Penulis: Agus S

Three strong knocks from the police battering ram and the front door bursts open. There’s a lot of shouting.

We follow heavily-armed officers as they stream into the house, a woman drops to the floor as the camera turns left, and we head up a small, dimly lit staircase, passing a man with his back against the wall, hands raised, yelling to no avail.

Within moments, a 13-year-old boy has been arrested and we’re back outside in the morning light. The family screams on the front lawn as the camera returns to the boy, now a detainee in the dark interior of a police van.

All this happens in three minutes. In one take. It is an early scene in Netflix’s hit show Adolescence, which was watched by more than 120 million people worldwide in its first month.

It wouldn’t have been possible to film a sequence quite like this five years ago, the show’s cinematographer Matthew Lewis claimed in a recent interview. Each of the four, roughly one hour-long episodes of Adolescence was shot entirely in one take, known as a “oner”, with the camera frequently following characters through frantic scenes, or switching from handheld to vehicle-mounted filming.

Lightweight, self-stabilising cameras that can adjust to dramatic changes in environmental lighting have sparked a small revolution in the film and TV industry.

At the end of Adolescence’s second episode, for instance, the camera moves from filming inside a car to crossing a road, to flying over nearby streets, and then to ground level again.

You can just about detect the switch from drone to human operator – there’s a minuscule wobble – but unless you’re looking for them, these transitions are effectively seamless.

It was made possible in part by a DJI Ronin 4D, a small, high-resolution camera that has multiple built-in sensors for detecting movement in relation to the floor and nearby objects.

This allows internal mechanisms to compensate for that movement and achieve smooth, stable footage.

The result is “phenomenal”, says seasoned filmmaker and Boston University professor Tim Palmer.

He initially doubted that episodes of Adolescence really were shot in a single take. “As soon as I saw it I knew, no, that was absolutely done in one take.”

Camera technology has developed significantly lately, he adds.

In 2014, Prof Palmer worked on a hospital drama called Critical, which required lengthy shots in busy hospital corridors. “It was just little joystick video game controllers to make the camera pan and tilt, and that was just not precise enough,” he recalls.

Makers of such TV programmes have long tried to capture the energy of hospital environments. One episode of 1990s BBC series Cardiac Arrest opens in a hectic triaging unit. As far as I can tell, there is only one cut in the first 10 minutes – but the camera moves rather robotically back and forth. It is nowhere near as dynamic as Adolescence.

Prof Palmer adds that gimbals, stabilising devices for cameras, have been around for years now, but methods of controlling them and pulling footage remotely have only recently become highly sophisticated.

He also mentions how some of the latest cameras have built-in filters that can be controlled remotely, or stabilisation technology that can be activated or deactivated at the press of a button. “That’s a complete game-changer,” he says.

Long single takes are far from a new concept in cinema. There are examples dating back decades.

Take the 2015 film Victoria, a hair-raising, two-hour and 20 minute feature film that its makers say was shot in a single take. Some have expressed scepticism about this in the past, but cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen tells the BBC emphatically, “There are no edits or cuts.”

While Mr Brandth Grøvlen had to rely on the technology of the time, he says that the slightly shaky images were intentional – the director wanted a film that reminded viewers of footage shot by news crews in warzones.

“It feels very much in the moment, but also like you never know what’s going to happen,” says Mr Brandth Grøvlen, “You’re taken on a journey.”

He used a Canon C300, a small motion picture camera well-suited to documentary filmmaking. Mr Brandth Grøvlen reduced the weight of the camera as much as possible by only adding essential accessories. He also practised the movements he planned to make during takes of the final film in order to achieve “muscle memory” of the process.

“When they suddenly start running I have to shift my grip on the camera from holding it on the side handle to the top handle – that way it shakes a little bit less,” he explains.

The Ronin 4D is DJI’s “first dedicated cinema camera”, says Brett Halladay, product education manager at the firm.

He describes the extensive stabilisation technology and the fact that the device transmits footage wirelessly to on-set monitors. It automatically selects a frequency based on the best available signal.

There are some limitations, though. The camera is not set up for vertical filming – increasingly in-demand with the rise of video-sharing smartphone apps such as TikTok.

Mr Halladay points out that it is possible to shoot in landscape and crop to a portrait, or vertical, image, though that might not be the most “ideal” solution, he acknowledges.

Other cameras are available. Canon, for instance, touts its line of lightweight Cinema EOS models.

Barry Griffin, a manager at Canon, says these cameras are finding a market among filmmakers aiming to shoot with increased freedom, or who want to put cameras in tiny podcast studios and livestream high-quality shots of hosts and their guests.

The rise of highly ergonomic cameras could have a big impact on the quality of film and TV, says Booker T Mattison, a screenwriter and director who teaches filmmaking at the University of Georgia. “Point of view is often represented by the camera itself,” he says. “It absolutely, 100% allows you to tell better, more dynamic stories.”

There’s a risk that obsessing over one-take TV shows could become a gimmick at the expense of good storytelling, says Carey Duffy, director of product experiences at Cooke Optics.

Lightweight Cooke lenses were used by the makers of Adolescence. Mr Duffy explains that his firm designed these lenses to work with emerging, lightweight cameras and that this was possible in part because of the shorter distance between the back of the lens and the image sensor in those cameras, versus earlier devices.

But fascination over “oners” won’t be enough to retain audiences, says Prof Palmer: “Personally, it’s not going to make me want to watch something because it’s shot it one take – I want to watch these things because they’re good.”

India can’t grow enough apples to meet demand but farmers are struggling to raise production.

The 131cm-high figurine was sold at the Yongle International Auction in Beijing.

The world’s two biggest economies have agreed in principle a framework for de-escalating trade tensions.

The Hollywood studios allege Midjourney’s image generator is a “bottomless pit of plagiarism”.

Asian bakeries are seeing success at home and abroad by bringing global flavours to traditional French pastries.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

Part of Other Side of the Story

Save guides, add subjects and pick up where you left off with your BBC account.

Kendall Jenner, Pope Leo XIV and Prince Harry are just a few celebrities that have hit the headlines recently, and these famous faces also feature in this month’s quiz. But can you spot which of the images are real and which are AI generated? Challenge yourself to get full marks in this month’s AI or Real quiz.

And don’t forget, do your own research to find out where the original images and videos came from, verify sources, and check to see if credible news sites have covered the story.

Quiz: Can you spot the fake news stories from April 2025?

Met Gala AI pics go viral: How not to get caught out

Copyright © 2025 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

Sneha Sachar, who spent half her life in Delhi and now lives in California, is used to heat. But her hometown feels much hotter now than when she was growing up.

Even commuting by car is so uncomfortable in certain months, says Ms Sachar, who works for the Clean Cooling Collaborative, a philanthropic initiative focused on improved cooling.

Rising temperatures are even worse for outdoor workers. “This is really impacting the ability of people to continue to earn their livelihoods,” Ms Sachar says.

She says that there are a number of low-tech ways to keep buildings cool, such as designing for air flow.

For outdoor workers, even a 20-minute break from the heat and humidity, such as in well-designed cooling stations, can make a difference.

But beyond this, active cooling will become increasingly critical as temperatures continue to rise due to climate change.

Morgan Stanley is predicting that the annual growth rate of the cooling market, already worth $235bn (£180bn) a year, could more than double by 2030.

Yet existing cooling devices have serious drawbacks. One issue the refrigerant – the fluid that transitions back and forth from liquid to gas, in a process that transfers heat.

It’s common for them to leak from standard systems, harming both efficiency and potentially health.

The refrigerants typically used in cooling today are hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a group of synthetic gases with high global warming potential. HFCs are much more potent than carbon dioxide.

So one option is to replace the refrigerants with more climate-friendly versions. But the candidates with the lower global warming potential, also have problems.

For instance, propane is highly flammable. Ammonia is toxic. Carbon dioxide works at high pressures, requiring specialised equipment.

But as many places phase down HFCs, alternative refrigerants will remain important.

Ms Sachar says that we still need refrigerants because for home cooling, “A/Cs as we know them today will continue to be the solution, at least for the next decade or so”.

In the longer term, some scientists are looking toward cooling devices that don’t need liquid refrigerants at all.

Lindsay Rasmussen, who manages building and land-use projects at the energy non-profit RMI, calls these “revolutionary technologies”.

A major set of revolutionary cooling tech is solid-state cooling. This uses solid materials and some sort of additional force to induce temperature changes. That extra force could be pressure, voltage, magnets or mechanical stress.

Ms Rasmussen says that solid-state devices can go further than incremental improvements because “not only do they eliminate those super-polluting refrigerants, but they can also offer improved efficiency to the systems”.

RMI has identified between 10 and 20 start-ups working on early versions of solid-state cooling devices.

One of those startups is the German company Magnotherm, which uses magnets. Certain materials change temperature when exposed to magnetic fields.

“With our technology, it’s inherently safe because it’s not toxic, it’s a metal, and we operate at very low pressures,” according to Timur Sirman, the CEO and cofounder of Magnotherm.

The idea of magnetocaloric cooling has been around for years, but commercialising it is relatively new. Magnotherm has built about 40 beverage coolers, and about five refrigerators, in what is so far a manual and in-house process.

The permanent magnets are the most expensive part of the technology, Mr Sirman reports. “But it never breaks, so we can always reuse this quite cost-intensive component.”

The company is seeking out alternative sources of magnetic fields, as well as optimising materials, as they aim to dramatically increase the cooling capacity of their devices.

Mr Sirman believes that if you account for the efficiency and health issues of refrigerants, like leakages, Magnotherm products can compete on price. “We are not targeting customers who are only looking at initial cost.”

He acknowledges that for now the company’s beverage coolers are quite pricey. Their customers tend to be early adopters of new technologies.

Another technology under development is thermoelectric cooling.

This involves moving heat between two sides of a device. With the application of electrical energy, heat is transferred in the direction of the current.

A notable thermoelectric start-up is Phononic, which is based in the US and has an additional manufacturing facility in Thailand.

Millions of Phononic cooling devices are now in use, including in data centres, supermarkets and other buildings.

Their cooling devices are built in a similar way to computer chips, using semiconducting materials to transfer the heat.

“Our chips are really thin, really small, but they get really cold. They consume a small amount of electricity in generating that coldness, but they pack one hell of a punch,” says Tony Atti, the CEO of Phononic.

He says that, to work at their best, traditional fridges need to be run all the time.

But thermoelectric devices can be easily switched on off. This helps to reduce the costs, energy use and space requirements.

“We like to present the coolness on demand where you need it,” says Mr Atti.

Another advantage is that thermoelectric cooling can operate silently. “That’s because there’s zero moving parts,” Ms Rasmussen explains. “The heat is occurring because of the reaction in the material level.”

In contrast, standard vapour compression systems contain pumps, condensers and expanders for refrigerant, which all generate much of the noise.

A different type of solid-state cooling is elastocaloric cooling. This achieves temperature changes through mechanical stress to elastocaloric materials, which can cool down or heat up with the application of stress.

Researchers in four European countries are collaborating on SMACool, an elastocaloric air conditioner that uses metal tubes made from specific metallic alloys.

At the moment, elastocaloric prototypes have much lower cooling capacity than commercial air conditioning. And the maximum possible efficiency of SMACool is still lower than that of conventional air conditioning, although the aim is to beat the energy efficiency of A/C.

However, progress is continuing. A team led by Hong Kong researchers recently created an A/C alternative that achieved a cooling power of 1,284W—the first time an elastocaloric device surpassed the 1,000W mark. One innovation was using graphene nanofluid rather than distilled water to transfer the heat.

Overall, Ms Rasmussen says, solid-state devices are generally not yet as powerful as conventional vapour-compression air conditioning. But she expects performance improvements over time.

She also expects improvements in affordability. So far solid-state cooling has mainly been deployed in wealthy countries.

A key question, Ms Rasmussen says, is “Can these technologies scale up to where they could be affordable for those who need it the most and where the greatest demand for cooling is coming from?”

The innovative collection created by Blackburn College students will be auctioned off for charity.

The BBC looks at the latest innovation and technology as workboats try to decarbonise.

Customers need stronger protections against scammers capitalising on green energy schemes, says Scotland’s consumer body.

Light shows involving hundreds and even thousands of drones are becoming big attractions.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

For Mansukh Prajapati, childhood in the western Indian city of Morbi began before sunrise, with a six-mile walk to collect clay for their family business.

“My father was a potter,” he recalls.

Often he would wake up to the rhythmic sound of his father at work at his potter’s wheel.

“My mother and I would get up at four in the morning and walk for miles every day to get clay.”

Used for storing water, clay pots were a common item in Indian households in the 1970s.

But the income from making pots was meagre and the profession also came with social stigma.

“Nobody wanted to their daughter married in a potter’s family,” Mr Prajapati says. “They feared she will be burdened with endless labour.”

Aged 31, a natural disaster marked the turning point for Mr Prajapati.

The devastating earthquake that hit Gujarat in 2001 destroyed his family home and left a pile of smashed clay pots in the courtyard.

“A local reporter wrote that ‘the poor people’s fridge is broken’,” Mr Prajapati says.

“Clay pots keep water cool in the summer, so they are just like a fridge. The thought got stuck in my head. So, I decided to make a fridge out of clay that doesn’t need electricity.”

With no formal training, Mr Prajapati started experimenting with designs and materials.

“I first tried to make it like the modern fridge and even added a water tank, but nothing worked’, he says.

“At one point I had $22,000 (£17,000) in loans and had to sell my house and small workshop. But I knew I had to keep going.”

It took four years of tinkering to come up with a design that worked – a small clay cabinet with a water talk on the top and storage shelves below.

As water trickles through the cabinet’s porous clay walls, it naturally cools the interior.

Mr Prajapati says it can keep fruit and vegetables fresh for at least five days – no electricity needed.

He named it MittiCool or the clay that stays cool.

At $95 its affordable and now sold through 300 stores in India and exported to countries including the UK, Kenya, and UAE.

“Fridges are a dream for many poor families,” Mr Prajapati says. “And such dreams should be within reach.”

Mr Prajapati’s innovation is part of a growing wave of grassroots entrepreneurship in India, driven by necessity.

Prof Anil Gupta who runs the Honeybee Network, a platform for supporting such ventures, call these “frugal innovations”.

“It is a mindset,” says Prof Gupta.

“Frugal innovation is about making solutions affordable, accessible, and available. Many of these innovators don’t have formal education but are solving real world problems.”

It’s difficult to put a number on such businesses, as there has never been an in-depth study.

Prof Gupta says such start-ups are crucial because they provide jobs in rural areas and start a cycle of economic change.

For example, Mr Prajapati now employs 150 people in his workshop and has branched out into cookware, clay water filters and is experimenting with homes made of clay.

Another start-up that’s hoping for similar success, is run by Bijayshanti Tongbram in the northeastern state of Manipur.

She lives in Thanga village which is home to one of India’s largest freshwater lakes, Loktak.

Here lotus flowers bloom in abundance.

“People in my village use the petals of lotus flowers for religious offerings. But their stems often go to waste and that’s what I wanted to change and thought of doing something sustainable,” she says.

A botanist by profession, Ms Tongbram developed a way to extract silk-like fibres from the lotus stems and now leads a team of 30 women in her village who spin the threads into a yarn and weaves them into unique scarves and garments.

“It takes two months, and 9,000 lotus stems to make one scarf,” she says.

Ms Tongbram pays the women $80 a month.

“This isn’t just about fashion. I am giving women in my village a chance to do something other than fishing and earn money,” she says.

Like many small business owners, she wants to scale-up and find new markets, perhaps overseas.

“Funding is the biggest challenge,” she says.

Prof Gupta from the Honeybee network agrees.

“There are government schemes and small grants, but rural entrepreneurs often don’t know how to access them.

“Even venture capitalists who are looking at IT innovations rarely invest in these kinds of start-ups because of high transaction costs,” he says.

Nevertheless, innovators continue to spring up.

In Karanataka’s Vijaynagar, Girish Badragond is working on a device to help blind and partially-sighted farmers.

His device, described as a smart farming stick, uses soil sensors and weather data to guide its users about the crop conditions and harvests through audio messages and vibrations.

“There are so many blind people in India who want to farm but they can’t trust others to guide them. This will help them become independent and empower them,” says Mr Badragond.

He has sourced mechanical parts from different shops and is hoping to gain support for commercialising his project soon. For now, he is doing rounds of government exhibitions.

“It’s a prototype but I am hopeful that people will support me to change lives of others,” he says.

Details are still emerging, but these are the people so far confirmed by the BBC to have died.

Hindu temples in Harrow and Neasden are offering special prayers for the Air India crash victims.

One British man, who was a passenger on the London-bound flight, survived the crash in Ahmedabad, western India.

London-bound flight carrying 242 people crashed shortly after take-off in Ahmedabad, western India.

Experts told the BBC that a flap issue, engine failure or a bird strike are among the possible causes of the crash.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

US green fuel company HIF Global has a big vision for Texas’s Matagorda County: a $7bn (£5.2bn) commercial scale e-methanol factory to supply the world market.

The plant, which it claims would be the largest to date anywhere, would make e-methanol from captured carbon dioxide and green hydrogen produced on site using renewable energy.

Its construction would create thousands of jobs and the product would power ships and planes in a far cleaner way.

But the company has yet to make its final investment decision. It is waiting to see what the Republican-led Congress does to clean energy tax credits, in particular the one for clean hydrogen production.

The fate of the subsidies is part of a sweeping budget bill currently under consideration by the Senate.

A version of the legislation passed by the lower house cuts the hydrogen tax credit, amongst others, and scales back more.

The clean hydrogen tax credit would help reduce the cost of the American technology going into the facility, and aide in competing with Chinese e-methanol producers, says Lee Beck, HIF Global’s senior vice president for global policy and commercial strategy.

“The goal is not to be dependent on tax credits over the long run, but to get the project started.”

Ms Beck can’t say yet what the outcome for the Matagorda facility will be if the tax credit is ultimately killed, except that it will make things hard – and the US isn’t the only location the company operates in.

The Trump administration has been particularly hostile to green energy.

Amongst the President’s actions since taking office in January include initiating the US’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement and temporarily suspending renewable energy projects on federal lands (he has a particular disdain for wind power).

Trump has also directed agencies to pause Green New Deal funds, which he regularly calls “Green New Scam” funds: grants and loans being made under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), enacted under Biden’s presidency in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

Those grants and loans, together with the clean energy tax credits that are also part of the IRA, have been funnelling billions of new federal and private dollars into developing clean energy.

“It is tumultuous time,” says Adie Tomer, of the Brookings Institution, a think tank. “We are doing the exact opposite of our developed world peers.”

Court battles are ongoing over the President’s order to pause green funding, which might ultimately end up in the Supreme Court. In the meantime, agencies are conducting their own reviews and making their own decisions.

Jessie Stolark, executive director of the Carbon Capture Coalition, which represents companies involved in carbon capture and storage, laments the lack of clarity from the administration.

Members, she explains, have won project funding under the IIJA – including, for example, to build direct air capture facilities. But while projects generally have been able to access funds already awarded to earlier phases, it is unclear if they will be able to progress to additional phases where additional funds are supposed to be made available.

“It is causing uncertainty, which is really bad for project deployment,” says Ms Stolark. “If you endanger the success of these first-of-a-kind projects it just takes the wind out of the sails of the whole [carbon management] industry long term.”

Meanwhile, the fate of the IRA, which the Congress has the power to amend or repeal along with the IIJA, is being decided, in part, by the budget bill, which aims to permanently extend President Trump’s first term tax cuts by making savings elsewhere.

What exactly will remain of the Federal green energy agenda when both the House and Senate agree a compromise version remains to be seen.

It seems likely the IRA’s tax credits, which are generally scheduled to expire at the end of 2032, though some extend beyond that date, will take a heavy hit, even if the IRA dodges the bullet of outright repeal.

Also marked for termination include the tax credits for consumers buying EVs and making their homes more efficient.

Many others, such as those for producing clean electricity and manufacturing clean energy components like wind turbine parts, solar panels and batteries, would be phased out earlier or made harder and less worthwhile to secure.

That many of the projects set to benefit from the tax credits are in Republican areas seems to have had little sway in the House, notes Ashur Nissan of policy advice firm Kaya Partners.

But critics say that the Biden green energy initiatives are too expensive.

The IRA’s energy tax credits are “multiple times” larger than initial estimates, and expose American taxpayers to “potentially unlimited liability” noted a recent report from the libertarian Cato Institute advocating their full repeal.

Meanwhile, actual clean energy investment in the US including from both government and private sources (the far larger share) dropped 3.8% in the first quarter of 2025 to $67.3bn, a second quarterly decline, according to new figures released by the Clean Investment Monitor.

“Momentum is sagging a bit which is a little concerning,” says Hannah Hess of the Rhodium Group research firm, which partners with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to produce it. She attributes the trend to a mix of high inflation, high interest rates, global supply chain issues and uncertainty in the policy environment created by the new administration.

There was also, she observes, a record number of clean energy manufacturing projects cancelled in the first quarter of 2025 – six projects mostly in batteries and representing $6.9bn in investment– though it is difficult to say to what extent the new administration was a driver.

More worrying to Ms Hess is the decline since the last quarter in announcements for some types of new projects, which she believes can be “more strongly” attributed to the policy situation, with companies lacking confidence there will be demand for the clean products their projects would produce.

Tariffs, which will increase factory construction costs if components need to be imported, are an extra factor that may negatively influence project decisions going forward, notes Anthony DeOrsey of the Cleantech Group research and consulting firm.

Investment aside, companies are also making shifts in how they market their products.

The homepage of LanzaJet – which produces Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) from ethanol – used to emphasise how scaling SAF could “meet the urgent moment of climate change”. It now focusses on its potential to “harness the energy of locally produced feedstocks”.

SAF has never been about just one thing, notes CEO Jimmy Samartzis. Tailoring messaging to be “relevant to the stakeholders we are engaging with” makes sense.

The company is current waiting on a $3m grant it was awarded by the Federal Aviation Authority last August as part of a nearly $300m program designed to help aviation transition to SAF and which was funded under the IRA.

“It is approved funding, but it is stuck at this point,” says Mr Samartzis.

The 131cm-high figurine was sold at the Yongle International Auction in Beijing.

The world’s two biggest economies have agreed in principle a framework for de-escalating trade tensions.

The Hollywood studios allege Midjourney’s image generator is a “bottomless pit of plagiarism”.

Asian bakeries are seeing success at home and abroad by bringing global flavours to traditional French pastries.

Jetstar Asia has struggled with rising supplier costs, high airport fees and increased competition.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

“It was going great until it fell apart.” Richard Varvill recalls the emotional shock that hits home when a high-tech venture goes off the rails.

The former chief technology officer speaks ruefully about his long career trying to bring a revolutionary aerospace engine to fruition at UK firm Reaction Engines.

The origins of Reaction Engines go back to the Hotol project in the 1980s. This was a futuristic space plane that caught the public imagination with the prospect of a British aircraft flying beyond the atmosphere.

The secret sauce of Hotol was heat exchanger technology, an attempt to cool the super-heated 1,000C air that enters an engine at hypersonic speeds.

Without cooling this will melt aluminium, and is, Mr Varvill says, “literally too hot to handle”.

Fast forward three decades to October 2024 and Reaction Engines was bringing the heat exchanger to life at sites in the UK and US.

UK Ministry of Defence funding took the company into hypersonic research with Rolls-Royce for an unmanned aircraft. But that was not enough to keep the business afloat.

Rolls-Royce declines to go into details about Reaction’s collapse, but Mr Varvill is more specific.

“Rolls-Royce said it had other priorities and the UK military has very little money.”

Aviation is a business with a very long gestation time for a product. It can take 20 years to develop an aircraft. This unforgiving journey is known as crossing the Valley of Death.

Mr Varvill knew the business had to raise more funds towards the end of 2024 but big investors were reluctant to jump on board.

“The game was being played right to the very end, but to cross the Valley of Death in aerospace is very hard.”

What was the atmosphere like in those last days as the administrators moved in?

“It was pretty grim, we were all called into the lecture theatre and the managing director gave a speech about how the board ‘had tried everything’. Then came the unpleasant experience of handing over passes and getting personal items. It was definitely a bad day at the office.”

This bad day was too much for some. “A few people were in tears. A lot of them were shocked and upset because they’d hoped we could pull it off right up to the end.”

It was galling for Mr Varvill “because we were turning it around with an improved engine. Just as we were getting close to succeeding we failed. That’s a uniquely British characteristic.”

Did they follow the traditional path after a mass lay-off and head to the nearest pub? “We had a very large party at my house. Otherwise it would have been pretty awful to have put all that effort into the company and not mark it in some way.”

His former colleague Kathryn Evans headed up the space effort, the work around hypersonic flight for the Ministry of Defence and opportunities to apply the technology in any other commercial areas.

When did she know the game was up? “It’s tricky to say when I knew it was going wrong, I was very hopeful to the end. While there was a lot of uncertainty there was a strong pipeline of opportunities.”

She remembers the moment the axe fell and she joined 200 colleagues in the HQ’s auditorium.

“It was the 31st of October, a Thursday, I knew it was bad news but when you’re made redundant with immediate effect there’s no time to think about it. We’d all been fighting right to the end so then my adrenalin crashed.”

And those final hours were recorded. One of her colleagues brought in a Polaroid camera. Portrait photos were taken and stuck on a board with message expressing what Reaction Engines meant to individuals.

What did Ms Evans write? “I will very much miss working with brilliant minds in a kind, supportive culture.”

Since then she’s been reflecting “on an unfinished mission and the technology’s potential”.

But her personal pride remains strong. “It was British engineering at its best and it’s important for people to hold their heads up high.”

Her boss Adam Dissel, president of Reaction Engines, ran the US arm of the business. He laments the unsuccessful struggle to wrest more funds from big names in aerospace.

“The technology consistently worked and was fairly mature. But some of our strategic investors weren’t excited enough to put more money in and that put others off.”

The main investors were Boeing, BAE Systems and Roll-Royce. He feels they could have done more to give the wider investment community confidence in Reaction Engines.

It would have avoided a lot of pain.

“My team had put heart and soul into the company and we had a good cry. “

Did they really shed tears? “Absolutely, I had my tears at our final meeting where we joined hands and stood up. I said ‘We still did great, take a bow.”

What lessons can we draw for other high-tech ventures? “You definitely have no choice but to be optimistic,” says Mr Dissel.

The grim procedure of winding down the business took over as passwords and laptops were collected while servers were backed up in case “some future incarnation of the business can be preserved”.

The company had been going in various guises for 35 years. “We didn’t want it to go to rust. I expect the administrator will look for a buyer for the intellectual property assets,” Mr Dissel adds.

Other former employees also hold out for a phoenix rising from the ashes. But the Valley of Death looms large.

“Reaction Engines was playing at the very edge of what was possible. We were working for the fastest engines and highest temperatures. We bit off the hard job,” says Mr Dissel.

Despite all this Mr Varvill’s own epitaph for the business overshadows technological milestones. “We failed because we ran out of money.”

Light shows involving hundreds and even thousands of drones are becoming big attractions.

Food firms are marketing ranges with fewer ingredients, but are they healthier?

Billions of dollars of US federal funding for green energy projects hangs in the balance.

Indian start-ups are using local materials and innovative ideas to make useful and affordable products.

The vigilance needed in the military can be an asset in the cybersecurity industry.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

With Air Canada and Southwest the latest airlines to charge passengers for check-in luggage, the ballooning cost of such ancillary or “junk fees” is provoking anger among politicians and consumer groups. At the same time, sales of suitcases small enough for passengers to take on the plane as hand luggage are booming.

Standing outside Toronto’s downtown airport, Lauren Alexander has flown over from Boston for the weekend. She describes such additional charges as “ridiculous”.

“It feels like a trick,” says the 24-year-old. “You buy the ticket, you think it’s going to be less expensive, then you have to pay $200 (£148) extra [to bring a suitcase].”

To avoid the fee, Ms Alexander instead travelled with a small backpack as hand luggage.

Sage Riley, who is 27, agrees, telling the BBC, “It can be pricey.”

There was a time when checked bags, seat selection and your meals all came as standard on commercial flights. But that all changed with the rise of the budget airlines, says Jay Sorensen of US aviation consultancy IdeaWorks.

It was in 2006 when UK low-cost carrier FlyBe became what is believed to be the world’s first airline to start charging passengers to check in bags. It charged £2 for a pre-booked item of luggage, and £4 if the customer hadn’t paid in advance.

Other budget carriers then quickly followed suit, with the so-called flag carriers or established airlines then also doing so, at least on shorter flights.

In 2008 American Airlines became the first US airline to charge a fee, $15, for the first checked bag on its domestic routes.

Mr Sorenson says such traditional airlines felt they had no choice when they “began to realise that the low-cost carriers were providing very significant competition”. He adds: “They felt they had to do something to meet that.”

Fast forward to today, and US airlines alone made $7.27bn from check-in baggage fees last year, according to federal figures. That is up from $7bn in 2023, and $5.76bn in 2019.

Little wonder then that more of us are trying to just take carry-on. Kirsty Glenn, managing director of UK luggage firm Antler, confirms that there is an ongoing surge in demand for small suitcases that meet airline dimension limits for carry-on luggage.

“We have seen huge spikes in searches online and on our website,” she says. Describing a new small-dimension case her company launched in April, Ms Glenn adds: “Testament to the trend of only travelling with hand luggage, it’s sold like crazy.”

At the same time, social media content about travel packing “hacks” and luggage that meets airlines’ carry-on size measurements, have soared according to travel journalist Chelsea Dickenson. She makes this content for TikTok.

“Social media has really propelled this idea of needing a bag that fits the baggage allowance requirements, says Ms Dickenson. “It’s become a core part of the content that I create and post on social media.”

Ms Dickenson, whose social media following has ballooned to close to a million followers, adds that her luggage videos have become a “core part of the content” she creates.

“It blows my mind,” she says. “I could spend weeks and weeks researching a big trip, and the resulting videos will not come close to doing as well as me going and buying a cheap suitcase, taking it to the airport, testing it in one of those baggage sizes and reporting back.”

The overall global cost of all airline extra fees, from luggage to seat selection, buying wifi access, lounge access, upgrades, and food and drink, is expected to reach $145bn this year, 14% of the sector’s total revenues. That’s according to the International Air Transport Association, which represents the industry. This compares with $137bn last year.

These numbers have caught the attention of some politicians in Washington, and last December airline bosses were grilled before a senate committee. It was a Democrat senator who used the term “junk fees”.

He wants the federal government to review such costs and potentially fine airlines. We asked the US Department of Transportation for a comment, but did not get a response.

But if having to pay for check-in wasn’t enough, a growing number of airlines are now charging for hand luggage. For example, Irish budget airline Ryanair will only allow you to carry a small bag that fits under the seat in front of you for free. If you want to take a bigger bag or suitcase to go in the overhead locker that will cost you from £6.

Other European airlines that now have similar charges for hand luggage are Easyjet, Norwegian Airlines, Transavia, Volotea, Vueling, and Wizzair.

This has annoyed pan-European consumer group BEUC (The European Consumer Organisation), which last month filed a complaint with the European Commission.

BEUC cites a 2014 EU Court of Justice ruling, which said “carriage of hand baggage cannot be made subject to a price supplement, provided that it meets reasonable requirements in terms of its weight and dimensions, and complies with applicable security requirements”.

However, what determines “reasonable requirements” continues to be a grey area in need of an official ruling.

There can, however, be a different way of doing things, as shown by Indian airline IndiGo. Its boss Pieter Eibers says that it does not charge for check-in luggage.

“The entire philosophy here is different,” he says. “We don’t want long lines, and endless debates at gates about the weight of luggage. We don’t have any of that. We turn our planes around in 35 minutes.”

India can’t grow enough apples to meet demand but farmers are struggling to raise production.

Experts told the BBC that a flap issue, engine failure or a bird strike are among the possible causes of the crash.

The airline said it would also continue to take legal action against anyone who disrupts a flight.

Caroline Bridge says a trip to Kazakhstan could be next for her and son Tom.

People will opt to drive if buses feel outdated or complicated, say researchers.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

The wedding ceremony was almost over when newlywed Bobby Underwood stepped on a napkin-covered glass to break it, as is Jewish tradition, and everyone shouted “Mazel Tov!”.

But as he and his new wife Siobhan turned to walk back down the aisle, their wedding officiants said, “Wait.” There was a surprise.

“All of these drones started rising up,” recalls Mrs Underwood. “It was honestly remarkable, very overwhelming – and incredibly emotional for us.”

Around 300 drones appeared in the night sky, displaying lights of various colours, and forming images chosen to represent the bride and groom.

These included a baseball player hitting a ball – as Mr Underwood is a big baseball fan – and a diamond ring being placed on a finger.

The couple were married on New Year’s Eve 2024, in New York State. Mrs Underwood’s mother had arranged the surprise drone show with help from the couple’s wedding planner – who had suggested it as a “wow factor” component of the day. It seemed to have the desired effect.

“It was kind of just shock – ‘Is this really happening right now?’,” says Mrs Underwood. “I can’t believe my mom did this for us.”

Drone shows are becoming ever more popular. Once rarities, they are now appearing at occasions ranging from birthday parties and weddings, to major sporting events. Some theme parks even have resident drone shows that take place multiple nights in a row.

Glastonbury music festival had its first drone show in 2024, flown by UK-based drone show company, Celestial.

And record-breaking displays are pushing the technology to its limits – the biggest drone show in history took place in China last October. It featured a total of 10,200 drones and broke a record set only the previous month. So, does all this spell the end for fireworks?

“They are really beautiful – they are art,” says Sally French, a US-based drone industry commentator known as The Drone Girl. She says that drone shows have appeared at baseball games, corporate conferences, and even at ports, to celebrate the launch of cruises.

Drone displays are becoming highly sophisticated, she explains, with some drone shows featuring thousands of flying devices, allowing them to animate figures or patterns in incredible detail.

“I saw a Star Wars-themed drone show where there was a full-on lightsabre battle,” adds Ms French.

One barrier might be the price tag, however, with the cost per drone at around $300 (£220) in the UK, says Ms French, citing industry data from drone show software firm SPH Engineering: “A 500 drone show would be over $150,000.”

Mrs Underwood does not have an exact figure, but estimates that her wedding drone show cost tens of thousands of dollars.

The sky’s the limit, actually. Skymagic, one of the world’s largest drone show companies, has put on major displays that cost north of $1m says Patrick O’Mahony, co-founder and creative director.

Skymagic’s shows have taken place in various countries – including the 2023 Coachella music festival in California.

The company has also performed drone shows in the UK, including as part of the King’s Coronation concert, which was broadcast by the BBC.

Mr O’Mahony has worked with designers of fireworks displays and other, similar events. But drones have revolutionised outdoor public displays, he says.

His company has a fleet of 6,000 custom-designed drones. Each one can reach speeds of up to 10 meters per second. The drones sport LED lights and have batteries that allow for 25 minutes of flight time.

To make them easier to transport, the drones are stored in flight cases and unpacked at venues in a giant marquee before they are laid out in the take-off area, half a metre apart, in a grid pattern.

“Once the drones have received their ‘go’ command [they] fly the entire show,” adds Mr O’Mahony, explaining that a single human pilot on the ground controls thousands of the devices at once.

The drones are geo-fenced, based on Global Positioning System (GPS) data, which prevents them from straying beyond the allotted flight area. In windy conditions, though, they can get blown off course. In such cases, they automatically return to a landing spot on the ground, says Mr O’Mahony.

Fireworks have a “boom” factor that drones generally don’t, notes Ms French. However, Bill Ray, an analyst at market research firm Gartner, says that some drones can now launch pyrotechnics, for a firework-like effect. For instance, a stream of sparks raining down from the lower portion of an image created by a group of drones.

Plus, Mr Ray says it is much easier to accurately synchronise drone movements with music during a show, which could be another reason behind their appeal. But the cost of shows remains prohibitive to some, and in part comes down to the fact that laying out the devices and gathering them all up again after the performance is still a relatively slow, manual process, adds Mr Ray.

Pedro Rosário is chief executive of Drone Show Animations, a company that designs drone show performances for other companies that supply the drones themselves. Mr Rosário says that one challenging aspect of his work is in coming up with displays that adhere to various regulations applying to drone flights, since these rules differ from country to country. England has stricter regulations than countries in the Middle East, for example, he says.

Mr Rosário adds that drone shows, which might be paired with pyrotechnics, traditional fireworks or even lasers, allow for a huge degree of creative freedom: “You can really build something that has emotional value, it can tell a story.”

In Mrs Underwood’s case, that seems to have worked. Her guests enjoyed the spectacle too, she adds: “We’ve heard compliments about our wedding in general – but, consistently, the drone show is something people bring up as something they never expected to see.”

The 131cm-high figurine was sold at the Yongle International Auction in Beijing.

The world’s two biggest economies have agreed in principle a framework for de-escalating trade tensions.

The Hollywood studios allege Midjourney’s image generator is a “bottomless pit of plagiarism”.

Asian bakeries are seeing success at home and abroad by bringing global flavours to traditional French pastries.

The Serbian project, led by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, has run into opposition and scandal.

Copyright 2025 BBC. All rights reserved.  The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.