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tv   BBC News  BBC News  December 26, 2016 5:45am-6:01am GMT

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zone 200 kilometres off the coast of the philippines. this is what he found. it's just before dawn on the philippine island of palawan. even at this hour it's hot, but there's no sign here of the trouble brewing a few hundred miles out to sea. i'm about to take off on a trip the chinese government has tried to stop. this place is called mischief reef. until a year ago there was nothing here, just a submerged atoll. now look at it. millions of tons of material have been dredged up to build this huge new island. then as we close to 12 nautical miles, this. down below we can see a pair
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of chinese navy ships. our pilots are nervous. they want to turn away. we're a civilian aircraft flying over international waters and yet we're being repeatedly threatened. so what we're getting is the chinese sending out that message, foreign military aircraft, unidentified military aircraft, leave the area immediately. in chinese and english, our captain replied saying we are a civilian aircraft, not a military aircraft, but it didn't make any difference, they repeated the threat to leave the area over and over again. as we fly on the full extent of the construction is revealed. the lagoon is teeming with ships.
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a cement plant is visible on the new land. then for the first time a clear view of the new runway china is building here. a chinese fighter taking off from here could reach the philippine coast in nine minutes. in the last year, china has built at least seven new islands and three new runways in the south china sea. one here at mischief reef, another at subi reef and the biggest of all at fiery cross. the aim is to reinforce china's claim to the whole of the south china sea. more than 40% of the world's trade passes through the waters below us. china is determined to assert its control. america and its allies say they won't let that happen. and as we have found out, it may already be too late. rupert wingfield—hayes, bbc news, in the south china sea. now to evidence of a startling rise
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in gun violence the us, including in barack obama's hometown of chicago. killings in the city have reached a 20—year high. a deadly summer of violence brought this year's death toll to 500. most of the victims and their killers were young men. we spent a week in chicago and found a world where guns rule. in my neighbourhood, they start young. that is the edge, and they are dying from guns. very young. we have to teach children how to defend themselves. it is like, what do you do? you would rather be caught with protection than without it. i have never seen so many gui'is. like, we have so many guns. but i have never
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seen as many as now. this is a rapper from the west side, now, the most violent part of chicago. he is a member of the vice lords gang. he has been imprisoned. and even he is shocked by what has happened. it is like somebody dropped off crazy amounts of guns in the neighbourhood. i think that many guys need to die to make it better. some of these guys need to be killed and knocked off to make it a better place. sirens. more people have been killed here since 2001 than us deaths in iraq and afghanistan combined. and yet, there is almost no outcry. do you worry about your children? i do. like, to be honest, i have a son of seven and a daughter of four, and i have not taught them how to ride a bike because the environment they live
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in is just not safe. i love you. i love you, dadda. i am trying to change the cycle. it is hard when you don't really have help, you know what i'm saying? we have been put in a weird position, you know what i'm saying, because... hold on. cut. this stuff don't end. with so many guns and so little control, the murders will rise. rarely solved, and barely noticed.
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this may sound like the stuff of science fiction movies, but american researchers broke new ground this year by trying to grow human organs inside pigs. the research uses a pioneering technique called gene editing, which allows genes to be changed quickly. some say this may end the organ crisis. but it also may raise ethical issues. you are watching two species being mixed. humans stemcells are being injected into a one—day—old pig embryo. you can see them travelling down the tube. this biologist in california is trying to grow a human pancreas inside a pig. our hope is that this will develop normally. but the pancreas will be made up almost exclusively out of human
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cells so that then that pancreas will be compatible with the patient for transplantation. the technique is known as gene editing. it uses molecular scissors to delete the dna instructions in the pig embryo to create a pancreas. the ambition is the human cells will fill the void and grow a human pancreas instead. the same technique might enable other organs to be grown for transplant. the bbc‘s panorama was allowed to film the sows filled with human embryos known as chimeras. human stem cells are taken from a patient, they could be tissue match, reducing the risk of rejection. this research raises profound ethical concerns. crucially, just how human and the piglets developing inside this sow?
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it is such a sensitive area that the chimeric embryos will not be permitted to go to term, but be removed for tissue analysis after 28 days‘ gestation when they are about a centimetre long. they will crucially check whether the brain develops humanlike qualities. another pioneer in this field told me this question has yet to be resolved. whatever we tried to make, whether it is a kidney, liver, a lung, we will look at what is happening in the mind. and if we find it is too humanlike, it will be ended. organisations campaigning for an end to factory farming are dismayed by the image of organ farming. 7000 people are on the transplant waiting list in the uk and hundreds die each year before a donor can be found. but patient trials involving gene edited pig organs are still a long way off. and that is all from this special
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edition of reporters looking back at some of the best reports from this year. from me, phillipa thomas, goodbye for now. hello there. for most of us christmas day 2016 was very mild, almost record—breaking and that's because of the south—westerly winds across the country, ahead of our next named storm — storm conor. there's an amber warning in force from the met office for the day haead. storm force winds are in the forecast for the north and north—east of scotland, the northern isles and, for a time, the western isles as well, so they're really going to cause some issues. 0bviously dangerous conditions out to sea and we've had reports of dangerously high waves, so those will be affecting some coastal areas. it's not as if it won't be windy through the remainer of the night, severe gales around the coasts, gales inland and some wintry weather. those snow showers have been coming in thick and fast and they will be even
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falling at lower levels across the north of scotland. so it could be a bit wintry, with as few centimetres of snow building up by morning, by daybreak and, of course, as a consequence, a little icy. coldest for all of us first thing, then the rain clears away and it is a much drier and brighter day in the south. further north it's a stormy day, indeed, even for this part of the world. unusually windy and combined with the snow showers, plenty of them. but very few further south. we've replaced the cloud with the sunshine. a bit of a breeze and temperatures won't be the teens we had on christmas day, 6—8 is about average. but, given the sunshine, pleasant enough. further north, however, initially there could be a few wintry showers for the hills of northern ireland and scotland. gale force winds here. then escalating further across the northern half of scotland. then it goes on to batter scandinavia and around the baltic sea. further south, you can see across the mediterranean, still some nasty
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weather through cyprus and turkey, with heavy snowfall inland, courtesy of low pressure. 0therwise some fina and dry weather. the intense high pressure will be building through the latter part of monday, pushing that windier weather away into the north sea and scandinavia, where it will cause some potential power outages and travel disruption. dangerous conditions — we've had and enormous waves already reported out to sea. coastal waves will be pretty large. through tuesday, as you saw — things are calming down. wednesday, the calming process continues. a lot of sunshine on tuesday, will be getting contaminated with low cloud and fog as we move into wednesday. where the fog lingers it will feel much colder. could be some freezing fog around. some nasty conditions around at the moment, however the amber warning in force for boxing day. as ever the details on the website. hello.
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this is breakfast, with naga munchetty. george michael, one of the biggest music stars of his generation, has died at the age of 53. after a string of top ten hits with wham in the 80s, he had further success as a solo artist, selling more than 100 million albums. we'll look back at his career. good morning, it's boxing day, monday the 26th of december. also today: a day of mourning in russia for the 92 people who were on board a jet which crashed into
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the black sea on its way to syria. we'll find out how the community in hebden bridge has recovered
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