Peter Bose has more following a meeting in autumn or the group urge the international community to prevent the government of President Nicolas Maduro from conducting financial and trade transactions abroad having access to Venezuela's international assets and doing business in oil gold and other assets Mexico which is also a member of the lim a group but opposed to steps aimed at ousting Mr Madeira did not attend the meeting last month the Lima group announced a travel ban on senior Venezuelan officials and a freeze on their foreign assets 2 people have died during severe flooding in the Australian city of Tums ville where thousands of homes have been inundated emergency crews worked through the night as the focus of flood relief efforts moved to suburbs in the north of the city hundreds of people have been moved to evacuation centers more heavy rain is forecast you're listening to the latest world news it's coming to you from the b.b.c. Canada's largest crypto currency exchange Quadriga says it's unable to access digital currency worth millions of dollars following the sudden death of its founder Gerald cotton in December Mr cottons widow said the laptop he used was encrypted and that she didn't know the password or the recovery key a judge in the Us city of Kansas has sparked outrage after he said the 2 girls aged 13 and 14 were partly to blame in a sexual abuse case involving a 67 year old man the judge said the girls went to the man's house voluntarily and took money for sexual favors. U.s. Government scientists have published an undergraduate update to their model of the Earth's magnetic field to deal with speeding up in the movement of the magnetic north pole magnetic north is currently moving across the Arctic ocean toward Siberia at the rate of more than 50 kilometers a year Steve Jackson reports planes ships and a range of smartphone apps all use this model of the Earth's magnetic field for accurate navigation usually the us government agency responsible updates the model every 5 years to allow compass bearings to remain precise but the speed the magnetic north pole is moving at has increased significantly since the year 2000 this has forced us scientists to bring out a new model a year Aliyev than planned g.p.s. Systems are not affected because they use satellites but magnetic navigation is still widely used by military forces and commercial transport firms as a back up airport runway names are also based on their compass directions a German museum displaying the painting by Banksy that famously began destroying itself at auction has deactivated the art works shredding device lovers in the bin stand up lovers by shredding itself in its frame immediately after selling for more than a $1000000.00 in London in October Banksy has suggested that the entire canvas was supposed to be shredded not just 2 thirds of it b.b.c. News. Thanks You're listening to the newsroom from the b.b.c. World Service with me Nic Miles the big to read North Korea of nuclear weapons continues today with the u.s. Envoy heading there for talks it's the order if you like for the planned 2nd summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong un So the timing of the publication of a damning u.n. Report about North Korea is unfortunate to say the least it says that Pyongyang is continuing to defy economic sanctions and that pressuring it to give up its nuclear weapons or Laura Baker is our correspondent in South Korea Laura tell us the specifics about this report. Well this seems to be a leaked report from the United Nations it starts off by talking about the fact that North Korea still has nuclear and ballistic missiles that its weapons programs remain intact that much we did know and but I think what is interesting to many is the fact that the our this report certainly is very specific about the ways that Pyongyang is managing to subvert strict economic sanctions this diplomatic tool which aims to bring Kim Jong un to the negotiating table and I remember this was Donald Trump's main maximum pressure strategy which and the countries in the Security Council agreed to including initially China and Russia but what this support suggests is the illegal ship to ship the transparence having creased massively and in one incident and sanctions monitors say they found and I know oil ship to ship transfer of nearly 6 bill is $6000000.00 So that's quite a lot of oil making its way to North Korea against the sanctions I suppose if these sanctions can be circumvented so easily to what extent does that undermine the leverage that President Trump has over Pyongyang. That's exactly what many people are no asking I don't know Trump has always said that if Pyongyang fails to agree to its demands then and he can go back to this maximum pressure strategy that he's not in any rush and but this certainly report which suggest that that strategy is no longer an option that goods are beginning to make their way through and you know there have been various reports suggesting that might happen or might be happening but certainly this report it to the u.n. Security Council suggests it's on a larger scale than we expected it means that the United States needs to kind of rethink what kind of diplomatic tools it has its disposal but this all comes ahead Steven bacon the u.s. Envoy to North Korea is making his way to Pyongyang there he's going to have these talks to try to leave the groundwork for a 2nd summit if those details don't come through with what is the United States going to use as leverage over Kim Jong Il and Laura because many thanks 17 years that's how long the Afghan Taliban has been trying to wrest control of the country from the government in Kabul in recent weeks though there have been tantalizing signs of progress towards pieced 1st talks in Qatar between u.s. Officials and the Taliban and now the militants are due to meet high profile Afghan opposition figures in Moscow but and it's a big obstacle to peace the Afghan government is not there the talks so can the commodity is there and he joins me from Moscow so for me 1st of all remind us why there are 2 sets of talks going on the u.s. Led talks and then these ones on the agenda is different. Yes they are to an extent what we've seen is a series of rounds of negotiation between us and Taliban officials which should been taking place in the Gulf primarily in Qatar where the Taliban have a political office and just over a week ago those talks resulted in what's been described as the draft framework of a peace agreement between the u.s. And the Taliban and though there are still big obstacles in bringing that to a close today in Moscow the Taliban a Taliban delegation from Qatar will meet around 40 Afghan political figures many of them a high ranking they include for example the former president of the country Hamad Karzai. And they'll be discussing. The future of Afghanistan really the kind of issues that up until now haven't really been part of this questions between the u.s. And the Taliban because they've been primarily around u.s. Troop withdrawal and the u.s. Tends to get the Taliban to give assurances they won't allow groups like Al Qaida to. To to to use Afghanistan as a base sorry we lost you there moments ago but you're back with us now can I just ask you this there are going to be elections in July the Taliban may be hoping that the opposition politicians it meets today will be in power so to that extent perhaps it doesn't matter the government's not there or is that a wrong analysis. We'll get on a bunch of basically refused consistently to engage with the Afghan government whoever has been in power and that's because they say that they don't want to give them village intimacy of sitting across the table from them and the Americans have been trying to convince the Taliban to sit across the table from from the Afghan government and discuss exactly how the country could be governed You know after a peace deal is rape is reached but these talks today offer a kind of potential route around that by speaking to opposition powerbrokers and so that's why many Afghan and American officials are rather wary of them Ok we'll leave it there are going to come on many thanks. Change the government but don't use force to do it has the latest intervention from outsiders who've weighed in then as well as Fee brought political situation it came from the Lima group Canada and a group of Latin American nations set up to try to find a solution to the crisis 2 years ago he gave more promises of humanitarian aid something which would require the compliance of the Venezuelan forces despite calls from the opposition opposition leader One Goh Ido the generals have refused but Mr Garrido wants more reminded soldiers he'd offer an amnesty for any of them who join the opposition. But he won't be. Going to moment to if you have doubts ask your family what is right at this time and so you Clay what guarantees in an Amnesty means we've also spoken to the Army about their role in the reconstruction of Venezuela their role in the exercise of sovereignty or both Russia and China are now still putting their support behind Mr Maduro and that I cleaned off his deputy chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the upper house of the Russian parliament the position of my country is very clear we do not want to interfere Israeli children States. For we are saying that we recognize the model of the president we are still a little less you know the president elect ability or according to police they should of been so we have to kill about internal problem of Syrian state the main thing we are looking for is culture we want any kind of civil war or any kind over military interference in the streets of this. More than half the nations in the European Union do now recognize one. Word of the events of the last 24 hours leave Mr Madoff all know is our correspondent in Caracas Well it seems that the police closing in on in Mr mother it was expected these. Diplomatic pressure coming from Europe but Mr mother hasn't changed his stance so far his insistence that Mr way though is pushing a coup the time when as well out with this report of what he called imperialist powers. And again refused to call to give in and to call these natural actions that the Western powers and the Venezuelan opposition are demanding now number of countries are sending humanitarian aid which is going to go to the borders particularly in Colombia How important will the actions of the military in Venezuela be when that aid arrives whether or not they actually decide to distribute it within Venezuela or hold it up at the border while the opposition is trying to use all fire has been has emphasized the Loddon the thing that the Venezuelan military must turn their bags. And side with Mr way those that we the people of Venezuela so this is a step farther to increase pressure because when that huge humanitarian aid that has been promised actually came in while the earth and troops at the border must take a side and now the other part of this other sanctions imposed by Washington cutting off government oil revenues how important will that be the squeezing of government revenues or will the government just be able to sort of tough it out as it has over the last couple of years it's obvious that the pressure the economic and the international pressure is harming motherhood or harming the government. It's evident that many people are losing the faith in a government that mainly in its ability to to develop government programs to deliver food and medicines in popularity as Were they had they usually have their the bulk of their supporters Well the question of how long the political system can stand Well it's a tough question I usually remember the case of Cuba in 1900 suffered a bury very serious economic blow when the Soviet Union collapsed in that didn't lead to political change in the end will these international isolation and these economic collapse lead to a political change in Venezuela we don't know yet we what we know is that these days are crucial days when it comes to that that was Guillermo Oh no. Well the rise and fall of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin over the last year hasn't been quite as the Tejas as the Dutch chewed it up crash it has severely undermined confidence in digital currency is now in another blow to the industry Canada's largest crypto currency exchange says it's unable to access or secure digital currency worth millions of dollars are North America technology correspondent has been following developments this was what they refer to as a crypto currency exchange service where people could trade their crypto currencies with each other and in some cases kind of bank cashed them out for real currency this exchange is called Quadriga as you mentioned is Canada's largest and what happened is quite simply there was one person the founder who is in charge of this site and on his laptop he kept several encryption keys and those keys were used to to keep these reserves of cryptocurrency secure and without those keys you can't access them because that's just how the technology is designed without those keys you can't access him and therefore now that old cotton has died he died beginning of the stamp or when he died he essentially took knowledge of those keys with him there's a laptop that they think the information is on but they are his widow and Rivera's forensics these 2 forensic experts can access that laptop and so right now it appears that almost $140000000.00 worth of of cryptocurrency has been lost because of all of people simply being locked out of the now so a quite extraordinary turn of events so those last out is the individual investors what's happened well that the estimate is around $115000.00 users of this exchange of have lost out to varying degrees so that means you know these are people that would have gone on the site use it to trade their cryptic currencies and in toto always well. As the crypt the currency there's also a real currency of total between that and the real money about $190000000.00 that has been locked up because of this now one of the things that makes this even more complex is that these coins as they're known were being kept in cold storage which means they're kind of offline until they're needed which is generally good practice because when something is offline it because it means it's much harder for any hackers to access because that's a problem that the cryptocurrency industry has faced as well as simply being hacked and having these coins stolen so what was good practice in one sense keeping them in in so-called cold storage has meant they're even more difficult to access now listening to the need for here's a remind of our main headline the u.s. Envoy to North Korea is going to go to Pyongyang to pave the way for the planned summit between their leaders it's coming up to 0520 Greenwich Mean Time. Local and national police services often have a pretty fractious relationship no more so it seems than in India where the Supreme Court is due to consider an application by the country's federal police agency after its agents were detained by police officers in the state of West Bengal a correspondent Tondo is on the line. Tell us why relations deteriorated so much between these 2 police forces. Well it's a story that the whole of this country has been following over the last 36 hours forget cricket forget Bollywood they've got all been watching the soap opera which really is Indian politics it began on Sunday evening when 40 up a system India's premier investigative agency the c.b.i. Turned up to question the city's top police officer in connection with what they say is a financial scam when they tried to enter his residence the local police rushed there and they found themselves instead of questioning him being questioned themselves in a local police station the state's chief minister then set up but they're not a sit in the center called that I'm I'm actually here at the moment behind there is a sign saying save the Indian Constitution saying you cannot enter my house to the federal authorities without my permission they've gone to the Supreme Court on the stage in front of me and some of India's political leaders they're all looking at their mobile phones because the court's going to start sitting in a few minutes and it's judgment could have serious implications for how this country is run House always being viewed by the people there are they credulous all the resulting to it is good for news channels everybody is glued to their T.V.'s or reading the newspapers this morning I think there is a feeling here that in a country where corruption is such a big issue you need to have an investigative agency that can question anybody whether it's a police officer or whether it's the prime minister so I think at the moment there seems to be sympathy with the government in Delhi and with the c.b.i. On the other hand there is. Consider that an agency like that is being politicized but the fact is really for the people around me were heading towards an election season we're heading towards a well still the largest democracy going to float and I think many of them feel that it's part of the process what they do want is for the Supreme Court to make a quick decision so that they can come back to watching cricket and talking about Bollywood Ok Roe we'll leave that rotunda Many thanks for that. Now what she'll brains metabolic age well if you're a woman it's almost certainly younger than that all of your male counterparts who were born in the same year as you 4 years younger it seems according to a study carried out in the u.s. And that means it's likely to perform better to Marcus Reichl is a neurobiologist at Washington University School of Medicine incent Lewis in the us he told me more about his findings re think about sugar coming to the brain as if coal is coming to the furnace and you throw it in there and it burns up and produces a lot of energy and that's indeed true but that sugar if you will goes into the brain and does other things as well as just generate energy this energy is concerned with such things having to do with learning and memory that is how you modify your brain years in apps as if you will such that it allows you to learn new things to learn new skills and so forth of course and then was it is or the issue here is that the difference across the age span as we decrease metabolism is a decrease in this special use of sugar but in that regard then it is the females that seem to be ahead of the males and so you want to think about it retaining some of this youth in their brain that has to do with learning and memory and there's some hints from the cognitive studies of older females that they may be just a bit sharper than males and interestingly that the difference is already very apparent by early adult hood it persists well into your later years so it isn't something that may be easily explained say by hormonal differences that would change you see a man a pause for example but it goes beyond that so there's something a bit more fundamental. Going on here so we're saying that on average it's harder for a male brain to continue to learn and remember what they've learned is there anything we can do about that well 1st thing is to discover it. It Or helps to orient us to what's going on here or the other issue that of course it raises is there a vulnerability that goes on losing our males at a disadvantage here in some way and if so how and why. At this point the jury is out we don't know but I think it opens up the door to think more specifically about this now as Marcus Reichl and he is the mentally very. Nimble student with some other stories from moneys that you say the nicest things Google's parent company alphabet has posted strong quarterly earnings just days after Facebook reported record profits but rising costs of alpha