The hills testimony exposed the frustration felt by many American officials and diplomats as President Trump encouraged all those to build relationships with the Ukrainian government Dr Hill said the u.s. Ambassador to the e.u. Gordon someone's told her that Mr Trump had expanded his portfolio to include Ukraine and that was with the express intention of getting the country to launch an investigation into his potential presidential rival Joe Biden the British foreign secretary Dominic rubbers announced that a number of orphaned children whose British parents died in Syria are being returned to the u.k. No more details have been given but it's understood that the children were living in areas which used to be controlled by the Islamic state group Mr Rubb said this was the right thing to do this is even where the process of returning back to the u.k. a Number of often British children from the conflict in Syria we look at the cases individually very carefully and in these circumstances it's the right thing to do these children should be safe and sound here in the u.k. At home but caught up in that vicious conflict I hope and now be given the time the space and the support to return to some kind of normal life world news from the b.b.c. Riot police in Bolivia have fired tear gas to disperse supporters of the former president Evo Morales who resigned nearly 2 weeks ago the protesters were taking part in a funeral procession for 5 of the 8 people killed in clashes outside the gas plant on Tuesday. The United States has said it's concerned about the condition of anti-government protesters in Nicaragua who've been holed up in a church for more than a week 14 people there are holding a hunger strike Leonardo Russia reports the group has been surrounded by police inside the church in the city of Messiah they have no access to clean water or electricity they gather there to demand the release of relatives arrested by Nicaraguan police for political reasons the church's priest or lawyer or not the people who gave them support over the past 8 days have also been detained police have encircled the church present the near lot there says the protesters were planning terrorist attacks the u.s. Says it will use all economic and diplomatic means available to restore democracy in a caracal an investigation into an Italian road bridge collapse last year has discovered that sensors to monitor structural stability had long been out of action Italian media say the devices led engineers to conclude in 2014 that the bridge in Genoa was at risk of giving way but the sensors were damaged during roadworks falling the following year and they were never replaced 2 metal detector tests in Britain have been found guilty of stealing a hoard of Viking treasure worth nearly $4000000.00 The bear had dug up the coins and jewelry in a field they were required by law to declare everything they'd found to the earth origins but instead they began selling it on to dealers many of the items still haven't been recovered experts say they provide fresh information about the unification of England in Saxon times the 2 men were convicted of theft and concealing their discovery b.b.c. News. Hello and welcome to the enquiry with me Celia Hatton Each week one question for expert witnesses and an answer. In July China's all powerful state media trumpeted the findings of a major medical study stroke is now the leading cause of death the headlines read going on to warn about the dangers of eating too much salt it was the kind of health story you might read in any newspaper anywhere but in online chat groups Chinese people focused on something else that had crept into the death statistics. For the 1st time depressive disorders had jumped on to China's top 10 list of killers. Depression ranks 10th wrote one person scoring more than 11000 likes tens of thousands of people then seized the rare chance to voice their true feelings online ignoring the threat of China's censors. Over half those who are depressed haven't even been diagnosed they're being ignored read one popular comment people don't seek treatment because society is prejudiced said another the discussion grew eventually racking up more than 50000 comments and more than 4000000 views in just over a day a huge number even for China. That's just one snapshot from one country but it points to a nagging concern for many of us so this week we're asking what can we do about the world's mental health problem. Part one every country is a developing country. If I'm asked the question how many people are affected by meant her problems globally I would really respond by asking the question how many people are affected by physical health problems globally and I think if you look at the last question across the lifetime the answer would be 100 percent. The crim Patel is a big name in the world of global mental health He's a Harvard psychiatrist and co-founder of the Center for Global mental health in London u.k. And he's devoted his career to studying the issue across the world finding similarities in countries from his native India to Zimbabwe and the u.s. His conclusion everyone's vulnerable every single human being on this planet will at some point in their eyes be affected by a physical problem my speculation is this is also equally true of a mental health problem actually is one in 3 of all people will experience the clinically significant mental health condition at some point in their lives. So 30 percent of us will cross that admitted Li blurry line between experiencing normal negative emotions like anger and sadness to feeling like we can't manage mental health is much more than the absence of mental illness it is a state of wellbeing in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities can cope with the normal stresses of everyday life how do we measure mental health where's that line between feeling mentally well and feeling like something's wrong . Finding the line between feeling well and something being wrong has been one of the greatest challenges in psychiatry and psychology the honest truth right now is that we do not have a clear way of being able to distinguish those individuals who have a mental health problem from those who are otherwise well are the numbers rising the numbers of people affected by mental health problems are rising globally in large part driven by the increase in the global population in absolute numbers of people who are entering the risk periods for developing mental health problems that is adolescents and young adults or are also increasing dramatically particularly in regions which witnessed a baby boom in the sixty's for example in South Asia and in the coming years in sub-Saharan Africa. Here's what the big global surveys tell us the percentage of people across the world grappling with schizophrenia or personality disorders is remarkably consistent so too are the numbers of older people experiencing dementia that's in line with what we'd expect from populations that are living longer but some who study mental health trends say we are seeing a rise in anxiety and depression one that's out of step with simple population growth so they come Patel agrees with the people speaking out about depression on China's social media platforms they were on to something I don't think the word epidemic is correct but if you'd asked me Are we facing a global crisis of unmet needs for people with mental health problems yes we are one this is true in every country of the world when it comes to mental health he says every country is a developing country so even if you live in a rich country that doesn't mean you won't face stigma or long waiting lists for help. All over the world issues that might be treatable if they're caught early or being left to fester and that's making things much worse. Our 1st expert witness leaves us staring at a health crisis that no country has been able to solve so it's time to ask why when it's usually so easy to talk about our physical health is it so difficult to open up about mental health problems. Part 2 we need to talk. When I was a tiny land my mother developed a severe depression she sent me to run to a neighbor to get help because at that point in her extreme distress she wanted to put her head in the gas oven our next expert witness knows the impact of mental illness firsthand she wanted to put her head in the gas oven and also the heads of me and my young sister in those days we had coal gas in Britain and that was a common way to take one's life and fortunately I was able to get to a neighbor help came my mother received treatment and she went back to work a year later now I asked to resign I said Mum when you unwell did you say to your boss that you'd been away from work sick the depression's of course not you're mad if I told my boss why I was off sick that I would have lost my job. Graeme Thorneycroft watched his mother turn her life around it's what inspired him to become a psychiatry he's now Sir Graham Thorneycroft in the u.k. He was knighted by the Queen for his work reducing the stigma surrounding mental health problems in many countries I'd say most countries very idea of mental illness overlaps with madness and craziness and bring shame and embarrassment and damages not just one's own reputation but reputation the family indeed in some countries especially in South and Southeast Asia it may damage not just your marital prospects if you have a mental illness but the prospects of your wider family because there's a sense of vision etic or a familial taint upon the whole clan if you like for centuries we haven't really spoken about mental health people often talk about it in hushed tones behind closed doors or not at all the stigma so strong that people who do receive treatment. Are only the tip of the iceberg we have a difficulty specifically with depression so let's take one end of the spectrum which is called Major Depressive Disorder this is jargon in severe depression so recently we asked the question in 21 countries how common is this an answer between 4 and 5 percent of the population this year don't just feel a little bit down today but actually have severe depression might well be feeling like hurt themselves or taking their life and then we asked the question of all of those people in different countries how many were actually getting help the best we found in the rich countries one in 5 many 80 percent were not getting help the worst we found in the low income countries as one in 274 percent meaning 96 percent of people severe depression not mind a severe depression are not getting help in low income countries of course 85 percent of people world live in lower middle income countries that's where most of us live and the supply of actual treatment of any sort is miserably low at the moment that's a challenge that challenge begins by encouraging those who are in pain to put their hands up and get help stigma is a type of polluting or corroding fog or mist sort of miasma that interferes with every aspect of mental health where it's individual who's at home and lonely or depressed or of its policy making a profit ising as well at the top level every level is negatively affected by stigma it's almost like a house on fire you need to clear away the smoke so you can actually get to the source of the fire and put it out there and that's what stigma is exactly Graham and his fellow researchers have discovered that campaigns to reduce stigma have to be tailored to each local audience from cheap and cheerful radio jingles in southern Nigeria to with theatre group that tours coastal villages in Southeast India it all comes down to who is delivering the message the strongest evidence we have about how to reduce sigma is rigged. Excuse the simple and it's called social contact What does that mean it means arranging ways for people who have experience of mental health problems to come into contact with people who did not have that experience but Graham says that social contact doesn't have to be face to face celebrity messages and even fictional characters from books or movies can work it's enough to hear stories of people who've encountered mental health problems and overcome them without losing the love of the people around them. It's certainly a good thing to remove stigma and to talk about mental health that will help us to see just how many are suffering but still it doesn't answer why so many are struggling to cope. Our next expert witness offers some answers. Part 3 a brave new world. As stigma slowly we can see there are growing numbers of people who are suffering some of that rise can be matched by population growth but what else is contributing to our enzymes in depression some experts including our next witness to fundamental changes in the world around us in all societies and all countries as rich and poor small and large people heading more insight into mission. Is the director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse of the World Health Organization his work explores the complex list of factors that could push us across the line and contending with normal thoughts and emotions towards ones that stop us from functioning that is published literature is now ready decently done to say that they did that least a 3 to 4 times increase in the percentage of people who will have ngs ideo depression or even other mental disorders if they're affected by conflicts and wars and or some natural disasters but what if you haven't been directly affected by war or natural events like floods or forest fires what if you're living a supposedly normal life she Gaar sexiness believes that a host of new complexities tied to our modern world could also be causing problems I'm not talking about all the people in the world but for the very large number of people who live in urban environments who are doing what is going the knowledge based jobs the competition is very high and the stress has become unbearably high for many of these people together with the job uncertainty and also the economic issues reared expectations are much larger than what that he added is Shaker believes that. He makes the problems worse for those at the bottom end of the pyramid a large number of people have moved up in in life in terms of economic benefit the genes is an even and many people have become much much more powerful and ignore me capable and some others have moved just a little bit up and it's the inequality is the difference that people see for their reality versus the c.l.p. Which really affects them it's a mixture that's bound to create problems take a younger population that's contending with an urbanized world and in soaring inequality and then remove many of the traditional social networks that once offered support the usual earlier methods of social connection including in the extended family in the neighborhood in the community have decreased in many other revenues leg the social media having pleased and that really affects the way people react that resilience within the person is interacting with the sort of support they have or at least the perceived social support they have and danger action of that is affecting the chances of person having anxiety and depression and so humans are social beings they need to have social interactions in order to stay mentally healthy absolutely correct and that really is affecting the way we react to environment to people and to us the exactly one thing that certainly changed over the years is social media and many young people now play out their lives over the Internet how does that fit into all of this well it's difficult to analyze the various aspects of social media as they impact people's lives and there are certainly positive things that are happening because social media and people feel more connected people agree to converse with many more people than they are able to see face to face and so on but yes there is that other element that they become much more aware. About. The possibility for them. That remains out of did reach so the world has changed but the way in which we can take care of ourselves to cope with those changes hasn't really caught up yet. Because we find ourselves in a new word and hooping strategies and it was social support systems have no devil of Google but the debt kind of issues. Facing a global mental health Burton that's weighing on every country no exceptions and we're starting to understand what's fueling the crisis it's time for some solutions . Part for Grandmother time. In Sierra Leone for a very very long time there was only one psychiatrist working in the public sector for the entire country. Our next expert witness Grace Ryan is a researcher at London's global mental health center in the u.k. And then I think as part of the a bowler response they got a 2nd psychiatrist and I'm not sure that that 2nd psychiatrist is still even working in this is a country that had years of civil war Liberia I think had a very similar situation so there really is an extreme shortage of specialists to provide mental health care in the middle income country settings. This shortage comes with very real consequences. End Up With People living many years in psychiatric facilities that may be run by specialists but oftentimes the quality of care is pretty low so for example at the psychiatric hospital where I've been doing some research in Uganda it's called the because it's the country's biggest psychiatric facility it has about 500 beds but it regularly has more than 752000 patients so you have. 2 people sleeping to a bed if highly trained psychiatry aren't an option there's a growing realisation in some poor countries that the best solutions are right on their doorsteps Grace studies how those countries can address mental health and innovative ways by doing more with less so imagine a staircase and at the very top of that set of stairs is a specialist a psychiatric care from one of the very few psychiatry's or clinical psychologists or other specialists in the country Ideally you want to keep as few people as possible from having to climb the staircase up to that stairs that step is the most expensive the least efficient and not everybody needs it or can benefit from it so why don't we instead focus on catching people at the bottom of the stairs. On that bottom step some of the basic things that researchers are realizing are vital to good mental health programs that tackle poverty and give everyone access to good schools and stable jobs they help to decrease everyone's baseline stress levels then when people do become unwell community level services so that could be lay workers community health workers who live close to you maybe know you in your family and you feel that they're somebody who you can talk to governments around the world are just beginning to embrace the idea that it's a lot easier and cheaper to address mental health problems before they reach psychiatric hospital levels the top step is best avoided for everyone one of the really exciting examples that we're hearing a lot about right now is in Bob boys friendship bench program and essentially they train community grandmothers to sit on a bench outside of primary health care facilities and if somebody comes to primary care and is you know not feeling so hot emotionally they can go speak to one of these community grandmothers and they'll give what they call a problem solving therapy after. 6 months researchers discover that almost all the people who were able to sit down for a constructive chat with a grandmother felt better only 14 percent of them were still feeling depressed the ones who didn't get any grandmother time didn't fare so well half of them were still experiencing depression 6 months later the rich countries have picked up on this simple solution to friendship benches are now popping up in London and New York City. So here's the good news the solutions to this global crisis don't have to be expensive or complicated and countries without many resources are being more creative at finding ways to make people feel better faster. Some complain that young people simply need to become more resilient they need to learn how to deal with life's ups and downs they don't know how easy they have it is the opening line to this kind of argument but it's an idea that doesn't hold much weight for Grace Ryan I resent the implication that kids these days have lost resilience or somehow no longer able to cope with things that our parents or grandparents were able to cope with I just don't think there's a really good enough evidence for that however I do think that we could all benefit from interventions to promote resilience you know why not help everybody build their resilience but let's not mix up our messaging here and suggest that the reason we should be improving resilience is because a particular generation has lost it or you know are somehow not as resilient as we used to we actually need to be superheroes we need to be super resilient going forward because we're going to be tested in some really scary ways turning humans into super heroes it sounds like a tall order but Grace Ryan is optimistic in a way isn't it also very hopeful that somehow we're now surfacing problems that have been ignored for hundreds of years isn't it also really helpful and exciting that we're at a point now where children aren't dying in infancy in these huge dramatic numbers and you as a parent can have the hope of your child going on to live a happy and healthy and productive life and now you can even worry about their mental health on top of their physical health and well being. In some ways it sounds quite perverse but it's actually very exciting that we're getting to this point of development where we can take this really seriously. So what excites me is the potential that there's more answers out there that we haven't come up with and that by looking further afield we might discover something just really exciting in transformative that could improve mental health care all over the world . We began this episode of the inquiry by asking what we can do about the world's mental health problem over and over our expert witnesses told us it's a crisis that for far too long we've tried to pretend doesn't exist and when it comes to solutions and usually rich countries aren't fairy much better than poor ones in fact it's the poorer countries in many cases that are working faster to test innovative ideas it's a chronic crisis yes but not a hopeless one. This is the b.b.c. World Service and we're asking what makes the perfect city what would your city of the future look like and if you could take the best bits of other cities which fits would you choose like San Francisco's environmental policies or climate action strategy it's bold it's our day shifts and we're on track to getting there All Souls' smart city plan we can no longer rely on all technology to be able to lead the next boom economic growth and can a successful idea from one city work in another may be really was copying the wrong thing a copy of the technology rather than a policy approach next we move on to Europe's fastest growing city and how it's tackling the problems that come with expansion as well as its ambition to become a car free city is the Norwegian capital's blueprint one others should follow my perfect city at b.b.c. World Service dot com You're with the b.b.c. World Service on today's science in action we're returning to the white spread wildfires in Brazil earlier this year new evidence that accelerating forest clearance is to blame but some of the research is finding this prefer to stay anonymous the government was saying that the fires are natural that it was we've been the historical average we showed that the government was wrong and then those government workers those people were afraid that something might happen to them sounds and action follows the news b.b.c. News with Stuart McIntosh Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described his indictment on charges of corruption as an attempted coup Mr Netanyahu has denied all wrongdoing and says he will not stand down he's not legally obliged to do so. Amnesty International says the security forces in Chile have deliberately injured people taking part in mass demonstrations against inequality it says excessive police force has led to the deaths of 5 people in response president been near a knowledged in some cases that the security forces may have disregarded the proper rules of engagement a former u.s. National security official has said that Ukraine was put under pressure to investigate President Trump's opponents as part of a domestic political errand Fiona Hill told the impeachment inquiry that she was worried u.s. Foreign policy was being mixed up with domestic politics the president has denied wrongdoing. The u.s. Says it's worried about anti-government protesters in Nicaragua you have been besieged in the church for more than a week by police 14 are on hunger strike they're calling for the release of relatives arrested for political reasons riot police in Bolivia have fired tear gas to disperse supporters of the former president Evo Morales who resigned nearly 2 weeks ago the protesters were taking part in a funeral procession for 5 of the 8 people killed in clashes on Tuesday the British foreign secretary Dominic Rob has announced that a number of often children are being returned to the u.k. From Syria he said this was the right thing to do it's understood the children were living in areas which used to be controlled by the Islamic state group the investigation division of World Athletics has suspended the president of the Russian Athletics Federation and several other officials the ethics integrity unit said it obstructed an investigation into doping by a Russian high jumper b.b.c. News. Welcome to Science in action from the b.b.c. World Service I'm Rowland piece we're returning to the damage wrought by the fires in the Amazon earlier this year with new data on just how destructive they were but we're going underground as well to see fungal support networks that help plants to grow ever since plants 1st came onto the trustor alarm surfaces they've been partners with funky that live in the soil those fungus the help the plants get nutrients out of the soil in return the plants give the funny energy in the form of sugars all fats that they've made during photosynthesis so it's very much a partnership I get to see the dangerous addictive drugs spice in a new light outre violet light we've got a little line up here of 509 and this is green light that's green and you can actually see the drug in there you're seeing the fluorescence the emitted light of the drug and Japan's amazing high booster to space probe has just started its long journey back to Earth carrying some precious bits of asteroid this kind of bittersweet I think said because we cannot see real good anymore but the positive part is we are going to have this sample of you go back to if in 2020. The headlines only a few months back were a blaze with news of widespread forest fires in the Amazon particularly in Brazil but also in Bolivia Peru and Paraguayan and from satellite detections an expert told us at the time the burning looked like it could be as bad as 15 years ago certainly it was worse than last year and seems to point to a return to widespread forest clearance practices that had been made illegal Erica Beringer is on a multi-discipline team in Paris stayed in the Brazilian Amazon trying to assess the damage done by the 2905 season and she's on the line now Erica the experts we spoke to then said the draw a season last through to November so other still fires burning way. Right now I am in the middle of them as and I haven't seen any fires in the shoe to be seeing fires through the beginning of it is them bar but it is raining every day so it's impossible to burn you must be grateful for what you're seeing the damage are scarce I have seen the damage and I've been here and I'm you know of the far as when it was burning I have tried to put the fires out in the past and it's a very. Feeling like emotionally speaking to see the forest that I love so much and specially before is that long for my country burning my country destroying some forests and professionally as a scientist I know the impacts that these has in terms of climate change how they missions that we put in the atmosphere but also in terms of biodiversity loss so it's a really strong been traumatised an experience the science so lovely to do with the forestation it's not just farm is clearing their land so the 1st station fire is a basically where the forest is chopped down the visitations left to drive there to sun the wind and after a couple months is dry and us that it can be set on fire going to be starting to ashes and the area can be planted for agriculture or pasture. So that's what we're saying back in all this you have you been going to some of these queries in your recent visit to the 4 station every year I've been working the same region for 20 years and I've seen the landscape changes through time but I've never seen so much of the forestation as I'm saying there one thing that our paper shows is that in 2019 there was a short increase in deforestation rates which is way above the average from previous years and people have been saying that was going to happen with this new government scenario not being interested in protecting the Amazon Yes that was expected since he's campaigning and the run up today election he was openly say that he was going to and what he calls the this fine industry fine as being the giving fines the people that the forest is saying that he was going to and the fines he was trying to merge the group Culture Ministry with the Environmental Ministry saying that it was the use of us to have an environmental ministry the other day he said that if you are concerned about being Vironment you shouldn't who every day you should do one day and then not on the other that's his levels of course are there and we're talking about the country is the largest have gone on the arse end of the largest couple rang for us and others and that's how we used. So we've seen the him in the change of rhetoric which is being very own t. Vironment and t m isn't it also is a rhetoric that favors illegal activities so his environmental ministry has most of illegal loggers of illegal miners with the land grabbers but he hasn't met with his own stuff which is the people on the frontline fighting the 4 stations and also the cherry on top is the budget cuts so there are severe budget cuts to the environmental ministry to the environmental agency and even to the climate change fund that we had in Brazil what the future holds in this instance I mean do you expect it to get worse again next year or is this the new normal Yeah we expect that it's going to get much worse and this is because the birth in a space agency and just accounts for the forestation from all this one year to July the next year. So we have been seen incorporating to this and oh figure that if I were a station the happening August September and October 2001 team but the 1st station race in this month were really high it's terrible and all those areas that have been chopped down they have been born yet and that's what I've been seeing around here right now I'm a native paradise state I've been seeing a lot of the forestation that is still on the ground because it's raining a lot so weak it's to him it's born so some of this lot's going to burn and the air is going to be choking again exactly that because nobody The far as a marriage just to leave it at that bend and it is an economic loss so they will burn as soon as the dry season hits next year when it's not only the smoke that's coming out of vent There's also the common dockside that's released when you burn the forest and presumably some of the soil gets burnt as well at the same time what kind of contribution disses gave to global warming Brazil was one of the largest climate polluters in the world and this is because of the poor station the Amazon and the large car bombs or were you stores more or less as much carbon as 100 years of emissions from the u.s. So if you are complicit in the forest police in a bar night we're going to putting the equivalent of 100 years of u.s. Emissions back and that in with you complicity in house and climate change efforts I'm a born and we're just putting back into the atmosphere and of course that interferes for example of rainfall patterns across the whole South America which then interferes of our on economy as we're going to have less running for our crops. Leslie archivist something at the end of your paper that really caught my eye in the knowledge meant to say that some contributors declined to be named as Office of this paper they wanted to be anonymous which to me is a very shocking thing to see yeah unfortunately that was an action that we had to take and we didn't take it lightly because in Brazil researchers receive a Bono's based on their productivity so the more papers a publish you receive of all is by the end of the year and unfortunately people had to withdraw from the paper because the you afraid of going against the official narrative from the government. The government was saying that the fighters are normal that they were natural that it was within their historical average and that's why with us that on the paper and we showed that the government was wrong and then those government workers because in Brazil universities are public so if you work for a university or public server or if you work in environmental agency or an environmental ministry you are public server people felt that if they went against their fish on their it is their jobs might be a risk and we have precedent on that like the rector of a space agency was removed because he was publishing the deforestation figures which is the job of those space agency so there was before afraid that something might happen to them a terrible indictment on the political situation when scientists fear to be named Eric a very good however has positions are often in Lancaster universities in the u.k. So clearly feels more able to speak Arabic of course those trees in Amazonia are all above surface very visible but we all need support networks and plants are no different we've talked previously on science in action about the close mutual interactions underground between trees earned funky it's been called the Wood Wide Web but all plants benefit when their roots connect up with the thread like hifi of soil fungus is except Katie field of Leeds University says that plant breeders have damaged that mutual ism in a way that Amanda mines their efforts to engineer healthier crops are 1st the basics ever since plants 1st came onto the trusted alarm surfaces they've been partners with from me that live in the soil those funky actually help the plants get nutrients out of the soil in return the plants give the phony energy in the form of sugars or fats that they've made during photosynthesis so it's very much a partnership which to me was a real surprise that I didn't realise not just what the. Bungie were there doing their own thing in the plant sort of piggybacking there's quite a lot of carbon goes down into those funky apparently air that can be a huge amount up to 20 percent of all of the carbon that's fixed from the atmosphere during photosynthesis can actually be channeled below ground by these funky So I actually saw fungus in the soil itself represents this huge global carbon sink that we don't often really think about but the plants are suffering in the process where they're not losing no absolute no totally the opposite so the plants really benefit from this is so ca ssion because the fungus able to get nutrients out of the soil that the plant wouldn't otherwise be able to get the fungal hifi is so fine they can get into spaces within the soil so between particles that plant roots can't get to and access nutrients and also different forms of nutrients so some funkier able to get organic nutrients how the soil plants can't do otherwise if not understood your paper right there's an issue that inbreeding plants the way that we have like wheat for farming we've actually interfered with that interrelationship is that fair Yeah it seems that way thank goodness that trait is still there in modern culture of ours of crops like the wheat that we've used but it's much less strong that relationship than we might otherwise expect and yeah that's largely because breeders have been selecting for different traits in crops that are kind of inadvertently against them being symbiotic with these fungus things like responsiveness to chemical fertilizers traditionally you want your cult of our to respond really well if you're adding phosphorous not just into the soil but that kind of selects against them forming partnerships and funny in the soil but our research shows that actually these associations are still there and they are still functional and so that kind of gives us hope for the future that we can breed that back into future grabs and part of the. Up to this is I think you're quite concerned about particular the phosphorus that so used to fertilize farms these days ever since sort of the green revolution of the 1950 s. And on which we've been adding more and more phosphorous based fertilizers to our fields the raw materials that this 1st life is made from actually mind from big rock phosphate mines and then it's converted into these 1st slices which we spend on fields that's finite so it's going to run out and it's actually not got that much longer left till we run out Secondly the huge carbon emissions are associated with producing these chemical fertilizers So if we can explore ways alternative ways of accessing pools of phosphorous that already exist in the soil plants just can't access at present and then I think there's big gains to be made in terms of sustainability and that's what these funky are doing is it absolutely that's what they're really good at doing they're excellent to get a hold of phosphorous out of minerals or in soil already and also by accessing organic pools of nutrients extending the area that which plants can get those nutrients from given that we've got rising c o 2 how does that play into the story you're telling some what we did a few years ago with wild plants showed that the associations between these fungus and those plants and c o 2 in the atmosphere had a big effect functions to how much carbon was going to the fungus and how much phosphorus is being transferred to the plant because of this we kind of were concerned that increasing c o 2 in the future would have a big impact on the function of the symbiosis between crops and these fungal in the soil so we investigated it using these controlled environment chambers which were able to simulate a future c o 2 atmosphere which is roughly double the c o 2 concentration of today and what we found was actually the c o 2 didn't have a massive impact on the amount of nutrients in the plants we're getting from the fungus and it didn't increase the amount of carbon that the funk you were taking from the plan. Want so there's 2 ways of looking at it the 1st way is that a really good news story because it's not going to adversely affect the symbiosis so we can continue to use this in the future potentially means it's got real potential for impacts in sustainable farming futures but secondly it also suggests it's not going to increase in line with c o 2 increases we're not going to get more carbon being drawn out the atmosphere because of this fungus transferring more phosphorus because that simply doesn't happen Have you seen yet what's different about the roots of the sort of good symbionts in these crops is it I don't know sort of chemical signaling is it something about protein or is it sort of structure yet we're not really sure we know that wild plant species that very heavily colonized by these funky they secrete signals into the surrounding soil so these signals which will struggle Actos they stimulate the fungal spores in the soil which can be there for up to 10 years to actually germinate and then the hifi grow towards the roots admitting that signal and then there's some crosstalk between the fungus and the root and at some point the fungus gets into the roots and the plant lets it the exact mechanisms that are at play that there's still kind of a black box really we don't really know exactly who's saying what what point but there is communication between 2 organisms that actually fascinating sort of makes you realise how inventive evolution is it really does this is an association that's been around for 500000000 years these funky actually got plants on the land in the 1st place it's kind of amazing Katie field part biologist at Leeds University for more than a year we've been celebrating the Japanese space agency's mission higher booster 2 to a remote and tiny rocky asteroid called Real go this time last year they had succeeded in putting 3 miniature robot landers on to that rubble pile the orbiting the sun and in February we spoke just the funniest old the only one of the hardly syringe in is about the missions. 1st touchdown on the surface 2 seconds to scoop up some space dirt but last week high boosted to find up it's on Dr rockets to start its long journey back to Earth and this week it took its last picture of an asteroid that had been his home from home so I called Stephanie again yes is kind of bittersweet I think said because we cannot see real good anymore but the positive part is we're going to have this sample of you go back to Earth in 2020 which is very exciting a bit of a wait before that the last time we spoke to you were is the 1st time that the Harbor City Mission actually touched down on the surface of this asteroid for just a couple of seconds you said and picked up a little bit of dust from the surface but that was in February and there's been a whole load happening since then you've had it in the exhibition would have been even putting on but do you go and actually we did they did 22nd of March and it was making a crate with some kind of a bolt or yes so this device was called small carry on impact or it created the 20 meter the I meter of cutter which is being quite a that a mark of will open a shim in this sense that has been down or out on a mislead by list spacecraft so you have to imagine their impact it was released in the sun but you go that action and then I was at the space car went away deployed a camera and then went in the night side of the Hugo and then the comment I had was kind of remote eyes images where said to the spacecraft and then send it back to Earth and what was important about this hole was it because you were looking inside or was it the fact that you were finding new material that there are actually 2 reasons one scientific and one is basically related to having the opportunity to do the 2nd fetch down that we actually. The in July 2 sample this observed from my d.d. O. But the other one was also an engineer tingle sot there was stating that we can actually do these artificial impact and try to understand how these mechanisms function in Micco gravity so this was a 2nd goal so that's what I like about tell you it was a to this buff advancement in engineering and also in science you could see how much trouble came out could you with a camera could you see how fast it came out they could tune the way in which scientists compute the formation of those catarrh So thanks to the images I can understand the velocity to speed on much material was released and you touched down and collected then some material from inside that crater Yes exactly so they were this was the 2nd touchstone I've spoken to scientists who are very keen to get their hands on some of this mysterious which comes basically preserve from the beginning of time of the solar system but you were involved and as an engineer and astronautical engineer is that what you're going to be doing in the future are there brilliant lessons that you've had from this one to read what the scientists came up with the analysis of the samples but I'm not a scientist so I will not work on the sampled what I'm more interested and I'm looking at as an engineer is results from all the operation we have done especially for gravity measurement and the formation of those body from a good education Alok spit in fact I think in the future of the space exploration especially if we want to go fight it away then the distance we've been so far is to be able to program our spacecraft to be fully autonomous and this may be it also in an intelligent way so maybe in the future we can use even after she said intelligence would have passed to explore those body and take some decision from the software on board the spacecraft so that's where research is going towards this that actually in flight and omics the funniest so. Now at liveable university in the u.k. But still working with the high be sitting. Spice is a casual phrase for a large variety of psychoactive compounds commonly called legal highs they interact with the same receptors in the brain as kind of this does and that typically sold sprayed on to Common Herb's which uses smoke so the dose as well as the variety and the purity a completely uncontrolled by the time the taken and that's where the problem starts in hospital emergency departments because patients can show up with severe symptoms of psychosis but with little clue as to what's causing it and until now there's been no quick and easy test about the university biochemist Chris Patten has been working with drug experts and engineers to develop a portable detector using ultraviolet to throw light on the spice uses a smoking so I went to have a look so what we have is a tiny little package she was like I guess I don't know she when she's by few inches she centimeters sure and the elite It looks like a pair of wheels actually what you know what he would say looks like a tie fighter. Has no intention house within those little wheels were an array of every day which shine u.v. Light onto a tiny sample tube the resulting fluorescent glow think white shirt shining on the disco lights can be analyzed on a computer screen so I got some saliva in that moment we can sense in lightning in a really deep part of the ultraviolet You never be able to see that if you Spike saliva with tiny quantities of spice the kind of quantities you might find in a user's spit that u.v. Gets reradiated at different colors detected by that spectral analyzer and those molecules reveal themselves now we're going to look at the similar sort of true Violet but with the drug present So let's now. See what we get. So you can see now with the drug present there's a. Great big Let me unscrew the front face as if you look in there to McAleese I can see there's something greenish in the Middle East and that's the drug that's the drug so if we can green We've got a little line up here of 500 millimeters that is green light that's green and you can actually see the drug in there you're seeing the fluorescents the emitted light of the drug different strains of spice grow slightly differently and they respond in subtly different ways if the illuminating u.v. Is itself strange giving Chris the means to be quite precise in his analysis and fast because quick simple detection is what this project is all about what which one achieve is supporting the most vulnerable people in society to hopefully come off these drugs problematic spice use take clearly see what homeless populations Jenny Scott is a senior lecturer in pharmacy practice at Bar University and has worked with Chris Budden me on the new scent she also works with a local drug and alcohol treatment service Spice is cheap she says but there's more to it's use on the streets homeless people very often have quite complex mental health problems very short of living on the streets I think the desire to remove yourself from is obviously quite strong and spiced given that effect takes all kind of away from reality large amounts of tackling society's most challenging issues is a long way from Chris part nice normal concern it was a chance conversation that got him into studying spice on the protein carbs and protein scientist and chatting with my partners my partners a psychiatrist a case when the car she was driving in she said I Do you know actually I've got a problem at work at the moment that people are coming in the smoke this trouble we think of smoke this drug and it's a real problem for us in the psychiatric services but also all of the medical profession is that we don't know what today I saw said you know flippantly to me with this new technology we've made all can you just. Do something to take these drugs are no come on to me silly nobody preaching to dentist monocles I don't know pull my phone now is the hard just have a quick gander at them and they just look like the fearful the same proteins and all the sudden I knew what to do we just raced back straight and we had some things that I knew look a little like these molecules threw them in and it just worked really really beautifully more important then was to test the protector on real drugs real smoked drugs and that's where Jenny Scott's teams work with the Avon and Somerset police played a critical role this is seized from the police the police officer real oh yeah this is the terrifying stuff I mean that's been key to us developing is that we have real molecules that we could look at what about the smoking that again something I think we're very proud of is we had to shoot in the developed smoking simulator he makes a cigarette the drugs in from the seeds material from the police and then he runs are actually in the lab you know perfectly well fish lungs the smoke a cigarette when you trap the chemistry that comes off and that's actually what we're looking at here is combusted material in saliva you know that was one of the questions is once you smoked it to these kind of fingerprints change much are they still unique all these kind of questions and they are absolutely in fact they become easier to detect you can get screening but not require someone to be sent off for several days with us our focus is something that can be a tool and an emergency setting so quickly easily see that this parcel has taken space recently Chris Putney's device was thrown together from spare parts lying around is and may bring in labs but he says it's a good starting point for a device that's suitable for the real world of a need psychiatric services and homeless shelters and one that's affordable so to put this whole rig together I think we're going to get it down under 500 quid without any problem whatsoever being busted important because did you settings we want to see this in it's going to be knocked on the floor so you can throw this again. The work we did a few years ahead and I think that you know it's really incredibly robust I think we're going down the right of a lot of the important things in the field it's got to be easy to use kind of one click one finger simplicity cost dear ability all key aspects for a tool to see quickly whether a patient is suffering from the effects of spice or has other mental health issues but when he's got hands it's just one tool among many we're saying you can use this alongside the presentation the picture the person presents the other card of course sometimes any history you can get from them or people that come with them to make a decision around what you do next for that person it's a chore to help because they get things taken away now that's what I call songs in action thanks to Chris and Jenny about university for sharing that work with me and it will be sharing more science in action with you here on the b.b.c. Same time next week event for me Ron and Peter I'm pretty secure in Seattle thanks for joining us this is the b.b.c. World Service where each week for a big name musicians discuss what matters most to them making music music satisfies me like nothing else because it is really powerful and it just makes me so happy to gal my face every day is just such a beautiful way of articulating what's on my mind and in my heart. Music life at b.b.c. World Service dot com slash music life. And in an hour on assignments in Russia there's an epidemic of domestic violence it's a patriarchal society with a twisted proverb If he beats you he loves you but society is now waking up to the crisis I'm Lucy action I'm in Moscow to meet the women fighting back that scene in our news room is next on the b.b.c. World Service the world's radio station. A defiant is ready Prime Minister reacts to his indictment for bribery and fraud one of one of them this evening we are witnessing an attempted coup against a prime minister with false charges and a contaminated and tendentious investigation process this is in London also in the news room or drama of the impeachment hearings in Washington the unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions and 2016 it is beyond dispute some of the world's most dependable beasts under threat these donkey's carry out many of the household tasks that she has that she was carrying forward and without a junkie there used Hoff's are often left to the women all the children of the household and. The South Korean pop stars called up for military service it's meld 22 hours g.m.t. . I'm Stuart Mackintosh with the b.b.c. News Hello Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has responded angrily to his indictment on corruption charges describing it as tantamount to a cuckoo in a televised speech he said those behind the investigation hadn't been after the truth they'd been after him the accusations relate to cases that involve gifts Mr Netanyahu received from wealthy figures as well as his alleged efforts to get better media coverage in return for favors the announcement was made by the attorney general I have a high Mandelbrot who was appointed by the Prime Minister but you know we've got to go because we should also mention I. Don't know today I informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of my decision to prosecute and indict him on 3 charges the day the attorney general decides to indict an incumbent Prime Minister for serious offenses relating to government corruption is a difficult and silent day for the Israeli people and for me personally. Amnesty International says the security forces in Chile have deliberately injured people taking part in the current mass demonstrations against inequality it so the aim is to try to discourage further protests from Santiago so silly a barrier reports throughout the unrest in Chile police have said they were acting to maintain order has been contradicted by Amnesty International we set in its reports that the security forces where the Liberty her mean protesters The report goes on to say excessive force and in some cases torture and sexual violence has been used as a means of punishment what started as over a small rise in the price of public transport has turned into the biggest demonstrations for 3 decades a former u.s. National security official says that Ukraine was put under pressure to investigate President Trump's opponents Fiona Hill has been giving evidence to the impeachment inquiry it's examining whether Mr Trump withheld military aid.