at a surprisingly small price. new all-in burgers™ with free refills of fries that never end. seriously, they never end. and it's only at applebee's. get a free $10 bonus card when you buy $50 in gift cards. hello, and welcome to "gmt" on "bbc world news." i'm stephen sackur. our top stories. last-minute nerves for nasa. a second attempt to test-launch the orion capsule is due minutes from now, if the weather holds. these live pictures from cape canaveral. yesterday the orion launch had to be abandoned. could today be a big moment for the spacecraft which might one day take man to mars? the philippines braces for another typhoon, just a year after typhoon haiyan.

thousands have already been evacuated from towns reeling from the last killer storm. >> black lives matter! black lives matter! >> anger on city streets across the u.s. as protests about alleged racism in the american justice system get bigger and louder. and jamie's here with a look at all the business, including what's happening to global wages. >> the latest report from the international labor organization shows more than ever it depends where you work that dictates how fast wages are rising. in asia, they're rising up to 9%. in europe, countries like spain and italy, your wages are probably below what they were in 2007, if you've got a job at all. a very warm welcome to "gmt." it's midday here in london.

8:00 p.m. in the philippines. and 7:00 a.m. at cape canaveral, where the attention is fixed on the orion spacecraft, which is due to blast off on its maiden test flight in the next few minutes. it's an unmanned mission, but nasa sees it as one step on the long path towards a manned mission to mars. if you were with us yesterday, you'll know that the launch was postponed several times due to wind gusts and technical problems, but right now, nasa's saying the weather conditions are good to go. there, the live pictures from cape canaveral, where the orion capsule is due to take off and due to orbit the earth twice before splashing down in the pacific ocean. it should be, if all goes to plan, a four-hour flight. we can join our mom at the launch site, jonathan amos. he's at the kennedy space center at cape canaveral. i have to ask you, as we look at these live shots, does it look and sound to you as though

everything is going to plan and this launch will happen? >> reporter: the clock is towning down. we've got further than we got yesterday. had a number of interruptions for various reasons. a boat got too close to the launch site here on the east coast of the united states. had some gusty winds. the rocket has constraints on it, which means it can only lift off when the wind is blowing from a certain direction and is of a certain strength. and finally, we had some sticky valves on the big boosters of this, which meant they couldn't reliably launch it on that occasion either. so we just wait. we keep our fingers crossed. we keep our toes crossed. >> how far is it actually going to fly? i said it was a four-hour expected flight, jonathan. how far is it going? >> it's only going on two short

circuits of the earth. it will be thrown up to about 6,000 kilometers. and then it will come back fast. it will come back in at about 30,000 kilometers an hour, and the intention is to stress the heat shield on the side. very similar to the old apollo capsules. they had a trial by far. and this orion capsule will do something very similar as well. >> we will keep watching with the clock going down. and we'll stay with you as this clock continues to count down. >> t minus one minute. >> range status. >> range green. >> we've got further than we did yesterday with the towndown. one or two stops. eventually they scrubbed for the day. but it looks as though we're going to get orion off this morning. orion sitting on top of its delta 4 rocket. currently the biggest, most powerful rocket in the world.

when it lifts off, you'll see the flame. it will sit on the pad for a very short moment. then it will be up and away. big, bright light on the bottom. the men here at the kennedy space center -- we're about five miles away. we'll feel it and we'll see it. and i'm going to keep quiet just for a moment so you can watch the countdown. >> the igniters have been lit. >> ten, nine, eight, seven, six. >> five, four, three, two, one. and liftoff. at dawn. the dawn of orion. and a new era of american space exploration. >> passing 25 seconds.

>> pulling up into the sky. it's going to do a pitch and roll maneuver as it heads out over the atlantic. it will head towards africa and upwards into earth orbit. it will reach there about 17 minutes from now, and then it will start to go around the earth. on its second orbit of earth, it will then fire its upper stage once more and throw the orion capsule up to about 6,000 kilometers and that will set up this fast re-entry. about four and a half hours time. we'll see orion come back in through the atmosphere. 30,000 kilometers an hour. it will generate heat on the underside of the capsule. temperatures something like about 2,000 degrees. and then we'll see whether the capsule is ready to have humans put aboard. that won't happen for a number of years yet. six or seven years we're talking about before nasa says it will have the confidence to put this vehicle to the test with humans

aboard. this is one small step in that direction. they're just currently using this rocket as a stand-in. it's the biggest rocket in the world at the moment. but they are building what they call the space launch system, which is an apollo-like saturn-like vehicle. even bigger, in fact. and that will have the capability then to put the capsule on a mission to the moon, or even on a mission to mars. >> still looking good. coming up on two minutes. two minutes into the flight. >> well, there we go. great stuff from jonathan amos at cape canaveral. jonathan, if you're still with us, i do have one question for you. when you talk about the timeframe for this, is the money there. the political will may be there, but is the money there to progress this project all the

way through to a manned mission to mars, which is going to cost an unbelievable amount of money? >> reporter: i was going to say, stephen, it's the $64,000 question, but it's not thousands of questions, it is billions of dollars. this capsule itself has come out of a program that has spent billions of dollars already. it's difficult to say. it depends what sort of concept is used to go to mars. i was speaking to the program manager todd may here this week, who's looking after the development of this monster rocket that nasa are developing and i asked him how he would go to mars with this huge, huge rocket that he's looking after. and he says it might take nine launches of that rocket to put all of the equipment up into low earth orbit. you build a transfer vehicle to mars. you have to send all the hardware to put on the surface

of mars so that once the astronauts arrive, they could survive. have to pick them back up off mars and bring them home. so yeah, it is a long game. when apollo did its stuff in the 1960s and '70s, we were in a different era. the conditions were different. it was the middle of the cold war. the imperative was very different to what it is now with constrained federal budgets. so nasa has a long view. it's the only way it will get to mars if it spends slowly. >> i know you're going to stick with it. as long as it takes,than. thank you for joining us from cape canaveral. a new dawn, many hope today. we'll see how far they get into that day they get today. we are going to bring you some breaking news. news that has come into us just in the last few minutes here at

"bbc world news." prosecutors at the international criminal court have withdrawn charges against the kenyan president uhuru kenyatta. he was accused of crimes against humanity for inciting post-election violence in 2008. the prosecutor's office said it did not have enough to prove his responsible beyond a reasonable doubt. it had been refused more time to prepare its case. so we'll bring you reaction to that as we get it, but let's move now to the philippines, where millions of people are bracing for the arrival of typhoon hagupit, expected to make landfall on saturday morning with a wind speed of over 180 kilometers an hour. haiyan killed more than 7,000 people, and already thousands of residents have been evacuated from vulnerable areas in tacloban and other towns still bearing the scars left by

haiyan. villages could be cut off by the expected heavy rain. let's have a look at some of the facts as this storm approaches.

inevitably, there is alarm as this typhoon approaches land. we're going to cross now to manila, to richard gordon, the chairman of the philippines national red cross. he's on the telephone. these things change hour by hour, almost minute by minute. what is the latest estimate for just how dangerous this typhoon is going to be? >> the estimate of landfall for this typhoon would be seven p.m. saturday afternoon, our time. and right now it's traveling at about 82 kilometers an hour. the swath is quite wide. 600 kilometers in diameter and it's covering about 55 provinces

at the moment. we have a long coastline. about 2/3 of the country's coastline is going to be impacted here in various degrees. but theed my point of the most powerful part, about four meters high storm surges that can penetrate up to one kilometer in territory. so we're bracing for impact. maybe 20,000 families evacuated from our report. we are getting reports from several provinces. >> i want to ask you one thing if i may. one of the things that seems very alarming about this is the path of the typhoon seems very there to that followed by

haiyan, and obviously many communities still struggling to recover from haiyan. is that the way you see it? is it the same communities that are in the line of fire, so to speak? >> yes. to a lesser degree. the area affected by haiyan will be affected. and the next area is yellow, etc. the haiyan area is the orange and red part. so you're talking about it being affected again, but also it will affect the northern side of the philippines from haiyan, which will include a volcano that's been grumbling for the last three months, and it could bring it down in landslides. so having said that, a lot of people are bracing for not only that, but the winds are quite strong. 400 kilometers per hour.

and it will carry a lot of rain. a lot of rain will come down and that will cause floods. it's not as strong as haiyan, it is nonetheless perhaps could be more destructive than haiyan because of the wide swath and because of what it carries. >> well, that is a pretty break thought to end on. rifd, we thank you so much for joining us on "gmt." obviously we'll keep in touch with you and we'll keep following the path of this typhoon. to help me do that is one of the bbc's meteorologists. he joins me in the studio. just give us the latest as you see it on what's happening. >> i suppose if there's any good news to come out of this, yesterday it was classified as a top level, violent storm. today it's been down gridded only a little bit to a very strong storm. so it has weakened off a little bit. it's still a very powerful storm. it's still going to cause a lot of destruction, so the impact will be quite widespread and

pretty severe in places as well. >> you're indicating this isn't quite a super typhoon, but as richard said in manila, the wind speed and the amount of rain could be very damaging. >> you have to add the storm surge as well, because that's what gets a lot of people around the coast. could be a couple of meters or more, a wall of water just heading through here. it's a very large, organized system. the eye of the storm has actually filled in a little bit and that's partly due to the pressure rising a little bit so. the winds have eased off a little bit, but it is still a monstrous storm with potential for widespread destruction. and the track of it takes it probably just to the knnorth of tacloban. it's going to be the northeastern quadrant. the general consensus is that it will slad across the central swath of the central philippines. some places could see as much as 500 millimeters.

floodi ining and landslides loo like they'll be the main issue. and then there's a bit of uncertainty, just how far north will it go, will it affect manila. there are questions which need answering. we'll get those answers i suppose in the next few days. >> we'll keep turning to you, jay, to see how it happens. all the latest from the philippines as the typhoon sweeps through here on "bbc world news." do stay with us, buzz still to come, britain promises not to abandon afghanistan, even though most of its troops are leaving the country. ♪ grab a refreshing canada dry ginger ale.

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there's been a second night of protests across america of the decision by a grand jury to clear a white police officer over the death of a black man who died after being put into a

choke hold. >> black lives matter! >> thousands of people in new york city marched to demand justice for the dead man eric g garner. demonstrators gathered near police headquarters in new york, disrupting traffic along the manhattan bridge and the holland tunnel. the message was echoed in other cities across the united states. in staten island, there's been growing frustration and outrage. the bbc has met three residents to discuss their reactions to the grand jury decision. >> i'm 19 years old, i'm from staten island, new york, born and raised. >> i was the one that shot the video of garner getting choked by the nypd. >> i have family on the force. they're generally good guys.

>> i'm from staten island. a college student. i want to be a police officer to make a change. police officers have hurt me. i've been thrown to the ground. i've had a police officer's gun to my head. i've been illegally detained before. i don't believe that should keep on happening, especially in this day and age. i have a small poem that i wrote. it goes, i think it's crazy that if i got shot by a cop, he wouldn't even serve time on the rock. a father and a husband, a son, a brother, and uncle and a cousin. i'm trying to make a difference how we see them and they see us. we got out 150 years ago from slavery, now free us. >> i work at the beauty supply store right there. i was hearing him say he couldn't breathe. i was in the process of taking their badges numbers down, but they jumped on him so quick. i pulled out my phone and started filming because these are the things that people don't

see happening. if somebody pulls out their camera and they see what's happening in the street, we think that we would get justice, but obviously we didn't. this is like a slap in the face. the police officers now are beginning to have cameras on their uniforms. so their cameras -- it's the same footage. the footage doesn't lie. >> you can clearly see that the man choked him out. and they're saying he didn't. a lot of people that had the choke hold on them. so it's not like it's something new. it's just like i said, a man died during it. so that's what brought it to the light. i mean, i knew the man. he wasn't like my best friend or nothing like that, but i knew

him and i feel upset that a life was lost. you know, could have been my brother. could have been me. nothing's going to happen. it's beginning to be the same thing. everyday living. it's just another day. >> now, we're going to go back to the breaking news that we brought to you earlier. that concerns uhuru kenyatta and the international criminal court. it has just been announced that prosecutors at the international criminal court have withdrawn charges against the kenyan president uhuru kenyatta. he was accused of crimes against humanity for inciting post-election violence in 2008. the prosecutor's office said it didn't have enough evidence to prove his criminal responsibility beyond reasonable doubt. it had been refused more time to prepare the case. now, we can go live to the hague to our correspondent anna holligan. you've been following this case for an awful long time, because

it has been going an awful long time. why after all of these years has it now been dropped? >> reporter: because the prosecution simply couldn't find sufficient evidence to justify going ahead with this trial. it can't really be overstated how much of a blow this is to the prosecutor. it's been her most precious and high-profile trial. also the most frustrating. we've just had a statement from the prosecutor at the icc, and she talks about attempts to frustrate her investigation. she says there has been a steady and relentless stream of false media reports about the kenya cases. an unprecedented campaign on social yesterday to expose the identity of witnesses. and a concerted and wide ranging effort to harass, intimidate, and threaten individuals who would wish to be witnesses. and that's been one of the main frustrations for the prosecution is the fact that the witnesses

have one by one disappeared from this case. they haven't been able to secure the witnesses. and that's something that prosecution will also be massively krooicriticized for. >> this is beyond embarrassing for the icc. there have always been questions about whether it's actually possible for this court to deliver justice, particularly to serving heads of state and heads of government. and this was in a way a big test of that proposition, and frankly, the court has failed it completely. >> reporter: in some respects, the icc, many will say this is testament to the international justice system working. and that it refuses to put an innocent man on trial. there isn't enough evidence to put uhuru kenyatta on trial. and that's why he won't be

brought to the hague again. it will be seen as a failure of the prosecution. and that's why it's been forced to withdraw the charges today. a really historic and devastating moment for the prosecution. >> we have to end there, anna. stay with us here on "bbc world news." foreign markets. asian debt that recognizes the shift in the global economy. you know, the kind that capitalizes on diversity across the credit spectrum and gets exposure to frontier and emerging markets. if you convert 4-quarter p/e of the s&p 500, its yield is doing a lot better... if you've had to become your own investment expert, maybe it's time for bny mellon, a different kind of wealth manager ...and black swans are unpredictable. you know how fast you were going? about 55. where you headed at such an appropriate speed? across the country to enhance the nation's most reliable 4g lte network. how's it working for ya? better than ever. how'd you do it? added cell sites. increased capacity.

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and welcome to "gmt" on "bbc world news." i'm stephen sackur. in this half-hour, as the number of people killed by ebola advances beyond 6,000, we have a special report from ones sierra leone community where help has finally arrived. and we talk to hollywood star idris elba about why he's taken up the fight against ebola and how he's using football to help stop the spread of the virus. jamie's here with all the business, of course, including a look at how britain is trying to

lure more chinese visitors. >> yes. to try and get to chinese people to actually come up with their own names for british tourist attractions. stonehen stonehenge -- if i got the words in the right order, means huge stone clusters. pretty fair description, really. a very warm welcome back to "gmt." the human toll taken by ebola in west africa grows heavier by the day. more than 6,100 people have lost their lives. but after months of agonized discussion amongst health experts and a series of big promises from at least some world leaders, international assistance is starting to make a big difference. one month ago, our africa correspondent andrew harding

visited a village in sierra leone that was being torn apart by the ebola virus. no help had reached the village, which is several hours drive from freetown. he found people dying by the side of the road. this week, he went back to see how things had changed. >> reporter: a month ago, we found a village torn apart by ebola. the dead and dying on one side. do you think it's ebola? >> it is. >> reporter: orphaned children stranded across the road. could you ask the children to raise their hands if they've been orphaned? >> i haven't got any help yet. >> reporter: nothing at all? >> nothing at all. >> reporter: today, we're back here to find out what's changed. in october, this man begged us to help him. >> she's going to die. >> reporter: his wife fatu was sick. he was afraid to touch her.

we're back in the very same spot, and i must admit, i did not expect to see fatu alive, or to be honest, but here they are. sitting on their porch and looking it seems pretty well. you're okay. how do you feel? >> fine. >> reporter: you feel good? fatu was finally taken to hospital. she fought off the virus. now she's cured. "i'm surprised to be alive," she says. "i was so sick." "i didn't touch her, then they came to take all the sick away, that saved us." >> reporter: the help came almost immediately after our visit. now more survivors brandish their hospital certificates, and a proper holding center for new suspected ebola cases is just opening down the road.

>> we need help from everywhere. the government, you know. i mean, we are very happy now. >> reporter: do you feel you have ebola under control in this area? >> yes. >> reporter: but the village has paid a heavy price. we're told 16 children are now dead. many more orphaned. including mabinti. in october, she told us her mother had died. she's just heard that her father didn't make it either. are you feeling okay? then there's alouson. his head's aching. i'm sorry. a month ago the 6-year-old was ill and being kept apart with six other young suspected ebola cases. there were people dying all around them. today, all but one have made it. they were rescued by a tiny

british charity. allison's mother, who also beat ebola, has been hired to care for them all. "i thought i'd lose him like my husband and baby, but he didn't have the virus after all. now i don't know what the future holds for us." nor does anyone in the village. one in six have now died here, and ebola isn't beaten. still, some have good reason to smile. andrew harding, "bbc world news," sierra leone. >> so, still many challenges for those communities wrestling with ebola, and a little later in the program, we're hoping to talk to the hollywood star idris elba, who is a driving force behind one campaign involving many celebrities and sports stars who are pushing the message that ebola needs international assistance and also work with

local communities inside west africa. so hopefully idris elba a little later on. but we've got our own star here right now. that is jamie. he's here with all the business news, and quite a billing, so take it away. >> it's all to do with wages. when did you last get a wage hike? it's a rhetorical question. do you feel better or worse than before the 2007 financial crisis? it could depend on where in the world you live. because a major report by the international labor organization says that wage growth around the world actually has slowed down in the past couple of years. and the workers in the developed world are the ones who are the worst off. having a look now at the numbers, global wages -- the whole world rose an average of 2% last year. the average was pushed up by asia. leading the way was china at 9%. now, compare that with developed economies, wages have been flat-lining really. almost no growth at all.

just 0.2%. in realtimes, the ilo says people in some countries like the uk, italy, spain, they're actually earning a lot less than they did in 2007. wages failing to keep up with inflation. our chief business correspondent linda yueh joins me now. let's talk about asia first. a big rise in wages, but is that because of china? is china overweight in this particular index, as it were? >> jamie, china tends to be overweight i think in a lot of indices. if you take out china's wage rise, the am of global wage increase halves. but leaving aside china, growth of wages in asia is still about 6%. also in places like eastern europe. so from a faster region of the world, which is asia, and some parts of the emerging world, there's still a sense that a fast economic growth is still translating into little bit

better compensation for workers. >> when wages go up, should they go up just because you're getting growth, or should it be linked really to productivity? >> it should be linked to productivity. in fact, the best example of this is japan, because they've been trying to inflate their economy, trying to get wages up in order to push up prices. obviously wages go into the cost of goods and services. of course, companies don't want to do that unless productivity is up. one of the interesting things in the ilo report is that they found productivity actually and wages, it's not the case that wages have been outshipping productivity. in fact, it's the reverse. places like germany, japan, the united states. what they actually found was that workers were not getting the share of income you would expect given how productive they are, and what's really fascinating is that this is not a product of the great recession and the big productivity puzzles. there's a lot of debate over why

jobs have recovered but wages haven't. this has been going on for over a decade. in fact, probably two decades. what's lying at the heart of it is why aren't workers being paid something which matches the amount of productivity, the amount of output they're giving to companies. >> very briefly, in southern europe, countries which are still in recession, they're making less than they were five or six years ago. >> yeah, you don't even have to go to southern europe. britain. the average wage growth -- the level, i should say average growth has not pushed a level of wages back up to what it was in 2007. that was seven years ago. so greece, italy, britain, spain. all of these countries are still seeing at the level of wages nothing like what it was in 2007. the economy seems to have recovered but not wages, and that seems to be the big thing across this report. >> linda, thank you so much for that. linda yueh there. britain is launching its largest

ever tourism campaign, which is aimed at encouraging chinese people to visit. the billion-dollar campaign is set to run on chinese social media platforms. it's based around asking people to choose the chinese names in a range of british landmarks. some celebrities and places are very well-known to rate their own names. stonehen stonehenge's name, apparently means huge stone clusters. the beatles translates as gentlemen with long hair. is this campaign going to bring the chinese to britain in droves? joss kroft explains the premise behind this campaign. >> the chinese have a fascination with naming things. sometimes it's to do with the difficulties that they might have in terms of pronouncing them. but they absolutely have a fascination with naming things, objects, people, places. so it's to really try and leverage some of that real

engagement and interest that people have in it. china is a market that has an absolute fascination with britain. when we ask them how they perceive britain, we come out second in the world. so for a market like china, it is about giving them ideas to come. it's about trying to increase our market share of what is actually the largest outbound market in the world. >> that's it. back to you. >> terrific. thank you very much, jamie. now, let us go back to our coverage of ebola. this week, a host of international football stars led by the british actor idris elba launched a public awareness campaign to try and halt the spread of the disease. they call it the africa united campaign and it's using football to try and get a message out. so let's take a quick look at it. >> west africa. everybody listen up. we have a very big game today. very important. this is not an ordinary game. this is life or death.

>> you saw the charismatic figure there of idris elba. i'm happy to say we can speak to him live now. idris elba, thanks so much for joining us on the show. just explain to me what prompted you to get involved in all of this. >> good morning, thanks. it was prompted by, you know, my family coming from sierra leone. and, you know, just the idea that i could help and wasn't able to. you know, i wanted to -- and, you know, we discovered quickly that -- needs to be targeted and very specific. so we know that west africa

especially is very big on football. and we thought we'd just be quite aggressive in the campaign that would appeal to them using footballers. the footballers came willingly. >> if you don't mind, idris, tell me who's involved. name me some of the famous footballers that our audience will know so well. >> yaya toure. manchester city. patrice lamumba is also one of the players. we've had a big response from the players, especially the african players. and, you know, they want to help in an organic way. there were some concerns about footballers and celebrities helping, and they wanted to

figure out a way that we could do it organically and this idea came. >> it's interesting what you just said, because i guess you know that the skeptics are going to say here we go, some more celebs, actors, and sports people wanting to be seen to be sort of having their hearts in the right place, but what kind of difference can you make on the ground, and what do you say to that? >> i mean, you know, first of all, i don't think there are any skeptics on the front lines of sierra leone and liberia and guinea dealing with ebola. that's number one. number two, to a very ordinary person watching football, in the midst of a crisis like that in their country, messaging coming from some of their stars, some of the people they admire, it affects in a different way. it inspires in a different way. you know, the skeptics sort of, you know, foreign, tends to be people that are a million miles away from any sort of disaster.

yes, i wish i could be there, too, but i do have to use what i can, and that's my celebrity. and the footballers felt the same way. but at the same time, we're not here doing politics. we're making this message very specific to how we think they'll respond to, which feels, like i said, more organic. i am one of those skeptics, believe it or not, that, you know, kind of scoff when i see celebrities going in that way, because it always doesn't feel organic probably. but in this case, you know, i am from sierra leone. it's a situation that's close to my heart. and, you know, football is close to my heart as well. so it just feels like a good way to approach this. >> we do wish you well with the campaign. and we thank you for being on "gmt" today. thanks a lot.

>> thank you so much. do stay with us on "bbc world news." still to come, we have a special report from inside a hospital in guatemala, described by campaigners as the world's most abusive and dangerous mental health institution. a garbage t. so,you call your insurance company, looking for a little support. what you get is a game of a thousand questions. was it raining? were your flashers on? was there a dog with you? by the time you hang up you're convinced the accident was your fault. then you remember; you weren't even in the car. at liberty mutual we make filing a claim as stress-free as possible. see car insurance in a whole new light. liberty mutual insurance

welcome back to "gmt." i'm stephen sackur. these are the top stories this hour. people in the philippines prepare for the arrival of a powerful typhoon. it is set to hit the same parts of the country devastated by typhoon haiyan last year. the orion spacecraft has successfully launched from cape canaveral in florida and is now on its maiden test voyage. the afghan president ashraf

ghani has insisted that there will be no role for foreign combat troops in afghanistan after the long established deadline date of december 31st. in its first broadcast interview, the president told the bbc any u.s. missions against the taliban after that date would be part of an agreed counterterrorism strategy. now our chief international correspondent lyse doucet met him earlier today. he acknowledged the growing wave of taliban attacks, but he still spoke of process pentagons for peace talks. >> when the light at the end of the tunnel becomes clear, actually it accelerates violence. and the very fact that our children are wounded, our civilians are being targeted is an indication of the depth of the fall. and the sense of hopelessness. people who think that they will exercise power do not kill children on a volleyball field. >> reporter: but you know that

if there is not security, you cannot achieve any of the goals you've set for your country. >> yes, we can. >> reporter: it's now even the most dangerous agency you need your own government workers. >> we do. >> reporter: the governors have been targeted. >> my life has been threatened, repeatedly. >> reporter: but if afghans are too scared to work in the provinces. aid workers are afraid to go. >> ms. doucet, all of those are realities, but do not underestimate our determination to overcome the vicious cycle and to create a virtuous psych. afghans are not going to leave afghanistan. we've been there. we will be there. and the will to change, it's not confined to me. i'm an elected president.

outcome of an intensely debated discussion, where we have opted for a future different than in the past. and it's that public energy that moves. >> reporter: you said yesterday to the international community that you hope that afghanistan will never have to ask again for direct combat support. but you've already asked for it. barack obama has authorized that he'll send 10,000 troops can engage next year in missions against the taliban. >> he has not said that. what is said -- >> reporter: he's authorized the combat order. >> there's a counterterror mission. that's very much part of the agreement. with the afghan government. we have lost about eight months. we are making up for it. but the security transition will be completed on 31st of

december. >> reporter: you said you would like to engage in talks with the taliban. >> absolutely. >> but is there any prospect? >> there are prospects. let's not conduct peace through public diplomacy. peace is our national priority. and from day one, i focused on this. that it needs to be very deliberate. because missteps will be costly. >> there you go. that's ashraf ghani, the afghan president talking to lyse doucet. the fred rico mora hospital in guatemala has been described as the most dangerous mental health institution. the government promised to improve conditions, but the bbc has found little has changed. this report by chris rogers contains some shocking images. >> reporter: what goes on behind the walls of the federico

hospital is a guarded secret. journalists are not allowed. we're taken first to the recreational area and it's clear just how much help is needed. lying on the ground, what appears to be heavily sedated patients. their ras rags and dirty bodies. this is guatemala's only state-run psychiatric facility. the patients range from violent mentally disturbed criminals to patients with learning disabilities, abandoned by their families. there are no care staff in sight, but guards are everywhere. in the wards, we enter a hell on earth. there are almost 70 patients on this ward, looked after by just two or three care staff. the patients crave attention. the beds are in a terrible state. and there are pools of urine on mattresses. patients sleeping, they've all been sedated.

the staff said any way they can control the huge number of patients here. and as you approach the patients lying in the bed, there's an overwhelming stench of urine. i'm actually quite overwhelmed. the guatemalan government insists that only the minimum recommended dose of sedation is used on the patient. it also says there are cleaning staff and trained nurses to provide care. the campaign group disability rights international gained himmed ahim -- limited access in 2012. the campaign told the director about how she was restrained. >> we're going to see the restraints hanging from the wall where she was tied. >> reporter: and she revealed an even more disturbing layer of abuse. >> she said on her very first day, she was sexually abused upon admission. it's one layer more horrific than any place i've seen before. >> reporter: in reaction to the charity's footage, the inter-american commission on human rights ordered the

guatemalan government to end the neglect and abuse two years ago, but during our visit, it's evident little has changed. still believing we were charity workers, they admit abuse and blame police guards. a former patient tells me she was sexually abused. not by the guards, but by those who were supposed to care for her. she was just 17. >> translator: a male nurse came in, and since i was sedated, i wasn't aware of it. i didn't realize until the next day that i had lost my innocence. so i realized that what had happened that night is that a male nurse had come in and raped me. >> reporter: the guatemalan government says it hasn't received any reports of sexual abuse or rape, but it has ordered an internal investigation and it intends to make improvements to the hospital and the standards of care. the campaigners point out the

same promises were made in 2012. they now plan to launch a new legal bid to shut down the hospital. chris rogers, bbc news, guatemala. a very disturbing report there. and that brings to a close this edition of "gmt." but do stay with us here on "bbc world news." ♪ ♪ ♪

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