♪ >> tonight on pbs news weekend, with cases of gut disorders on the rise, how to sort through the good and the bad information to stay healthy. then, why the soaring cost of

cocoa may have chocolate lovers paying the price. >> our drought last year caused particularly hot, dry weather in western africa. >> and a powerful solar phenomenon that has the potential to disabel satellites and overpower electrical grids. ♪ >> major funding for pbs news weekend has been priseressed by -- >> consumer cellular, this is sam. how may i help you? >> this is a pocket dime. somebody's pocket? >> with consumer cellular, you get nationwide coverage with no contract. that's kind of our thing. have a nice day. ♪ >> certified financial planner professionals are proud to

support pbs newshour weekend. machine information at lets make a plan you're. >> and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. and friends of the newshour. this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasng and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> good evening, i'm john yang. as efforts intensify to break a debt lock -- deadlock in talks

for the israelis still held, u.s. talks are to free two including an american. it's not clear when the footage was taken. siegel ice wife was released during a brief truce in november. talks on a hostage release and cease-fire are expected to removal this week in egy. john kirby says israel promises it won't launch an invasion into rafah until they hear the u.s. point of view. >> they've assured us they won't go into rafah until we've had a chance to share our perspectives and views with them. the hamas hasn't fully rejected it. if we can get that this place, that gives you six weeks of peace. >> the white house said in a call today with israeli prime minister beaning anyone netanyahu, president biden reiterated u.s. opposition to the rafah operation o

humanitarian grounds. there were prozests against the war last night at an annual honoring of newsmakers, politicians and celebrity. shouts of shame on you and some laid on the pavement splashed with red. president biden spoke at the dinner but didn't mention the war on or the protest. nighttime tornadoes in oklahoma left at least four people dead, including a child in sulfur, in southern oklahoma, there was significant damage to homes and businesses. tonight heavy rapes with a flood watch sweeping from louisiana to missouri. a heavy prison sentences iraq passed put help sentences. i'm imposes 10 to 15-year

sentences for same-sex relations and up to three years for undergoing gender transforms. and candace parker says she's retiring. a two-time m.v.p., a two-time champion and a two-time pimp mid list. she's the only player to win three different championships with three of her teams. still to come on pbs news weekend, why satisfying your chocolate cravings may start taking a bigger bite out of your wallet and the potential effects of space and on earth of solar flares. >> this is pbs news weekend from weta studios in washington. >> go on social media these dayses and you're bomb barded

with ads and influencers touting all sorts of promises promising to rid you of digestive tract complaints, supplements, juice diets, all promoting what's called gut holt. and inthat ma story cancers of the intestines are on the rise. how do we separate the facts from the fads? dr. sadik is an assistant professor at the pennsylvania school of medicine and also on the chin cal guidelines committee of the american cost tra interlogical association. why all this focus on gut health? >> we're definitely seeing a rise in gasp trough intestinal diseases. and they can rake from heartburn

to hemorrhoids to colon cancer and especially recently we're seeing an uptick in colo restriction ectal cancer particularly among young individuals and it's the leading cause of cancer death in men under0. >> is there a leading factor for that rise? >> one is a western diet, one that is high in fast foods, processed foods. more meat, less diverse vegetables and other lifestyle choices like tobacco use, alcohol use and more sedentary behavior. emerging research on the microorganisms that live in your gut show that there is a link between those functions and your immune function, your cardiovascular health, metabolic health and informers system. what we expose our gut to can

have impact on overall health as well. >> what are the biggest miscontentions you hear from your patients in your practice and do they ask you about products and procedures that don't have any use? >> yes, one of the most common things i'm asked about is about doing colon cleanses this which is this concept that we need to detoxify or gut. but colon cleanse is not necessary. our liver and kidney, detox -- detoxify our bodies appropriately and those things can be harmful in some cases. >> are there symptoms maybe that someone with come with control with over the counter medications and symptoms where they should see a doctor? >> absolutely. if you're having more severe symptoms like blood in your stool, abdominal pain, weight

loss that you can't explain, you should be seeing a doctor sooner. other symptoms more mild like bloating, oftentimes you can make mild changes in your diet. for example, anything that's swallowing air. carbonated benches, gum chewing, those are simple things you can do to see if your bloating gets better but like any symptom, if it's persistent, definitely see your doctor. >> how should people evaluate the claims on these products that are being advertised or that influencers are talking about? >> we need to have? i sort of data showing that there is a benefit in gut health or overall health. that hasn't borne out at all. if anything we've seen patients having harms from cleanses. including dehydration and some forms of colotis.

the risks and downsides don't outweigh the benefits. >> do you see patients who come in with the side effect they have from tha >> i had a patient who came in with rectal pain and i had realized she h done a coach enema, something she had done from tiktok and she ended up having imaging signs of colitis as a result. fortunately people are influenced but it's not data driven. >> what do you tell patients about main maintaining their gut health? >> have a new traditionally diverse diet. less red meat, lots of fibers, gerut, and avoiding ultra processed foods. so going for whole foods and fresh foods. >> thank you very much. >> thank you so much.

♪ >> if you've shopped for chocolate lately you may have noticed that your favorite items are either smaller or more expensive and sometimes both. the price of cocoa is the highest it's ever been in the last four months it's nearly doubled. this worldwide shortage has been years in the making. >> it's a sweet treat and can be an affordable indulgence but the rising cost of cocoa could soon leave a bitter taste in the mouths of chocoholics >> the people affected would be the chocolate lovers who really want to buy good quality chocolate at extremely low prices. >> cocoa beans is an extremely vulnerable crop. >> tell nino last year caused particularly hot, wet weather in

western africa, which has impacted the qualities of the cocoa harvest. in addition, there's a disease which is sweeping through the west african cocoa crops called swallow shoot disease and this is decimating the harvest >> west africa accounts for over 70% of the world's cocoa supply but low harvests have tightened farmers' margins. ghana is one of the hardest hit places and farmers lik this are struggling to keep family farms afloat. >> we are not able t produce the required amount of cocoa beans up expected so you produce less. you take this small amount to the market, you don't get more money. >> most of the farms in west africa are under 10 acres. the farmers who cultivate them

earn less than $2 per day. >> this has come about because of a long tm under payment of the farmers. >> also, rising production costs. fertilizers and pesticides are more expensive due to inflation and the war and ukraine and more necessary as farms age and erratic weather affects the risk of disease. planting cocoa alongside other trees would make crops more resilient but more expensive up front. >> the terms of the cocoa tree or bean. in terms of the living conditions o the farmer. >> rampant illegal gold mining also threatens the cocoa farms. >> today we don't get labor because inside of going to work for a cocoa farmer, you could go work for a miner whole pay him a

huge amount. >> the miners also help extract the gold that lies beyond the cocoa trees. this is a farmer harvesting one of her cocoa trees just last year. this is her land today, ranched by miners. >> my toil, my livelihood was destroyed. i've no source of income anywhere. >> once the gold is extracted. the pits of mercury and heavy metal lei in water pollute the waterways that supply farms miles away. >> in the process of their mining they destroyed some of my cocoa trees and whether i complained, it always turned sour. some of them even threatened me and made death threats. >> cocoa farming isn't just a dangerous business, it's not very profitable. >> people are not interested in becoming cocaoa farmers because they're don't see cocoa farming

as a good bills venn culture. >> because the high price doesn't reach the farmers growing it. it's meant to insurance laith farmers from low prices but often out of step with the market. in early april, the ghana cocoa board said it would raise the price over 80% but nowhere near what the that werers need to stay afloat. >> they decide the price for you, if farmer, who are very not even -- >> further, office supply chains, big companies like hershey and cadbury are rising prices and also changing recipes. >> one strategy is to reformulate the chocolates and incrisis more non-chocolate ingredients, maybe more waivers and reducing the cocoa content

so they could still provide the same size to a consumer but contains more nonchocolate ingredients. >> the swiss company toblerone had to move some production out of switzerland to reduce costs. some companies are creating new flavors and factoring other candy. california based voyage foods is making chocolate wit coke -- wit cocoa. >> kelsey tinny is the vice president of research and development. >> it's not our aim to replace coca has a commodity globally. we were we are looking to bump out the supply complain and create a product that can be used, for example, in your favorite chocolate chip cookie from the grocery store. >> the key ingreen -- grape

seeds. >> if you've tasted a roca cow seed, it tastes nothing like a chocolate bar. we aim to recreate a final product through different starting material. >> there have been attempts to replicate chocolate through the decades but for now there's no substitute that can meet global demand and that's why he says the world still needs cocoa farmers. >> if i leave the cocoa sector and others i know also leave, there wouldn't be no cocoa so how are the consumers going to live without coc? >> that's a question most chocolate consumers don't want to condemn placement. ♪ contemplate. ♪ >> to he's of us, the sun is a steady never-changing source of heat and light but to scientists it's a

dana:ic star constantly in flux sending energy out into space. right now experts say it's in itself most active period in two decades. for us, the signs are more likely to be more northern lights civil over a wilder area and perhaps disruptions to radio and satellite communications. the person in charge of coordinating the government's response to these potential descriptions is bill murtah. program director for noaa's space center. peak activity, what's going on, what's the activity? >> so, the sun is like the earth in one way. it's a big mag innocent -- magnate. it's got a big north pole and a big south pole. but over the course of seven years, it does a reversal of the polarity. the sun is a big ball of electrically -- charged gas,

turning and rotating and the magnetic fields turn and twist and essentially it's a rotation of that magnetic field over an 11-year period and right in the middle of this process these sun spots emerge and they're localized magnetic stress areas on the sun that can produce big eruptions and similar flares, corona mass, >> s, minutic particle blasts, all blast radiation and energy towards the earth and can affect a lot of the different technologies we rely on for everything we do. right now we're in the very middle of this 11-year reversal process and we refer to it as lar maximum, being the period of most similar activity where we're seeing the most sun spots. that's what's been happening over the next couple of years and will happen over the next several years where we'll see lots of sun spots and eruptions

that will be affecting lots of our technologies here on earth but, of course, producing the beautiful northern and southern lights as well. >> are some of these flares more active than others? >> yes, it's like hurricane season. some hurricane seasons very active and'res -- others, not so much. same thing with the sun spot cycle. we've got some very big cycle. we've been measuring these sun spot cycles since 1755. the biggest one was the one in a peak could in 1953. the last couple of cycles quite a bit smaller so they do range in intensity. it's 11 years average but sometimes as quick as a nine-year cycle and sometimes up to 14-year cycles. >> how could you measure and track what's going on? >> back in the old days -- essentially since galileo and

others invent the tell coach is we've been watching the sun, projecting the image of a sun on a a white light board where you can see the record of sun spots. so that dates all the way back to 1755 that's helped us establish that average 11-year cycle but, of course, technology has evolved tremendously over the last 20, 30, 40 years so now we have all sorts of instruments in space taking pictures of the sun, monitoring the sun's surface, monitoring the corona. and then a million miles out, one spacecraft and closer to earth more measuring the sun and all sorts of instruments measuring different types of emissions from the sun and how they're affecting the technology and the earth's atmosphere. >> tell us more about the

practical effects on earth and maybe even in space? >> these eruptions, when they occur there's all sorts of emissions and whether a flare occurs there's a blast of radio magnetic radiation. it can affect aircraft, communications. aircraft communicating with the ground can have interference. we get these big energetic blast of particles following soon after the flare. they can affect satellites. they affect the astronauts in space, which is a big thing going guard supporting the artemus missions and going back to the moon. when that corona mass ejection hits earth's mag nettic field, it produces unwanted current that can flow into if power grilled and cause big problems. worst case, it can provide a blackout. what we have to do in the prediction center is boulder is

get out the alerts throughout the united states and kan so they can take action during these big gio magnetic storms. >> some of these records go all the way back to the 1th century. tell us about that. >> i talked about hurricanes earlier. i'll do it again. people know what hurricane katrina and sand and i and in space we've had big events. the carrington event in 1858 was an extraordinary eruption. a scientist in england was watching the sun and all of a sudden he sees these big white spots, he was looking at a major flare and just 19 hours later, that corona mass ejection made itself way to earth, impacted the earth and it surprised a lot of people. you know, our friends up in the north, kan, alask and sand nava, they're used to seeing the northern lights. what was it light like in september of 1859 when the folks

in cuba and central america looked up and could see the northern lights? it was a powerful storm and even the technology of today, the tell grasp systems, big long conductors, wires, lines, causing all sorts of havoc. it was an extraordinary event and it is the one we fear today. >> bill, thank you very much. it's fascinating. >> it was a pleasure talking to you. thank you. ♪ >> and finally, tonight, more from the cosmos. new research is revealing the mysterious volcanic moon of jupiter. nasa sent a first of itself kind solar powered spacecraft called

juno on a five-year -- 1.7 billion mile journey to jew terp and itself moons to see what it could discover. last week peraza released animated conceptions of io based on datea it collected on two fully-buys. it named this feature steep emmountain. it's estimated to be as tall as 3 miles. by comparison, mount everest is just under 5.5 miles. this lake is filled with cooling magma and rimmed by hot lava. there are islands in the center. the reflections juno cam captured suggests that part of the surface is as smooth as glass. eruptions from io's hundreds of volcanoes, illustrate why some call it the tortured moon. it's relentlessly squeezed by jupiter's title -- tidal forces,

creteing tremendous heat and melting rock. the solar system's most volcanoically active site. and that is pbs news weekend for this sunday. i'm john yang. for all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us. have a good week. >> major funding for pbs news weekend has been provided by -- >> certified financial probably are proud to support pbs news weekend. more information at let's make a plan.org. >> with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by critics to

your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

(bright music) - [jonathan] in an historic homage to queen elizabeth's legacy, royal grocers fortnum and mason are running a once in a lifetime competition for home bakers across the country. the search is on for a pudding to sit alongside the victoria sponge and coronation chicken in the nation's heart