Sky Views: My frustration with an internet we still can't touch

You may find yourself clicking a link to another cute panda video, or looking at the Wikipedia entry for the toasted sandwich, and you may ask yourself, well: how did the promise of the internet end up here?

I do. More than 25 years since the world wide web and we're still just splashing around in the shallows.

My unfair gripe is that the biggest information revolution in history has so far confined itself, mostly, to information.

Despite varied and delightful services, like Tinder, they're all pretty much the same: look at something and send back your thoughts on that something.

To do a bit more, the internet needs to break through the glass screen and into the world; from information to action.

The first necessary and boring step in this is the internet of things, a term first coined in 1995 and only just getting there now, with small computers being embedded into everyday objects, like washing machines.

That's leading to new, emerging user interfaces, including voice control.

The next stage is much more radical, though: a world in which we transmit touch as easily as we do information.

Advances in robotics and in networks will allow us to manipulate objects in real time across continents.

Mischa Dohler, professor of wireless communications at Kings College London, calls it "the democratisation of labour".

A Vauxhall engineer will service a car in Asia from the UK; a Great Ormond Street Hospital surgeon will be able to operate on children in Aleppo.

You could be taught woodwork or painting or piano at home by an expert teacher an ocean away.

"The idea is to transmit labour digitally from any point in the world to any other point in the world," Dohler says.

"We could, in a sense, democratise labour the same way as knowledge has been democratised with the internet."

The internet may have collapsed borders, but every so often you still need to get on a plane. Not anymore.

Some of this is here already. The first remote surgery happened in 2001, when French surgeon Dr Jacques Marescaux, in a New York theatre, operated on a patient 6,230km away in Strasbourg.

Now the da Vinci surgical robot offers a commercial version of that system.

Teledildonics, or, if you prefer, cyberdildonics, let people operate sex toys for their partner from afar: just connect via wifi or bluetooth.

Telepresence robots - basically, a head-high screen stuck on a pole stuck on a hoverboard - let people "attend" events digitally, trundling around conference room floors; it's how Edward Snowden gets about the world despite being confined to Moscow. Imagine telepresence in a fully embodied android and you could combine all three.

But these are all haphazard. The da Vinci robot is an expensive and proprietary system, for instance.

Dohler is intent on building a set standardised plumbing for the tactile internet - the same features that allowed the internet to be open and adopted by anyone with a connection.

Some of that is technical, but important: coming up with open codecs so that data can be compressed and decompressed and swapped between very different robots efficiently; establishing an ultrafast, omnipresent 5G network so that every robot enjoys zero delay (Marescaux's pioneering surgery needed France Telecom to provide a dedicated fibre optic line to minimise the lag time between his movements and the robot mimicking them).

When can we expect the tactile internet?

Dohler says sometime around 2025, which seems slightly optimistic to me, given that we haven't even agreed what 5G will look like yet.

Still, being quite literally out of touch will, in due course, be impossible.

Theresa May moves to allay 'hard Brexit' fears after pound slump

After a new slump in the pound, the Prime Minister has moved to allay industry fears of a clean break from European trading arrangements. 

She told Sky News that she wanted British business to have the maximum possible opportunity to "operate within" the single market.

Since an uncompromising speech on the opening day of Conservative Party conference, widely interpreted as an endorsement of a "hard Brexit", sterling has been under pressure on the currency markets.

:: FTSE 100 closes near record high

On Tuesday the pound fell to a new 31-year low against the US dollar - below the level it slumped to on the day after the vote to leave the EU.

Image Caption:Margaret Thatcher: architect of the single market

The Prime Minister played down the sterling moves in an interview with Sky News.

She said: "Of course we see sterling moving in different ways at different times but if you look overall at economic data coming out over last few months actually the data has been more positive than people were expecting. It's early days of course."

Asked why she was withdrawing Britain from the Single Market created by her party and predecessor Margaret Thatcher, she said: "The question is what the relationship we want in the future with the EU.

"I want that relationship to have the best possible deal, the maximum opportunity, for UK businesses to be able to trade with and to operate within that market in the European Union which is the Single Market".

The phrase "operate within" means that the Government is willing to contemplate some sort of shared regulatory framework with the European Union, short of European Court of Justice jurisdiction.

Image Caption:May: I want the best deal for the UK

This is especially important for the financial services sector, whose representatives at this conference have been expressing deep concern at some ministers reluctance to take seriously their need to maintain the "passport" to operate in European markets.

A number of Cabinet Ministers at the conference have privately pointed out that Mrs May's speech could be consistent with membership of the EFTA (European Free Trade Association) bloc, which has its own Court, situated next to the ECJ in Luxembourg.

:: Could May trigger Article 50 before March?

"We need to approach this to make sure we get the right deal for the UK, not looking at models that already exist but saying 'what's going to work for us?'.

"This is about a partnership, a relationship with the European Union which is going to be in the best interests of the UK," she said.

The PM will make her full speech on the domestic agenda to close the conference on Wednesday.

It will focus on economic, corporate and social reforms "where everyone plays by the same rules".

She said: "There's no question of abandoning Conservative free market principles", and that she was continuing with the work of the 2015 General Election manifesto.

The pound's across the board fall is now exactly in line with the "shock scenario" in the Treasury's much-criticised predictions of the ahead of the EU referendum.

Kim Kardashian made herself a target for robbery on social media, police say

Kim Kardashian West was robbed at gunpoint of millions of pounds worth of jewellery after making herself a target by flaunting her lavish lifestyle on social media, police have said.

The 35-year-old reality TV star reportedly had a gun held to her head before she was tied up and locked in the bathroom of a luxury residence in the French capital where she was staying during Paris fashion week.

She was "badly shaken but physically unharmed," a spokeswoman said.

Five masked and armed men were involved in the raid and escaped with a jewellery box containing a ring worth €4m (£3.5m), as well as other valuables worth between €5m and €6m (£4.4m - £5.2m).

Muslim school changes curriculum after Sky News investigation

A private Muslim school has been forced to change its curriculum, overhaul teaching standards and improve child safety following a Sky News investigation.

Education watchdog Ofsted served a statutory notice on the Institute of Islamic Education in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, after its strict Sharia code for pupils was made public, including the threat of expulsion for mixing with outsiders. 

Documents handed out to parents warned that boarders were forbidden from watching TV, listening to music, or reading newspapers, while pupils were taught not to speak to the media. 

The school, which is run by the secretive Deobandi sect, has now been told it is meeting the required standards, but it has no website and it is unclear whether the policies are still in place. 

Inspectors had praised the school in 2011, but re-graded it as inadequate in October 2015 after a re-inspection, and told senior figures at the sect's Markazi Mosque that they were failing to meet basic standards. 

In a further blow to the sect, which runs the school in the grounds of its Tablighi Jamaat headquarters in Savile Town, a subsequent school improvement plan was rejected in April 2016 by the Department for Education. 

Image Caption:Shabbir Daji is involved with both schools. Pic: Batley News

The Ofsted report blamed school leaders, governors and trustees for failing to ensure child safety, and said the trustees, led by mosque elder Shabbir Daji, "do not fulfil their statutory duty".

Politicians and papers 'fuel rise' in racist attacks across UK

The UK is not doing enough to tackle a rise in racist attacks - with newspapers and politicians partly to blame, according to a new report.

Human rights experts from the European Council in Strasbourg say new laws are needed to tackle racism and discrimination.

Although the European Council is separate from the EU, its criticism and a call for stronger UK ties to the European Convention on Human Rights is unlikely to be welcomed by campaigners pushing for a swift exit from Europe.

The report, published by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), said Brexit "seems to have led to a further rise in 'anti-foreigner' sentiment" against what it claims is a backdrop of rising Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

The commission said a particularly high number of violent racist incidents occurred in 2013 when there was a sharp rise in anti-Muslim violence, while anti-Semitic incidents reached the highest level ever recorded in 2014.

Christian Ahlund, the chair of the watchdog, said: "It is no coincidence that racist violence is on the rise in the UK at the same time as we see worrying examples of intolerance and hate speech in the newspapers, online and even among politicians.The report also said there are "significant gaps" between equality law in Britain and in Northern Ireland, and pointed to the absence of a national strategy for the integration of Roma, Gypsies and Travellers in the UK.

A number of positive developments were cited in the study, however.

The Commission welcomed the Equality Act 2010 coming into force, and said the UK has generally strong legislation against racism and racial discrimination.

The Government launched a new action plan to tackle hate crime in July.

US suspends contact with Russia over Syria

The White House says it has "run out of patience" with Russia and has suspended contact with the Kremlin over Syria.

Tense relations sharply deteriorated on Monday when the US State Department announced that bilateral discussions were being stopped.

The move had been threatened last week by Secretary of State John Kerry, furious at repeated airstrikes on rebel-held areas of Aleppo.

Hundreds of civilians are thought to have been killed in bombardments of the city in recent weeks.

America is accusing Russia of "failing to live up to its own commitments" under international law, namely sticking to the terms of an agreement made in September to restore a faltering ceasefire.

:: Aleppo's largest hospital in rebel-held area is 'completely destroyed'

The US expressed a desire to the make sure humanitarian aid could reach cities under siege, saying that halting talks was "not a decision we took lightly".A statement accused Russia of being "unwilling or unable to ensure Syria regime adherence to arrangements to which Moscow agreed".

"Rather," the US said, "Russia and the Syrian regime have chosen to pursue a military course inconsistent with the cessation of hostilities, as demonstrated by intensified attacks against civilian areas, targeting of critical infrastructure such as hospitals, preventing humanitarian aid from reaching civilians in need."

Image Caption:Al-Kindi hospital in Aleppo is said to have been destroyed by Syrian government troops

In response, Russia has said it regrets America's decision, insisting it has been attempting to sustain the agreement and throwing the accusation back at the White House.

"After failing to fulfill the agreements that they themselves worked out, they are trying to shift responsibility on to someone else," said Russia's foreign ministry.

Sky News US correspondent Amanda Walker said the bombardment of Aleppo has been "the final straw" for America.

The US also says it is withdrawing personnel it had sent to take part in the creation of a joint US-Russia centre.

Military strategy, as well as intelligence, were to be run from the centre.

In a statement, Moscow added: "It all essentially came down to a simple question: who are Jabhat al Nusra, who is behind them and why can't Washington fulfill its promise to divide the terrorists from the so-called moderate opposition?"

The White House said the suspension would not affect communications between the two countries on counter-terrorism operations in Syria.

In a day of high tensions, President Vladimir Putin earlier suspended a deal with the US on the disposal of weapons-grade plutonium.

The White House has said it regrets Russia's decision to put that agreement on hold.

Ben Needham police want part of Kos farmhouse demolished

Police searching for missing toddler Ben Needham want to knock down part of a farmhouse built after he disappeared on the Greek island of Kos.

A second week of excavations are under way near the spot where 21-month-old Ben went missing in 1991.

Detective Inspector Jon Cousins said a newspaper photograph from the time showed part of a nearby farmhouse had not yet been built.    

"I'm in negotiation with the family that owns the farmhouse," he said.

Image Caption:A digger searches farmland for the missing toddler. Pic: Mark White

"There is reason for me to consider removing a small part of this farmhouse in order that I can be sure that I have not missed any opportunity to find the answers that I need to."

Mr Cousins said talks with the owners were difficult as many family members had grown up there.

"I fully understand the concern that the family has," he said.

He added that the operation was back on track after a delay caused when a suspected ancient burial site was discovered.

Lawyers for the landowner asked police to stop their dig while they sought certain assurances.

A team of 19 officers from South Yorkshire Police are on the island to investigate claims the toddler might have been killed by a digger driver who had been working on the site.

Ben's mother, Kerry Needham, was warned to "prepare for the worst".

Konstantinos Barkas, also known as Dino, was clearing land with an excavator close to where Ben was playing on the day he vanished.

Image Caption:Computer images of how Ben may have changed over the years

Following a TV appeal in May, a friend of the builder reportedly told police that Barkas may have been responsible for his death.

Barkas died of stomach cancer last year.

In the 25 years since Ben disappeared, most of the theories surrounding the toddler's disappearance have centred around fears he was abducted.