Will be heading to Malaysia shortly as police there say a highly toxic nerve agent called it was used to kill North Korea's half the leader of North Korea's half brother Kim Jong un and more about the chemical agent also about North Korea's chemical weapons arsenal and will hear criticism of the United Nations over its reactions to claim that its peacekeepers are guilty of abuse both on the program we're going to consider a disastrous election result questions the main opposition party saying the Labor Party used to be able to pretty much just wave the votes the working classes in these areas were loyal to the party. Has been broken and Matthew Kenyon with sports news will talk to the baby shoes man in Leicester about the sacking of clarity around Yairi and who might replace him at the English Channel. B.b.c. News on police in Malaysia say one of the world's most deadly nerve agents was used to kill the brother of the North Korean leader Kuala Lumpur 11 days after the attack the Malaysian authorities are checking the airport for traces of the substance known as the testing for radioactive materials Rupert Winfield hey is in Kuala Lumpur now that the Malaysians have confirmed they have found traces of Vieques on Kim Jong un's dead body this is a very very powerful nerve agent perhaps the most powerful nerve agent ever invented it is also banned under un convention on chemical weapons so it is considered a banned substance under international law and the fact that that was used to kill someone in an international airport has increased the seriousness and the gravity of this for the Malaysian authorities considerably and now we understand there is a suite potentially taking place over the airport to obviously see whether there's any contamination that. Donald Trump our 30 wants to expand America's nuclear arsenal and his 1st comments on the issue since taking office Mr Trump said he'd rather see a world without nuclear weapons but that the United States had fallen behind in capacity and wanted to be top of the pack on his control groups have criticized the comments Iraqi forces have begun their attack on the western part of the city of Mosul the day after capturing the city's airport from the Islamic state group Quinten some of l. Is embedded with the Iraqi military again armored columns formed up after a night of heavy airstrikes on the west of Mosul it's a familiar pattern but today the battle is different having yesterday captured Mosul airport Iraqi forces are moving from desert farmland to the city itself one colonel leading the operation said this is where the real fighting starts where small salt will be difficult its streets are narrow and it's densely populated but I s are in retreat and Iraqi forces will attempt to use the lessons learned in their campaign for Easter more so we stick around 100 days to recapture to blunt I as a tax Britain's main opposition Labor Party has suffered a shock to feet by the governing conservatives in a parliamentary byelection Labor had held the Copeland seat for more than 80 years boss in another byelection Labor fended off a challenge from the anti European Union Party Ukip Chris Meissen has the details the victory for the Conservative Party in Copeland an isolated corner of the North West of England was stunning the 1st time a governing party in the u.k. Has gained a seat in a byelection since 1982 in Stoke in the English Midlands the opposition Labor Party did hold on to its seat and so beat the u.k. Independence Party who had hoped to snatch a constituency that overwhelmingly backed Bracks it's the u.k. Leaving the European Union this is the latest world news from the b.b.c. . President Zuma of South Africa has condemned an outbreak of violence against foreigners he said it was wrong to label them as drug dealers and people traffickers dozens of shops in homes owned by immigrants were attacked this week near Pretoria a protest March against migrants is due to take place in the City later today raising fears of further violence Human Rights Watch says Israel will no longer issue visas to its start the group says Israel rejected a visa request for its regional director a u.s. National the Israeli Foreign Ministry has accused the group of being anti Israeli but he said the group was not banned and its local employees would continue to be able to work in Israel police in India have arrested the director of an Indian company which claims to have produced the world's cheapest smartphone on allegations of fraud mo it go well of ringing bells was arrested after a distributor complained it had been cheated due to Pandy reports the freedom $251.00 Ford price to $251.00 Drew Brees or less than $4.00 went to an advance sale in February last year but while many customers got their forms drinking bells was accused of failing to fulfill all of its orders a distribution company I am enterprises said it bade $45000.00 for a batch of forms just said but it claimed that less than half of the devices were delivered it said its staff received death threats after asking for the money for the remaining forms to be refunded the parent company of Google alphabet has filed a lawsuit against the taxi sharing company that itself driving vehicle unit auto alphabetic uses herb or of stealing sensor technology to help speed up its development of self driving cars alphabet alleges that the co-founder of also an 11 Dosti downloaded thousands of confidential files when he worked for Google it was said it would review the matter carefully b.b.c. News. Thank you the news update welcome to News Day here in the b.b.c. World Service with no Merrick Garland on the way. It's been the most toxic nerve agents around colorless odorless and is banned by the u.n. . Killed North Korea's half brother Kim Jong nam his murder in Malaysia international Apple continues to make headlines we'll be giving you an update on that shortly we'll also have a story from the Central African Republic there have been over 100 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by u.n. And French peacekeepers there and the new boss of the u.n. Says he wants to see solutions also Britain's main opposition party suffering another humiliation more on that this half hour. But 1st if it were a soap opera we'd be bringing you the latest outrageous unbelievable episode in fact the story of Kim Jong assassination is real and now it appears the 2 women who are accused of attacking him at the Kuala Lumpur airport appear to have used nerve and a nerve agent v.x. On his face that's at least what the Malaysian authorities are saying happened to the half brother of North Korea's leader v.x. Is an image is said is so deadly that the u.n. Classifies it as a weapon of mass destruction there is widespread suspicion that the North Korean state was behind the attack is a claim which it fiercely denies Khalid Al bucket of the Malaysian police said that they are trying to find out how this v.x. Chemical was brought into the country. And so what he's saying there is that the amount of the chemical brought in was it would be difficult for us to detect it's a chemical weapon we are investigating how it entered the country to find out more about this story our special correspondent report Winfield Hayes who's in Kuala Lumpur all this came as quite a big surprise to everybody this morning when the police came out and made this. Statements saying that v.x. Nerve agent traces of v.x. Nerve agent had been found on Kim Jong. UN's body. Cheering the autopsy process so they said they took swabs of his skin on his face and from his eyes and when that was tested the preliminary results show traces of the ex Malaysia is really pressing on with this investigation but at the same time they're not pointing the finger at North Korean regime directly but how much do you think this is going to impact relations with North Korea Firstly the implication of all of this is that North Korea is the North Korean regime is the chief suspect that the regime itself has not been named but all of the suspects apart from the 2 women who are believed to have carried out the attack all of the other suspects named and wanted on North Korea including staff at a North Korean embassy so this is potentially a an assassination of a North Korean citizen on a foreign country soil but today this is stepped up hugely because not only is it potentially an assassination by the North Korean state on foreign soil but using a banned nerve agent banned under un convention in an international airport so this sort of puts it to another level using a banned chemical weapon inside another country's international airport and Rupa just quickly we're just going to to Seoul in a moment but in terms of the airport is the airport close what was the situation that. We're actually on our way to the airport now we stop by the road to have a talk to you so we're not sure the authorities say they are going to sweep all the areas which may have been contaminated we'll be able to tell you that once we get to the airport and see it with our own eyes thank you very. That's a repeat Winfield Hayes that he will probably be at the Malaysian International Airport now and we will get updates from him on the b.b.c. Website throughout the day and let's find a little bit more now about the ex agent yes don't to be responding is a seat on this at the Rand Corporation it's a u.s. Based think tank and as I repeat it took that mention that it's a chemical weapon so dangerous it's considered a weapon of mass destruction so I asked brace what he made of the confirmation that this no the agent had been using Kim Jong Nam I'm surprised because I'm not aware of anyone having used v.x. For an assassination before but it's actually a fairly good choice the axis like an oil you could use it to put it on someone's skin and it's not going to affect people around as long as you don't get it on other people's skin My guess is the water splashed on Kim Jong Nom or whatever it was was a diversion it was something to allow them to be able to come in and try to wipe his face and probably had just a little drop of this on the cloth to get onto a skin the x. Takes about $100.00 ths of a gram so it's about a 3rd of a drop is what it takes to kill somebody the thing you have to remember with the axe is you don't make this in a kitchen lab this is extraordinarily lethal you're going to make this in a very very high technology chemical lab and as far as I know there are not many countries even that have made this chemical we don't know for sure that North Korea may they may have bought it there are a lot of lethal chemical left around by the former Soviet Union when it fell apart so it may have been purchased somewhere or it may have been made by the North Koreans and why would they use this type of weapon if indeed they may have. And assuming they have it's just the fact that it would allow them to do something that was plausibly deniable they get a 3rd of a drop on can John noms face he dies and their ambassador tried to immediately reclaim the body trying to avoid an autopsy had he been successful had the Malaysians not been persistent and really saw for evidence they'd have gotten the body and gone away and no one would have ever known that it was the x. That was used no North Korea obviously furious that Malays ia wanted to do this post most an examination and they're saying when a z. Had a sinister Pappas where does it leave relations between those 2 countries I would be surprised if Malaysia didn't kick out to the 'd North Korean delegation 'd maybe even break relations I mean this is extraordinarily serious but I think the more interesting question is what is China going to do yeah because China had been providing or that at least it was said that China was providing security for Kim Jong Naaman his family and the North Koreans it killed him in this horrendous way I think the Chinese are going to be pretty upset many people have said that because he left China he left himself vulnerable that's quite probably the case I suspect North Korea was waiting to catch him outside the country I don't think North Korea wanted to kill him in Macau this way the Chinese would have been just overwhelmingly furious said they'd been killed in China something like 85 percent of North Korean trade 'd is done with China if China cuts off more of that trade and already cutting off the coal exports from North Korea North Korea is going to be in a very serious hard currency problem student and a development in the story Dr Bruce Bennett from the Rand Corporation a u.s. Based think tank and this is just come in it's the Malays and. Foreign minister who's been speaking to the press he says we don't see the need to dignify the statement accusations against the government of Malaysia he's commenting really on accusations by Pyongyang that Malaysia shouldn't have conducted an autopsy the North Korean ambassador he says has been informed about the process involved but he continues to be delusional and spew lies and accusations against our government and we were talking earlier about relations between Malaysia and North Korea I think that's a pretty good indication that they're strained at the moment let's get the sports news now Matthew Kenyon Good morning Mamiya one story in town really the departure of cloud here Ranieri as manager of Leicester City just 9 months after leading the club to the most extraordinary success in winning the English Premier League title but their defense of that title has been very difficult indeed they are only a point above the relegation zone so Ronnie ery has gone very much a negative reaction from around the football world we've talked about what Gary Lineker had to say we've talked about which as a Marine here had to say I wonder what the view is from the fans in Leicester Let's talk to him and Stringer who watches and commentates on Leicester City week in week out for b.b.c. Radio Leicester last time you were doing a live broadcast outside the can pass stadium it was the massive success of the club in winning the Premier League very different today I know you had a special program on the b.b.c. Radio Leicester last night in response to Ronnie Aires departure is there a settled view about this it seems really mixed to me from the fans. Morning Matthew Sudarsan the king pile stayed in the sun rising just over the a stand but is rising on a stadium that is manager less the Smalling Yes good morning we hosted a an hour and a half on b.b.c. Radio Leicester last night a month you have got to say the resoundingly message from Fox's fans was one of bewilderment and those a lot of outpouring of emotion as well that people adore the Italian because of what he did this club's been around for 133 years have never won the f.a. Cup but come to the f.a. Cup Final 4 times never wanted the never won the league until on this stood on right now we were celebrating as a city and the world's media were down here on the 3rd of May after Chelsea to tour with top them and gifted less to sell handed a city that trophy and Claudio Ranieri puts for one reason or another he's fallen on his sword and Claudio Ranieri will be his bags this morning and he's unemployed . Is no longer the manager of Leicester City I wonder about his future long term but on the more about the foxes future long term there's a lot of emotion in this city at the moment Matthew Yeah I would say it's going to be difficult for people to process this is a hard headed to sit in there isn't it I mean if the owners have got a long term project winning the league last season wasn't really part of that project but they have to keep things on track because there's a huge amount of money at stake not least that's what they will say we have to keep this club in the Premier League and we believe that the best way to do that is to change the man at the top. Here and I understand that Matthew but there's the tie owner. Serie Wassenaar prop Our who who owns the King Power g t 3 joint is a billionaire is a very successful man the global success of Leicester City Football Club will have had a thing credibly to him on his business within the g.t. Free outlets around Thailand in the Bangkok International Airport and around South-East Asia yes I understand it could be damaging for the brand I understand the Leicester City Football Club. Champions can't be embarrassed by being relegated but in the relegation zone people are forgetting this they stuck with nodule person for a 140 days was they were bottom of the probably lake they stuck with knowledgeable they've sacked cloudy Oh when they're not in the relegation zone Listen they may become what Monday when they play Liverpool here at the King Palace stadium in the Premier League and they've got a 2nd leg of the Champions League last 16 where they are only 21 down they've got an away goal if severe are going to frenzy on a cold night here in March to warm up with an away goal the new guy could come in and have Leicester City in the quarter finals of the Champions League not in the relegation zone that were based on a model is interesting Absolutely and thank you very much indeed in strength from b.b.c. Radio Leicester he's going to be a busy man today the next question that moves on fairly quickly is who is going to follow cloudier Ranieri the clear failing is that there is a plan from the owners otherwise they wouldn't have acted at the time they did more reaction on sport today thanks Matthew but just getting some reports that a suicide bomber has killed 29 people most of them rebels on Friday and in the Syrian town of Al-Bab they had taken it from the sonic state group just hours and it will keep of course our story throughout the day our other top story this morning is that Malaysian police say the brother of the North Korean leader was killed by the most deadly nerve agent that exists Vieques is classed by the u.n. As a weapon of mass destruction we're going to head now to the Central African Republic where task force set up to tackle child sex abuse in the country by un peacekeepers will reveal its findings next week the new head of the un Antonio Gutierrez called for game changing solutions after a succession of scandals and a word of note here our special correspondent for report contains some rather harrowing testimony. They came here is defenders of the people French and u.n. Peacekeepers helped prevent genocide. They still protect tens of thousands of vulnerable civilians and stand between this country and anarchy. But the story of their mission has been tarnished by allegations of horrific child abuse a 13 year old boy whose parents say he was raped after being given food a 14 year old girl made pregnant and they be positive a 12 year old girl raped during a u.n. Raid. Drove my daughter to see this soldier she was invited to eat afterwards. He took her virginity. That night it was very cold and the man offered a pill to my child claiming it would warm him it took my son 5 minutes to fall asleep then the soldier raped him he was woken by the weight of the soldier lying on him. She told me there was a man. Showed us the place where it happened. But we found. Blood u.n. Officials were accused of failing to act to stamp out the abuse but one senior figure did speak out my name is underscore pass in July 2014 I informed the French government about information that I had received about allegations of French soldiers abusing children in Central African Republic 9 months after that I was asked by the un leadership to resign and when I refused to resign I was forced out eventually in August 2015 after a rape case and the killing of several civilians became a major public issue the un acted the force commander was sacked and the un Secretary-General Ban Ki moon promised to crack down enough is enough I cannot put into words how anguished and angered and I was ashamed I am a detailed un investigation would later accuse so. Top officials are failing to act to stop the abuse and of perpetuating a culture of impunity Among them was the head of human rights on the mission Renner or Nana However he's been promoted by the un and now runs a regional office in the Central African Republic the u.n. Said he wouldn't speak as the matter was being handled by headquarters in New York but we did meet his boss the respected u.n. Veteran parfait on anger who were sent to run the mission after the scandal do you understand and Europe with the us a long time how it looks to the people who are critical of this organization thrive when you have the situation what of course do you for everything that people say I do only stack of account of an absolute or Iraq was absolutely. Contingent from the Democratic Republic of Congo was sent home following allegations of abuse but it's up to contributing nations to carry out any prosecutions so far they've only been a handful and the French after 2 years of investigation haven't charged any of their troops whistleblower under scarp us again it's terrible for the credibility and the trust of the United Nations 1st of all the savvy people and the children who are being affected but also to all the people inside the United Nations because these are the this is a terrible message the UN's head of mission parfait on longer says allegations of abuse have gone down drastically even if there was only one single case left it was it would be one case too many. There have been many such promises from the United Nations before in the Central African Republic and on other missions the integrity of the organization the hopes of the victims demand that this time the promise is kept. That's Fergal Keane reporting but his main opposition Labor Party has suffered another humiliation after a period of infighting and disunity is of a shock to. Feet to the governing conservatives in a parliamentary by Election Day but night why was it shot while Labor's held the seat for more than 80 years and governing party is used to do badly in by elections Robertson's our political correspondent it's really terrible for the opposition Labor Party I mean there's just no 2 ways about that and I think it's a really interesting example of the fall out if you like from post Bracks politics but this is major grief for labor for 3 reasons really I mean I think the 1st one is of course they have an unpopular many people would say incompetent leader and Jeremy Corbin 2nd it's about that day industrialisation of these large swathes of Northern England where the Labor Party used to be able to pretty much just weigh the votes the working classes in these areas were utterly loyal to the party I think really warring for labor there are signs that that that that bond has been broken and that brings me to Bracks and I think that has been part of breaking that bond because of course the Labor Party campaign for Britain staying in the e.u. An awful lot of its voters in the industrial north or post-industrial North voted to leave but I can assure you people in the higher echelons of the Labor Party scratching their heads I think they do have a real problem on their hands I mean what is the Labor Party his role in a post Bracks world I Mean Chlorine my way towards saying that it's about holding the government to accounts and making sure that it carries out these Bracks negotiations properly but clearly that their supporters are looking around and they are asking themselves that question what is the point of labor. Probably a little correspondent now business news and all this week across the b.b.c. We'll look at disability in the workplace Alex Ritson is here Alex very exciting you got a star of the chocolate advert world with you Yes Samantha rank She's an actress as you can see she uses a wheelchair I will introduce you properly in a moment but let's 1st to the advice it was part of a controversial series of adverts for a brand of chocolate called Maltese is the bang you hear in the middle is a very solid looking puss landing on a chocolate somehow the big wedding on your haircut then my every word on the downslope we can count you know and think this is my life we'll on. The bright for. Much how all. This is. For the best most number you bball and good to have got a better more important time what you're looking at there all the way. To survive thank you so much for coming in today. Was this chocolate company trying to change the world or was it just getting a cheap headline and what's a follow up publicist you know I mean the response I had it means untasted and as a as a person with a disability I have all from my life no no I'm different and people treat me differently and people still maybe make comments feel awkward around may not know not know how to respond to me and now people want to take selfies with me dismay and the Will seems to just disappear and I'm not from the t.v. So for me I think I think representation to say positive roles of disabled people in t.v. You know we need to push that and I had a lot of fun during the during the out of that and you know it's cheeky and it's very mate So yeah I'm happy with you too. Some personal attacks and abuse after it was shown I mean I think whoever whoever is on our t.v. Or you know as a public figure you know you're always going to get trolls that's just part of it yeah I had I had quite a few people calling me after the adverts saying quite nasty things about my disability but you know I kind of expected that. And I've done a lot of work with children about role models and bullying so I kind of trying to turn that horrible experience into a positive experience your rocker be philosophical about it do you think these adverts actually did change attitudes in the u.k. I definitely think I mean you know we've all programmes like The Last Leg the Paralympics made a massive change and. Disability only represents 2.3 percent of media and I think that really needs to change a thing you know broadcast is really need to kind of separate them all can and commit to having authentic roles may I only go roll for roles and that all based around my disability why call me schoolteacher Why can I not go into a role that you know I place will keep your doctor or nurse so I think what the disability community warmed are more authentic roles for trials of disability on our screens Samantha rank thank you thank you and thank you Alex Ritson thank you so much and that's it from us from Ian Amir thank you very much for listening to news day if tomorrow and the next day are off days I hope you have a lovely lovely weekend statements of d.c. For more news though. Distribution of the b.b.c. World Service is supported by a cloud based phone service working to help businesses run efficiently the smart phone for your business more at o.o.m. a Dot com and via Apple layer a tax automation for business have a Lera is designed to simplify business tax by performing real time tax calculations and enabling automatic return filing have a layer of dog called. On the next fresh air Oscar nominees the film moonlight is up for 8 Oscars at Sunday night's ceremony including Best Picture and Best Director will hear from the film's writers and director to Roma Craney and Barry Jenkins and we feature an interview with writer director Mike Mills his film 20th century women is nominated for Best Original Screenplay joining us. This morning at. A respected physician must choose between the lives of 2 men and his principles are put to the ultimate test do you must save me has been your most you were asking me to kill another man for his sake the doctors dilemma by George Bernard Shaw next time on a taser works. Tonight at 9. B.b.c. News on John Shea police in Malaysia say one of the world's most deadly nerve agents was used to kill the brother of the North Korean leader called an international airport the substance known as v.x. Is classified by the u.n. As a weapon of mass destruction the Malaysian authorities say that checking the airport for traces of the substance and testing for radioactive materials. Reports from Syria say a suicide attack has killed at least 29 people near the town of Al-Bab Turkish troops and their rebel allies recaptured the town on Thursday from Islamic state militants Iraqi forces have begun their attack on the western part of Mosul a day after capturing the city's airport from Islamic state after a night a heavy night of airstrikes troops are now moving from the surrounding desert and farmland to the city itself South African protesters have blocked roads was burning tires in parts of Pretoria before a planned anti immigrant rally in the city demonstrators are to March to the Department of Home Affairs to protest against illegal immigration on Thursday President Jacob Zuma condemned an outbreak of violence against foreigners. Britons main opposition Labor Party has suffered a shock to feet by the governing conservatives in a parliamentary by election in the north of England it's the best byelection performance by a governing party in Britain in nearly half a century the campaign group Human Rights Watch says Israel will no longer issue visas to its stuff Israel has accused the group of being biased police in India have arrested the director of a company which claims to have produced the world's cheapest smartphone it follows allegations of fraud and workers in Japan are enjoying the country's 1st ever premium Friday the government wants all officers to close early on the last Friday of each month to help boost wilting consumer spending and reduce Japan's notoriously long working hours b.b.c. News. Hello welcome to Science in action I'm Adam heart and today we're getting excited about exoplanets as we discover a solar system of 7 Earth like planets around an ultra cool dwarf star we've been finding planets around distant stars for a while now 25 years this year in fact but so many rocky planets the same size as Earth some of which may have liquid water raises the possibility of extraterrestrial life but don't get too excited it's 39 light years away so we're not going to heading there any time soon another place will not be heading anytime soon is the naked cave of Mexico famous for its giant crystals the cave has become flooded and access is no longer allowed but scientists have been able to sample water from within these massive crystals and this week we learned that from that water they've been able to resurrect bacteria that have been dormant for thousands of years we also learn something of the lengths to which scientists will go to get close to their subjects all I remember doing is walking up to one of these during crystals and putting my arms around it now getting out and it repaid me by giving me essentially what amounted to paper cuts so I came out with all the skirts. But before that we're traveling in little further 39 light years further in fact the ultra cold war star Trappist one has been under surveillance by the Spitzer Space Telescope ever since the discovery last year of 3 planets orbiting the Jupiter sized star This week sees the publication of a paper detailing another 4 planets making a 7 exoplanet system in total now there are more planets in our galaxy than there are stars and this year marks the 25th anniversary of the 1st confirmed extra solar system planet so finding new planets isn't exactly breaking news but the 7 planet system orbiting Trappist one is between the exciting because these planets are Earth sized and at least 6 of them are rocky. Finding exoplanets is hard they are tiny and a very long way away so locating them requires you to be something of a space detective one such seasoned planetary shellac is co-author of the paper Professor Dak low from the University of Cambridge and Geneva I started by asking him what was so exciting about this latest discovery the exciting part of discovering planet on these stars is because a star I saw small then it's far more easy to try to learn much more on the planet and we were really interested to study the atmosphere of the smallest possible planet possibly planet like the oh now these planets a very long way away the ones we're talking about today are 39 light years away how do we go about studying things that are so far distant from us well that's about the business of the me because he must follow me you always 1st things I just want to make I'll distances so we have to learn how we can remotely that that things are learned for this the one we have been used in this case is if we could just lucky the planet may be just in front of the star it means producing a transit is there will be a brief moment of time usually a one hour or so where the planet will remove a little bit of the light from the star it's a bit like a shadow and this can be detected and from this you know the size of the planet and you know the period of the planet orbiting that star we have this little nugget of time as the planet news in front of the star dimming it slightly and we can detect say the size but can we tell anything else about the planet from that transit Well it's about all you can learn from the transit but in the case of the system we have been studying I mean there is far more that we've learned because it's not only one planet by these many planets around and pretty much compact a very close to each other I mean the shuttle stop it is $1.00 days and then is to have and it's 4 days 6 days 9 days so they're very much together and they so close that they are interacting between each other a little bit saw the duration of the year is not always the same there's a tiny bit of viability. Between the duration of the year by one minute or so and then you can use that to derive the credit effect of the planets and then its mass so because of this and it's very lucky part of the game is we do have the mass of all these planets and from the size of all these planets and from the mass of all this planet we know that the density of this planet is about the density similar to the one of the earth the system that you found is almost feels like a mini solar system it's much smaller the star itself is about the size of Jupiter but you're saying that the planets there are potentially quite earth like quite similar to here yet what we know on this planet is a massive size and the density sort so far there's only thing we can know about and we understand from this disavowed the both density of the Earth Well the next step and what we really want to do and very good to start is to twine to know a bit more on this planet and trying to see whether we can detect in the atmosphere one of the drivers for looking for planets is the search for life and one of the key features there is looking for liquid water can we infer anything from the distances in the size of the sun about the potential for the presence of liquid water on these planets Well the 1st one is we used to consider that he has a range where the planet should sit to have a possible life which is related to the temperature of the atmosphere so the very 1st fact you want to check is where the temperature makes sense so getting the atmosphere will give you in a way the temperature on the planet then on the top of that there is another ingredient that is seen as essential for life to Bellevue up which is water so you really want to take water and author is kind of easy to that I get they are water you will find it so on top of that what we need to see we don't know we have 0 idea exactly what it means to take to life remotely We have some idea of what we can detect if this is like the life we have on Earth but who exactly can guess that the life we look the same at the center of the system is the star chef is the one we already know that it's much smaller than ours. Sun but what else do we know about it this kind of star or the most common in the universe but this is the lest observe stars because they are the faintest and they are in aware for us one of us kind of boring star because they are very slow to evolve they almost have an infinite life time compared to our sun then they have a different pattern after man u.t.d. Field we expect the star to have far more you have a nation that we have on the sun so it is going to be a problem for Life Is there going to a problem for the atmosphere could you just remove the atmosphere by the energy and the planet receives from the star I mean all these question and we'll get our answer because we have ways to do that but so far this was not really looked at because we don't have accounting the way the incentive in something was missing to look at the stars but there is going to change and change rapidly Dak went on to explain that over the coming years the search for habitable planets eclipsing all trickle stars or speculates we'll be taking a much closer look at $500.00 optical stars including Trappist one we'll keep you posted Coming up we learn how research is attracting mosquitoes to use them like tiny by the drones harvesting blood samples to find out more about the Z's So this is a device designed to autonomy us to capture mosquitoes you can think of it like a Venus flytrap it sits in it listens and when an interesting insect like a mosquito encounters that it can actually close and trap it but now jumping from the intriguing potential for life in the depths of space to a story of unexpected life in the depths of the earth the giant gypsum crystals of the naked cave in Mexico are striking enough the largest is 12 meters long but this week they prove to be more than just a quirk of geology Rolen piece has been at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and he brings us a story that sounds like the stuff of science fiction scientists have been reviving iron eating bacteria trapped in these giant crystals thousands of years ago but its role and found out when he spoke with Dr Penny Boston director of Nasa's Astrobiology Institute when it comes to caves science fact is often stranger than fiction right and started by asking penny how these remarkable. Formed these caves are cavities that were filled with fluid until they were drained from mining and when they didn't drain them as part of a mining operation they discovered that there are stupendously huge glowing shining crystals of calcium sulphate in a crystal in form some of them are big long needles that are you know 5 metres long metre in diameter some of them are big rosettes like you buy in Iraq shop except these are the size of compact cars so everything is scaled up in terms of the mineralogy in these environment you remember your impression the 1st time he walked in and possibly your fading is the last. Of the 1st time I went in Europe immediately overwhelmed by just the physical exertion of being in an ultra heated sauna. And the ability to move around in that environment becomes almost impossible you know very very quickly but at the same time visually I was overcome by emotion really with the beauty of the scene it actually brought tears to my eyes and all I remember doing as walking up to one of these giant crystals and putting my arms around and hugging him and it repaid me by giving me essentially what amounted to paper cuts because the crystal faces are so very sharp where they come together so I came out with all these cuts. And I felt like I had been baptized by the cave in some sense and it was just sensor really saturated but it's also the point is that these crystals have also given you some extraordinary bacteria Yes these crystals have yielded life forms that appear to have been dormant for on the order of a few tens of thousands of years perhaps as long as 50 So this is something that has implications for what is the longevity of different kinds of life particularly microbial life on this planet what is a potential longevity of these things over different geological periods and what that means for the evolutionary biology of these kinds of creatures and how we figure that out and exactly where were they well organisms themselves were in a lot of different places but within the crystals themselves they're a little pockets these little pockets contain fluid and sometimes gases and sometimes mineral particles and now we understand that they also contain biological material and the pockets are formed when the crystal which is this beautiful regular array of material that makes it up has defects and those defects call us holes in the crystals and so those holes then act as time machines by trapping some of the fluid in which the crystal is growing and we now understand that they seem to have trapped the organisms that were in that fluid so these pockets of water that was trapped tens. Thousands of years ago with the organisms Yes that's what we believe and these crystals are very large and monolithic So it's very clear that they have grown sort of steadily over time and so that gives us confidence that the crystal itself has not been breached so this is why we believe that it's pretty clear that the organisms that were able to get out of these fluid inclusions had actually been trapped in there but it's not just the age of the organisms that you think's important no because 10 to 50000 years while it's a long period of time by human standards is actually very short in terms of geology other people have made much longer term claims for the antiquity of organisms that were still alive but in this case these organisms are all very extraordinary they're not very closely related to anything in the known genetic databases that we know and we can't for example assign any of them a known genus So we think that by analyzing what their closest relatives identities are but that may give us some clue in terms of their genetic history or how they got into this cave but all of their relatives are extraordinary in one way or another that there will be blood crops of some sort but to yes they're all bacteria there are a few archaea It's a pity that the system is now no longer accessible because it would be great for even more people to interrogate this material but there may be other opportunities but you took them to your lab so you fed them I mean what do they actually live off well you know we try all different things and what we try when we're growing them are attempting to grow things like this is we analyze their environment and we try to pull out what we see in the chemistry of the environment that might be a plausible source of energy and then we reproduce that in growth media and then we just try various different things and we do huge number of trials so. It well there's sulfur. So there's different states of sulfur and there is quite a lot of iron and so a lot of the organisms that we were able to culture are iron oxidizers so they take 2 plus form of iron which is chemically more reduced and more yummy and they use that and they oxidize it make it into f e 3 plus which is less yummy rust basically that's why the walls are our engine and in the process of doing that they get little quanta you know little quanta of energy just Girl Yeah how red you know iron oxidizers are not rare they're all over the planet there's a lot of them in the subsurface but even surface areas where you get Springs for example that are coming from depth that contain that yummy form of reduced iron those will attract organisms maybe those organisms are coming from the spring water we don't know but they're there and they can take advantage of that so iron oxidation is really a very widespread set of processes that organisms can use on this planet genetically they're very different I mean could you extract place and I think for all these microbes in this particular environment to a message about life on earth more generally Well I think that the biggest message is that the subsurface is very under explored so far and there are obvious reasons for that it's not easy work to do and this is true not only of the subsurface on the terrestrial land masses but also as our colleagues who are working in the ocean bottoms are finding definitely under explored with regard to the microorganisms that live in the ocean floors so I think that that's sort of the uber message the other message is that every time you conclude that environment is too tough for organisms you should have a look because you might be wrong and they might be in there and they might be in there in abundance Dr Penny Boston director of NASA Astrobiology Institute talk. That's a role in peace given he's in North America in the depths of winter musky towboats didn't feature on Roland's risk assessment but while we all know about the problems that mosquitoes can Cool's scientists are turning their habit of feeding on blood to our advantage using them as tiny highly mobile data collection devices sampling the environment for disease that's right and found out when he calls it with Ethan Jackson a Microsoft Research is project premonition So this is about disease surveillance and you start off by recruiting mosquitoes that's right can we use a mosquito as a device because they're so good at going out and finding animals and taking a blood sample can we use them as a device to bring back about what sort of pathogens are moving in the environment so every time they take a bite they take a sample of book that's so all the virus is nothing in that that's right that's how they make their living. And that's not going to make you a living so this is what you got the most skeeters out there number one is to get them that's right yes so this is a device designed to Autonomy's to capture mosquitoes as opposed to other things it's a bit want to know the big lantern that you might have outside but with. We call it an array of smart cells you can think of it like a Venus flytrap it sits and it listens each of these $64.00 smart cells and when an interesting insect like a mosquito encounters that it can actually close and trap it gathering data about that mosquito and the environmental conditions present when it captured it so you put the cylinders I mean it's a multi-story cylinder and you put these out in the field and that's right you just wait for yes so they stay in the field for typically about 20 hours they have a chemical they were in them which is typically c o 2 because all blood feeding insects are attracted to c o 2 that draws them in they explore the trap and then they get captured Wow And how many insects you get well this has 64 cell so maximal collection 64 samples However it actually clicks a lot more data than that because even once all of our Venus flytrap surf or they still have the capability to listen so as other insects encounter they still can infer what with. Flying around give us data about what sort of mosquitoes were in the environment I mean it won't only be mosquitoes that fly into this you're right it could be anything this is biology so anything can happen in our experiments though we see 99 percent of the time mosquitoes and it really has to do with the lure because in the dark few things are attracted to c o 2 Typically those are going to be mosquitoes because some laser technology in that is similar to lasers the way that we tell what sort of insect is flying around as an l e d which is a light emitting diode it emits an infrared light when something crosses infrared light it basically cast a shadow on it and we're analyzing the property of that shadow to try to estimate what kind of insect it was that just flew into the device so you actually can choose That's right right because we can let's say tell apart mosquitoes the might carry from those that might carry West Nile with in the case of Houston over 90 percent accuracy we can in real time decide which kind we want to capture Blimey And so that's the capturing part you've got your recruits right now we have our interesting samples and then we bring them back and we want to turn them into data we do that by gene sequencing them and we do that we basically get this collection of little snippets of genetic material that comes from all sorts of organisms that are colocated with that mosquito that happened to be in its body going to say so you have the mosquitoes own them and you know that's right you might have some kind of passage and have some kind of pathogen we might have the d.n.a. Of the animal that it's been and we might have the d.n.a. Or or r.n.a. Of pathogens in the animal that it's been so we have this whole layer of possible candidates that could be in that mixture so what you just will probably hit right so it's a very hard problem to work out because there are so many possibilities so we develop as a very fast cloud scalable pipeline that takes all of that data in takes in our entire database of known partially sequence animals choose which is approximately 400000 genomes 1.2 trillion bases in nucleic acids and then tries to reconstruct a recipe that explains what organisms. Would you mix together to create the sample that you just gone I dunno half a dozen 10 or something like that possibly digested genomes within these That's possibly Yeah I mean typically a mosquito might bite a few hosts it would be unusual so I think that it could be more it could be more than that when you go to screen these unload once against $400000.00 knows when Jones known That's right yes and then of course when you zoom down to viruses what we now know is that there are many unknown viruses so it is quite plausible that we see something in that soup that has never been seen before isn't in any database and there are pipeline has to at least kind of get it right at a higher level if we know the genus of this virus the family of this virus and that helps us understand how to reconstruct a virus we haven't seen before Ok great idea you tried this last year in Texas that's right does it work it works so it catches mosquitoes that are interesting it accurately identifies them with over 90 percent accuracy and then it gives us back huge data sets about the behavior of the mosquitoes in the environment that we hope will be useful for public health decisions and it gives us back genetic information about what they've encountered yeah suppose what I was wondering is can you tell protection if yes from the genetic data we can of course tell the species of mosquito we can tell what it's bitten so we can see things like pigeons birds of prey that they've been which are actually known known reservoirs for human diseases like West Nile we have found a number of recently discovered viruses in mosquitoes viruses such as Or the mix of viruses favoritism out of the iris is and we've also discovered novel viruses which were currently still analyzing I mean this would clearly be interesting for example you talk about you know in Brazil in South America for tracking seek of the viruses borne by the mosquitoes it could also be used for example in Africa which might be picked up by the most ski toes but they is not designed to survive Exactly that's a great question so that's what we're trying to understand in the way that we're trying to understand this is by actually feeding mosquitoes viruses some that reproduce and and some that don't. And then testing 1st can you detect this virus using the best techniques out there the most precise techniques and then sequencing them and seeing how well countermeasures you know mix pipeline do now this experiment is still ongoing so we don't have the results back for that yet but what we do know is non mosquito borne viruses in the one we've tested so far is influenza because it's so common is that it does remain in the mosquito for quite some time so it is not digested immediately it is detectable using techniques like p.c.r. Ethan Jackson from Microsoft Research talking who wrote in piece. Not that long ago the notion that we'd hybridize with Neanderthals and we elegant and sophisticated modern humans had Neanderthal genes was to say the least controversial these days it's well established that Norm African humans have around 2 percent of Neanderthal d.n.a. Swirling around their genomes but what we don't know is what this d.n.a. Actually does this week sees the publication of a paper that starts to solve that mystery the 1st rather indelicate question that I was keen to ask all the professor Josh aiki from the University of Washington was exactly how we ended up with me and to tell d.n.a. That has arisen by hybridization that happened somewhere between 50 and 70000 years ago so we're basically talking about early humans and Neanderthals having sex producing offspring and those offspring then become viable and have the right offspring and we end up with a mixture of those 2 d.n.a. Exactly and in fact our genomes are sort of this rich mixture of different ancestries in the last few years we've learned that part of that ancestry comes from the end or false I Can we put a number on what proportion of d.n.a. Is Neanderthal so all non Africans have about 2 percent of their genome that was inherited from the end Arthel ancestors can we identify specific Neanderthal sequences in everyone or is it spread out in a much more complex way well we can scan each individual's genome and using techniques that we and others have developed in the past few years it is now possible to pull out all of the Neanderthal sequences in an individual and when you compare different individuals you'll see that some of the Neanderthal sequences that they have are shared and some are unique to each individual and what sort of effect of those genes having in living people well that's a great question and that's sort of where the field is right now so the last few years we've become very good at identifying Neanderthal sequences that survive in modern individuals but there's been much less work in understanding what the consequences of those sequences were and that was the basis of our new study we tested the hypothesis. That Neanderthal sequences influence gene regulation turning on and off of genes and we found that indeed Neanderthal sequences have a pervasive effect on gene regulation and over 25 percent of the Neanderthal sequences we tested influence gene expression did you find a pattern in that gene expression between different types of tissues or in different types of systems what we found was if you ask whether the Neanderthal copy of the gene was turned up or turned off more than you would expect by chance for most tissues we didn't observe any bias except into certain brain regions in the testes they seem like very specific organs to find this in the brain being a sort of mark of modern humans testes being so involved with reproduction is there a good evolutionary backstory as to why that would occur Yeah there's probably several interesting hypotheses to explain that result the one that I think makes most sense is that it reflects the more rapid change in how genes are regulated in those tissues between modern humans and the end are false so previous studies of implicated these genes in diseases like Lupus and schizophrenia What's your study added to that large study provides a mechanism for how those sequences contribute to disease susceptibility and specifically not in changing protein structure but by influencing how much of that protein is made so these genes are really regulating the way that those genes are expressed exactly this is and also mune disease and obviously immune diseases particularly the links with things like cancer very much in people's mind at the moment do you think that it's significant that these genes are related to our immune system yeah I do and one of the pictures that's emerging and studying Neanderthal sequences that modern humans carry is that there seems to be a disproportionate contribution of Neanderthal ancestry to some immune genes and we think that is a reflection of when modern humans inherited these sequences as they were dispersing out of Africa some of the Neanderthal versions of these immune genes were. And helped us better survive and reproduce in these new environments so what we've got here historically is a situation where ancient humans but modern humans nonetheless are moving out of Africa hybridizing with Neanderthals who already have the genes present for the parasites and pathogens within the areas that these people are moving into and the result being us better adapted to what's going on exactly so presumably the flip side if we can examine Neanderthal d.n.a. Is that we should be able to find similar adaptations in the undersell of spring as well I think that was would be extremely exciting questions to ask and hopefully will be able to do that as new Neanderthal sequences are generated what is the availability of them Neanderthal d.n.a. At the moment well there's a high quality genome sequence from a single Neanderthal individual and more limited genetic data from a handful of others so right now it's hard to ask the same types of questions that we can in modern humans where we have thousands and thousands of whole genome sequences but presumably as more and more material comes to light we may well get lucky and find some excellent sources of Neanderthal d.n.a. Think is crossed Yeah I think that in the next few years we'll see more Neanderthal genome is being sequenced and will be able to ask those more detailed questions about genetic variation in the end or falls and we look forward to bringing the answers to those questions as they emerge that's it for science in action this week which was produced by Fiona Roberts more from us at b.b.c. World Service dot com But until next week good bye. Coming up on the next have responded show from p.r.i. 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