you should really check out our podcast wherever you get your podcast you can also find us and. this is the w. news live from berlin hundreds of boys in nigeria are free after being kidnapped by . their abduction last week from a school prompted public anger and fresh demands to better protect the country. also coming up french president has tested positive for covert 19 he's now isolated but there are concerns about all those he had contact with recently including

a number of european leaders. plus why singapore street food markets are getting a global stamp of approval from unesco. and waves of craft good to have you with us officials in nigeria say more than 300 school boys kidnapped last week have been released the boys were abducted from a government school in the northwest state of kut sina the jihad his group boko haram claimed responsibility for the kidnapping though officials have cast doubt on that claim earlier katsina state governor gave this update on the students' release . all on the. from the forest. 'd

and. all the natives. 'd we. corresponded in lagos' nigeria flourished acorah has more for us on what's going on down there now the governor there saying unharmed the boys are what more do we know about their condition well as you heard from the interview we don't really have much details which we got through the condition of the boys what we know is that currently on bail we box curtsy a nasty where the ricky tapped from to be reunited with their families parents and . this is the huge sigh of relief to the whole country. how

much more do we know about what led up to this release of the boys. so what we know is that. this was a joint effort between the police the army and. probably like to all the security agencies in negotiating the release. of these boys. has claimed responsibility for kidnapping this boys however the authorities and even the local people. that the key was not done by this was. the work. in the area which of course the bandits have been trying to. avoid while now many people are very fair to their muscle groups of. what regardless of. the highlight of the woman's right now is the fact that

these boys have. indeed now what's been the public reaction to all of this yet another kidnapping of so many children has there been political fallout. i would say that this has been a very moment for the country just a lot of shock a lot of disbelief like. it's enough that students are kidnapped in mass in your lifetime to see that happen twice very soon then you begin to risk questions of all to. see because i mean it's one thing to keep not one person but where hundreds of students are being kidnapped. reasons questions of security of every single person regardless of where you leave whether you live in the north north east of the northwest where. that terrorist

groups are busy thriving yeah definitely reason is that question and then a lot of people have being very very frustrated. and yes that's what you hear where you talk to you know. there for us in law goes thank you very much french president emanuel mccrone has tested positive for covert 19 the president's office says it's highly likely that mccrone caught the virus and a european council summit last week his diagnosis is fuelling alarm and exile among many e.u. leaders many of them had close contact with grown at that summit he also hosted spain and portugal as leaders in paris this week they're both now in quarantine. an affectionate squeeze that's how french president emanuel not home greeted officials

and heads of government last week at the e.u. summit and how he welcomed portuguese prime minister antonio costa to the elysee palace on wednesday. but now that michael has tested positive for the corona virus those close contacts may wish they dodged his warm embrace. last night the president started to experience symptoms indicative of covert 19 year mediately isolated and took a p.c.r. test the results of which confirmed that he is positive for coping $1000.00. cinnabon as for everyone who test positive in this country to contact tracing began immediately in order to identify the president's close contacts. back home symptoms are mild he attended this meeting virtually from isolation but the positive test has been did both his agenda and the agenda of european politics as the u.k. and the e.u. attempt to negotiate a breaks

a trade deal before the end of the year. a growing list of european leaders who met with my call are now working from home working that is unless they become seriously ill. in paris there was little surprise at the president's misfortune. so you felt it serious that affects everyone so no there's no reason to blame him. it will it's obvious given his job that this would happen so it doesn't surprise me that the problem probably didn't respect the social distancing rules. michael joins a long list of world leaders who have caught the virus and just over a week before the e.u. was hoping to begin vaccinations. and now let's take a look at some of the other stories making news the u.s. has moved closer to approving a 2nd covert 19 vaccine after an independent panel of experts endorsed the shot made by pharmaceutical company modena the decision paves the way for the f.d.a. to allow emergency use of the vaccine the u.s.

has already started its mass immunization with a covert vaccine by bay ontario pfizer. in fiji a powerful cyclist killed at least one person and destroyed dozens of homes. yassa made landfall over the island of van while labor on thursday evening bringing to rental rain widespread flooding and winds of up to 345 kilometers per hour authorities say the cycle has now weakened. british prime minister boris johnson says a trade deal with the european union is looking highly unlikely he's been in discussions with european commission president or saw a photo who says overcoming remaining differences will be a huge challenge the european parliament has set a sunday deadline for an agreement. sony has pulled its cyberpunk 2077 video game from playstation stores after players complained of bugs and

compatibility issues analysts say the game is one of the most expensive ever made company said it will give refunds to anyone who purchased the game through its platform or. russian president vladimir putin has used his annual news conference in moscow to praise the national health care system in a virtual gathering dominated by the pandemic putin also laughed off accusations the kremlin was behind the poisoning of opposition leader alexey. this year's news conference with the russian president was a socially distance video encounter with journalists spread out through several rooms across russia. each reporter held up a sign bearing their news outlets name or the subject they wanted to ask about the coronavirus pandemic dominated the 1st hour. and yet not one single health system in the world was prepared for the pandemic we've

analyzed and we found that our system was the most effective because there was. you know the rate of infection in russia is higher at the moment but much lower than in the u.s. for example however doubts of being raised whether the figures reflect reality well the middle one journalist asked whether the president had himself been vaccinated. putin responded by saying that russia's vaccination program was taking place in stages and his turn had not yet come he was also asked about the poison attack on russian opposition leader alexina valmy. he's not worth poisoning who cares about him if we had wanted to poison him then we would have completed the job. the kremlin has vehemently denied any involvement in the poisoning of river but this week the investigative group telling cass released a report alleging the russian secret service agents had been tracking the valley in

the days leading up to the attack. by or next robert levin has won the 5th best men's player of the year award of a scoring 55 goals in all competitions last season the polish national help to buy and seal a champions league bonus league and german cup trouble it is the 38 year old's 1st global award given the women's prize went to england defender lucy bronze 20 year old won the champions league with me on august before moving to manchester city. singapore street kitchens have long been a key ingredient of life in the city stay with stalls bundled together in food courts known as hawker centers these communal dining rooms serve meals at all times of day to all types of people and now unesco has formally recognised the particular flavor they bring to life in singapore and added them to their cultural heritage lists. it sizzles sinless and steams something's always cooking in

singapore's whole consensus 24 hours a day 7 days a week. every morning at 5 am lina stones preparing to dove for the fish pools in her kitchen singaporeans eat around a 1000000 of them a day and here this still handmade. i think i spoke it is very hard to eat fish right to the bones so fish bones there and it was so easy so kids love these girls yes i think that. that's what's going to love to taste of. lena and her husband even serve hundreds of portions of fish school soup every day they run one of more than $18000.00 food stalls in the city's food courts the whole consensus chinese and indian influences all come together here. jeevan is typical of this cultural mix he's of indian heritage but his this. are

inspired by chinese cooking and if i sing avoid losing a voice or culturally diverse we have so many different people of all sorts of racism walks of life coming together sharing a common love of food. chicken or duck with rice for 3 euros a singapore classic the dish has even and this hawker a michelin star the longer the queue the best of the food that's the rule of thumb here but going to a hawk a center is not just about filling your stomach according to food blogger leslie 10 a more than half of all singaporeans visit one of the food courts at least once a day for breakfast lunch or dinner. ok she knew you see our prime minister lining up a lot of food here and he's got to stand in line like everybody else they wait for table again everybody else so it's it's something that you know whether you're a c. or president of a company or whether your you know just

a middle class worker whatever this is this is all community dining hall. but something needs to change if the culture is to survive the average age of chefs is 59. j.j. is an exception 12 hour shifts and relatively low pay are keeping young people away j.j. gave up his marketing job to become a hawker together with his friends he wants to entice future tastebuds with a mix of japanese and malaysia who has seen. him start off more than you know maybe yes we do a lot during the 1st of us all of what we do want to educate more business us getting more getting more stalls and also the u.k. sort of recruit more people and in our last week the revenue was up to just kick in on time. singaporeans love their food every evening at 7 and

entire street in the business district is closed off and turn. and interest rate food markets in singapore good cheap food is almost a basic rights and now part of humanity's intangible cultural heritage. i want seconds you're watching news live from berlin next up our documentary series takes a look at how our memories work more news headlines at the top of the hour and go to g.w. dot com for all the latest on william blake croft thanks for watching. and . we're all set. to go beyond. that. we're all about the stories that matter to you. really. whatever it takes. people are running out. publicly ensure that nothing d.w.

made for mines. we cherish our memories. they help us recall our 1st love affair our 10th anniversary and the rest of our life story. they tell us who we are. or do they. memory is being probed by a new generation of scientists and they're posing uncomfortable questions. can we trust how we remember our own lives. jennifer thompson was a north carolina college student of 22 when someone broke into her apartment. it

was a night she. but i always remember. around 3 am when i heard feet moving around in my bedroom and a man quickly jumped up on my bed and then i have to my throat and tommy sharp he was going to kill me. thompson was raped at knife point but somehow in her terror she carefully memorize details about her assailant. i willed myself to actually stay connected to my skin and i started memorizing everything i could did he have a scar on his face did he have a piercing did he have a tattoo somewhere. anything if i survived i would be able to help the police catch him. thompson came through police procedure with flying colors she helped prepare this composite drawing then chose a suspect from a lineup eventually the case went to trial in a north carolina courthouse where she was asked if she remembered the man who had

attacked her. thompson was dead certain. i suggested to her cotton to being right over there the defense table i hated him i wanted him to die been told they. no one had ever seen a better witness are better than me. in court when a judge asked cotton if he had a final statement before jail cotton requested to sing a song to calm himself i just stood up and i start saying in. the. new movie maybe because move futures so i'm going to make you. the. ronald cotton spent over 11 years in prison before newly uncovered d.n.a. evidence led to another suspect and he was released. jennifer thompson had identified the wrong man.

thompson's memory error was one of many. these people all went to jail judged guilty. but years later they were exonerated and freed by d.n.a. evidence found at crime scenes. d.n.a. has helped overturn more than 350 criminal cases in the u.s. and canada alone. in 70 percent of these eyewitnesses had identified the wrong person. and the d.n.a. exonerations cases the case gets overturned there incredulous they can't believe this wasn't the person they're false memory is a very genuine memory it's the way memory works. wells is an internationally acclaimed expert on eyewitness memory. he paid his way through university as a pool shark. memory scientists had known for over 2 decades that eyewitness

identification was far less reliable than thought. but it took d.n.a. exonerations like ronald cotton to start convincing the law that science was right . we knew a lot by $990.00 that memory is not a law like a video system that changes that is fragile but it was largely ignored by the legal system they saw it as academic and heads flying around in their lab. testing has changed everything it was feel. as d.n.a. exonerations sword wells was invited to sit on a major expert committee examining the reliability of eyewitness memory. wells demonstrated just what scientists were doing in their labs what i'm going to do. in this experiment well show several subjects

a 92nd video shot in an airport and ask them to pay attention. then he interviews the subjects much as police would did you see anything unusual yes and what was that the man at the the taking counter there switched bags 10 you. describe this person maybe unlike his 30. very short hair there was a white male. is wearing next wells shows a standard police photo lineup and ask them to identify the culprit too but i don't think can you. think so i think it's either one or such sex. either paid one or number 6 and if i had to choose the one i would pick number one. what the participants don't know is that

the real thief isn't even among the photos. but when they finally make a tentative choice wells offers positive feedback yeah yeah yeah right you do good job. ok so you're a cumber said. the job with a 6 with one has to value very very observant person the question is has he did their confidence i think i would be about maybe 90 percent confident that was the man that all sides 8590 percent of that's pretty sure ok finally wells shows them a photo of the real thief so this is the person you picked right i suppose i tried to suggest to you that it means that person no no i would never. but in fact years the culprit this is the lie now that i showed you and that's the person

you picked actually this is the guy wow ok. there's a guy. one of the things i did was i said you know good job right you remember me saying that when you positively unfree and force me i don't think that i was right right and so that made you more confident yes when you said that you had a good job then yeah i did right but still you wells and other experts say this kind of feedback during police lineup was routine in the u.s. and canada until recently forced terrible consequences for certain. you know de officer might say something like good that's that's who are suspect is that positive feedback will inflate the confidence of the witness and make them a more persuasive and powerful witness by the time they get on the stand basically i'm stamping in that person who they packed into their memory so

that person starts to increasingly become their memory. why do our memories change like this is there a neurological explanation. neuroscientist and jogging addict steve ramirez says the deeper problem is that when a memory is recalled especially in its early stages it's highly vulnerable to change. when we recall a memory it is put into this weird state where it becomes susceptible to modification or a kind of. each time that we recall it becomes vulnerable and changeable so it's a physical process that manifests as. activated neurons that are in activated its forming between the reason our our memories change is because the brain has plasticity or the ability to change with experience that is constantly. so

everything that happens to us is capable of changing the brain to some extent and in some ways the retrieval of a memory is in and of itself a change that is in and of itself an experience as if you're including something completely new from scratch it's not necessarily that the justice system is doing it out of malice it's that it's it can be implanting different kinds of memories that were not there at the time of a crime so it could be used to put somebody away from. psychologist elizabeth loftus has testified that many trials to point. the frailties of eyewitness memory. she says an eye witnesses memory is like a crime scene it must be protected from any possible contamination during police interviews and lineups. if you contaminate the fingerprints then you don't have very good fingerprint data and likewise if you contaminate the memory trace your own have very good memory evidence. that's what

happened to jennifer thompson's memory when she chose cotton at the 1st photo lineup after some indecision over 2 photos. as i looked at those 6 photographs very quickly discount. 4 and i think in my mind i narrowed it down and i picked a number 3 and i told him i was positive he told me that's who he thought it then and i really appreciated that because i felt so relieved and court it was absolutely unshakable. because he told me i was right in thompson's case she was reinforced after the photos she was reinforced again after the live line up telling her that again she was right by the time of that trial ronald cotton was to remember. ronald cotton exoneration was big news in north carolina. it became the 1st state to pass legislation requiring mandatory reforms for

eyewitness testimony. among these reforms the officer conducting a police lineup must be unaware of which person in the lineup is a suspect other states soon followed just as memory scientists had long urged. fast changing memory science isn't only challenging assumptions in the courtroom. it's also posing intriguing new questions about the human mind. what does it say about all of our memories of our families our friendships and ourselves. are any of us reliable witnesses to our own lives. i still remember that like yesterday i was with my friend elena downtown and i believe is my colleague martin pasha turn on the t.v. .

most people have emotional memories of where they were and what they were doing during certain events such as 911. j.f.k.'s assassination. the fall of the berlin wall or the death of princess diana events that feel seared in their brains. these are called flashbulb memories and we have great confidence in them but were surprisingly wrong says cognitive neuroscientist elizabeth phelps. in the days after 911 felt this team surveyed over 3000 people about what they recall doing that day. we asked you a question to how did you 1st hear about the tac who are you with where were you. then phelps gave them a similar survey after 13 and 10 years it turns out even flashbulb memories are often illusory overall people remembered the central event well the exploding

towers but the rest of their memories often changed over time. if we compare memories through what you told me happened to you personally right after the attack versus a year later about 40 to 50 percent of the time the details of those memories are different almost half. here we asked people you know what were you doing and this person the 1st time in the 1st service that i was in the kitchen making breakfast a year later they said i'm in the dorm room following laundry we had one participant who we asked who were you with and initially she said i was with my husband the time after that she said i was alone my house was playing golf we can't know what really happened to you all we know is that you're not consistent over time so one of those stories is right. people stories usually changed after one year and from then on they were utterly certain that's what had happened. 3 years later your fairy confident that your memory is

a 100 percent accurate most of the shift happened in the 1st year and then after that that sort of became their story i was in new york that day so you know i have a story too and you know that's my story right now and i'm telling it for the time i'm telling it like it's a story not like it's my memory you sure your story is right of course of course i'm sure but you know david tells me i'm probably 50 percent of. part of the reason we're wrong is that we can absorb and remember the astonishing richness of every life moment. so we fill in the gaps unconsciously and create a narrative story that makes sense for now. but that can make us defective at discerning truth from fiction say scientists who deliberately create false memories.

dr julius shah is a psychologist at university college london in england. she is also the author of an intriguing book the memory illusion. every time you remember something you activate that memory network in the brain you're actually evil to change it slightly so next time you recall it you're only recalling the last time you recall it and over time those changes can compound and you can end up very far from the original version of your memories and you might believe it wholeheartedly full of confidence and while it's not true. elizabeth phelps is kali neuroscientist joseph made a video illustrating phelps's idea that our forever changing memory is forever.

that's a terrible war hero going on a 100 city tour describing all the great things that happened during the battle and the story gets more and more heroic as you go from city one to city 100 so by the end it sounds so good to leave. us broadcaster brian williams and hillary clinton both falsely recalled being under gunfire in conflict with foreign countries. where they deliberately exaggerating or just misremembering their own stories. the fact remains that memories as they are retold relived every experienced they are changed it's almost like a play to get a broken telephone so it's you know every time that you're retelling that story or saying it over some detail it's changed and the longer the time goes on the more changes you have are recollection of something that happened from 20 years ago is very different from what actually happened 20 years ago. the big question is what

happens inside our brains to make us so confident when we're so wrong. is stored all over the brain most day to day memory is captured in the hippocampus a small seahorse shaped organ in the brain. meanwhile very emotional or threatening events are also imprinted on the. there's a personal recollection for you or for event of your life hippocampus is always involved but it's something that's highly emotional so for instance like the terrorist attack of $911.00 you know the image below will also become active helping the hippocampus store the memory lets remember the central details of this a little bit better so that's the explosion not who you're with if you were ironing in the dorm room or in the kitchen. but felt says the emotional intensity of that central memory may fool our brains into thinking our company memories are just

as real we don't forget the important event itself we know that 911 happened we knew there was a terrorist attack and our memories for that actually are quite strong and the what i think is happening is that the high confidence and vividness we have for that single event bleeds over to memories for details surrounding the events in some way . but that's just a normal part of memory right this probably happens all different types of memory not just flashbulb memories as we get older our confidence in our recollections gets higher better accuracy so we are more confidence but our memories are false. the fact that we can remember so wrong while convinced we are right led some researchers to pose an extraordinary question can false memories be created deliberately. neuroscientist steve ramirez you did a much heralded experiment at mit that was right out of a science fiction film. but the stars were mice. the 2

scientists started by creating a fear memory by giving a mouse model. in a box like chamber while identifying the individual brain cells in the hippocampus involved in making this memory. then the scientists genetically engineer these brain cells to respond to pulses of laser light. now they could switch that fear memory on and off. this is a brain scan thousands of times the size of the mouse's hippocampus. so there's the branches that were active everything that's going green here was active in the animal was making this particular fair memory. next they put the mouse in a different box where nothing bad had happened to it after a while they shot light into the mouse's brain to switch on the fear memory from

the 1st box. but out of the $1000000.00 question is does the animal behave as though it's recalling a fear memory even though it's in a safe environment. how could they tell when a mouse experiences fear it often freezes in place. but we're not scared it will run around exploring its environment. so how would the mouse behave. so as you can see the animal isn't scared from the get go of this particular environment and then it's running around and when we shoot late into the brain and reactivate the brain cells that we think process a fair memory the animal immediately goes into this freezing behavior its things still so this is evidence that we were able to successfully fall this animal into recalling a memory artificially. months later the scientists tried a daring 2nd experiment racing a real memory by creating a false one. this time they put the mouse in a harmless chamber and identified the brain cells of this safe memory. then they

put it in another chamber and gave it slight foot shocks. but at the same time they switched on the memory of the earlier safe box. so what happens the next day when the mouse is put back in the 1st safe box. freezes in terror falsely believing that's where it was shot. a false fear memory has been implanted turning a safe environment into a frightening one. the idea of being able to manipulate memory is promised for for instance trying to turn off negative memories in p.t.s.d. or maybe trying to turn the volume up on positive emotions. i think that when we create a false memory recreating the links between the areas of the brain that wouldn't normally be there so they would be there if we were to create a false memory in humans. so how do you create false memories in people

without shocking them or shooting lasers into their brain. elizabeth loftus has done many famous experiments creating memory mirages in humans. she's planted memories in people that they hated strawberry ice cream as a child. or that they loved asparagus. who planted a false memory that you know as a child you loved disparate as the 1st time you tried it we got people who imagine this and later on they were more interested in eating asparagus so i actually that that scientific paper became a paper with one of my favorite titles which is asparagus a love story. by exposing subjects to fake advertising she's convinced many that they remember seeing bugs bunny at disneyland when they visited. but bugs is not a disney character and has never been there. they'll often then go on to tell us

that they shook his hand or they touched his tail or they heard him say what's up doc you can get people to become more confident that they actually had an encounter with a character. that they didn't and couldn't have encountered i don't study forgetting i study in a way the opposite when people remember things that didn't happened false memories can be expressed with a great deal of confidence especially when they're a product of suggestions. following elizabeth loftus is memorable footsteps scientist julia shah published a dramatic 2015 study done it canada's university of british columbia it showed how easy it is to obtain false confessions of committing a crime. show started by asking 60 student volunteers to participate in a memory study. but she also privately asked the subjects parents for one

emotional incident from their childhood that she could bring up. in something that's that's all they really are. sharp then brings up a 2nd childhood memory where they committed a minor crime that involved police in their own hometowns with their friends only this memory isn't true for some of the other events but your parents are part of crafting our i was 20 and 14 years old initiated a physical fight and it's your parents that have an enclosure and the far. right when it happened i was you and i don't like i don't know why you took. on this honestly i so here for this part has been i've just introduced the 2nd memory the false one but she doesn't know that and then when she of of course naturally can't remember anything given that it didn't happen i then as a helpful researcher offer that we can do this guided imagery technique which helps

to retrieve lost memories so picture yourself at the age of 14. in colona. and it's. try to remember that the weather was. warm. in the 2nd session shaw continues the memory exercises and some details begin to emerge. oh mike maybe you remember a little closer where in the park what's up i can maybe remember getting in like a verbal fight with someone could. this girl called her it was. going to. get it's ok was actually saying about race. by the 3rd interview the subject has filled in most of her supposedly lost memory. kind of vision of it i see myself wearing this. i think.

too much i think the cops showed up and we were coming. to. this. so it ended up being much easier than we were expecting to convince these people who'd never had police contact that they had committed a crime that never happened. overall team convinced 70 percent of our 60 subjects that they had committed criminal or violent acts that never happened. we even 'd had participants reenacting the crimes that never happened showing me how they threw a weapon or how they attack someone physically it was astonishing. after the 3rd session i'm told participants the truth some had trouble believing the memory was

false. it is. actually. so and they do you prefer to call certainly there was resistance from some participants takes that that actually this was a false memory rather than a true memory and that's the thing about false memories is that they feel like real memory they feel real to you you're playing with the original and you're tweaking it and you no longer have access to version want you no longer have access to what you originally coded you only have this new adjusted which started at least memory . we don't know for instance if that original memory is permanently everest or if you're just very writing on top of that memory but the question now is what's actually happening. when the memory is being recalled when it's being updated with new information the honest answer is that by asking the question when i read what we know. don't know generally in the brain false memories and true memories look

exactly the same so for all your concern and for all an f.m. or i scanner would be concerned that is a memory it's not a memory of something that actually happened but in your brain it is now the same in this english of all from. are we all vulnerable to these memory illusions or are some of us more vulnerable than others do some outstanding people have perfect memories total recall. when was your 1st dance social these talking about 1st dance all that since tre wish me may 15th 2015 the 1st dance was are 23rd 2015 both those took place on friday. tyler and chad he can bottom are identical twins but they have one major difference tyler has a sam highly superior autobiographical memory. this

means he can remember distant events and dates in his own life like most of us recall yesterday. tyler in chatter being quizzed by university of california irvine research or not he'd go far to see how their memories compare they're both top a students would have been on aug 16th 2014 or i'm guessing some would have been was soccer and no it was my 1st soccer tournament no. on this exchange 2014 it was a saturday and we went and we adopted our current count that we have a sentiment was right. in our breasts the script when did you watch the women's n.b.a. game at staples center july to 1724 teen thursday july 19th was when we went to the

ronald reagan museum. and then that night we went back to brayley winter divine for dinner which is close tyler has an obsession.