of cases and deaths. a new variant of coronavirus discovered in india in march may be linked to the massive surge. after the big cities, rural health facilities across the country are coming under increasing pressure. police in brazilian city of rio dejaneiro have defended their operation against drug traffickers in which at least 25 people died. officers said that the action had been planned for almost a year after they had received information that criminal gangs had been recruiting children and minors. votes are being counted in britain after elections to the devolved parliaments in scotland and wales, and to local government authorities in england. a parliamentary seat in hartlepool in north—east england is also being contested. the result there is expected to be announced in the next few hours. now on bbc news, influencers

across the globe are promoting apetamin as a quick fix for kardashian—esque curves. but there's a lot they don't know about this �*miracle�* syrup. i'm altou mvuama, a model and influencer. so obviously, appearance is everything for me. it's a really competitive world out there and sometimes, people do crazy things to stand out from the crowd. i've always been very slim. that might have been great for naomi campbell but now, the girls that make serious cash have curves. yeah, i like that. t-h-i-c-k.

t-h-i-c-c. oh, girl! 0r t—h—i-q—u—e would be the posh way. slim thicc to me is having a slim waist. big thighs and a big bum. that is what everyone focuses on now, is the bum, isn't it? i i would classify cardi b as being slim thicc. kylie jenner. kim kardashian pushed it quite a lot. there's a product out there that influencers claims to make it easy, but can it really be that simple? so this whole slim thicc look, that's what i was trying to go for and i came across some youtubers and they were taking apetamin to gain weight. i googled it and i saw that it was black market stuff, 0k. ijust decided, "0h, hang on, i have this product. let's try it." i collapsed in the street and . they brought me into hospital. i kept falling over and kept sort of tripping up.

brakes squeal. i had a patient who came in to our liver clinic, she could have full liver failure had she continued it. so did you know it was illegal? illegal? oh, wow. i guess, no! if apetamin is illegal, what is it doing over all of my socials? i have taken apetamin myself to get the most desirable look. i look up to kyliejenner because she is just a big influencer, so inspirational, and ijust really like her body. i feel like you have to look a certain way if you want to make it big. i don't think it'sjust me — i feel like there are plenty of other models and girls out there that feel like they need

to change themselves due to what they see on social media. people are doing a lot of crazy things to get that slim thicc body. like taking apetamin, an unlicensed medicine that's definitely not made to be used for boosting your bum. now today, guys, i will be reviewing and giving my input. simmer down! right here, what is this product that these girls are taking, that these girls and saying is giving them hips and booties and thighs and maybe bigger breasts? what is it? i will be giving you. my review on the... ..apetamin. apetamin. apetamin — i get so many questions all the time. i influencers all over the world are promoting apetamin. i was one of them. so guys, literally, all of you would not stop asking me this question. how did you gain weight? how

to? you have got a little breast there, it's growing. and look at this. i have tried it and even promoted it to my followers. back then, i didn't do my research. i didn't know how it could really affect you. 0k, let me look, i am not accrue to thicc but i have gained weight. you can see i am tickling. ——jiggling. i have gained weight, you can see. if you are out there struggling, get yourself apetamin, mate. you have to speak to your medical advisor if you want to but, yeah, i didn't do that, because, yeah... i'm thinking of taking it again, but i have heard some nasty rumours. there's a video going around of a girl in the us called asha grand. welcome back to my channel. she blogged about her apetamin experience. ..and so i wanted to tell my story, of what happened to me

when i was taking apetamin... tyres squeal. asha believes that apetamin made her really drowsy and she even blacked out. she's lucky to be alive. oh, my days! i cannot believe she fell asleep! you definitely, definitely get really sleepy and tired and miserable. my mum thought i was pregnant at one point �*cause of the amount of times i was sleeping. she was thinking "what are you doing? "get up! you are moving like a lowlife." i was falling asleep at school. my mood swings were crazy. but that wasn't my mum's only worry. she did not want me to take apetamin. my mum was taking it, like, a long time ago, because again, like, she loves being thicc,

it had a huge effect on her, �*cause she has sickle cell anaemia, she had to go hospital and she ended up ina coma. like, it wasn't good at all. so you took it after that? i mean, that was year seven, so... ..ten years later, i did. ok, i know i seem mad for still thinking about taking it, but i sometimes feel like having a perfect body is worth the risk. so, the side effects of apetamin... tiredness. you feel quite nauseous. completely knocked out. it even hurt my eyes to be awake. i would jerk or shiver or shake orjump. i was probably overdosing. i couldn't even write my name on a piece of paper, _ my hands were shaking that much. _ i collapsed in the street and they brought me into hospital. i kept falling over and tripping up. i i went to college and the same thing happened again.

back in hospital. my feet started to swell. i had to change into my slippers on a night out. i was in denial. i took it again and i collapsed down the stairs at home. apetamin is the devil — that's all i have to say about this. my mum was always there for me when i was starting out as a model. but a few months ago, just as my career was taking off, her illness got worse and she passed away. she supported me, but i am the breadwinner now. i have my little sister to look after, i have to pay for the rent, council tax, internet and food shopping. it feels horrible being an adult. there's way more pressure on me to do well. i'm seriously tempted to take apetamin again. usually, i can never eat enough to gain weight, but apetamin changed that.

like, every single day, i would order mcdonald's. the most surprising thing is i would get the same delivery man and he will be looking at me like, "oh, god. what is your obsession?" little did he know it is just apetamin! i have been taking apetamin for the past five weeks. i was taking apetaminj for about 2—3 months. apetamin — is it apetamin? i went from weighing 54kg to 86kg, all in the space of three months. 1.5 months that i was taking| apetamin, i probably gained about two stone. my mum tells me all the time, "be careful. you have put on weight in yourface." i cannot physically see the drastic change that i want to see yet. i was told taking the apetamin will only make me gain weight around my bum and hips and my thighs

and to be honest with you, it is quite daft of me to think that. the whole of me i wants to increase. like, you put me in water- and ijust expanded something. hi, my name is chi. my name is edward. chi and ed are personal trainers and lately, they have been getting a lot of questions about apetamin. they are trying to achieve an hourglass figure, mainly how to achieve a small waist and large hips. that's what i want as well. her body, oh, gosh, she has literally got the perfect slim thicc body. you can tell she really puts in the effort. would i do the same? probably not. so... laughs. i wanted to know if they think apetamin really works. you are doing well. as well as being really muscly, ed is a pharmacist.

that they are using this drug, apetamin. the youngest person, she was 12 years old. i decided to research. but you are not going to become more curvyjust by eating more food. yeah. it is not going to make you become curvy. that explains the belly i have. fat doesn't have a lot of structure. if you train the right muscles, you can increase your curves. your muscle mass doesn't come easy. that's the thing. ed and chi want people to know that apetamin is not the miracle fix influencers say it is. farfrom far from it. did you know it was illegal? illegal? oh, wow! i guess no. this is your first time finding out? wow, it is illegal? it is illegal. it is not licensed in the uk, it is not licensed in america. itjust has crept into the market. you made this look easy! well done. i don't think the gym

life is for me. i'm going to tell you something now. you are not allowed to sell it in the uk.— now. you are not allowed to sell it in the uk.- you| sell it in the uk. yeah. you knew that? _ yeah, but... i had an inkling that it was illegal from the time - when i went to the chemist and asked for it, and they looked i at me as if i was mad. and when they said "you're not supposed to be taking this". i i'm not going to lie, i ran. imean... so it is black market stuff. 0k. everyone does bad things every day, don't they? i went to the african stores and asked my aunty, "can i buy this?" and she says, yeah. i got sent apetamin by a company on instagram, but it is all over the internet. there's literally so many sellers, it is actually insane. i even got it on amazon. i wanted to see if i could

buy it at the shops. the bbc set me up with some secret filming equipment. it's not what i'd normally wear, but we move. i could spot the bottles everywhere. like, it is crazy, it's really, really easy to get your hands on. i mean, why is it being sold near meat? does it make you gain weight? i asked him where it is from. thank you so much. thank you!

have a wonderful day. thank you. i bought one, two and three today. the experience was really exciting. it was like we were going on a little mission. i can't believe it's sold so freely. people are buying apetamin without realising it is an unlicensed medicine and they shouldn't be taking it like this. so, what is actually in it? i don't know what that is. it sounds dodgy. hydrochloride. i don't know how to pronounce this. the guy in the butchers said it comes from india. on here it says til healthcare. so i am just going to google them.

they are based in india. in a city called chennai. it is sold in the congo, ethiopia, ghana, ivory coast. so basically, africa. asia, centraland latin america as well. russia. this is interesting. it is basically everywhere. but we don't see the united kingdom. they shouldn't be selling it in the uk. i contacted til healthcare and they said this... i was interested to see that it was sold in congo — that is where my mum was from. i am not quite sure how she found out about it. i guess it is quite popular in the congolese community. so i am guessing it has a link.

obviously, there was no social media when my mum was growing up in congo, which means it's been sold in pharmacies there for years. everyone's obsession with these pills has got a name, it is a c—ii phenomenon, because they all share the same ingredient and it has been in the news. but this isn't - an entirely new fad. big has been beautiful. in many african cultures since the dawn of time. a study found nearly three quarters of the people in this city have tried it. i put 60 pills in the syrup product and then i mix it and take it before bed. 60 pills in a syrup, that is nuts! i say to women who take the stuff, stop, because| it is poison. but it will not be easy to fight the power of social pressure, and the buttock—boosting business here could one day approach the size of the weight loss industry in western countries. it seems that it could already

be happening in the uk. the company that makes apetamin say they do not send it here, so how does it get into shops? i am going to newcastle to meet an expert on how bad stuff gets into the uk. if it isn't hard enough travelling at the moment, the weather is grim. hi, i'm alex. i'm a i'm a criminologist. alex researches unlicensed medicine. have you heard of apetamin? i know there is an online trade. meat shops, as well. so you can get your meat and yourapetamin? laughter. it will have been manufactured largely in another part of the world. one of the biggest and most illicit lifestyle drugs on the market in the uk is an unlicensed version of what we know as viagra. that is largely legally produced in india, so it is licensed in india but unlicensed in the uk. i think it's a pretty similar story with apetamin.

it is licensed in india but in the uk it is not. why is it so hard to stop these unlicensed medicines coming in? with illicit lifestyle drugs, there is so much of a grey area that it can be really difficult for them to police. some people who have been involved in distributing cocaine have actually moved into the fake medicine trade. if you are caught with a certain amount of cocaine in the uk, you can end up in prison for a very long time. but if you are caught with something like a lifestyle drug, you're probably going to get a slap on the wrist. if the regulators know that this product is unlicensed, it's not meant to come into the uk, why are they allowing it to come in? how am i meant to know that apetamin is dangerous? the shop owner probably doesn't know, it all goes down to the people bringing

the product in the country. we asked the mhra, the organisation who is meant to police this, and they told us... i have a day off, so i'm going to call someone who knows about how apetamin affects people. i'm about to skype call dr victoria. she is in america and she wrote this paper. this is one of the few studies done on apetamin. hello. nice to meet you. my first question is when did you first find out about apetamin? i had a patient who came into our liver clinic and she was complaining

of fatigue. she was jaundiced, so her skin was yellowed. her own body was fighting her liver. do you know how serious it could have been if she was to perhaps continue taking it? it's hard to know what would have happened, she could have full liver failure had she continued it. yeah, because when my mum was taking it, she was kind of like the patient you just described, she was taking a lot, she was overdoing it. it actually caused her to go into a coma. i'm really sorry to hear that. oh, it was fine. what particularly worries me about apetamin is the way that it is marketed — as a vitamin supplement, which implies it's safe, that it's natural. the active ingredient that stimulates appetite and a few other ingredients, there are no actual studies about it.

we don't know how apetamin will impact a person. it is a medicine. sometimes people end up taking way too much. and some people, like my mother, probably should have never taken it at all. obviously, when i went to speak to the doctor, we heard all about the side effects, and hearing that was really shocking, how it affects your liver. i was taking that, god knows what would have happened to me if i kept on taking it. so, obviously, i will not be taking that again. because i love my life!

while i was on my next shoot, i couldn't stop thinking about how far we go sometimes to get the perfect body. how strong the pressure is to look a certain way. i feel that as much as anyone. and i have done things i regret because of that. i definitely regret making the video i did of apetamin, because of the truth i know now, i know that apetamin is unlicensed, it shouldn't be sold and it has a huge effect on you. through that video, someone might buy apetamin, start taking it, misuse it, perhaps, and then perhaps they can get liver failure as well, and that would be because of me. it's really sad to think that there are girls endangering their lives just

to look a certain way. # my anaconda don't... rappers, rappers, rappers. i would say they are the main cause of why a lot of girls are insecure. "he says he doesn't like them bony, he wants something he can grab." there is this one which was like, well, this is not healthy for my mind. basically saying the skinny bee' ., ., �* ., when i was growing up, | it was very skinny, slim, you know, low—cutjeans and everything like that, showing off the flat stomach. it has changed from being slim, now being hourglass figure. thicc, big bum, big breasts. i thought taking the apetamin was the easy route. when that didn't work out, i decided to get the bbl.

i said, "ok, i will get my breasts done and that's it". three years down the line, i found myself on the table again. i was somewhat disappointed and disgusted with myself because i have put my life at risk for the sake of looking nice in a dress. ijust want to feel like i have got everything, i am beautiful, that i've ticked every box, so that no—one has anything negative to say about me. i don't know what it stems from, but it all stems from somewhere. social media is extremely toxic. girls of my generation, they will know what i'm talking about — they make you feel, if you don't look this way, then you're nothing. and when you see public figures like kim kardashian, kylie jenner and all these other celebrities, they have got such beautiful bodies, but i think we all forget that it is not their actual

body — they paid for it. do you know what i'm trying to say? you will not achieve that perfect look, it is just unrealistic. unless you get surgery, yeah, but you are just endangering yourself. i am trying to make myself proud and make my mum proud as well. i had to pick myself up and tell myself to be strong, because, obviously, i have a little sister to look after. my mum always believed in me, she always knew i was going to be a supermodel. she had superfaith in me. last year, i was really obsessed with looking good, having the perfect body, you know, but this year it is just like, it is what it is. what i have learned is that family is so important, and forget trying to look like the kardashians. yeah.

thursday brought another rash of showers, some significant snow to some parts of scotland. it's still cold air with us for the day ahead, so it will be a chilly start, and there will be further snow showers over the hills of scotland. but as we've gone through the evening and overnight, the showers have tended to fade away. we had a lot of hail and thunder in eastern areas, but under the starry skies once again, because it's cold air, temperatures approach freezing — a little below — and given there is some dampness on the surfaces, it could be a bit icy in a few spots. perhaps a little bit of river mist as well. but an abundance of sunshine first thing. the showers already with us in some areas, as you can see, become more widespread as the morning goes on. initially, across many parts of england and wales developing across scotland, one or two for northern ireland, but then congregating on the east into the afternoon. hail and thunder and snow over the hills. so, again, chilly, but temperatures probably

a little bit higher than yesterday, up to 15 perhaps in the south. but then, it's all change as we go through the coming night and into saturday. we've got the next weather system coming in, so the frost won't be as widespread by saturday morning. more limited to the far north—east of scotland, which is where we probably won't get the milder air in. it's this deep area of low pressure that's pulling itself in off the atlantic, giving us all, really, a spell of wetter weather. looks quite wet in western areas, and given we've got the south—westerly wind coming in off the atlantic, it is bringing much milder air in, which means a lot of rain potentially across south—west england, wales, into the north of england. you can see a wetter day for northern ireland and much of scotland. it may actually dry up and brighten up in south—eastern areas later. the rain may not actually reach the far north of scotland, and the milder air slow to arrive here, perhaps some wintriness on the hills. but we could see 16 or 17 if it brightens up in the south. through the night, that weather front�*s dragging its heels, really slow to move its way eastwards. we've got one band of rain moving up towards the north of scotland, showers following in behind. still the south—westerly wind into sunday, so still mild, but with plenty of showers merging together across north and west areas near the centre

of the area of low pressure. it will be windy through the weekend as well, but we could see 20—22 celsius and possibly some late afternoon thunderstorms in south—eastern areas. quite a lot of uncertainty on the detailfor sunday, but it does look a very unsettled weekend ahead. you can get more from the website.

this is bbc news. our top stories: a boost for boris johnson: the conservatives look set to win a former labour stronghold in the first test at the ballot box since the pandemic. it is quite clear when we see the balance lying on the table that we just haven't got over the line on the day and that is clearly very disappointing. we had a good candidate and we run a decent campaign and one with integrity. the official result, when confirmed, part of a huge series of super thursday elections held across the uk — the biggest test of opinion since the uk general election of 2019. another day of record infections and deaths in india. a special report on just how badly this crisis is affecting

rural health facilities.