as i was documentary series founders valley africa to meet the founders imposing their continent through digital innovation, transforming work and living conditions in their country and inspiring world with their ideas. only valley africa watch now on the w documentary. mm hm. ah, ah ah, welcome to global 3000. let me dance a young man from columbia defies gnomes proving that dreams can come true. hope

or threat. can genetic engineering help crop stand up to climate change? and the usa is battling against a drug of the deadliest kind with no end in sight. around 1000000 americans have died from drug overdoses since 1999. most of them from opioid says the u. s. health authority, c, d. c. the so called opioid crisis was triggered not by drug dealers, but by us pharmaceutical company per due. in 1996 purdue introduced a drug to the market that it advertised as a homeless pain killer. it was later revealed to be highly addictive, even when taken as prescribed. several lawsuits have been filed against the family who own purdue. last year, multiple u. s. pharmacy chains were ordered to pay $13800000000.00 in damages. it's

hard to see a way out of the opioid crisis, especially as drug cartels have long since discovered the lucrative market for themselves. a ruthless killer on the streets of america, fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroine in the us, someone dies of fentanyl overdose. every 7 minutes. where does the truck come from? why is it so dangerous? the search for answers leads us to the city of could you come in north, west mexico. the notorious in a lower cartel have a strong hold on the trade in illicit drugs him. after months of research, one of its drug lords has agreed to talk to us on the way from the airport. a mexican producer receives a phone call. hello. there is an on

some of these people, i knew that god were not in the village, but i wanted when i like your crossed the bridge or across the bridge road or yes it was which is one of like over and over the bridge in a hotel we meet a man who says his name is kwan. he immediately issued a warning. oh awful hon. as long as you stick to what we agreed and disguise our identities, our voices and faces that it's all good. if you don't spread misinformation, then there won't be any problems or how long of a long, long one overseas part of the cartels fentanyl production. the drug is the latest best seller responsible for the deadliest drug waive in american history. he says he'll give us access to one of the any safe houses where the cartel produces

fentanyl here. oh, we used to have a few big laboratories, huge industrial spaces where we produce the drugs. oh, but we learned from our mistakes. a big lab is easy to find, for example, from the air. and if you're exposed, the damage is considerable. oh, oh. kwan leaves we are told to wait at the hotel until he contacts us again. we get the call late at night when we are less likely to attract attention. the cartel has many enemies. get to my location and when you get there, don't stop. just keep driving and give me a call and i'll be guiding you. what follows for jorge and his assistant, or making fentanyl using chemicals illegally imported from china. the ingredients

for fentanyl are relatively easy to come by compared to other opioids. and only a small amount is needed to induce a high, it's easy to smuggle and the profit margins are huge. the cartel knows exactly how deadly the substance is. just 2 milligrams can be fatal or farm accidentally inhaled some last week. oh, i fell into a coma and spent 8 days in hospital. i only breathed it in once a month with in the us one pill sells for between $5.00 and $10.00. in this house alone hold hi produces 50000 a day. mexican drug lords do whatever it takes to keep this $1000000000.00 industry going awful. i, we have people who test each badge for us. so we take the pills and tell us if they're good. they are drug addicts. they don't even get paid. they're happy

because they get the gear for free on all the cartels reign of terror of a public life here has brought the power of the mexican state to its knees. this was made clear in 2019, during the arrest of a video, guzman lopez, the son of the former cartel boss and the most famous mexican drug, kingpin of all time i'll chopper, i gun battles broke out between the police military and heavily armed cartel members in broad daylight also, darcy's later released him to avoid further bloodshed. then, in january 2023 guzman lopez was re arrested and a similar wave of violence broke out killing 29 people. yet the heavily armed gangsters are by no means the cartels deadliest product. last year, around 70000 people died as

a result of fentanyl abuse in the us alone. drug related deaths and the country are at a record high. the kensington neighbourhood of philadelphia is one of america's drug hotspots. the fentanyl crisis is plain to see here. matt had managed to win himself of the highly addictive drug, but recently relapsed. ah, i was on suboxone. this is pay 7 moisten with my type of mind for him. he says wasn't enough. they needed to be more and more and more and more. and eventually on, you know, i was kind of scared of doing fennel again because showing he were overdose. emergency 25 year old natasha has passed out and overdose. the police officers stand by just as helplessly as the government in the face of the biggest drug crisis and us history. i finally natasha regains

consciousness. but he would rather she hadn't thought of that when you come robin. so the rosie o'donnell i've heard before. i'd murder this in a vile division longer. jimmy, let me go, please. to the hello home you. 5 years ago, sarah laurel, his social worker was addicted to drugs too. when she finally managed to get clean, she decided to dedicate her life to help him. the victims of drug abuse, she offers addicts, advice, and helps them to get clean to that was much more pill and much more deadly. so what we saw a fennel is that it was ling laced into drugs other than opiates it was inc. okay. it was a map, amphetamines, it was a crack, you know, it, their drug market is a very competitive market. so people wanted to boost sales by making the high a little bit more intense. the number of drug related deaths has gone up by around

20 percent over the past year. in the us. the crisis is going from bad to worse, and the fight against it appears to be hopeless. on both sides of the board. maize, rice and wheat a some of the world's most important crops. but how will harvests fair? as temperatures increase, research suggests that the mays harvests in hotter areas could fall by more than 20 percent. and the world meteorological organisation fears that even before 2030, the average temperature on earth would have risen by 1.5 degrees celsius. that will need to crop damaging, heavy rains and droughts as an urgent need for more resistant plant species. are genetically modified plants, a viable solution, or could they pose

a new threat? we started improving plants by cross breeding. the best variety is the 1st records of human, selecting ancient grass and wheat date back 10000 years. since then, we've multiplied corn, wheat, rice, and so yields by several times and read them to something which would probably be hard to identify for one of the early settlers back then. for example, do you know what this is? today? it looks like this doesn't seem like a close relative does it. in the past, decades yields have skyrocketed to feed an ever increasing population. we did not stop at just multiplying yields. our excessive use of fertilizers, pesticides, and the ongoing from version of sense of ecosystems to crop land have degraded 40 percent of fertile soils globally. what's more, the climate crisis is forecast to reduce harvests. the problem is we actually need to produce more, but without using moorland and more resources is

a 50 percent gap between the food produce to day and what we need in 2050 just just to feed people adequately. if everyone became a vegetarian, we could produce enough sustainably, but that doesn't look like it'll happen any time soon. if we just stick at the current yield rate is always great, is can power sample on the back and move on. and then the only way that we would meet those needs is to expand the agriculture frontier even further. which means sort of good bye to the remaining natural ecosystems. scientists are designing climate resilient super crops that might produce higher yields and need fewer resources to grow. they want to see about the process by changing the plants. genetic code with genome editing, such as with rice, drought was major news. it is brutal down there, drought emergency unprecedented droughts and hate waves have put, bought a scarcity into shop focus. that's

a problem for rice of thirsty crop used to being soaked. a new breed might help in the future. this variety, i are 64 is mostly grown in the global south, but it's eaten worldwide. scientists tweaked its genes to make it more drought resistant. the new rice uses up to 40 percent less water in some weeks, while the conventional varieties did not survive a week without water in 40 degree heat, half of the gene edited plants did. scientists did this by instructing a naturally occurring gene and the plant to be more powerful. this gene helps reduce the number and size of the plans pores which are responsible for gas and water exchange. fewer and smaller pores meant the plant saved water yields increased or remain the same. the method they used here is called crisper cas 9, also known as genetic scissors or genome editing. it is fundamentally different to

traditional genetic modifications or g m technologies. it relies actually on natural processes, but it makes the mutation process much lesser and most g m products contain a synthetic gene or it gene from another organism inserted into the plant or animal of interest insect resistant cotton. and mean, for example, grown widely around the world contain a gene originally found in bacteria. instead of using foreign dna, gene editing makes changes in the characteristics of any organism using the information present in its own genetic code. using special enzymes, working like scissors, we can delete, swap or repeat genes present in the plants dna. it will take many dozens of generation until you have only this one gene transfer it by crossing and then often will not be very viable because that would just take too long. so the ad genome editing is really super powerful because it can go and the single gene

change it and block to take 7 to 15 years to get across bread plant with the desired trait, with gene editing just a couple of months, plus a few years of testing globally, gene sitting researches speeding up from only a couple of patterns filed in 2011 to about 2000 patents in 2019 by private companies and public researchers. the us, china, and multi nationals are investing heavily in the technology which is expected to develop into a multi $1000000000.00 market by the end of the decade. it's risky, especially as many new crop varieties are still in the research phase. and little data and few risk assessments exist weekend have been have to see what happens in nature. it's all uncertain. and it will be really, experimentation fact ah, we're, we'll be far ahead of a site. sometimes we'll have to catch up some experts point to cases of off target

genetic changes or cases of deleting much more genetic information than intended. additionally, genes involved in increasing yields, in some type of drought, could decrease yields in wet years. and as there is a large number of genes involved, turning one or 2 genes honor off is mostly not enough here. the less optimized the crop, the easier it is to improve. that's why experts see most potential in quickly developing old varieties that haven't been part of industrial production so far, such as millet and corn, wheat, or magnet, which already have stronger defenses against climate related challenges. but where breeding is still in its infancy. so i don't want to take anything the table. the challenge is so significant, and i wanna take crisper technology go, i don't wanna take shifting diet, i don't want to take restoration or decimal. it's all of these things. you genetically edited crops are labeled g m and therefore heavily regulated. but

there's increasing discussion about whether the g m label is still appropriate or of genome editing should be considered a new breeding method instead of classic genetic manipulation. in the us, china and many latin american countries, genome edited crops don't need to be labeled or controlled as g m. and the sector plans to bring several crops to the fields in the coming years. as highly advanced as genome editing methods may be conventional breeding will remain as important. neither will be able to make up for the huge burden we currently put on our ecosystems. but they'll probably filled the food gap in the future. several african countries have experienced a, bola outbreaks in recent years, thousands of people have died from the infectious disease which likely spread from meet sold at markets. cove at 19 is also said to have jumped from animals to humans

in a similar way. guerrillas can also contract corona virus in the republic of the congo, researches are taking a closer look. it is 5 o'clock in the morning and robbie booker is already tracking through the congolese jungle. early mornings are the best time for the young environmental scientists to search full and study the gorillas. after a one hour trek, he spots some. under strict precautions, he tries to observe them, study their behavior chemically previously liquid. a mask is to avoid contamination of table and contamination with the guerrilla with corona virus. it's important that we protect the animals against the disease because we know that when the disease migrates from humans to animals and then possibly back to humans, it gets very complicated and alone separative, and you can pick up the north of congo. browser vall is home to the western lowland gorillas, thousands live here. nowhere else in the world. can he find such

a density of guerrillas? how dangerous as covert 19 for them. that's a question, robbie becker and his research group often debate, but they simply don't have an answer yet. after a silver back out. seriously, sick with cove it in the u. s. sue. they have been very careful. they keep at least 25 meters away from the gorillas, and everyone here is vaccinated. in the early, 2, thousands abolla killed almost 5000 guerrillas. that disease was most likely transmitted by bats, possibly from eating the same fruits. that's why rubber cocker and a group of students from the university of brother vall are also researching the areas massive bat population program. bob, on the phone, it's very important to follow up on better pathogens because there's a local community that eats bats and scientifically, we know that there's a risk of transferring disease from bad to humans, issues, sorry,

i low in the capital browser. well, there are several high risk places for the spillover of diseases from animals to humans. bush me markets while selling endangered species like a relas and chimpanzees is illegal. many other varieties of bush meat can be bought here for thorn be masika brewer crawford oak. and these are markets that can be considered breeding grounds for diseases. in those markets, viruses can be easily transferred from animals to human asthma, along a pre up and we're not some one contracts the disease, it quickly spreads to others to prevent future disease outbreaks among the guerrillas. the scientists have increased surveillance, creating an early warning system. the research base is the core of the congo conservation company. his research has financed by eco tourism, but they want to keep the number of tourists low. we don't want to push on the glorious to much and or so we don't want to have a,

a kind of factory and like a lot of people coming in coming in, coming to him. we wanted to keep bits are as boost come as possible to be a bird. oh, to manage that waves of park and the waves, the consumption aspects. we don't want to mastery them here. in the meantime, rubber cock, i was getting ready for his next track to the gorillas. he has a few more weeks for his research here before returning to the capital to write his master's thesis. long summer's post cuz it is, and i think i'll never get tired of seeing the gorillas fit for me. it's a dream, it's a dream to be here. to be able to go and see them as a dream. i can spend all day long watching them for me as well. that's the life i want to live phil advocate for me. rather, the cocker, once more congolese, to appreciate the environment and study natural sciences in his master's course. now, currently only for students according

to the world bank, around 40 percent of columbia's population lives in poverty. that's the result of decades of civil war. and now many people are also suffering the economic consequences of the corona virus pandemic. many colombians, a desperate to leave their home country and make a new life in the us. and yet, dreams can also come true in columbia as our next story shows. when the music starts to play, diego feels joy and every fiber of his body, the dreary world around him disappears. and he transforms from a poor young man into a proud ballet dancer, as using the pin. yeah, it's always been my dream and i'm working hard to achieve my goal of upward road. i'm always training biando is doin headed in under mortar. it's always been his dream to become a ballet dancer. and there's only one place where his dream can become

a reality. the day starts early for diego lopez in the hills of columbia's capital home to the cities more impoverished residents. diego lopez's family is so poor that they only have enough money for their daily sustenance. being a successful ballet dancer has always seemed out of reach for diego. c, digure bro, i tried taking drugs. i didn't have a job. education wasn't an option. i didn't have any life goals. i had no idea what to do with myself, diane. he found it. go ahead and get him, nina. his aimlessness is now a thing of the past. the 21 year old young man travels more than 2 hours a day to a place where others share his passion for dance. the festival art foundation in the heart of bogota is diego new home, where he spends 8 hours a day with his new family. in just 2 years time,

he has improved significantly to become the foundations, most promising dancer, according to foundations, director marley hernandez. he's not the same strange kid who 1st showed up at their doorstep by nausea, but as any, no or no, not. when diego showed up here with these little capital with away he looked, i thought, oh my god, diego was already too old, thin and meek. then the transformation began, and his poise grace, power, and endurance, quickly developed, along with an unshakable self confidence that he didn't have when he 1st arrived. all the students here come from poor families. marleni hernandez used her own money to start the foundation to help them. she is always on the lookout for new sponsors because she can't rely on the state for help. set is gone. elma humbly and elisa

paypal with a lot of the spirit who are working hard to make their dreams come true. but up when we meet, they are driven to succeed, so the vacancy survived. wireless. they have the same rights and deserve the same opportunities. it is intell. ah, they have to work hard to better themselves. it requires brutal discipline and they have to make difficult maneuvers look easy. they're also developing leadership skills and learning how to work as a teen. male group members in particular have to fight back against preconceptions that men don't do ballet. when it was when there's alicia muma, when i told my mother she immediately asked me if i was gay. i said no. then she asked me if i wanted to be gay, and i said, no, i don't. okay, no. even diego mother was against him dancing at 1st. she's the family's mean breadwinner, and diego helps her on the weekends. her daughter suffers from epilepsy and another

son is homeless. then there's diego with his dream of being a ballet dancer open cps. hey, you're the help on that. yes, at 1st i was again steph. i told him, it's a waste of time and then he should go to work and earn money. i'm lazy, platinum, diego puts love into everything he does. even if he is just earning a few cents by selling coffee and a hot meal, he hopes his mom will be able to leave the life of a street vendor behind the dilemma. today i want to be able to tell my mother that she doesn't have to work any more, that she doesn't need to worry because i'll take care of her. i want to inspire others to achieve their dreams jewels. the way i look at, on the 30th at the foundation, diego is not only working hard and bally issues. he's also developing his english skills. these are essential for an international career. everything they learn here, prepares them for the future. diego dream could soon come

true. the foundation has already produced several international success stories in diego have completely turned his life around from that of a poor boy with no life goals to a competent and talented dancer in to me as one of the richest men in the world. because i would, i love working concise. c and that, so from us at global 3000 this week, do send us your comments right to global 3000 at d, w dot com, or visit us on facebook the next time ah, with

one years of war in ukraine. how has it affected the economy? our sanctions against russia working our overview covers booming ukrainian. i. t firm supporting their homeland skyrocketing natural gas prices and an

evolving cyber war that's more dangerous than ever made in germany in 30 minutes on d. w. ah, the ancient pharaohs are up to their mix in water. 60 years ago, egypt no river was deanda. temples, thousands of years old are facing destruction. the solution aggressive conservation, and a thick tackler rescue mission to feed the temples on the nile. in 75 minutes on d, w ah. making the headlights and what's behind van d. w. news africa. the show that schools the issues have been the continent. life

is slowly getting back to normally where on the street to give you enough reports on the inside. our correspondence with on the ground reporting from across the continent, all the trend stuff. the mazda u. d. w is africa every friday on d, w. mm. mm. should we oh, how do we treat animals and why hasn't anything changed in does, this is actually a clear violation of animal protection. why do we love so much companions while eating others? yeah, i never thought about how strange it was that i could have my dog with one hand while i ate a pork chop with the other. what is the alternative? and how does it taste? is like the real thing? yes,

house will we all be begin in 50 years. i literally think that legs are the next generations. well, i'll look back and say, that's crazy that we ever use animals to get a documentary series about the future of food. and we're complex relationship with animals. the great media debate this week on d. w or ah, w news, and these are our top stories, u. s. president. joy biden has vowed russia will never weaned in ukraine, and that flattered me person will never be able to crush the wheel of ukrainians to be free. in a strongly wooded address on tuesday in warsaw biden also rejected. hooton's.