ahead of the opening ceremony of the winter olympics, china's president, xijinping, met his russian counterpart vladimir putin and gave his support to moscow's security and foreign policy aims. the official opening in beijing was toned down due to covid restrictions. the former us vice—president, mike pence, has said he could not have overturned the result of the 2020 presidential election, his strongest rebuttal so far of claims by donald trump. mr pence said it was un—american to think that any one person could choose the president. emergency workers in morocco say they're hopeful that they'll reach a 5—year—old boy trapped for four days in a deep well. the child, who's called rayan, slid more than 30 metres into the narrow shaft on tuesday while his father was repairing it. coming up in around 10 minutes�* time, we'll have newswatch.

but first on bbc news, here's click. this week, lara is doing something unusual. she's left the city to join someone special on a walk. she's in the new forest national park with wildlife tv legend chris packham. what a beautiful scene. tell me about this area. well, we're in the new forest national park here, which is famous for various habitats, its valley moors, its sandy lowland heath, but also, its ancient woodland, and there are a number of veteran trees here, a significant number,

so we're talking about trees that are 5, 6, 6.5, maybe even 700 years old, and because there's been woodland here for that amount of time, it means that it supports a lot of other life — there is a great richness of biodiversity. the bird fauna here is really important too — we've got a number of national rarities. you can hear the birds — this isn't a sound i'm used to living in the city! no, what we got? hold on. we've got a bit of robin going. a blue tit _ yeah, there's blue tits and great tits calling. i mean, it's a lovely, sunny, pre—spring day. they're loving the sunshine and they're pumping out some song. but unfortunately, not all birds are left alone in their natural habitats and wildlife trafficking, mainly perpetrated online, is having a major impact on the world's biodiversity crisis. carl miller has been looking at the problem. we've had catastrophic declines of whole suites of bird communities.

without large tracts of forest, they're silent — they're silent forests, because the birds have been trapped out of these environments. so trapped out, in fact, that 40% of all bird populations in the world are now in decline. to find out a bit more, i came to london zoo, where some of these species have found a home. we have our blue—crowned laughingthrushes, you know, which are a species from china. there's less than 250 of those birds left in the wild and we actually have more in captivity. the species is more threatened than the giant panda because of the trapping for the pet trade. the illegal pet trade is a major factor in declining bird numbers. what may come as a surprise to many is that most endangered of all groups of birds are parrots. what would be less surprising, though, is that the pet trade is a majorfactor in their decline. einstein could sure fit the bill because she loves to dance.

can you get down? laughter let's get down for everybody. come on now. she's gonna make me do it too. 0oh—ooh! imitates dance music bird imitates dance music this is an african grey parrot, famous for its intelligence and the most popular one to be kept as pets. even though many are bought in legitimate ways, their popularity fuels the illegal trade too. these birds have been almost wiped out in some of their native countries. so, five years ago, they were given the highest category of international protection. it means all international trade of any wild african grey became illegal, and there were serious restrictions on any transaction involving captive—bred birds as well. in short, it became illegal to capture and sell african greys. so we went undercover to investigate how online trafficking still carries on under the radar, particularly on social media. we followed one of these ads, which took us to bangladesh — one of the major hubs in south—east asia for the trafficking of african greys. we set up a meeting with faiz ahmed,

a trader whose social media led us to investigate possible illegal activity alongside his legitimate business. we operated under the pretext of wanting to start a breeding farm. the conversation started over legal captive—bred parrots, but faiz was also prepared to sell us wild african greys. he was confident that he would be able to get around customs import restrictions, and also advised it would be a lucrative business.

recently, a global initiative was set up to understand the scale of the problem and a new system was designed to give conservationists a data—driven view of possible illegal trades online. no—one is able to give us an authoritative answer to how much of this is online and everywhere that it is occurring — it's too dynamic, the online space is too fragmented. the system's mission is to identify online trading hot spots in the hope of disrupting a business that's worth £15 billion a year. although many online sites have worked to remove illicit content, the system has found around 10,000 classified ads all over the world for the sale of potentially endangered species and their parts.

we showed our film to rowan martin of the world parrot trust, whose expertise in parrots and trafficking is helping the project's researchers. so, rowan, that was obviously undercoverfilming that colleagues of ours did in bangladesh. what do you think of all that? a lot of those would be endangered species, might not necessarily be illegal trade. the conversation switches from this sort of legal side of things to more grey areas, where he is offering up or explaining how he can import large wholesale quantities of wild core african grey parrots into bangladesh. and that would be illegal under international law? yeah, that would be illegal under international law. back in bangladesh, faiz was getting cold feet. he told us the authorities were getting stricter, so the birds

could still be imported but he couldn't take responsibility for them at airport customs. when later called up by the film's producer in the uk, faiz at first denied offering to trade african greys, and then claimed he did not know that their import was now illegal. 0ur reporter contacted other sellers based in africa and asia and secured promises of shipments via transit countries. but for every one of these traders who we have highlighted, there are countless others using tricks online to avoid detection. they use clever things like sharing memories of something that maybe happened back when it was legal, but that might then stimulate a discussion amongst traders about whether or not something was still available. so they might not have been directly advertising, butjust indicating that these things are available. or, more specifically, school people within these groups about how to talk about the trade

without it being flagged. this is all made worse by the way in which social media allows pockets of communities to form, who actively evade any enforcement efforts that do exist. they are using sort of new private channels which might only be viewable to friends and only available for a short period. these platforms aren'tjust sort of passively hosting a problem, they're actually acting to amplify that problem. that's where the system is aiming to outwit illegal sellers by figuring out the tactics being used in specific markets. on these indonesian posts, for example, it's cracked a code of letters and numbers used by sellers to represent the asking price for each bird. and in other cases, it's found a slang familiar to enthusiasts which might be used in possible sales, such asjitot for a bird which is fully tamed, and raw for those that are wild and in plentiful numbers. we showed some of the posts selling endangered birds to the platforms hosting them, pointing out that in many cases, their existence was breaking their own site guidelines and policies.

of those that responded, meta, the umbrella company of facebook and instagram, said: people are not going to huge lengths to hide behind tor browsers and on the dark web, because they don't need to. and i've seen it for myself with these birds that often get mutilated. they are crammed in these really crowded boxes, dying of dehydration. it is a slow, painful, miserable death for a lot of these birds. lara: back in the new forest, i asked chris about the wider impact of the illegal wildlife trade. we are in the middle of a climate and biodiversity crisis, which is really, really seriously impacting on our lives — even if we have not felt here in uk yet — so stamping out illegal wildlife crime

is absolutely critical. the principal culprits here for me are not those poachers — sometimes people living in poverty that cannot do anything but capture birds in the forest to feed their family — and tackling that part of the crime will be extraordinarily difficult. the easier part would be dealing with those platforms. they have the technological capacity to stop this, i believe, overnight if there was a will. what do you feel that conservationists could do to help with this cause? frankly, i can't write code, i don't understand algorithms. i understand birds and birdsong. but in order to protect those birds and that birdsong, i need young, smart people with their fingers on the buttons of that technological capability to act in our interest. i mean, frankly, if i had my finger in the conservation purse at the moment, i would spend a lot more money on buying more nature reserves, so on and so forth. i'd spend certainly a significant sum on tackling these tech—led issues

because we are underestimating how much damage they're doing and we've got to change that. that is it for the shortcut. the full version is waiting for you on iplayer. as ever, you can find us on social media, youtube, instagram, facebook and twitter @bbcclick. bye— bye.

hello, and welcome to newswatch with me, samira ahmed. bbc3 is back on tv. can its new show, the catch up, persuade young adults back into watching news bulletins? enough colleagues to rescue your premiership... and guess what the subject was at the first question to the prime minister at this press conference in ukraine? in the face of strong protests, bbc3 disappeared as a broadcast channel in 2016, though it continued to exist online. bbc bosses said it was to save money. this week, keen to ensure that 16— to sa—year—olds didn't lose forever the habit of watching scheduled television, the bbc brought it back on air. and, although entertainment and comedy predominate, the channel has a nightly 3—minute news bulletin, the catch up. here's the start of the first edition on tuesday.

hey, i'm levi with the catch up. tonight — sue gray's report, the latest on ukraine and lunar new year. but first, the man united striker mason greenwood has been arrested on suspicion of sexual assault and threats to kill. and the editor of the catch up, amanda goodman, joins me now. thank you so much for coming on newswatch, amanda. what's the brief for the programme? so, our target audience is 16— to 2a—year—olds — and that's the very lightest news users, and mostly people outside london. so we were looking to create something which, in look and feel, felt like the kind of content they were consuming on social media. so, kind of, very graphical, very relaxed, very informal, and also informative. so we want to help them feel confident about talking about the news, break down some of the difficult subjects, but in a relaxed, relatable way.

0n the original bbc3, there was — there was a 60—second news service. now, you've got this three minutes on the catch up, you know, each night. can you realistically cover stories as complex as, say, ukraine in such a short bulletin? well, some of the bulletins are two minutes, actually. so it is a challenge, but i think in development, we found that the key is not to try and race through too many stories. so, to take a couple of stories and kind of break them down. kind of, what's the story? why does it matter? why is it happening? and not assume too much knowledge, to use graphics to help kind of explain, then signpost to other kind of areas of the bbc if they want to know more. so it's just an opportunity, then, for them to dig deeper if they want to. i think it's fair to say no one would be turning on bbc3 for the news, will they? so is it really something that the regulator 0fcom is making you do? yeah, it is a requirement of 0fcom, but i mean,

it's important for the bbc anyway, because you know,