this is bbc news, our top stories: the uyghur children separated from their parents, why china still won't reveal their whereabouts. the world health organization announces it's setting up a hub in south africa to help poorer nations produce their own covid—19 vaccines. australia's great barrier reef is described as in very poor condition, and its world heritage status is under threat. also coming up, a us supreme court ruling on the rights of student athletes to earn a living from their sports. it could shake—up the billion dollar college sports industry.

welcome to our viewers on pbs in america and around the globe. the bbc has been investigating the plight of thousands of children believed to have been separated from their parents as a result of china's treatment of its uyghur population. beijing has denied that uyghur families are being deliberately split up, but reports have consistently emerged of uyghurs being forced into internment camps, women being sterilised and the use of forced labour. reporting from taiwan, here's our china correspondent jon sudworth. these mothers are marching for their missing children back home in xinjiang. walking almost 300 miles across turkey where they now live to highlight the years of silence from china. i want them to let me see them, kalbina tells me.

in this information age, why can't i contact my children? two years ago, in a meeting hall in istanbul, in dozens of similar accounts, uighurs from xinjiang told us how they'd lost all contact with the children. do you know where your children are now? so where are these children? shown that testimony, the chinese ambassador in london at the time denied the claims but promised to investigate. if you have people got their children lost, you give me names. with our interviewees�* permission, we sent him the names. in 2016, fearing china would force her to have an abortion, kalbina left xinjiang to give birth to her youngest daughter, mersier. little did she know the camps designed to replace ethnic identity with loyalty to the communist party were being built

on a massive scale. having relatives overseas was one sign of suspicion, so contact with the outside world simply stopped. kalbina's husband was detained, and she hasn't seen him, or herfive older children, since. except for this. the video she discovered online formed in a school hundreds of miles from the family home. i'm sure it's my daughter, she told me. a claim china dismisses as a lie, although it hasn't provided any proof. after the promised to investigate, uk embassy officials confirmed receipt of art documents saying they had reported the matter to china. we send follow—up e—mails but were told there was no feedback from beijing. and our requests for comment eventually went unanswered.

we also handed over details of the missing relatives to officials in xinjiang including copies of id cards, again without success. then, one year after his first appearance, the ambassador went on live tv once more. the bbc did provide the chinese embassy with names, and we haven't heard back. i never received any names since our last show. i hope that you can give me the names. we certainly will get back to you. so we renewed our request. where, for example, are kalida's missing sons? are their wives still in the camps? where are her 14 grandchildren? kalida, who lives in kazakhstan, now spends her days protesting outside the chinese consulate. until china gives me information, i will keep coming, she told me.

earlier this year liu xiaoming left the uk with an online farewell reception, and his promise still unmet by the chinese government. no progress, said the latest e—mailfrom his officials. no explanation, for example, as to why this 68—year—old uighur spent 18 months in a camp and why she is now being prevented from travelling to see her daughter who lives in the uk. what do you think the fact that we have heard nothing from them in response might tell us? they are trying to, not to answer, or trying to hide what they're doing. what she has been through in the camp, they don't want her to speak out what's happening in there. after two years of promises to help find the missing, xinjiang's shattered families have been offered only silence. john sudworth, bbc news, taipei. the world health organisation

is working with a group of companies to start producing coronavirus vaccines in south africa. the whole continent is facing a shortage, and with a successful transfer of existing technology, south africa could start producing mrna jabs within a year. the country's president, cyril ramaphosa, welcomed the move. it has been shown now that we just cannot continue to rely on vaccines that are made outside of africa, because they never come. they never arrive on time and people continue to die. and we have therefore called on technology transfer. cyril ramaphosa there. matthew kavanagh is the professor of global health at georgetown university in washington. i asked him why africa has recieved so few vaccines so far. a year ago we saw governments around the world coming together, promising vaccine equity, that vaccines were going to be available to everybody, then come december of last year vaccines are approved but none of that equity actually happened.

so now i% of all vaccines have actually reached sub—saharan africa, meanwhile in the wealthy world we are talking about vacations and getting young people and healthy people into vaccination, african countries really don't have enough vaccine and so they've got to take some moves. i wish this had happened months ago but it is really good to see it happening now. right, cyril ramaphosa there talking about technology transfer as critically important, obviously. what is your best guess, then, as to how long it might be before a move like this actually bears fruit? so, what we are seeing overall is, that what the who and the african union are agreeing to do is to work together to make mrna vaccines, which are proving to be by far the most effective vaccines. study after study is showing that these vaccines are really good at fighting the variants,

they are able to do a lot. they are also relatively quick to scale, so the core question of how long it is going to take is, how cooperative are some of the companies out there, right? so, thailand right now is piloting a brand new... crosstalk. sorry to interrupt you, that is the point, isn't it? because there's a lot of good talk and not a huge amount of good action in terms of handing over the necessary. this is what we are worried about, right? now, basically what is happening is that the eu and the world health organization are calling the bluff on countries around the world who have said they will help and of companies around the world. moderna and pfizer, these are companies that have said, no, you can go ahead and make our vaccines but we're not going to patent them, et cetera. now the question is, they have got the technical know—how, they have a hub they are setting up and they have got the funding. so the core question is, who's going to share the know—how of the technology so it can happen fast? the biden administration,

of course, could push moderna to do it, the question is, will they? and that is the bluff that is being called right now by the eu. i suppose you can set up a hub, we have seen in india, for example, the serum institute of india running into problems, partly political, partlyjust sheer volume required in india itself. how many hubs are you going to need across a continent like africa, do you think, for this to have a real effect? right now, we are sitting on a world where there is only a handful of manufacturers, one manufacturer basically for every single vaccine. so this would shift that. this would say, look, we're going to have a hub in south africa, that is sponsored by afrigen and biovac, two companies that are african—based. and they are going to rapidly build mrna vaccine technilogy. we might well need another hub in senegal, for example. we may also want hubs in latin america and asia. there are companies around the world with the capacity to actually make these vaccines but they so far haven't because of a combination

of intellectual property but also becuse of tech transfer, and so the bargain here is, who comes together, these companies are not the only ones who know how to make mrna, will scientists come together and help them make it? will the companies come together and help them make it? they are setting up a hub, you may well see within months, actually, vaccine coming out, and that's the real hope. the australian government has vowed to strongly oppose a recommendation that the country's great barrier reef be listed as �*in danger�*. unesco has published a draft decision which could threaten the reefs world heritage status. the un agency says the reefs condition has deteriorated from poor to very poor, citing widespread coral bleaching, and it's called for more action from the australian government to address the effects of climate change. earlier, i spoke to our reporter courtney bembridge. the environment minister susan ley said she was blindsided

by the decision and it came out of nowhere and was a backflip on previous assurances that this step would not be taken. she said that she will strongly oppose this all the way through. the unesco report does cite that there are water quality targets that were not met for the reef and that is the reason behind this decision. it's funny because it's almost counterintuitive, isn't it? you would think if it has gone from poor to very poor it's even more important to keep it on the world heritage list in terms of its protection, so i imagine the australian government sees something behind this, not least with, i think, china will be chairing the meeting where a final decision may be taken? that's right, there has been some suggestion that this may be some kind of retaliation, of course australia called for an independent enquiry into the origins of covid—i9 that upset china and there has been an intensifying row between the two countries. but it is worth noting there are 21 members of unesco, so all of those countries are behind a decision like this and many say that there has

been a move for many years within unesco to link a country's climate policies, and we know that australia's climate policies haven't changed since 2015 and that the prime minister scott morrison has been reticent to sign up to a net zero 2050 target, so unesco has been trying for many years to link the climate policies to the heritage sites within a country and this could just be down to that, so many are saying it may not just be political tensions but certainly china does play a big role in unesco. lets put the politics aside for a minute, we're looking at some wonderful pictures of corals, but of course coral bleaching is a very real issue. is there anything that can be done about it? is it getting worse? climate change has been acknowledged by the australian government and scientists as the number one threat to the reef and with that comes coral bleaching because you have got rising sea temperatures which causes this phenomenon. there have been five serious mass coral bleaching events in the past three years, the most severe were in 2020 and 2016 so they are very recent and they are getting worse and scientists say that

will continue to happen unless global action is taken to tackle climate change, but of course unesco would like australia to take more decisive action first, and hope that that may make, play a small part in addressing this and trying to secure the future of the reef. stay with us on bbc news. still to come: we know the vikings travelled far and wide. so as their fans celebrate denmark's progress in the euros, we'll speak to one supporter from their american diaspora. members of the neo—nazi resistance movement stormed the world trade centre, armed with pistols and shotguns. we believe that, according to international law, that we have a rightful claim to certain parts of this country as our land. i take pride in the words

"ich bin ein berliner". cheering and applause as the uk woke up to the news that it is to exit the european union, leave campaigners began celebrating. in total, 17.4 million people voted for the uk to leave the eu. the medical research council have now advised the government that the great increase in lung cancer is due mainly to smoking tobacco. it was closing time for checkpoint charlie which, for 29 years, has stood on the border as a mark of allied determination to defend the city. welcome back to bbc world news with me, david eades. the top stories:

the bbc has uncovered new claims that children from china's uyghur minority have been separated from their parents by chinese officials. i spoke to nury turkel who is the vice chair at the united states commission on international religious freedom. i asked whether he feels any progress has been made in getting to the truth. the chinese government statement shows they have intention to break their lineage, break uyghurs�* roots and break uyghurs�* connections and uyghurs�* origin. the story you just tested, about broken families, speaks to that fact, so it's not because what we are saying is happening in the uyghurs�* homeland, xinjiang, that uyghurs�* call east turkestan, but it is what the chinese is telling the public and contradicting the research. so we have made some progress, governmentally, societally, as far as the community is concerned, that there is a lot to be done. the international community has been tepid and meandering in their responses.

only a handful of governments including the united states, uk and others have publicly taken a position and imposed certain measures. . . sorry to interrupt you. do you have any confidence that that will change and that there will be a concerted international effort to force china's hand here? it has to be, there has to be a way to make them stop. i think the international community so far, led by the united states and our partners and allies particularly in europe, are doing the right thing calling the chinese out for these evil policies and the atrocities committed against vulnerable and ethnic religious minorities. at the same time, we are going after their economic interests. specifically the technology aspect, the chinese using technology to advance and intensify its criminal acts against uyghur people.

college sport in the us is a massive business. it's worth billions of dollars and attracts huge crowds. the us college system soaks up most of that revenue — and imposes strict limits on what student athletes are allowed to make. but now the supreme court has declared the athletes should get a bigger slice of the income. our north america correspondent, david willis, has more. college sports is very popular here, i reckon billions of dollars in sport for colleges, countries, and the ncaa, the national collegiate athletic association, the sports governing body, but the stars themselves, the sportspeople themselves are deemed amateurs and so they are entitled to scholarships but not to pay. well, this decision by the united states supreme court, the highest court in the land, doesn't directly pave the way

for these amateur athletes to be paid but it does open the door to them receiving additional educational benefits, so colleges, in an attempt to woo these athletes, kind of offer them under this ruling such things as education equipment, internships, computers, study abroad programmes and so on but the feeling is, that the dam has been broken here, as far as the process of recompense in amateur athletes in this country is concerned. the feeling is that this will lead to further legal challenges to come in the months ahead. i was wondering what the ncaa actually makes of this ruling. how are they interpreting it? well, it's very interesting, actually, because they issued a statement which was basically taking this very much in our stride, saying the ncaa looks forward to working with congress to reform this process going forward,

but the ncaa is currently criticised in a number of bills that numbers of congress are considering, and it was spelt out, really, in the ruling ofjustice brett kavanaugh, one of the supreme court judges, who wrote, "the ncaa has built a massive moneymaking enterprise on the backs of student athletes who are not fairly compensated, a feeling then that this is an compensated. david willis. the las vegas raiders player carl nassib has announced he is gay, making him the first active nfl player to come out. in a video post he said he finally felt comfortable to get the issue off his chest. what's up, people? i am carl nassib and i'm in my house here in westchester,

pennsylvania. i'm taking a moment to tell people i am gay. i've been open about it for a while now but i'm finally comfortable to get it off my chest. i really have the best life, the best family, friends and job a guy could ask for. i'm a pretty private person so i really hope you guys know i'm not doing this for attention, but ijust think representation and visibility are so important. i actually hope that one day, videos like this and the whole coming out process are just not necessary. to football's european championships now, and there has been joy for denmark who have reached the last 16. the danes, still reeling from christian eriksen�*s cardiac arrest during their opening game, beat russia 4—1 to finish as runners up in their group. they go through with belgium, the netherlands, austria and france, switzerland, sweden, england, and the czech republic into the next round. even though some of them haven't finished the group stage yet.

it's that denmark result, however, and the response to the christian eriksen incident that has really captured the attention of football fans around the world. and none more so than the united states. sune frederiksen was born in denmark, and lives in kentucky. he told us what his teams success means to the danish diaspora. it's just fantastic, i haven't seen anything like this before. going from the collapse, it's just a national tragedy and today became a national triumph for the danes all over the world. this was something everyone wanted to see, apart from the russians. that is a fair point. i had a sense that maybe it was all slipping away a little bit for denmark, so it is quite a turnaround. it was. it's just amazing how you can get your team together, and my kudos to the national coach for bringing the team up to such a high level internationally, top—notch level. in such a short time. the players did fantastically.

it was a glorious day for denmark, and the third goal that was scored by the chelsea defender, andres christensen, was just amazing. you got the result. can i just ask you, you're not the only dane out there in kentucky prepared to wear the hat and the t—shirt? i do it for you. and for the national pride, there is no doubt about that. there are few danes in kentucky but we don't see many of them here. we are a little group that get together on and off and we have a danish—american friendship association flag here so we do get together and have a carlsberg here now and then.

no more advertising, please. i just must ask you, against all the odds, back then, but how far can you go this time? they had some big names back then on the team and they are very strong, a physical team. denmark is more of a technical team with a lot of good positioning. i root for denmark, and i think they had it to you right now, and they have a magnificent opportunity.

good luck to denmark. here is another heartwarming story. it is about friendship and heroism, really. xavier bouget was walking through his village in france when he saw a vicious attack taking place. he eventually stepped in and rescued the victim, called blanchon, and the two of them are now inseparable. the only twist, well, the bbc�*s tim allman explains all. # thank you for being a friend # travel down the road and back again # your heart is true, you're a pal and a confidant.# to call them the odd couple seems almost like an understatement. an 80—year—old man who used to work in the building trade and a 2—year—old white pigeon. their unusual friendship began when xavier — he is the man, not the bird — was out for a stroll. translation: i saw a small, almost featherless, pigeon i fall to the ground and tried

to escape some cats. i thought, another living being is having a bad day. i told my wife, and she asked, "did you not take it?" and i said "no, i didn't." so i went back to pick it up, and i came home with blanchon in my pocket. wherever one goes, the other follows. xavier thinks their relationship could be an example for others. translation: there are billions of us, - and we have to share the earth. animals have as much of a right to be here as we do. we must know how to respect them, and everyone can do it. people often ask xavier how he managed to train the bird to be so tame. no trick, he replies — just mutual respect. # thank you for being a friend.# tim allman, bbc news. there we are. a little heartwarming story to end the

bulletin. you are up—to—date on bbc news. don't forget the website. goodbye for now. hello. monday was the summer solstice, but for some places, including parts of southeast england, it was colder than the winter solstice. this was the picture as we ended the day in pontypridd, south wales, so quite a lot of cloud around there. through the course of the night, though, the cloud has tended to break up a little bit. so, tuesday, it will be a drier day in the south, certainly compared to what we had on monday. and for most places, some spells of sunshine around. low pressure that brought monday's rain will be slowly clearing away towards the south. we have got another weather front approaching from the north—west. before it gets there, though, a lot of clear and dry weather. quite a chilly start to the day, single figures in the north.

in fact, those temperatures close to freezing in a few rural glens in scotland, so perhaps even a touch of frost to start the day. but tuesday morning, for most of us, it is dry, it is bright with some sunshine. cloudier for the southeast of england and east anglia. a few spots of rain for the likes of kent and sussex which should clear away through the day. so, light winds, not particularly warm for the time of year — temperatures around the east coast around about 15 to 17 degrees. the warmest spots probably for north—west england, into wales. 20 degrees or so towards cardiff. we have got some patchy rain arriving across northern ireland and western scotland through the evening, and overnight into wednesday, thatjust spills its way a little bit further south. so it won't be quite as cold as we start the day on wednesday, but the lowest temperatures will be across parts of southern and southeast england first thing. so, through wednesday, then, we've got this warm front slowly pushing south, bringing quite a lot of low cloud, mist, murk and drizzly rain, but towards the south, it's going to be a fine, dry day on wednesday. so, sunshine holding on for southern england, east anglia as well.

further north, we have got more in the way of cloud, a few spots of drizzly rain coming out of this cloud for some places as well. temperatures getting up to about 20—22 degrees where you do see the sunshine. typically the high teens where you are stuck under the cloud, towards the north and north—west. into thursday, again, we've got a weather front that's a bit more active this time across western scotland, perhaps parts of northern ireland also seeing some fairly heavy rain on thursday, slowly slipping its way south. i think much of england and wales holding onto some dry weather, variable amounts of cloud. 20—22 degrees in the south, but the mid—to—high teens further north. bit of a mixed picture as we look towards the end of the week. most of us see some drier and eventually some slightly warmer weather too as we head towards the weekend. still, one or two showers around on friday. bye— bye.

this is bbc news. the headlines: the bbc has uncovered new claims that children from china's uyghur minority have been separated from their parents by chinese officials. both the uk and the us have accused china of violating human rights as reports emerge of uyghurs being forced into internment camps and women being sterilised. south africa is to set up the continent's first covid—19 vaccine production facility, as president cyril ramaphosa said africa now understood that doses would "never come" from elsewhere in time to save lives. but it will take time — no vaccines are expected until next year. united nations cultural body unesco says australia palme great barrier reef should be on the list of world heritage sites that are in danger. it has called for more action from australia to address the

effects of climate change.