let's get you a minor of another top story at this hour u.s. president trump has held progress in what he calls a comprehensive trade deal talks in delhi with that country's prime minister trump is on the 2 day visit in india to deepening economic and military cuts. this is deja vu news up next our documentary series looks of the dark side of the south americans commodities and don't forget there's always more on all of our stories that are social media feeds for now i'm brian thomas thanks for the. set. to go beyond. all of the stories that matter to the. country. whatever it takes to get the running out try to explain

a little nugget. you made for mines. you can't see it but these children have poison in their blood the director of the primary school instead of the pasco in peru says learning and concentration difficulties are usually the 1st sign to this body when they sneeze the blood often comes out of their noses. you know cool they struggle to pay attention for longer stretches of time so that if i'm sure that students lead in their blood. the school is right next to a gigantic open cast mine. the crater dominates the town of saturday possibly. the global economy is hungry for wrong materials. but this comes at

a high cost $1.00 that many south americans have to pay. some even with their lives. saturday pasco is a town in the heart of the peruvian andes in peru and the sight of a huge open cast mine extracting zinc silver and lead for global markets. the mine is now owned by a swiss commodities giant glencore glencore recently paid several $100000000.00 for it but the people who live here pay an even higher price so today pasco lies in an altitude of 4300 meters locals absorb heavy metals into their bloodstream through the tap water. on the side of the lead makes us telling it to that especially if

it's children when. they don't get my stomach hurts my head aches a vision a list if you will unlike when i asked my children to solve a problem if they could take it tell it. to come from shopping again looking. next door as a health center with a poster that reads led campaign. everyone can get tested for heavy metals there. doesn't that is his house and we are measuring elevated values for all heavy metals lead cadmium potassium and mercury all residents have levels that clearly exceed the world health organizations limits. as far as giving. the thin. peruvian journalists have documented the worst cases. children confined to wheelchairs because their lead levels are more times too high.

cars from operation. dr fernando or sorries has researched heavy metal exposure his study revealed alarming results. in my made up if you think the don't feel sick i meant this was a food in us even when i found the most heavy metals in children and pregnant women . will tell us what it does mean but received if. the children have lead in their blood which means they have problems with nervous system development from a young age and reduced i.q. is as they get older. and that's half is when their little is several you'll. have also discovered levels of arsenic which is carcinogenic. i mean one time quickly enough equal. wealth it actually was intensity and that's not just my opinion the world health organization says that to. us and that.

these diseases are directly linked to peruse worthless exploitation of natural resources for export. the whole country is in its grip. we're on our way through a barren landscape to the highest town in the world. you can smell the garbage long before you even reach. hundreds of tons of waste surround the town in a ring several kilometers deep. the locals say the state has little power in this town of 50000 people perched 5100 meters up in the n.d.s. .

if you are originally from this inhospitable region. they came to this place to find gold. there is more gold here than anywhere else. but entire families are in thrall to gold fever sifting through the waste from the mines to find tiny fragments of gold dust. none of the mines or official. everyone in town or for themselves. nobody has a permit. not even the gold diggers who have driven their miles long shafts into the mountains. 10 years ago the gold boom attracted thousands of impoverished

peruvian. when fortunato to k. 1st arrived just a few 100 people were living in the town where nighttime temperatures can drop to minus 20 degrees celsius. exactly maybe when someone told me back then that a lot in kanada had a future where you it's hard but i've stayed with you i've been here almost 24 years now. and with friends going through. the mining companies have complete power if you don't play by their rules you get fired still fortunato held out soon he'll have earned enough to leave lot in kanada for good but working in the shops has left its mark on the 59 year old and. you know there's particulate matter everywhere in the mines human many colleagues die of pneumonia or from gas poisoning caused by one of the underground explosions yes but when it is placebo. in 3. of those. once a month fortunato sells his gold to

a trader it's usually worth about a 1000 euro so that's a pretty good income for peru. here in the wild west people can at least scrape a living but elsewhere they are paying for raw material exports with their lives. a burst dam in bruma denio in brazil in early 2019 had fatal consequences. bali it was the mining company responsible for the disaster. rescue workers dug desperately through the mud and sludge to find survivors among the 300 people reported missing. more often than not they only found bodies. some had even been buried in

a bus. i sure know how to sew something blue shimmering he dug with his hands and found the tire of the bus as. it was noon when the dam of the iron ore mine collapsed without warning. an employee recorded this video where he says all workers were sitting at the lunch table. to to the mudslide and bolted hundreds of workers and residents below the reservoir . brown red possibly toxic mud flooded the valley. the emergency services saved one young couple in the nick of time just as. this woman also escaped from the ruins. it took just one hour to devastate the entire valley.

distraught relatives gathered at an emergency response center many received trauma counseling. most had to learn that their brothers fathers or uncles were still missing so they waited even as hope of finding survivors waned. engine on choosing opposition we'll stay here until we find out what happened muscle soem change in only one moment that this is what's happened is terrible this is negligence this in my eyes my veins in the jet ice. the morning after the disaster warning sirens sounded again 'd people were scared a 2nd mudslide was imminent and fled to higher ground. we heard the sirens at 530 that's when we came here with our i.d.'s since then we've been waiting and

still have no information that. the police blocked off the. bridge and the main road of room and the nobody knew exactly what was going on but it was gradually becoming clear that the mining company of ali could no longer guarantee bruma deano was safe this is. one thought it would be even worse if there were more casualties that's why there sealing off the area. the rescuers had to stop their work because of concerns that another dam above could collapse. the delay angered the families desperately waiting for news of their loved ones. every moment was precious. it. was nothing but i've had no information about my husband it's been 2 days now it is nothing hours later they finally received the all clear signal for the 2nd dam the rescue workers continue. meanwhile the people of burma denio were trying to come to terms with the

sheer scale of the disaster. on a ritas 28 year old nephew was in the canteen when the mudslide hit home. he went to work and never came back i mean you want to know he's lying and. it's incredibly sad to hear you might hear people prayed for the missing at the church next door but for days after the disaster sorrow was turning to anger at mine operator volley . yes those this was no accident adventure it was a crime. no amount of financial compensation will bring our friends back to conspire god and vali is now under investigation by brazil's justice department which has frozen over 2000000000 euros of the company's assets. and so who's in with that i heard you this is a human tragedy because it involves such a large number of victims who were going to change huge moves. environmental

activists protesting outside the company headquarters. they say the commodities giant invested too little in safety and oversight. as one of the world's biggest iron ore exporters. many people have accused the company of deliberately flirting with disaster in order to be able to meet the end. creased global demand for iron ore. body doesn't own no land the company only has licenses to mine there and if they can even do that without making mistakes contaminating rivers and killing people. in bali is now facing probably the biggest crisis since it was founded 77 years ago. he used to be state owned. the growth of the global demand for iron ore led to a rapid expansion in the 1970 s. and even operates its own fleet of ships. volley grew to be so powerful during the brazilian military dictatorship it was privatized in the 1990 s.

but the state is still the majority shareholder of. the 2009 economic crisis hit bali hard the company which is dependent on global demand had to layoff many workers. but the past few years have seen a marked turnaround baalei was able to cash in on increased demand for iron ore in china and europe and has become a heavyweight in the brazilian stock index. the company has massively expanded its mining activities and generates billions in profits then in november 2015 a dam belonging to one of ali's subsidiaries collapsed 1000 people were killed in volleys operations came under increasing scrutiny. this was 1000 as a so often the case and brazil regulations and controls may be moving in the right direction but according to the law there should have been 3 times as many

inspectors in the disaster area to effectively inspect the reservoirs as there actually were. it was thought until you can hardly say the president really takes environmental regulation seriously is that just just what the authorities had said 3 days before the accident was these years although its laws are right no government neither left nor right has actually implemented them. simply because. after the bruma denio tragedy the authorities suspected that a brazilian subsidiary of germany's took may have been partly to blame and arrested 2 of its employees. documents show that the 2 men had certified the dam as safe just a few months earlier and the investigators wanted to know why. but the dam may have burst due to factors that had only come into play after the inspection. in december 20 teams the regional environmental agency issued the valley group with

a permit classifying the dam as a level for in other words medium safety risk. but the minutes of an earlier environmental commission show that the risk level had previously been a 6 heightened risk. the environmental agency also approved an expansion of mining activity this was significant because it also involved work around the dam. media reports cited this as an express permit it was issued just a few weeks before the accident and for saw a 70 percent increase in production. and environmental activists from the disaster area accuses the mine operator of negligence. the hidden. hebrew the valley group must have noticed that something in the dam was out of whack because of its illegal activities and then a month before the accident tried to get retrospective approval it doesn't muddy since an. environmental groups are calling for more rigorous state oversight was

each of those and i knew best and yet they had all we can see there's less oversight because the environmental authorities have been massively on to cuss you know is i was bobbing their leis my can you figure the skill is missing plane into miss even with the laws of play at the control authority is to not have the resources to enforce them. it's. hardly any checks are carried out. because companies are accessing enormous pressure to prevent them. the means to me to use them up is still in the moment this is going to brings me to the van i agree as has been. they can to nations to politicians for a long time going to be we started coming but i. really thought i did the old anger about this has been rising in broome again you know where they are also aware this wasn't the 1st mining disaster that. on a rita the aunt of the 28 year old who died there is scathing about the lack of

oversight because they thought of all of them the company knew that wasn't was hittite yes i should have fixed it but they only think about a lot of not about us yet you. meanwhile locals are left facing the environmental impact reddish brown tailing slurry has contaminated the water. was awful we used to use this river but now there is no river anymore it's. the. locals like the tour who rely on tourism are worried about making ends meet it will take months before the whole area is decontaminated it's a disaster with both human and environmental dimensions a lot of questions still haven't been answered especially about lax oversight and whether it was tolerated to increase profit margins. back instead of the pasco peru. experts say

a fine layer of toxic particles has settled over these mountains. they come from a nearby metal smelting plant. chimney of the smelter now releases fewer sulphur dioxide lead and arsenic fumes into the air than it used to. just a few years ago it was still running at full blast. it never bothered us we never left anyway so we thought everywhere looked like this it does get into. the consequences of the air pollution still haunt the residents many of whom suffer from chronic diseases blood lead levels are 4 times higher than the w.h.o. upper limits pablo has serious neurological complaints but he still supports your londa and her fight for better environmental standards you. at 1st they

called a. little but that never bothered me because people like your londa also supported us. the catholic church and international organizations helped us to get the peruvian state to finally recognize the poisoning that affects us as well as our diseases. to continue as you. get and. that's why operations in the law yes melter have been scaled back although the complex hasn't been shut down completely and continues to contaminate the area with heavy metals yolanda says the smelters legacy will be felt for years to come she's meeting constantine bittner who works for the german n.g.o.s. he spent years tracking the way german companies continue to import raw materials from peru in spite of environmental problems. but.

when it comes to raw materials germany is very dependent on peru much to them for its a lot of raw materials especially copper lead silver or gold molybdenum. and it would have a huge problem if the peruvian supply chain were to break down. concerted efforts to expose the human rights. he says in terms of pollution caused by the supply chain a rare. mention of the stuff there's. so much there are more efforts to push things in the other direction. people writing that things are pretty good highlighting a couple of sustainable projects. but when you visit places like this things look a bit different than just office and that's almost. the future of the smelter is a sensitive issue in la jolla one that even divides families. some want more

operations to create jobs others take a different view. is destined to be we need to find a balance when this field goes the smelting complex needs better filters to reduce contamination west means continuous you know and i don't see that in just one liter well yes i know they do but my main concern is the health of my children i even argue with my husband about this and the minute you both work in the mining industry. i expect the mine operators to act more responsibly. one person in la jolla who's been on the side of the victim since the very beginning is cardinal pedro barito who also comes from a mining region. for years he has witnessed the many deaths caused by the ruthless exploitation of mineral resources. and a listen unless they've gone through the media locus thank god that is in the church is not against. this but we are against irresponsible market but he's 6

of us for the peruvian state allows foreign companies. to basically earn their weight in gold here while at the same time causing such regrettable consequences for the peruvian people in the environment. but living at altitudes as high as perils and days already poses health risks especially for the dreamers and schemers enlarging kanada. a team of french scientists in 2019 set out to find out how the backbreaking labor here at 5100 meters altitude is affecting the miners bodies. they took blood samples from the gold miners to measure the number of red blood cells the blood cells that transport oxygen. there is less oxygen in the thin air up here than at sea level. the scientists wanted to find out how people had adapted to these extreme conditions.

which is a normal person that can only go. about 40 percent here we measured a lot of people above 80 percent which is a huge amount of red blood cells in the blood and this helps them to bring much more oxygen to their organs for instance to get to the brain to meso. the results indicated the miners' bodies had adapted to the altitude their blood was thinner than normal and stress tests revealed their hearts were working at a maximum capacity. the study was also intended to help people living at sea level . so learning how these people. can manage to leave we've so few oxygen it's a way to think how to manage people patients having respiratory disease and also suffering from my navel. i'm only able to deal with such low levels of

oxygen with the help of coca leaves. the leaves soul is about 20 without them i wouldn't be able to do anything at $5100.00 metres. you can either prepare them as tea or even better chew them. gold digger fortunato shows me how to do it even after all these years he still feels the need to chew coca leaves as do most of the miners here. seems like a ghost town to me but eric ramos chooses to spend his university educations here laboring to extract the coveted precious metal from the ground. for this he and his relatives begin by washing the earth and rocks. further downstream the gold falls through the gratings and gets caught in math. with

temperatures only around 5 degrees celsius it's hard work even for a fit 21 year old like eric. it's pretty tough out here look old. but i think i'm lucky because we're finding a lot of gold and we can buy furniture and stuff. mercury plays a key role in the process it's used to separate the gold from the rock but that requires repeated rinsing in the cold mountain air. that's almost as if i'm going to move on so we're mixing it here like this by adding mercury to the slurry of rock and gold. in the end i get a mixture of gold and mercury. that's how we get the gold out of the rock. as if it was some of the 1000000 and. the prospect airs then pour the mix into metal pans and sift out the little clumps of gold unlike his father eric doesn't intend to

work like this forever. if i'm studying on the side and when i finish i don't want to come back here i'm going to what i've got to me what your dream through you had to do and i want to be a teacher. almost everyone here once had dreams but most of them have been shattered. many gold diggers get stuck in lodging kanada somewhere between bars and brothels. under the spell of gold. and. before we leave we see women in the town searching for gold specks and puddles of ice run off and urine. not in ca now that still doesn't have running water or a sewage system. but there is a cemetery. a gold prospectors last resting place.

the cold the poisons the garbage each takes its toll on people in the world's highest town. we travel a bit further into the peruvian amazon. we come upon the end ward of the 3rd aging cargo ship loaded with pay. loading the ship is hard work but lowed wake is still glad to have a job as a porter at least until he starts to work out how much he's been carrying. bramber not on his that's not a sack of rice weighs 50 kilos so that's 100 kilos for 2 sacks. and yeah there's

every day we unload a truck full which adds up to several tons. ludwig and his colleagues spend about 3 hours loading and unloading the ship then they have to take a break. but their jobs may soon be obsolete anyway. the peruvian government is planning to build a modern and fully automated transshipment terminal in the port town of unity mogwai us. there are a few roads in the peruvian amazon so nearly everything has to be transported along the river. boxes sacks parcels and livestock. boats as small as the other water the 3rd are a logistical nightmare it takes hours before everything is stowed on board. the harbor master is already looking forward to a new container terminal it promises to make things simpler faster and better. we'll soon see some progress here peruvian brazilian and all the other boats will

soon be able to pass through all year round and carry more cargo do. the harbormaster is hoping for a dramatic increase in exports of raw materials to china. and he. will be there all via a sprawling infrastructure project involving the dredging of 3 major tributaries of the amazon aims to create 3000 kilometers of deep draft channels along the river wide enough for larger ships. up. chinese consortium has been set up to manage the project which is due to start soon. and we're building an extensive system of waterways that will open up new opportunities right now when the water level is low ships can only operate during the day not at night this project will greatly improve transportation links.

but that's still all in the future for the time being traders and passengers remain dependent on boats like the in water the 3rd. it will take 3 days and 3 nights to make it to eat those assuming nothing goes wrong. the. sign says is the ship's captain he's been sailing the amazon for 25 years. for him it's not just a job but a calling. the world cup but i mean another navigating your way along these rivers is a real art. i inherited the talent from my father for the pool i'm the only one of his sons to have carried on the tradition and i hope that the generation after me will continue it to. weaken a little bit of the humor of the. day you it means a lot to me that you are good but i mean if.

anything. these days the captain doesn't spend much time at the helm. he now has other people to do that task for him. like. who's also been on the job for decades. sailing in such shallow waters takes a great deal of experience. in the. face of it is a way. to be familiar with the river. and keep a lookout for shifting sand banks and i think they're really dangerous but if you run into one anything can happen the ship can even capsize. smaller boats are used to move along the tributaries to the villages where many inhabitants opposed to hitch rovio project. relations

between locals and the central government are strained many local people are part of the indigenous community or have indigenous roots they've suffered a long history of persecution and injustice and are still discriminated against they any of that because a member of the ku comma people is one of the last who can still speak the common language you know that kind of come my neck the p.v. market the market free now. if they put it that means how long and where are you from they need them. today they are neither has a visitor i said the pinch as an activist who's committed to preserving cool calm a culture she fears that the new infrastructure projects will do lasting damage. i think. it no he was the kid in the new technology and the machines they'll bring

in will have a devastating impact it will destroy a lot of things when they see the system of this be humongous. rather means life for us and for the animals i don't think i will send mine without with even the me the most receiver think there will be a movie it's as important as having a supreme being light in. the rivers and lakes of the amazon are central to the ku commas culture they believe there's another world under the water where their ancestors gather and where people spirits and animals all live together. for the comma any harm to the rivers and lakes would threaten the balance of the spiritual realm. and the human being who knew. but the protests against the new water highway also have a very practical dimension. still that runs of painting school. she says you only

have to look at the course of the river to see that dredging and channeling are a bad idea. coming. soon as you see the river here is constantly changing older people here will tell you that 2 streams appear and disappear give us honesty but we're not meant to interfere he thanked. us in this point is one leading scientists are raising as well. many of them have reservations about the project one is horsehair bob barr mental engineer who has spent years researching the amazon. he says the network of waterways here has shifted constantly for millions of years. we've got plenty on and they even think there's more to their lives even. want to try to put more

saving time on their. bond and i'm one of the more than that we never. had a child here so we don't know now that's why he's begun evaluating samples satellite images and other measurements at a survey like this takes time and he says the government doesn't want to wait at the same time the government's own surveys are inadequate are the commercial interests involved simply too powerful. basically i mean what i believe that the last. time thanks i think they want to be named black. cause you know people want to be nice to think that maybe showing that maybe you don't need to pay for it maybe not truly believe it but you know i think you don't buy that. dredging the river at the wrong place could have disastrous consequences he says it could upset the ecological balance and in danger local biodiversity. even if existing

waterways are expanded and no new roads are built it still carries high risks. this group of young filmmakers are shooting a documentary on current environmental problems traveling through the amazon region to talk to local people and get evidence of environmental pollution on film. and. oil extraction is a major polluter many of the pipelines leak pager wants his video footage to show that pipeline maintenance and cleanup operations aren't working anywhere near as well as the government claims. it was a year in the middle of my country in the middle of peru the reality is there's nothing other than pollution. as if there's no drinking water that makes me afraid

you can die if you drink the water here and you. pedro accuses the government of putting profit before people in the region and he doesn't believe the amazon infrastructure project will change anything. seymour avenue for. sure they tell us how things will improve the government says the big ships from other countries coming up here will buy our products. but that's not how things will be. nobody is going to stop here to buy our fish it's all dissin from ation. the government rejects these accusations saying that the heads rovio will also benefit local communities where you are there are many others in the river if they do that you mean that the indigenous people will benefit enormously it will help them get around quicker to the dr for example the new infrastructure will make a lot of things easier. but we will have

a lot of work to do explaining the project to the people. that we've been in for you. so it seems the government still has some convincing to do if it wants to push through its controversial plans to increase exports of raw materials. all this isn't relevant to the added water the third's operators right now. they just want to move their cargo as fast as possible get it unloaded and continue on their way. but sign perez still hopes to captain bigger and more modern ships up and down the river one day. he and his crew once again mastered the tricky currents and are welcomed with music. the porters quickly begin to unload the much needed cargo. in

a few days they will leave again with a fresh load of people cargo and stories on his next journey along the lifeline the peruvian amazon. to that's the most. at the moment we arrive safely at the moment but i mean the ship are securely mord equitable and. i think. that's the most important thing for me and i think what i'm going. back and said are they pasco missouri or staffer constantine bittner meets a local activist. jaime luis sales up on say publicizes the health problems caused by elevated lead levels and children's blood. he has been criticizing the lack of protective measures for years to listen to. the

c.b.c. i was going to see the few dollars to sit we have been identifying excessively high blood levels for years now we've even had help from international institutions. but then maybe that's what the ministry of health still hasn't done anything to alleviate chronic heavy metal poisoning and children. because you could only get chemicals purcell's but is it really b.s. if you're a student. shows us a film of children describing their headaches and nosebleeds. both symptoms are linked to the constant toxicity instead of the pasco. but to date the activists have seen little response to their protests.

in those days when you see the music when you put it is that in 2017 we protested in front of the ministry of health for 10 days. following that they signed declarations of intent. but the treatment of the hundreds and thousands of children who have to live with heavy metal toxicity is only progressing slowly and it's still inadequate. for now children still have to live with it and as you can see the environmental problems and saturday pasko haven't been eliminated either. core released a written statement saying the company was doing everything within its power to keep the human impact to a minimum and that it will take further protective measures. for many children however these could come too late for the same people would be does experience here that we feel forgotten or. turned to other cities but as we've given

a lot to peru and our government in sudan but we've got nothing back that will move to others that were much more softened other places is that they wish to do what the sudan. but center their pasco is just one of many places in south america caught in the stranglehold of the global greed for raw materials places where bulldozers rip open the earth and poisons their way through people's bodies. like say one thing a 4th child with a. massive attack on a bunch of pussycats. conifer time full color as they kicked up a straw. poll taken aback.

w. . they were forced into a new. aimless mass. their bodies near tools. the history of the slave trade is africa's history. it describes the 4th hour in traffic committed to an entire continent into chaos and violence of. slaves system created the greatest player and accumulation of wealth the world had ever seen up to that moment in time this is the journey back into the history of slavery and what i think will truly be making progress when we all accept the history of slavery as all of our history. our

documentary series slavery routs starts march 9th on t w. this is d w news live from berlin and a car plows into a carnival parade here in germany entering dozens of people 18 of them children the driver is in custody and facing charges of attempted homicide we'll go live to our correspondent also coming up u.s. president donald trump says progress.