on are at risk of disappearing, and when the aroma goes, it's not only the smell, but also the stories, the people, the places that are connected to them. so here we use different techniques to better understand and safeguard and preserve our cultural heritage. the world is changing, and there soon could be a day with some of the smells we take for granted no longer with us — but thanks to projects like this, we may be able to reconnect with our emotional memories with just a sniff. and that's all we've got time for. thank you for watching — we shall be back next week. bye— bye.

hello there. last day of august was a fine one across much of the country, with widespread sunshine to start the weekend. part two of the weekend, 1st of september is looking more unsettled and indeed, as we head deeper into september, it will turn increasingly humid over the next few days and that will generate more heavy, thundery showers. and it will be quite warm at times, particularly across the southeast, given some sunshine with this warm and humid air mass in place. so we've been seeing this area of high pressure pushing northwards to scandinavia, and that's been allowing this low pressure across northern spain, biscay and france to move northwards with its thunderstorms. so we start sunday off on a cloudier note, probably the best of the sunshine towards the north west. there will be some sunny spells elsewhere and it'll be

increasingly warm and humid, and that will set off heavy showers and thunderstorms across england and wales, focus of them through central areas, so they could be a little bit further eastwards and it'll be quite breezy close to the east coast. so a little bit cooler right on the north sea coast, but head further inland, it will be warm and humid. and given some sunshine, with this warm and humid air mass, we could be into the high 20s celsius in the southeast, but high teens further north. as we head through sunday night, we hold on to that threat of heavy showers and thunderstorms, which will drift a little bit further northwards and by first thing monday, we'll all be in that humid air mass. mid—teens there, as you can see through the central belt of scotland. same two for northern ireland, no lower than 16 or 17 across the southeast. so for monday itself it looks a lot more unsettled thanks to this area of low pressure, which at this point have moved northwards across the country.

with its weather fronts, that will generate lots of cloud and some showers and thunderstorms. again, a bit of a question mark on the details, but at the moment it looks like central, northern and eastern areas could see most of these showers and thunderstorms, with a greater chance of it turning drier for a while towards central and southern areas, and that will again push temperatures up to the high 20s here. but generally it's the high teens, low 20s elsewhere. the details are quite sketchy at the moment. this could change. as we head into tuesday, that area of low pressure we think will drift northwards. still some weather fronts around and the humidity still there as well, so there's a chance of further cloudy weather, a bit of sunshine here and there and the risk of further showers and thunderstorms pretty much anywhere. but again, if i have to pick central and eastern areas will see the highest of the temperatures again, the mid 20s here with high humidity further west, turning a little bit fresher, perhaps with some late in the day, sunshine. why? because by the middle part of the new week, we could see this area of high pressure topple in off the atlantic into northern and western areas. that should kill off many of the showers. it means we could see this cut

off low, stay towards the south of the country, and that could generate some showers here for the channel islands into the southwest. but with that area of high pressure building in, it could turn a bit drier with increasing amounts of sunshine and with slightly cooler, fresher air, we'll lose the humidity. we're looking at the high teens low 20s for many. beyond wednesday into thursday, as we head through into much of next week, it looks like high pressure will try to fight back. it'll always be close by with the chance of lower pressure over the near continent or towards the south. however, again, question mark the details of the outlook so you have to stay tuned to the forecast. but if this scenario takes place, then we could see quite a bit of dry weather as we go deeper into the early part of september. some warmth across the south as well, but showers will never be too far away, so stay tuned to the forecast for all the latest details.

live from london. this is bbc news. israel's prime minister benjamin netanyahu says his country will �*settle the score�* after the bodies of six hostages held by hamas were found in gaza. i say to the hamas terrorists who murdered our hostages, and i say to their leaders, your blood is on at your heads. we will not rest and we will not be silent. this is the scene live injerusalem where relatives of hostages are demanding a ceasefire deal. they should have come back alive. — they should have come back alive, they could have come back— alive, they could have come back alive. we need a deal now.

unicef tells the bbc that a mass polio vaccination programme in gaza is progressing well. people in eastern germany are voting in regional elections... with the anti—immigrant alternative for germany party expected to perform strongly. and — back to the old rule book. european airports re—introduce carry—on liquid restrictions. hello. welcome. as we go to air this hour, the families of israeli hostages are demonstrating injerusalem. these are the live pictures. the families are angry — and grieving — after the israeli army found the bodies of six hostages in a tunnel in rafah. they're calling for a general strike to try to force the government to reach a deal with hamas to release those still held in gaza. the military said they were killed by hamas shortly before troops arrived. a hamas official denied this, saying they were

killed by israeli fire.