Had the announcement of his sentence 4 and a half years in prison his crimes appear to be related to his work with overseas groups working to promote and train lawyers in China and how to use Chinese law to challenge the authorities in court here that's one aspect but really it seems that he has been targeted because of his own work defending marginalized groups victims of religious persecution for example and really his sentencing is designed to send a chilling message to those who would dare do that who would dare to use the Communist Party's own courts to try to challenge its authority John started with reporting on God He declared himself interim president of Venezuela last week has now called for 2 nationwide protests to try and force Nicolas Maduro from power in a video on Twitter Mr Goh said a demonstration on Wednesday would demand that the armed forces side with the people and he urged the army not to fire on protesters. As well and you know all of them. Soldiers of the Venezuelan home alone today I give you an order do not open fire on the people of Venezuela and not shoot those who are clearly and constitutionally come out to defend your family your people your work and your livelihood. While a rally on Saturday by Mr Goh I don't support will back a European ultimatum for fresh elections to be called within a week but President Maduro remains defiant addressing troops taking part in military exercises on Sunday he urged them to be ready to defend their country Meanwhile Donald Trump's national security adviser John Bolton has warned Venezuela that any violence or intimidation against u.s. Diplomats almost acquired Oh will be met with a significant response our correspondent Chris Buckley is following events from Washington the ruby 1000000 Legations of vote rigging and it seems that America buys into that idea that the elections were not for a nots what they're calling for free and fair elections but with those not taking place with Nicolas Maduro making clear that he doesn't intend to do that they have said as far as they're concerned the only person who has been elected fairly up to this point is one quite old because the National Assembly had elections and he is the leader of the National Assembly but there is a certain amount of coral choreography going on here because if you take a look back and you look at one quite Oh basically proclaiming himself as the interim president of Venezuela it was only a matter of minutes really before President Trump weighed in behind him and said as far as he was concerned America thought of him as the interim president as well and the pressure being applied by the u.s. And others German extent seems to be working I mean what comes to mind is the expulsion initially of diplomats by Venezuela and then they withdrew that order Yeah so basically they said as far as they were concerned Americans diplomats had to. Leave and President Maduro as noise said well actually is as far as he's concerned they will bark awful not yet you're right that to some extent Nicolas Maduro does not want to pick a fight in this he would like to try and solve this issue inside his country as opposed to having other countries bear or bear dawn on him I think he's very aware though of what is happening as far as the u.s. And European nations and all those not least in the Americas with him all putting pressure on him to try to say listen you have to sort out the problems inside your country or you really the Democratic leader at this stage would not be better to have elections but it's also worth saying that he has some significant allies not least Russia in all of this turkey's also weighed in behind him you've got Cuba you have all of those in certain parts of the Americas as well and so this is a bit of an international battle with Venezuela in the middle of all this and I suspect what's going to matter in the week maybe the month ahead is what happens inside the country and exactly what international countries are prepared to do to put pressure from the outside as well. Hopes begin to fade and heartbreak is taking hold for the relatives of more than $300.00 people still missing after a dam collapsed in Brazil on Friday specialist teams from across the world are arriving in Burma Denio to help with the huge rescue effort but they doubt they'll find any more survivors at least 58 people don't have died when the dam broke in a deluge of muddy sludge buried the sites cafeteria where many workers were eating lunch it also engulfed nearby houses vehicles and roads firefighter lay on sea of all that is says the rescue efforts proving very challenging a lot of fish but it's a location that's difficult to access when we got here we saw that there were only animals we call the army helicopter and it is rescuing the animals that are in this location a little early. Royal style Brazil correspondent Jill Kelley error if rescue teams had reached the building housing many cafeteria where so many people were gathered they haven't been the spokesman of the fire brigade has just honest press conference addressed that issue specifically he said they haven't reached the area because it's one of the most badly affected areas but was located just beneath the dam and that's an area where the sludge just piled up to 15 metres they also believe that because of the force of the current dispelled that the cafeteria might even have relocated so it might have been pushed further away from where it was originally located and they haven't managed to get to that site yet surely you know how the rescue efforts going the good news is that the rescue operations have resumed because earlier today and through out most of the Sunday they had been interrupted due to fears that another down belonging to the same mining complex could collapse later in the afternoon those fears were just felled and around 5 pm here the rescue operations restarted bringing loss of relief because on top of all these tragedies people were very frustrated that firefighters had stopped their searches the searches are very challenging however we've seen images of firefighters having to crawl over the mud trying to reach areas this very soft margin they're sort of thinking in it with helicopters hovering above ready to pull them out in case they sink too deep you must have been speaking to people that what kind of stories are you hearing from all sorts of stories and I was at the relief center where families are gathering to wait for any kind of news so it's a very tense atmosphere there are people huddled together all the time in tears and when you talk to the families there's a woman who's expecting news about her husband and her son another man from her brother and this may be multiplied by the hundreds if these numbers are confirmed so many families will be shattered by this dam collapse. Chickens could offer a much cheaper way of producing high quality drugs to treat people with some cancers or arthritis scientists at the University of Edinburgh have genetically modified chickens to lay eggs containing drugs which they say a 10 times cheaper to produce than those that are manufactured outside correspondent gauche has more details many diseases occur when the body stops being able to produce enough of a certain chemical protein such diseases can be controlled with synthetically produced replacements but these can be very expensive to manufacture researches at the Rosslyn Institute near Edinburgh found a way to dramatically reduce production costs they inserted a human gene that normally produces the vital protein into the part of the chickens d.n.a. Involved with producing their eggs the researchers found that the white parts of the eggs laid had relatively large quantities of the protein which could be extracted and purified the scientists involved believe that their system could be scaled up for commercial production there are many reasons for the world's obesity pandemic and it appears one of them is the powerful vested interests within the food industry a report from The Lancet commission on obesity here in Britain calls for governments around the world to intervene and to stop subsidizing unhealthy foods Here's our correspondent John Dollar globally around 2000000000 people that's almost 40 percent of the world's adult population overweight according to the World Health Organization the Lancet commission on obesity has pulled together experts from 14 different countries in its report it says powerful commercial interests and lobbying within the food industry coupled with a lack of political leadership and the key factors behind the obesity pandemic it calls for a new global treaty to limit the influence of what it calls big food the proposed framework convention on food systems would be modeled on. Similar conventions on tobacco and climate change the report says one of its main aims should be to redirect almost 4 trillion pounds in global government subsidies away from harmful foods and towards sustainable healthy alternatives David said now with some of the stories from our news desk reports from bikini a fast so say gunmen in the north of the country have killed at least 10 people in a village close to the border with Mali during the attack near the town of our shops and other businesses were looted and set alight Islamist militants have carried out a wave of killings across the region in recent years the defense and security ministers of the king of Fassel was sacked as part of a government reshuffle earlier this month following a previous attack in the north of the country. Flag waving Polish nationalists picketed the former Nancy death camp at Auschwitz on Sunday the UN's International Holocaust Remembrance Day to highlight the fact that poles as well as Jews were murdered their peace kept back a smaller group with a stop fascism banner an American group Human Rights 1st has accused Polish leaders of distorting history a law last year in Poland making it a criminal offense to blame the country for Nancy crimes under the occupation was amended after protests from Israel the Saudi authorities have freed one of the country's richest men the Ethiopian born businessman Mohammed's Hussain a movie more than a year after he was arrested as part of an anti corruption probe he was among about 200 leading figures who were detained at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Riyadh on the orders of Crown Prince Mohammed bin salamander several other business men were released last week it's not clear if Mr Al moody agreed to pay any settlement to secure his release last year Saudi Arabia's prosecutor general said tens of billions of dollars have been recovered as a result of the arrests. A quest has begun to find arguably the greatest undiscovered shipwreck that sank more than a 100 years ago an international team of scientists is searching for in durance the ship belonging to Sir just Shackleton one of Britain's most famous explorers back in November 115 the vessel was crushed by sea ice in the Antarctic and sank in the Weddell Sea remarkably Shackleton and his crew escaped and all of them survived Here's our science correspondent Jonathan Amos fortune has smiled on the international Weddell Sea expedition the sea ice opened at just the right time to allow them to reach Antarctica's biggest iceberg known as a 68 and to study its surroundings for more than 2 weeks but with all task completed the team's icebreaker is now attempting to get to the location where Shackleton's insurance went down in 3000 meters of water if they can get close enough the scientists will deploy robotic submersibles to search the seabed and if they can find in durance to photograph its condition just as sea ice frustrated Shackleton So it could obstruct this search effort but the research is believed they may have the best ever chance of finding one of the most famous ships in maritime history. This is the news room the time coming up to $520.00 g.m.t. It's a narcotic that's often mixed with rap poison injected or smoked with cannabis and it's destroying young lives in South Africa's townships the b.b.c. Has now learned that one of the reasons the drug is spreading is because corrupt police officers are taking bribes from dealers and African regional editor Will Ross reports. It's called No pay heroin based cocktail available across South Africa you find out just how highly addictive it is when you meet someone desperate for a fix. Your interest in that being what some are. But the relief will only last a few hours Jesus at MIT's has ruined his life he split up from his wife and he's not even allowed to set eyes on his 2 year old son right across South Africa families are being torn apart I'm sitting right on top of the screen and I would my 2 nephews laying He who died for nothing golden and Tika is a crime reporter in South Africa he says the death of his nephews who are both near Opie addicts has pushed him to try to help others who are hooked. Golden Tika finds the addict Jesus frantically searching on a rubbish heap for something to sell to pay for his next high. There's little stick. A painful steak is going to take a. Golden Ticket convinces Jesus that his only option is rehab Goldman Tika wants to find out why so little has been done to stop the spread of the drug trafficker has told him the risk of getting caught is reduced because the police take bribes golden persuades a dealer to wear a secret camera. Recorded footage you see a police van pulling up a known dealer approaches and offers him a cold drink and euphemism for a bribe in South Africa it happens repeatedly in response to the bribery allegations the South African Police Service highlights recent high profile arrests of drug dealers in the Johannesburg area. You're looking doesn't it do him in I can't believe this is it takes Jesus 6 tough months to get out of rehab having kicked the habit he heads home for an emotional. Union with his family including his delighted mother. Mistreats spreading the message to your opiate addicts that the drug can be beaten across the country the list continue to push the cocktail that's destroying South Africa's next generation that report from Will Ross. A counter movement to the anti-government protests in France held its 1st March in Paris on Sunday police say 10000 people took part surpassing the yellow vests who had turned out in the city for the 11th consecutive Saturday the newsroom's Matthew Lazar has this report. Another protest in Paris on Sunday but this time the dominant color was not yellow but red this by wind and rain crowds of people rowing full of holes a red scarfs to the streets of the French capital sick of all the violence and blockades witnessed in the past 11 weeks there much peacefully to defend what they describe as the country's democracy and its institutions. Protested for years Ok for you all this morning because it's too much 6 that a throw clocks journalists being attacked fake news endless lies and excessive violence and disrespect for the structures of the French Republic dubbed direct scarf movement it's all started on social media in December following violent universe protests politically some of its members are pro governments but not all many understand the anger adds fuel price rises and their demands to help the poorest but they do not support the clashes and destruction it is still on the earth because we 'd have the right to contest things to vote we elect people deputies mayors to represent us so of coups we can make demands and some illegitimate not just at any price but the community the government for its part did not officially support the March on the a few M.P.'s joined the crowds when asked about the current climate in France presidents Emmanuelle McCraw seems satisfied with the national debates Elantra few weeks ago to try to resolve the crisis but admits he's walking on the ice. In the end this full of holes protest was almost doubled the size of the demonstration organized in a capital the day before now it remains to be seen whether this silent majority as they call themselves will take to the streets again next week at. The. Matthew Lazar with that report. Now sharks are not necessarily the most loved of creatures and shark attacks on humans have done little to increase their popularity but one animal charities taking on the Australian authorities to try and save more of them the Humane Society International is challenging a shark control program that's been in place in the state of Queensland the Middle East 60 years drum lines are used throughout the Great Barrier Reef these are used to catch sharks on hooks where they either drowned or later shot tens of thousands of sharks a thought have been killed in this program since the 1960 s. The Queensland Government say the drum lines are effective at catching species such as tiger sharks but Nicola Binah and from the Humane Society International is taking the matter to court the important thing to realize is that sharks are allies in the King after the reef it is the apex predators the absolutely crucial for the whole ecology keeping it in balance and so for a healthy Great Barrier Reef we need healthy shut populations report the case because we've got so frustrated with the Greens and governments and not investing in these new technologies that are available now have to reduce what is a very very small risk of shall I write to humans and other states have been researching and trialing new technologies but the present government's been really complacent and just relying on this amp Stacey is crude and crude culling methods to kill sharks we've got technologies daylight drone technology we've got apps that can alert people when there are sharks in the water and we've got a personal shark to Terence which you can strap on and then they repel and sharks to keep you safe if you feel that you're putting yourself at risk and also just basic education the government has not been doing basic education public to one people which places are risky shots which times of day has so much more that could be done to keep people safe we do not need to be. Howling is that right they will abandon that now have a listen to this. Believe that what we do in the gaves 0. Useful as in it's music from all of the could see want to Zimbabwe's best known musicians who was buried on Sunday he died on Wednesday and was declared a national hero by the government thousands attended remembrance events including a memorial concert on Saturday at the National Stadium in Harare On Sunday thousands of people travel to his rural home in for the burial. Bulling cozy Shabangu was among the mourners I think for me it felt like it was an atmosphere of celebration ended like it was one family you know just like you get used to people that you've never seen before back that is testament I think coming to that kind of mean that you're going to put that you know you could unite people from different walks of life people from different places in combat point you know so I think in many different people say that it was one of the liberation I think for me that's one thing that we were getting by I think you can. Very well but I think even in terms of the low politics you know how colorized our politics is but I think we had people from across the political divide because I mean even when he was being literal we throw people from different churches not just he's only chick so I think it will speak to the kind of power that he has the kind of men that he was that involved actually he did not discriminate against anyone and I think that one thing that for me that is like I wanted to green everyone together well the song we played earlier was called Todi it was written in 1995 and urge people to join the fight against HIV and Aids Here's a little more of that moving and haunting melody You've been listening to the newsroom on the b.b.c. World Service with me Ben bland. Now time for some drama on the b.b.c. World Service it was a normal day. For a war torn country. The night sky brings me peace. Would you think a wedding or a martyr Betty there were no fireworks in between the gunshots definitely a belly. Love was in the air just a few minutes in our history test. He's gone he can come now he wants us a bomb raid a robbery a passionate affair and. A lion. There's much more to this world than you might think winner of English as a 2nd Language price in the international play writing competition a broken heart in a war zone bias the sage at b.b.c. World Service don't call. This week on crowd science we have a question from Moses in Uganda Why do we bury our dead we look back deep into human evolution visiting a cave in France where a 60000 year old Neanderthal skeleton was found and I try my hand a grave digging it right on top of it I was actually looking down the spade. But. You know before that. That's crowd science with me and jackets coming up next. B.b.c. News with David Harper a high profile human rights lawyer in China has been sentenced to 4 and a half years in prison for subversion Wang Chang Jang clients have included political campaigners members of the outlawed spiritual movement Falun Gong through the 3 years Mr Wang has already served in prison will count towards his sentence the un has appealed to the warring parties in Yemen to do everything possible to prevent to protect civilians amid renewed warnings of a possible famine and un humanitarian coordinator said there could be no justification for the shelling on Saturday of a camp for displaced people 8 civilians were killed the Venezuelan opposition leader has declared himself the country's interim president has calls to nationwide protests to try to remove President Nicolas Maduro from power I don't know said a demonstration on Wednesday would demand that the armed forces side with the people President Maduro has told the Army to remain loyal to him a group of Israeli soldiers has arrived in Brazil to join the rescue and recovery efforts following the collapse of a dam at an iron ore mine on Friday more than 300 people are still missing the Trump administration has lifted sanctions imposed last year on 3 companies linked to the Russian billionaire Oleg dairy Pascoe they include one of the world's biggest alum 1000000 producers Roussel Mr Terry Pascoe himself remains under sanctions researches in the u.k. Say they have genetically modified chickens so they produce eggs containing drugs that can be used to treat human illnesses the chemicals can be extracted from the eggs at a 10th of the cost of making them synthetically the superhero film Black Panther has won the top prize at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles the film which depicts a futuristic African society picked up the award for outstanding performance by a cast the best actor award went to Remy Malik for his performance as Freddie Mercury in the film Bahamian Rhapsody b.b.c. News. When he died he was taking those people in they didn't post-mortem and then they brought him back to the village. They washed their body then dressed up and then they put him in a coffin everyone who knows the deceased comes our own family the total is about $500.00 people and everyone is a rainbow coming you know paying their last respects. You're listening to crowd size from the b.b.c. World Service 2 I'm jackets here and this is one of our listeners Moses Marin remembering his grandfather's burial. The fact is the day of the burial there is a prayer then with a very grave and everyone who comes to bury has to pick some soil and then throw it in the grave before everything is sealed you later fire in the middle of the compound so the fire stays burning for the whole week to say good bye to his soul. Moses traveled for 8 hours to attend his grandfather's burial from his home in camp Paula Uganda to his family's village on the other side of the country and later he started pondering the Importance of It All My question is why do we humans bury our dead how important is it and how did it evolve Hi Moses thanks for your question tell us more about why you started to wonder about this question there is and I wondered about this question was in my last semester at the university I had a paper Unfortunately when my grandfather died the day of burial was conceding with the test so at that moment I had to weigh. And he said on her that would test or worth to unbury my grandfather so of course I decided to Granbury because family is more important I'm really glad I went but then I failed the paper because I didn't do the test so that's when I said wondering if it's really really important that we bury people it sounds like to me that you do think it was important that you buried him it is important in a family since of things the funeral is there for us to go and confronted the people who have lost but what I don't understand is. Itself you know how it started and why it's so important so many evolutionary reasons or advantages for why we have the exactly exactly because it's only us that actually seem to do this so I'm wondering what's so special about the humans I don't know I really don't know I'm waiting for chords to answer my question. Oh yes I mean. To start to answer No this is question we wanted to find a really old burial way back in the evolutionary history of humans and the search led us to France where in the middle of some very beautiful very cold countryside we found a series of caves set into a steep hillside and you can see that there is actually a lot of kids here and all of them well compiled by priests 3 people by Neanderthals Dr Isabel Crevequer is an anthropologist at France's National Center for Scientific Research She specializes in prehistoric funerary practices including those of the Neanderthal humans who once lived and died here those all of those caves have evidence of human of patients Neanderthal actually how far back in time we talk so we talking about publicly 802-605-0000 years ago and what with this landscape of look like that more cold maybe not colder than today. But on the year scale so call there and you can picture reindeer bison because those are the animals that we have found in these caves and that we're but should sort of like a little dome or a grotto kind of set into the surface of the rock but it's not very hard at all maybe just over a metre tall you can imagine someone kind of in there hunkered down maybe like putting some me or just protecting themselves from the elements exactly why these caves important for our program about burial it's because in the big. Getting off last century they found. Remains of an young that was most probably buried there this is the cave where they found the Neanderthals Colliton and it was the 1st time in the East 3 that such a discovery in this context was and the let us through evidence of Neanderthal burial you can still see the depression in the middle and this is the depression where the body was found oh that's the bit where that wow yeah since we're digging up clues for the evolution of burial the 1st question is whether this is indeed a true intentional burial rather than the body ending up there by accident intention is something that researches take great pains to find evidence for Isabelle was part of a team that came back to reexamine the excavation site a century after the skeleton was 1st discovered So what convinced them that the body was intentionally buried 1st of all the fact that the pit is clearly not natural We actually tried to lay down in that and it was actually perfect if you are in a contracted position lying on the side the fact that the size and shape is really perfect for human body is a strong evidence that it was shaped by human the other really strong argument for us is the completeness of the skeleton and the bones seem to have been more protected than the other bones that were discovered in this area the original skeleton now is 500 kilometers away in Paris but just down the road from the cave the local museum houses a replica. Ok to this is the skeleton so we're in the Museum of the Neanderthal and this is a replica of the skeleton that was found in the cave Exactly and it is positioned the way they found the skeleton it's almost as if he was hugging his knees and over to the side and. Our listener Moses wondered if it's only humans that bury their dead now Neanderthal of all humans but they're distinct from our own species Homo sapiens and historically there's been a widespread belief that only homo sapiens were capable of the kind of abstract self-conscious thought needed for intentional burial which is why the skeleton found a lot of Pelosi has been subject to a lot of scrutiny. But if Neanderthals were burying some of their dead all those years ago does that tell us anything about their attitude to death or even how burial might have started in the 1st place you start to think of that because you are conscience about your own life and your own death and this is something that probably at one time in human history took over just the natural thing of getting rid of a body and more and more studious show that taking care of the dead people is not specific to almost sapience and what we call symbolic behavior it's not specific to siblings even early youth population have probably had the same kind of here if you were to with that so it's more a question of did it start within their genius or do you have any idea about when that more of and that's exactly what we don't know. That's what we're trying to find that. So burial likely wasn't unique to our species and other early humans were probably doing it too however it's much harder to say anything about what was going on inside the heads of these prehistoric people unless someone is buried with objects that have been obviously placed there for a symbolic reason like art or arrowheads we can't know for sure what their beliefs about death might have been and what about our more distant relatives like those that aren't too minute all chimpanzees sometimes throw tree branches over their dead and we can see intriguing rituals the echo burial in other animals too like elephants that have been observed quietly tending to the body of one of their dead we tracked down a man trying to make sense of all of this poor Pettit on Professor of Paleolithic archaeology Darren university in the u.k. And Morley specific research interests include the origins and early development of our out and the origins and early development of treatment of the day. Ad so you and your colleagues have proposed this concept of evolutionary Thun a toilet which sounds quite impressive and I think Thunder toss is maybe Greek for the death your right yes a number of archeologists zoo all ages have been recognizing quite disparate examples of how animals in human societies deal with that day and we've got together and trying to work together some common ground to try to link what insects do with their dead birds or elephants and obviously primates and human groups I mean that sounds like it might help us out to answer a question from our listener Moses and one of the things that he was interested in was whether there is any evolutionary reason or advantages to burying the dead and if that might help explain why as humans we do that. There's 2 ways to look at this so insects of various forms practice what do all a just call net Crow class trail is and which means covering up or removing the coax from the colony termites for example will bury its carrying grains of sand to cover it up so I think evolution errantly the most simplest behavior goes back you know at least 400000000 years to our insect inhabitants so that's an obvious evolutionary advantage you know we need to get rid of rotting corpses but from a human point of view it has a secondary use and that is to solve all of the social problems all of the emotional problems when an individual Dali's So working through issues of anger grief of course and also how do we renegotiate our social tarries Now that's an important piece of the jigsaw has left all social groups so what do we think about some of the really earliest evidence for burial or thumbing like burial in humans were prior to the very obvious burials that we have from a mound half a 1000000 years ago to about 100000 years ago we do have sites in the Ice Age landscape natural sorry it's caves and particularly fishes that a number of human bodies are winding up being deposited in we have over 28 at one site in Spain for example I think it can't be accident that our little groups of hunter gatherers just come naturally to be deposited in these there has to be some deliberate placement of them and I've suggested that this is the evolution repercussion to human burial I call it funerary caching so just the use of those natural nukes and crannies in the landscape to tuck the bodies of the dead or why until. Maybe it's no surprise that eventually by 100000 years ago some early humans come to artificially create their own books and crannies in other words dig graves pits. Evidence for very early human burial is guess because most early humans weren't buried and because of this they left little or no trace so when do we start to see evidence that this practice became much more common more routine and organized cemeteries a place settings solely for the dead only really a Rowley's from around 1415000 years ago so we have a number of hunter gatherer groups they are intensifying the way they interact with their water resources and they were able to sit on certain areas of land for longer periods of the year perhaps his moral view and therefore the need to dispose of the relatively larger amounts of the dead so that might be one cause of beginning to separate dispersion of the dead from the world of the living and then secondly the dead become a very obvious a very useful why of establishing Klein to that land you know we've always lived here look our dead and buried next door in the cemetery in someone. You're listening to crowd science from the b.b.c. World Service where we're exploring Moses is question about why we bury our dead the act of burial itself is often just one part of a funeral ceremony full of elaborate rituals and symbolic behavior but if that was going on in prehistory nearly all traces of it have been lost so to help us understand the importance of this aspect of burial we're going to have a look at what happens today where we can see some of these rituals in more detail and ask people why they think burial is important to them My name's Eric and I'm currently writing a book called this party is dead about the world's death best. Great title Thank you Erica is traveling the world to explore how different cultures deal with death we caught her in between trips in our studio in London and asked her how she got interested in this subject it actually started off because my husband and I found his father dead in his house it was incredibly traumatic actually because he had been dead for over a week and we had absolutely no idea how to deal with that so of course we immediately called someone to help us and it really made me realize how little we discuss death how little we look at it and I actually used to live in Mexico and lots of people there had said to me we're not afraid of death so I got interested in that and especially in how other people deal with the certainty that they're going to die so I decided to visit 7 death festivals will give us a bit of a sense so I mean here in the u.k. And also follow us in the Moses in Uganda we bury our dead so most people be familiar with the idea you dig a hole you put the body in and you buried up and then that's it but tell us a bit about what it's like in other parts of the world so there's 2 I'm going to next year the only 2 death festivals that actually involve the corpse itself. In Indonesia where people are put in a crypt where essentially they just dry out and then that fs all is actually examining them from the Crypt dressing them in new clothes walking them around the town taking selfies like it's a very literal way to continue your relationship with the dead is to actually bring the corpse out and this is actually similar to something that happens in Madagascar which is called the turning of the bones where they will actually Igs you the body from the ground rewrap it in fresh sheets don't surround have a party that is I mean compared to the way that in the West and definitely u.k. That we think about burial and that would be like sacrilegious basically to take up a corpse it's already you know you put it in the ground rice it but there are you know it's not it's not a universal thing no rest in peace is cultural apparently because that's you know in the sending of the boat is that every 7 years but we're. As other parts so for example I went to Nepal a few months ago where they actually burn the dead on open funeral pyres and this is about reincarnation and I actually watched a funeral pyre watched a body butting you know I never saw my father in law's body my husband said stay downstairs don't go up there and they took him away and I still think I've seen him on the street I'm still constantly double taking and I think there's just this part of my brain that doesn't understand that he's gone and I don't know how to explain it right Ok so you know and you think that maybe you know I've been to a funeral I think was last year it was a cremation it was very sanitized I mean you kind of go into a room and they let you almost press a button you can just see the coffin receding away from you but you never really see the body or what happens to after right and I imagine if you watch someone you love literally burning in front of you there's no doubt that they're gone do you think maybe there is actually some benefit in being more sort of up close and personal to a corpse essentially and it can provide maybe some closure it's certainly what I'm hearing when I interview people about it like I said because I chose not to I certainly couldn't speak to the benefits of it myself but of course that's the question I've been asking everyone and everyone's come back and said yes. We got it easy to put that. Sometimes we have of course really I should say there are going to be any dead bodies in this program but to try and get a bit closer to some of the ceremonies and ritual surrounding death we visited a burial ground in the countryside of southern England so this is a bulletin carts traditionally list for thing coffins I'm with funeral director Luis winter helping her pull a cart up a muddy hill that we have family members here they can all get involved taking someone on their final journey his through the countryside so these are all graves . Would you like to meet the grave digger Yes space Ok. Hi. I'm no Martin master and you're taking a great. Many quite good progress very neat thanks very much if you want to lend a hand oh yeah that would be quite nice I'd say Ok I'll get involved so I get into the I've actually never been stepped inside a growth before 1st time for everything this is the trimming I get straight down like that yeah that and to see a square and I thought Ok Ok cool I'll go on with this bit and then you'll inevitably have to come over and tidy up a. Get right on top of it when actually looking down the space. You know before No actually. Ever. Will come back to this burial ground later in the program but standing inside an actual cold muddy grave inevitably got me thinking about whether I want to be buried or is perhaps cremation the way to go it's a decision that's bound up with culture and religion but there are very practical considerations too not to mention individual preferences and to pick our way through these myriad factors we called Dr Hannah rumble an anthropologist who specializes in death dying and body disposal I often come across in interviews when I'm talking with the brave people who are making their funeral plans that there's a sort of instinctive feeling that they just don't want to be burnt unequally for people who instinctively say to me they prefer cremation they'll often say it's because they don't like the idea of being eaten by where being in ground where it's cold so it's interesting how. Despite perhaps someone's religious persuasion or not and despite cultural background that when people 2nd consider their own funeral preferences often there is this kind of very strong emotional feeling which will make people think Karl I want to be cremated or I want to be parent and I know over some cultures by so I'm come from a Hindu family and cremation is a kind of different option there are other cultures like a 1000 people are generally buried but I've heard that cremation is becoming more and more popular is that right varies across countries the country with the highest cremation rate is Japan although it hasn't always been in history and here in Britain our commission rates been steadily rising and we're currently around 75 percent of all on your desecration there are many reasons why it's happening but quite broadly I think one is that there is a lack of burial space people might think that they want to be buried in their local cemetery or church yard and then find that that church yard or cemetery is full and no longer open to burial I also think there's something about the portability of ashes that holds appeal for a number of us today particularly if we've got family that live around the country or indeed you have some family members who live overseas then they can split the ashes up amongst the family and scatter them in places of significance or indeed if you're a person who's decided you want to be cremated maybe the appeal is that you spent most of your adult life moving around particular and you talking about burial there's a sense of places so if you've been a bit of a nomad in life then where is your place to belong. And the grave definitely gives a sense of belonging and a strong identity and so perhaps you can see in the appeal with cremated remains if you don't have the same strong community ties to a particular place. For people who do want to come to La in a particular place one option is natural burial that grave you had me taking earlier is in a natural burial woodland in the English countryside Louise winter helps organize burials here in her role as a funeral director so today we are even Valley natural burial ground with a natural burial ground it's a really different approach the idea being to return to nature as quickly as possible whereas in other approaches it might be important that the person is preserved there and bomb there in a metal casket and will never return to being part of the earth but here it's very different say you ain't see any headstones event see any heavy wooden coffin we're standing next to looks like a recently dug grave it looks very different to the kind of crazy you normally see but there's a verse and beautiful plants and flowers have been laid over the top of it so this is a recently filled grave which is why the ground over the grave is high over time the earth will drop and it will return to the same height as the rest of the ground everything here is designed to ultimately return to nature and not create the existing nature this would he have any problems what do you think it is about burial is powerful and do you think that the act of burying somebody is important. Idea and as a funeral director I really notice especially when I'm involved with a natural burial Usually when a family has been really involved when they carry the coffin themselves when they pull the cart through the midday when they lower the coffin into the grave when they grab a shovel and start putting the back into the grave it's a real acknowledgment of the fact that someone has died that person is not coming back we are putting them in the earth and there is absolutely no doubt about the fact that they are no longer physically with us. Natural burial is often seen as an environmentally friendly option because of its minimal impact on the landscape although weighing up its green credentials compared to say a cremation is a whole other program but anthropologist Hanna Rumble has spoken to many people about why they chose natural burial grounds some people would choose not to burial precisely because for them it much is their green values that they live by for other people it's because they want to be Berridge they can't bear the idea that their body would be burnt but they might not have any surviving kin and they worry about the fact that no one's going to visit their grave and they feel a kind of shame that their graves going to be neglected and so the appeal of natural burial is there isn't supposed to be a grave to tend that over time your grave disappears into the landscape and what about the idea of a natural burial is sort of the most direct way of just returning your atoms and your honor into the world from when you came ashes to ashes dust to dust all of the year that holds a real appeal to people it's a great source of comfort to think that that person has gone back to the earth is nourishing and that sort of around their continuing somehow in the landscape so when I was doing my research I talked about you know the therapeutic landscape and a romantic notion that where sustaining other life through our own decomposition. Though there are many other ways of dealing with dead bodies there are clearly important reasons for burial not just in evolutionary history but in the comfort it brings to people contemplating their own death or dealing with the loss of their loved ones today. While making this program I asked lots of people what they would like to happen to their own body when they die my girlfriend says she wants to be made into charcoal pencils so that people can draw with her I'm leaning towards raising my body to science one of our listeners Moses My great grandfather was one of the people who settled in the 1st people so whenever someone dies you have to get him back to winter for. Will you get married I definitely because my father will. You know the family bond stay there thank you so much Moses for a fascinating question next week on crowd science money Chesterton we'll be looking at whether it's possible to do your own recycling but for this program back to Moses for the credits that's it for this edition of crowd to us from the b.b.c. World Service this question was from me in Uganda the program was presented by an undergrad and produced by the Edwards. If you have a sas question you'd like our side please e-mail it to science at b.b.c. . Thanks for the say by this is the b.b.c. World Service bringing you the story behind a remarkable archive of songs in 1940 Alexander coolish a which was sent to a concentration camp where he and his fellow prisoners secretly perform songs they had written. And the promise to remember those. And I'll be exploring his musical legacy from the depths of hell b.b.c. World Service dot com. And it's b.b.c. World Service dot com business I'm carrying out I mean Johanna's burn the commercial capital of South Africa to find out how the thriving Korean community here is helping their own businesses to seize control of some of the key markets a continent that's often described as the final frontier This is the b.b.c. World Service the world's radio station. Hello and welcome to News Day of the b.b.c. World Service Laurence pull out here and be Alex Ritson. All the way we get the background to the latest prison sentence handed down to a human rights lawyer in China beaten up arrested disappeared and now given 4 and a half years for subversion all eyes on the Army in Venezuela will they continue their staunch support for President Bashir or might soldiers follow at an attached at the u.s. And pledge loyalty to the self declared opposition President Africa investigates the plague of a highly addictive heroin based drug corrupting apparently South Africa's law enforcement also the world's driest continent fires up its deceleration plant in response to the continuing drought we hear from Australia for the latest on the disaster in Brazil the Kenyan will be here with the weekend sport and looking ahead to the new week. Hello I'm David Harper with the b.b.c. News a court in China has sentenced a prominent human rights lawyer to 4 and a half years in prison for subversion Wang Chan Jang had already spent more than 3 years in detention after he was caught up in a wave of arrests of Chinese lawyers and activists in 2015 his sentence includes time already served John Sudworth is in Beijing his cry appear to be related to his work to promote and train lawyers in China and how to use Chinese law to challenge the authorities but really it seems that he has been targeted because of his own work defending marginalized groups victims of religious persecution for example and really his sentencing is designed to send a chilling message to those who would dare to use the Communist Party's own courts to try to challenge its authority the United Nations has all sides in the war in Yemen to do everything possible to protect civilians amid renewed warnings by aid groups that further fighting could provoke a famine it comes a month after the Yemeni government and Hoofy rebels agreed a ceasefire for the key port of her data our correspondent Elise Doucette sends this report from the outskirts of the city every hospital every clinic tells the story of this truce now there were fewer casualties from gunfire explosions in airstrikes at a government field hospital a doctor tells us the numbers have dropped by half but the suffering hasn't stopped in one clinic a teenager is rushed in his hand blown off by a landmine Both sides accuse the other of repeated violations but if this rare truce fails it could be catastrophic in a country on the cusp of famine the Venezuelan opposition leader why go has called to nationwide protests to try to remove President Nicolas Maduro from power in a video posted on Twitter Mr quite dos had a demonstration on Wednesday. Would demand that the armed forces side with the people rally on Saturday will back a European ultimatum for fresh elections to be called within a week. The holding company set up by the Russian billionaire all egg dairy Pascoe e n. Plus has welcomed the lifting of u.s. Sanctions on the business the firm is one of 3 firms including Roussel that were blacklisted last April by the trumpet ministration citing Mr Terra Pax as close it us to the Russian state is can get some and a statement the Us Treasury said that it had lifted the sanctions because Mr Pascoe agreed to lower his ownership stake in the companies and because the amp us and Ruth all had agreed to stringent reporting requirements the Treasury also.