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Trump sends 'border czar' to lead ICE in Minneapolis
00:26:35
Reports suggest the current border patrol chief will leave Minneapolis following backlash
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- [00:00]
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- [01:35]
Charlotte Gallagher
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Charlotte Gallagher and in the early hours of Tuesday, 27th January, these are our main stories.
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Protester
I cannot sit idly by while our country changes from what it was a democracy into an authoritarian fascist government.
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Charlotte Gallagher
As protests continue in Minneapolis, Donald Trump shakes up his much criticized immigration enforcement team. We'll get the latest from the city. The body of the last Israeli hostage is returned from Gaza. What does that mean for the peace plan? Also in this podcast, it's one of the biggest unknowns in astronomy, but scientists believe they've now mapped the dark matter.
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Professor Richard Massey
It pulls things around that we can see. It pulls stars and galaxies and rays of light. It pulls everything around and moves things that we can see. And that's how we know where the dark matter is.
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Charlotte Gallagher
And have they also cracked the mysterious ways of magic mushrooms? After days of mounting anger in Minneapolis over the killing of another US Citizen by federal officials. The There are now signs that the White House may be changing its tone in the wake of sentiments like these from protesters in the city.
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Interviewer / Reporter
It's disgraceful.
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Protester
They shouldn't be murdering people.
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Interviewer / Reporter
Alex did nothing wrong.
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Protester
Neither did Renee Goode. I cannot sit idly by while our country changes from what it was, a democracy into an authoritarianism, fascist government.
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Interviewer / Reporter
Our government and the Department of Homeland.
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Caroline Levitt / White House Press Secretary
Security is nonsense and it is being run by the biggest idiots I've ever seen.
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Charlotte Gallagher
Despite the anger, the White House press secretary, Caroline Levitt, in her briefing to reporters, placed the blame of Alex Pretty's recent killing on local politics.
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Caroline Levitt / White House Press Secretary
This tragedy occurred as a result of a deliberate and hostile resistance by Democrat leaders in Minnesota, spreading lies about federal law enforcement officers who are risking their lives daily to remove the worst crime, criminal illegal aliens, from our streets. Murderers, rapists, pedophiles, human traffickers and gang members.
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Charlotte Gallagher
But under growing pressure, President Trump appears to be taking steps to de escalate the crisis. He said he'd had a good call with the Democrat governor of Minnesota, Tim Waltz, saying he felt they were on a similar wavelength. He's also sending his border czar, Tom Homan, to Minneapolis. It comes as the city's mayor announced that some of the federal agents would start leaving the area on Tuesday, reportedly including the man led the immigration roundups. Greg Bevino, our correspondent in Minneapolis, Tom Bateman, told me more.
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Tom Bateman
Greg Bevino, who has been very much the figurehead on the streets for the Border Patrol in many American cities, but particularly here in Minneapolis, said to be leaving the city probably imminently, probably as soon as sometime Tuesday. And other agents around him. Now, it had been reported that he was being relieved of his duty. That was the line that was circulating, although the Department of Homeland Security has now said that that particular description is not accurate. But certainly if he is to leave in the next 24 hours or so, I think that is going to be perceived by both the protesters and the Democrat leadership here as something of a victory, but still really falling short of their full demand, the protesters at least, which was for all of the federal immigration authorities to leave the city. And it comes, as you know, you've been suggesting, amid a change of tone by the White House feeling a bit more conciliatory over this very, very big standoff between the Democrat led states and the White House itself.
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Charlotte Gallagher
Are you surprised, Tom, by the shift in tone? Because often from the White House and people associated with the Trump administration, we hear a lot of deny and attack, but it seems very different at the moment.
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Tom Bateman
Well, I think the biggest driver of that is the opinion polling. And, you know, Donald Trump is highly attuned to what his base is thinking and feeling. And he has been losing ground quite significantly, actually, on the issue of his handling of immigration, which, of course, was a core election pledge by him to close the southern border, which has effectively been done at least to undocumented migration, illegal migration across that border. I think, you know, what you're seeing in the polling is that a significant chunk, still a minority, but a significant part of the Republican base, is really uncomfortable about the kind of images they've been seeing of these sort of highly aggressive tactics of removing migrants from American cities. And then you had the deaths of two Americans at the hands of federal agents within the space of three weeks. And so those opinion poll numbers have been suffering. And I think that is probably the key explanation as to why you're now seeing the White House. Both appear to back down somewhat in terms of the policy personnel and its language, and also potentially sidelining some of the more hardline figures when it comes to immigration in the command structure.
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Charlotte Gallagher
That was Tom Bateman in Minneapolis. Gil Kurlikowski has spent decades in American law enforcement, including as Commissioner of U.S. customs and Border Protection. That agency is in charge of Border Patrol and is working alongside ICE in Minneapolis. Minneapolis. My colleague James Kumasami, asked him what he thought had gone wrong there.
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Protester
The Border Patrol is called the Border Patrol because they work on the border, they work in rural areas, they often work by themselves. They don't work in cities. And regardless of what someone may say, they are not trained or experienced or knowledgeable to work in urban environments. And so using them, it's clearly the wrong tool for what they've been trying to accomplish.
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Interviewer / Reporter
We know in this latest incident that the man who was shot dead did have a weapon with him.
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Gil Kurlikowski
And in normal circumstances, when Border Patrol officials come across someone with a weapon, what are the. The normal circumstances in which that would happen?
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Protester
The normal circumstances are if that person surrenders or has a weapon and doesn't use it to threaten the Border Patrol agents, they make the arrest and they disarm the person or they tell that person to drop the weapon. This one is a little bit uncle, because there is an agent that has the weapon in his hand after apparently disarming Alex. But almost immediately, the other shots are fired. So it leaves a lot of questions, and I think it's left a lot of people concerned in this country that two white American citizens, one a mother and a poet, the other a nurse at the Veterans Administration are shot and killed by federal agents.
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Interviewer / Reporter
Do you think the fact that they were white has made a difference then? Has made this cut through in a way?
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Gil Kurlikowski
If they had been of other races, wouldn't.
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Protester
Well, we know that violence in, in the United States can be very much based on race. There are more black victims than white. And so the fact that these people are attractive to the general public makes suddenly people say, gosh, maybe this is something that could happen to me. Whereas they don'. Think that way when it is in an area that may be a lower economic or more racially diverse area.
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Interviewer / Reporter
What's at stake here?
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Protester
Well, it's the trust of the community to law enforcement, and that makes all of us safer. Since the murder of George Floyd, law enforcement worked really hard to regain trust that had been lost. They did very well until 2025, where it took a nosedive again. And I blame that solely on the action of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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Charlotte Gallagher
That was Gil Kurlikowski. For more on one of today's big stories, you can go on YouTube, search for BBC News, click on the logo, then choose Podcasts and Global News Podcast. There's a new story available every weekday. The worst of the winter storm in North America looks to be over as it moves into the Atlantic. But its effects are still being felt, especially in much of the southern and eastern U.S. the freezing temperatures have left at least 20 people dead and hundreds, hundreds of thousands remain without power. Millions are being urged to stay at home with schools closed and travel severely disrupted. Our correspondent in New York, Neda Taufik, has been following developments.
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Caroline Levitt / White House Press Secretary
Two thirds of the eastern United States affected by this storm. The damage, you know, just extreme when you think about the sheer levels. You know, certainly here in New York, we got up to a foot of snow. You can see the ice floating in the Hudson river just to give you a sense of the cold temperatures that have come in behind the storm. But this is a state, a city used to snow. What we're seeing in the southern United States is just more than half an inch of snow just absolutely blanketing several states, including Mississippi, where the weight of the ice on the trees has led them to a quite crashed down. It's led to downed power lines. And it's just really to see those images is so striking in the southern United States, that deep freeze taking hold. And what it's meant is that the roadways, the black ice has, you know, trucks there in the south battling the roadways has officials encouraging people to stay home. We have people without power still hundreds of thousands across the United States without power. And air travel has been completely disrupted. You know, yesterday Sunday, there was more than 11,000 flights that had to be grounded. That was the highest total since the pandemic. And those effects are lingering today. New York's airports are heavily, heavily impacted. Thousands more flights across the country have been paralyzed, and that will continue for days. But thawing out and digging out of the snow will take some time because those cold temperatures coming in are going to make it that much more treacherous.
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Charlotte Gallagher
That was Neda Taufik. Now, it may sound like a contradiction in terms, but scientists have just published the clearest map yet of dark matter. The mysterious stuff that, so the theory goes, makes up a large part of the universe but can't actually be seen. But specialist teams have now plotted where the matter is thought to be. Professor Richard Massey is co author of the research. He spoke to my colleague Tim Franks, who asked him first if he could explain what dark matter was.
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Professor Richard Massey
Unfortunately, I can't really, because nobody knows. What we are beginning to figure out is where the dark matter is. But that's the first thing you do when you explore a new landscape. When you set off, the first thing you do is you draw a map and try to look at the lie of the land, see what's over here, see what's over there, and try and find some interesting regions where the gold nuggets might be. There's no way of detecting it directly as far as we can tell, but we can see the way it affects things that we can see. So, I mean, there's plenty of things that are invisible. If you look at the wind, you can't see the wind, but you know it's there because it's blowing the trees around. You can see the leaves falling around. Dark matter is the same way. It is really heavy and it has gravity. So it pulls things around that we can see. It pulls stars and galaxies and rays of light. It pulls everything around and moves things that we can see. And that's how we know where the dark matter is and can map it from looking at everything else.
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Interviewer / Reporter
So, okay, but are you able, as a result of this mapping, do you think, to draw conclusions on how it does influence the formation of things that we do know about things like planets and stars and galaxies and so forth.
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Professor Richard Massey
With this map, we're beginning to spot the first thing that we know that it does do in a very predictable way is it has gravity. It pulls, grab, pulls things towards it. And as far as we can tell, and now better than ever, it behaves in exactly the same way as ordinary material does, true gravity. And because of that, it has shaped the whole universe around us to make it inhabitable. I mean, when the universe started, it was this primordial soup which everything was spread out. Fortunately, there were a few lumps of dark matter in there and those lumps sort of congealed in this soup and because of their gravity, they pulled in all ordinary material and eventually that spread out. Ordinary material became concentrated into a few areas where there was just enough of it to create stars, create planets and create the people. So it's sort of, it is responsible for life. It's the scaffolding in which all of the visible universe that we know about, everything that science has ever studied, all of that is built inside the dark matter.
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Interviewer / Reporter
It sounds phenomenally exciting actually. And you've drawn this analogy that you are the explorers.
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Professor Richard Massey
Yeah, I mean it's quite, quite a privilege. But it is difficult. I mean, it takes a huge team to do this, both to build the telescope and then to make this map and analyze the data. It's taken a team from Europe, in the us, there's a group of us in Durham, in the UK and in Switzerland and in America. And you know, we all have to work to work together for this. And it's just, I don't know, it's heartening perhaps somehow as well that when it comes to these high tech fields like building satellites and searching the universe, we can just see further and chart our cosmic future better working together.
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Charlotte Gallagher
That was Professor Richard Massey. Still to come on this podcast, a sinister development or just plain business progress. Nike lays off almost 800 more workers as it accelerates automation.
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- [16:11]
Charlotte Gallagher
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Gil Kurlikowski
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Gil Kurlikowski
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Charlotte Gallagher
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Gil Kurlikowski
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- [16:34]
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- [16:44]
Charlotte Gallagher
Monday's return to Israel of the body of the last hostage in Gaza ought to have triggered the next phase of the US led peace plan. The opening of a key border crossing, Israel withdrawing its troops, Hamas disarming, and the governance of the territory by an appointed group of Palestinians. But observers question how quickly, if at all, this next phase will happen. From Jerusalem, Dan Johnson reports.
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Interviewer / Reporter
Israeli soldiers sang songs of Jewish resistance as Rangavilli's body was recovered from northern Gaza. This moment may bring closure for his family and it marks the end of Israel's hostage agony. Rangavili is the last of 251 who were taken. On October 7, 2023, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had vowed to return everyone and he'd kept his promise. Mr. Netanyahu's critics say it's taken too long and cost too many lives. Hamas said it helped locate the body to show its commitment to ending the war. Israel's agreed a limited reopening of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt so Palestinians can leave or enter Gaza. But there are other complicated issues to confront in enacting the next phase of the ceasefire deal. Disarming Hamas and unpicking it from life in Gaza, withdrawing Israeli soldiers and building an international force to protect security for the future so Palestinians can rebuild.
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Charlotte Gallagher
But just how realistic is that next phase? Imad Quday is a freelance journalist originally from the southern city of Khan Yunis, now stuck much further north in the vast displacement camp at Al Mawasi.
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Imad Quday
The opening of the cross border of Rafah means to me a new window to the world because this cross border of Rafah has been under siege for a long time. We are talking about more than one year and a half, May of 2024. So a lot of people did travel out of Gaza and right now they would like to return back. They have maybe completed their medicine, they have maybe completed their education. They do not have any more money to spend there. In Egypt people have been wounded during the war and their situation is really dangerous. So they need to travel out of Gaza to complete their medicine. We are talking about huge numbers, but first of all they would like to guarantee that the future is going to be non here in Gaza because when they come back to Gaza they will not find a place for themselves to live in because all of their houses have been destroyed. For example, my village has been destroyed totally. So Even if they allow us to return back to those places, we need a lot of efforts in order to rebuild a new Gaza, let me say, or a new village, in order to allow those people coming back from Egypt or other places around the world to find a place for themselves to complete their life here in Gaza. Many people have been killed during this ceasefire, but after the ceasefire is different about before, because when you walk in the street at the moment, for example, here in Mossi, at least you cannot feel worried. After the ceasefire agreement, people started to have very big hopes inside their hearts. And every day when we sleep at night, we say that maybe tomorrow is going to be better. And all the time we are ready in order to make it great again. So Gaza is one of the most beautiful places around the world. We are hopeful, we are positive about what is going to happen in the future. But that is not going to be easy. For example, before coming to this interview, Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, said very clearly, the second phase of a ceasefire agreement in Gaza is not reconstruction of Gaza, rebuild of Gaza, no, it's the disarmament of Gaza. Which means, of course he's going to put a lot of obstacles in the front of the ceasefire agreement. But we wait more efforts and pressure from Trump, the United States of America. He is the only man has a word to say to Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, in order to go on. And of course the whole international community, they have the ability to convince this man that everything can be very nice. But maybe you can use a diplomatic power.
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Charlotte Gallagher
Imad Quidai the authorities in central Mexico have appealed for federal government support against armed gangs after 11 people were shot dead at a local football match on Sunday. Will Grant reports from Mexico City for.
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Football fans attending a Sunday match in the small community of Loma de Flores. The attack was terrifying. Gunmen stormed the pitch, opening fire on players and spectators alike. In total, 11 people have been killed, most of whom died at the scene, with around a dozen people injured, including a woman and a child. The injured are being treated in hospital in the nearby town of Salamanca. No clear motive has yet been given. The municipal authorities say they energetically condemned the attack and called on the federal government of President Claudia Scheinbaum for support in tackling drug cartel related violence in the region. There are criminal groups trying to subdue the authorities, said the mayor of Salamanca, Cesar Prieto. In recent years, there have been numerous incidents of cartel violence in the state of Guanajuato, as the local Santa Rosa de Lima gang is locked in a turf war with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, in part over fuel theft. The illegal industry is worth billions of dollars a year and controlled by criminal groups, which also traffic methamphetamine and other drugs through the state. President Claudia Sheinbaum says her strategy of clamping down on cartel activity in several parts of the country has made significant improvements, with a 41% reduction in the homicide rate in Guanajuato since she came to office. However, it remains one of the most violent states in the country, and that such a shocking massacre could take place at a community football match only underlines the challenges which still exist in that part of Mexico.
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Charlotte Gallagher
Will grant in the rush to embrace AI and automation in general, many companies are looking to lay off staff now. The sportswear company Nike, which announced 1,000 job cuts last summer, is cutting hundreds more, Terry Egan reports.
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Gil Kurlikowski
Like many companies in the us, Nike has been feeling the pressure from Donald Trump's various tariff maneuvers added to a slowdown in the China market. The tariffs mean profit margins are under pressure like never before. These job cuts, though, are being characterised as facilitating an acceleration in the use of advanced technology and automation. They are say the company intended to reduce complexity and streamline operations. That doesn't sound particularly new or surprising, but what's different is a newfound interest in the corporate world in artificial intelligence. The use of AI and automation is spreading through corporate America, but more than that, many companies are in a sort of gold rush to place themselves at the forefront of what's seen as an AI revolution. Sales at Nike have been slowing for years and margins shrinking after the former CEO switched the focus from wholesale partners to retailers and websites. As part of that strategy, more distribution centres were established with large warehouses and their staffing was increased. While it's not clear how many distribution centres there now are with Nike, the new CEO, Elliot Hill, has been working to win wholesale partners back, renovate what's on offer and inspire innovation. So this could just be part of that reorganisation, in other words, a reset. Yet the interest in AI is intense because the hope is to build an AI model that actually thinks for itself, so called artificial general intelligence. No one knows if this can be done, but then again, no one wants to miss out should it become possible. And investment in AI costs money, making laying off expensive staff an attractive proposition. Just last year the shipping company UPS said it would cut 48,000 jobs, partly due to automation. Cutting staff in distribution or anywhere else would certainly suggest a company looking to the future rather than the past.
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Charlotte Gallagher
Terry Egan Canada has granted conditional approval for a defunct amusement park to sell 30 beluga whales to institutions in the United States States. Marineland had threatened to kill the animals if it wasn't given permission to send them abroad.
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Tom Bateman
Tom Kavanagh reports the park, situated near the famous Niagara Falls, closed to the public in late summer 2024. Marineland had been appealing to the Canadian government to grant the required export license for the 30 belugas along with four dolphins, but without success. Until now. The company said it didn't have the resources to look after the animals and and would cull them if they couldn't be sent abroad. Canada's government had blocked a previous plan to sell the whales to China over concerns of mistreatment. The Fisheries Minister, Joanne Thompson, said the decision to award the permits for transfer to the US was made in the best interest of the whales.
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Charlotte Gallagher
That was Tom Kavanagh. Finally. So called magic mushrooms have been giving humans mind altering experiences for thousands of years. But it's never been clear why these types of mushrooms have evolved with such strange hallucinogenic chemicals. But now scientists in Britain think they may have the answer. As Richard Hamilton has been finding out.
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Interviewer / Reporter
Magic mushrooms have been used as mind altering substances since mankind's early history by shamans, in traditional cultures and notably during the psychedelic era in the 1960s. Psilocybin is the active ingredient in more than 200 species of mushrooms which are found on every continent except Antarctica. Recently, researchers have been exploring its medicinal use to treat conditions such as depression and ptsd. But it has been unclear why the fungi evolved to create this compound. A team from the University of Plymouth believe psilocybin might provide a defence against mushroom munching insects. To test this, they mixed dried powdered magic mushrooms into food and gave it to fruit fly larvae. They then followed the young larvae through their life cycle to see the effect of the psilocybin. These larvae survived at far lower rates than those that were given normal food. Dr. Kirsty Matthews Nicholas, who's part of the research team, said the affected fruit flies also tended to be smaller, have asymmetrical wings, crawled shorter distances and showed erratic turning behaviour.
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Charlotte Gallagher
So in terms of their survival, so survival reduces, but it definitely isn't zero. And those that do survive are much smaller as well and they do have fluctuating asymmetry. So they've got larger differences between their left and the right wings which indicate some sort of developmental stress then in the locomotion experiment. So what it essentially does is it stops the larvae moving and coordinating their behaviour so they essentially don't move really at all, but the ones that do move are turning in more directions and larvae use direction turning to find their food or to avoid a nasty chemical, for example. So it's obviously having an effect on their behavior, which we believe could have a detrimental effect on their survival in the wild if they're treated with that drug.
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Interviewer / Reporter
The team stressed that it was unlikely the insects would have had the sort of psychedelic experiences that humans have described. They say other hypotheses should also be tested, such as the idea that psilocybin deters other creatures such as slugs and snails.
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Charlotte Gallagher
That was Richard Hamilton. And that's all from us for now. But there will be a new edition of the Globe Global News Podcast later. And don't forget our sister podcast, the Global Story, which goes in depth and beyond the headlines on one big story. This edition was mixed by Holly Smith. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Charlotte Gallagher. Goodbye.