China warns of further floods near Nepal border

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Support comes from wise, the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world. Your life is global. Your money should be too. Some providers promise no fees on overseas transfers. Don't be fooled. Extra costs often hide in bloated exchange rates. Choose wise. You can send, spend and receive money in over 40 currencies. Count on the exchange rate that you'd usually see on Google. That's how millions save billions on hidden fees. Be smart. Get wise. Visit wise.com. Tease and seize apply. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service, we explore a scandal which has left one country scarred. Columbia is still reeling from an atrocity which saw the army murder over 7,000 innocent civilians passing them off as rebels. This story takes us from the perpetrators to those who uncovered the scandal. What we want is justice and drugs. The price of peace. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Will Chalkin in the early hours of Friday the 28th of August, these are our main stories. There are growing fears a second flood could make things a lot worse, as the search for survivors of the catastrophic floods in Northern Nepal and Tibet continues. The Bosnian Serb Commando Ratco-Maladec, who oversaw the worst atrocities in Europe since the Second World War, has died and a trial that's gripped the US. She was very anxious and sad. She was begging for help. This was a woman who acted intentionally to accomplish a very specific goal. To kill. The story of Lindsay Clancy, who strangled her three children, but her defence say postpartum psychosis means it wasn't murder. [Music] Also in this podcast, Donald Trump renames Lake Ontario as the tariff war between the US and Canada notches up yet another gear. And? The telescope's designed to help us answer fundamental questions about the structure and the composition of the universe. NASA gears up for the launch of its flagship space observatory. [Music] As the water recedes in Nepal and Tibet, the scale of the damage and the enormity of the task ahead is being revealed. Wednesday's flash flood on the border saw huge levels of destruction and there were growing fears that debris blocking a river could cause another disaster. In Nepal, almost 500 people have been confirmed dead, more than 1400 are missing, many of them tourist. Nepali soldiers have been sent to the region to search for survivors, thousands of people are homeless. In Newarkauts, a hospital has been turned into a shelter. I don't know where to go. We had three houses, all of which were washed away by the floods. The land where we had planted rice is also gone. Everything the house has been swept away. We still can't reach my eldest son. I don't care for wealth, I just want my son back. If any of you could rescue my son, please do it for me. We've been staying in shelter since the floods hit. We didn't have anywhere else to go. Some tarplains have been distributed, but we don't have a place to put one up. It doesn't make any sense because we need to search for someone else's land, even for temporary makeshift shelter. La Correspondent Ataday Machiri is in one of the worst hit areas. You're really quiet where I am in northern Nepal intucially, and yet pass the barricades, pass the police checkpoints, emergency workers are racing to save more lives. The Prime Minister has ordered that all of these efforts should continue, and in some cases they have been successful. People's lives are being saved. And we have spoken to people, family members of those who are missing, who are holding on to hope. We started the journey back in Kathmandu hours away from here. And we met one woman who was holding on to the memory of her lost phone conversation with her husband. It was a video call at about 8am on Wednesday. And he was driving tourists through this region when the flood happened, but she still hopes that she'll hear good news. And yet mixed with all that hope is the devastation that we've seen across northern Nepal. The pictures of what's happened are still very difficult to see. Imagine being a family member and having to see that as well. I mean, this is a very painful time for them. And on top of that, there are warnings of more danger to come. There are warnings that some of the debris may have washed into the river systems and that there could be more flooding. As a day of machinery there. Now, while journalists are free to report from the pool, information from across the border into Bet, which is controlled by China, has been limited and tightly restricted. Shortly before recording this podcast, I got an update on what's happening from our Beijing correspondent, Stephen McDonald. Well, the latest we're hearing from officials is that more than a thousand people have been moved to safety in these flood hit areas, including over 500 tourists. The good news there seems to be that rescue teams are getting to these most remote parts of the Himalayas, which have been hit really badly by this devastating wall of mud and water, which struck there with such ferocity. What they're worried about, though, is this artificial lake, which is formed by the mud and water, which came. The fear is that there's so much water in there and then when it bursts, that could lead to another round of flooding. People here are very mindful of this because in recent months in China, man-made dams have burst following heavy flooding because of the typhoons. And so people have seen the devastation when this happens. It'll be, could just be like all over again, this water racing down those valleys. And to make it worse, rain is expected in the coming days. Obviously, more rain means more water means building up the level of that artificial lake and also hampering the rescue and recovery effort for those emergency teams. Now, we've heard reports of China almost attempting to downplay some of the images and very much control the narrative coming out. I mean, what are they trying to achieve by doing that? Well, what the Chinese government would say is we don't want to scare people. So those most shocking bits of footage, for example, of those multi-story buildings being swallowed up in that wall of muddy water, that hasn't been shown on television here. Just stills of it. Others would argue that people have a right to know. I mean, it's not that this footage isn't circulating there on social media because it is. It's just that official outlets aren't showing that. We also have the organisation department. This is the branch of the Communist Party, which appoints all people to all senior jobs in this country, saying that inside Tibet, officials who flee their post or who don't control instability, what have you, this is going to affect your career, warning people to take it all very seriously and also saying, on the other hand, those who step up and do the right thing, if they're not members of the Communist Party, we can fast track that. So word has gotten out by those organs to try to mobilise as many people as they can because they are worried about instability alongside this terrible disaster. Stephen Macdonald there. Moving on to our next story. He was known as the Butcher of Bosnia. Oversaurer Brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing as Yugoslavia splintered in the 90s and spent his final years in prison for war crimes. Yet, among some Serbians, Ratco, Meladich, remains a respected wartime figure. His death at the age of 84 has, for many, meant looking back on one of the darkest chapters in modern European history. Meladich oversaw the siege of Sarajevo in which thousands of civilians were killed. This is audio of him ordering the bombardment of Muslim areas of the city during the war. General Meladich here showed the presidency and the parliament. Shoot at slow intervals till I order you to stop. Understood. That bit Muslim neighbourhoods, not many Serbs left there. Yes. Show them till they are on the edge of madness. Meladich also led attempts to force Kroa and Muslim civilians from large suaves of Bosnia in the campaign which became known as ethnic cleansing. In 1995, his forces massacred more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica. This woman lost her relatives. It's really difficult to describe how I feel. We watched as men and boys had their throats cut all around us. Women were raped here. Over two nights people committed suicide watching what was happening. They took my husband to that building over there. My son wanted to escape but he never appeared again. For many years, Meladich evaded justice, assisted by nationalist Serbs who saw him as a war hero. But he was eventually captured and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2017 for his many crimes. Hassan Hassanovich is a survivor of the genocide and now works at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre. I was 19 when I was forced to flee Srebrenica and I lost my twin brother and my father and many family members. So when I heard that Thratko Almanich has died, I think about the lives he and his forces destroyed. What matters to me is that he died having been convicted of genocide in other crimes and he's that cannot erase that historical and judicial truth. Let's get the perspective of the BBC's Alan Little. He reported extensively from Bosnia in the 90s and co-authored a book The Death of Yugoslavia which is still regarded as the definitive account of the war. He spoke to James Menendez about Ratko Miladic's crimes. He was made the commander of the Bosnian serval army right at the start of the war by President in Oshevich of Serbia and it was his men acting under his command who conducted the campaign that came to be known as ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing is not a phrase coined by the Western media it was what they the Serbs themselves who had determined the Serbs themselves used to describe what they were doing. They would go from town to town, village to village, municipality to municipality in a very organized way. Round up all the non-Serb men put the women and children on buses and ship them off to refugee camps and hold the men in concentration camps. The men were then divided into categories. Those regarded as dangerous would be killed right from the beginning of the war and the rest would be held and later used in prisoner exchanges. They were held in conditions of starvation in sanitary conditions. Many of them died there and it was all about establishing an ethnically pure Serbian territory in the Republic of Bosnia, Herzegovina. These were among the worst war crimes committed in Europe since the Nazis and Srebrenica which came in 1995 three years after the start of the war in Bosnia was different only in scale from what had been happening across the Serb held territories from the very beginning. There were many Srebrenica's if you like right from the start all the way through 1992, 3, 4 and 5. Alan, you met him, didn't you? I think in 1992. I did meet him by pure chance. I was in the Serbian army barracks at look of it on the southern edge of Sarajevo. At the right it starts the siege of Sarajevo and he stopped me and said yes and I looked incredulous. He said yes, yes, it's me as radish and he shook my hand and pulled me right into him and wouldn't let go of my hand. It was really quite airy and he'd just been down to the city centre front line at a bridge across the river called the brotherhood and unity bridge and he could tell that he was very pumped up by having been so close to the military action and he talked about how his ambition was that there should be no guns anywhere in the world except the little toy guns used by little boys. I found it very, very disturbing and alarming because he was clearly very, very excited by the violence and he struck me even then as dangerously fanatical. Justice did catch up with him in the end but he evaded justice for many, many years. How? Well, because he was protected by not only Serbian public opinion but by powerful people in Serbia, even today or all these years on and despite his conviction, if his body is returned home to Bosnia and Serb territory, he will be given a hero's funeral. Yeah, he evaded detection. He lived in hiding. He lived in secret public opinion in Serbia and in Serbian parts of Bosnia still regard him as a Serbian national hero. Alan Little there. Now, we've had a lot of warnings about the dangers of AI but an open letter signed by more than 100 tech companies including Open AI and Thropic and Google perhaps stands out from the rest. It's a warning that a wave of AI enabled cyber attacks are coming and the organisations and governments have only a short time to defend themselves. It follows a spate of cyber attacks from AI models in some cases where they've gone rogue. In recent interviews, Microsoft founder Bill Gates said even though AI will help fight diseases and improve education, addressing these risks should be the world's top priority. If we manage the transition well, the good will vastly outweigh the bad. But I worry that we aren't preparing. There's no plan to ease the entry into the AI era. Our technology editor Zoe Kleinman has this assessment. Last month we had what was described as the world's first ever AI enabled cyber attack. Open AI was testing some of its AI products and it now says it found out that they were secretly communicating with each other working together. They set up a hidden message board and the result of it was they hacked another company and we've got other threats as well. We've got cyber tools that have been developed to find weaknesses in security systems that have hidden away. There's one called Mythos that was made by a company called Anthropic and it says it found a weakness in one platform that had been hidden for 27 years and this is how hackers get into systems and cause havoc as we see. Plus you've got AI tools just generating masses of spam emails trying to trick people into opening up their bank accounts. So with all of this going on, the letter that's been signed by these 100 companies is calling on the world to make sure it's ready and says the window to be prepared enough is closing. Now you've got to bear in mind that some of the companies that have signed this letter are the same companies who own this technology. It's in their interest isn't it to tell us how powerful their own products are but we do also know there's similar products being developed in China and that they are already freely available. So what the letter is saying is everyone needs to work together to AI proof their defenses and it also says vital services like hospitals and water companies need to watch their backs but what it doesn't say is how everyone is supposed to find the money to pay for this all. Zoe Kleinman there. NASA is preparing to launch its next flagship space observatory. The Nancy Grace Roman space telescope is set to take off over the weekend on a SpaceX rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Scientists are going to use the telescope to investigate some of the universe's biggest mysteries including planets beyond our solar system. Dark energy and dark matter. James Coppnell spoke to Morgan Van Arsdal the project's operations manager. We're aiming to launch on Sunday and the telescope's designed to help us answer fundamental questions about the structure and the composition of the universe. We'll be studying things like dark energy, dark matter and exoplanets with the two science instruments on board and the science instruments together are capable of producing over a terabyte of data every day. So we really can't wait to get on orbit and see all the amazing things we discover once we get out there. Gosh yeah quite a thing. Talk us through what exactly we know about dark energy and dark matter. What are they exactly? Why do they matter to us? So for dark energy we know that the universe is expanding which doesn't really make any sense. You would think that it would be either just expanding at the same rate or even starting to contract but instead it's expanding faster and faster and so we know there must be some force that is repelling things and we call that forced dark energy which we really don't understand yet and that's one of the things we're trying to learn more about with the romance based telescope. Dark matter on the other hand we know that only about 5% of the matter that we understand in the universe is visible so the galaxies the chair at your house all fallen that 5% of visible matter but based on how gravity works throughout the universe we know there must be something else and we call that something else dark matter so we're hoping to understand a lot more about what those things are that are really forming how the universe is structured and as far as exoplanets are that's just the fancy word we use for planets that are orbiting suns and stars outside of our solar system and this has to be done from outer space a long way from our planet simply to get nearer to get a better angle at all all these things why why can't it be done from town on earth? So it's not really to get closer but what we want to do is get above the atmosphere as light comes in from all over the universe to earth it bounces around once it hits the atmosphere so being above the atmosphere where we can get that vacuum of space the light is a lot crisper and clearer coming through and in the case of the roman space telescope we're going to be at a point that we call the Lagrange point about four times further away than the moon is and that gets us far enough away that we don't need to worry about interference from the earth or just gives us a better view because we don't have things in the way it all sounds incredibly straightforward but presumably anything in space is anything but straightforward this might perhaps even be a slightly nerve-wracking time as you prepare for launch extremely nerve-wracking I think we're all really excited but within the last few days you can tell that the whole team is sort of started vibrating at a new energy that there's a lot of excitement but a lot of stress and anxiousness to actually get on orbit and see everything start working so we've done as many tests as we possibly can we feel really confident in all of the work we've done to get here but anytime you're doing something new in space there's always a chance for some type of catastrophe to happen Morgan Van Alstelder speaking to James Copp still to come in this podcast it has been the great creative joy of my life to work on these books and I already know what will happen in book four and five I have written part of the ending Catherine Rundle author of the impossible creatures children's fantasy books speaks to the BBC support comes from wise the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world your life is global your money should be two some providers promise no fees on overseas transfers don't be fooled extra costs often hide in bloated exchange rates choose wise you can send spend and receive money in over 40 currencies count on the exchange rate that you'd use in see on Google. Be smart, get wise, visit wise.com, tease and seize apply. What we want is justice and truth. The price of peace. Hello, Greg Jenner here. I'm the host of your Dead To Me, the BBC comedy show that takes history seriously. Every episode I pair up a top historian with a fantastic comedian and we have a lovely funny, fascinating chat about a different subject from world history. In this new series, we're beginning with an epic voyage through the story of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. And that's with Kyle Smith-Bino joining us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudo-science of eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott. So, if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to your Dead To Me wherever you get your podcast. Thank you. Bye. Johnny has admitted killing health care boss Brian Thompson. After a shooting that sparked a nationwide manhunt and a since-divided opinion on social media, he pleaded guilty to federal charges in New York. Telling the court, I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan and he died. Manjioni continued saying I knew what I was doing. But the story isn't over yet. I'm Jordan Dunbar, host of the Manjioni Troll podcast from the BBC World Service. Join me to hear the story behind this story and to find out what happens next. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast. The escalating tariffs and rhetoric between the United States and Canada since trade talks collapsed last week have been something to behold. Then on Thursday, perhaps the most unorthodox trade war development yet from Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, Canadian officials aren't on board. We'll always call it Lake Ontario. After laugh when he comes up with these ideas, it's always going to be Lake Ontario here in Canada and that's up to the president if he wants to name it Lake America, Lake Trump, whatever he wants to do. Washington correspondent Daniel Bush told me how we go ahead. This has been an escalating feud between the US and Canada. One of its two biggest trading partners, President Trump and the Prime Minister of Canada, Karni, have now had sort of a feud of words. President Trump imposing tariffs on 20 up to 50% on $20 billion worth of goods from Canada. Karni then immediately said that he would retaliate and in fact now has said that Canada will begin imposing tariffs on a wide range of American goods. This infuriated the administration Canada along with China is the only country really that has imposed retaliatory tariffs on the US during President Trump's trade war in his second term. That led to today where in the Oval Office, the president signed an executive order which he says will rename Lake Ontario Lake America. Of course, it's important to note that this will be renamed for the purposes of the American government on maps and so forth, but other countries, private companies, private map makers are not required to use that name. It's reminiscent, of course, of President Trump's move to do the same thing with the Gulf of Mexico over a trade dispute there last year where he renamed it the Gulf of America to try and pressure another ally to come to terms with him on trade issues. Okay, I think some people listening will roll their eyes and go changing a name of a lake. What's enough? Give us the serious political argument for why this is a good idea. What is actually a play here is a much broader trade deal between the United States, Canada and Mexico, the old NAFTA trade deal that was renegotiated under Trump's first term, and all three countries tried to reach a deal to extend it for 15 years. We're unable to do so in July. So now, the USMCA, that trade deal between the United States, Canada, and Mexico is sort of in a perpetual annual renewal period where each year the countries have to come together and re-decide how they want to trade with each other. And this is really at its heart an effort by the administration to put more and more pressure on Canada to try and secure better trade deals. When you mentioned the Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of America, this has already been tried, did not work. In a short answer, no, Mexico is a different economy with the different set of goals than Canada, Mexico. In fact, it's taken to somewhat a more conciliatory tack with the United States that the President, Shinebound, and Mexico has tried not to pick public fights with Trump in the hopes of securing a better trade deal. But for the US's perspective, symbolically renaming the Gulf of Mexico did not actually result in a better trade agreement. Those two countries are still in the process of negotiating new trade deals. So whether or not they could somehow pressure Canada and even bigger, wealthier country remains to be seen. Daniel Bush there. Next onto a murder trial that has shocked and divided people in the US. In 2023, Lindsey Clancy was charged with strangling her three children. The 36-year-old former nurse doesn't deny killing them, but her defense argues she was suffering from postpartum psychosis, a severe mental health emergency that begins suddenly after childbirth. Now a jury's got to determine whether she's criminally responsible for the deaths. Shinema Khalil is following what's been dubbed America's saddest murder trial, and just awarding, you may find parts of her report, distressing. Lindsey Clancy admits to killing her three young children, but listening to details of their death in court was at times too much for her to bear. Kora was five, Dawson, three, and Callan was eight months old when they were strangled by their young mother. The question at the heart of this case is whether she was legally responsible. In January 2023, Lindsey killed her children while her then-husband was out picking up dinner for the family. She then tried taking her own life. Patrick Clancy described finding his kids in the basement and then I went to the other side of the basement and used in my office. Lindsey's lawyers say she'd suffered postpartum psychosis after the birth of her youngest child that she repeatedly sought help and warned she was thinking of harming her children. When she told you that she was having intrusive thoughts, did you ask her what they were? What was her response? She described thoughts of hurting the kids. Shortly before the killings, she admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital, but was discharged days after. Prosecutor Shannon Buckingham told the jury the mother was fully aware of her actions. This was not a woman in the throws of psychosis on January 24, 2023. This was a woman who acted intentionally, rationally, and swiftly to accomplish a very specific goal to kill. Clancy then attempted suicide, which left her paralyzed after she jumped out of a window. Her former mother-in-law, Susan Clancy, described her as a loving parent. She had insomnia. She was losing her appetite. Beyond the courtroom, this case has divided America. Hundreds of women, many with their own experience of postpartum illness, have rallied in support of Clancy. We all relate in one way or another, and that is definitely attracting each of us here to support her. So many women in the world go through this, and we really don't know much about psychosis, particularly with women who even burn. But not everybody believes she deserves sympathy. As far as I'm concerned, this whole situation is about those babies. I think what she did was horrible. I support mental health, however, in this case, three children were murdered. Millions, coast to coast, are waiting and watching, as this case will soon head to the jury. A conviction would mean life in prison without parole. If she's found not criminally responsible, this could mean indefinite confinement in a secure psychiatric hospital. Whatever the verdict, nothing changes the terrible loss. Three young children, dead, and a family destroyed. Shimer Khalilver. Let's move on to a story that has been dominating football for a while. Now, European footballs governing body UEFA is preparing to bring criminal legal claims against FIFA President Gianni Infantino. In connection with that now abandoned plan to sell off stakes in the World Cup to private investors. UEFA has asked for access to documents. to be used in proceedings in Switzerland. Our sports editor is Dan Rowan. So how significant is this? - I think this is another major escalation in World Football Civil War, despite three confederations wanting him to quit. Gianni in Fantino still clings to power, but now UEFA's considering bringing criminal proceedings against him, the pressure has ramped up again. An application, as you say, has been made by UEFA in the U.S. requesting access to evidence and documents for use in legal proceedings in Switzerland against him, Fantino, who's accused of criminal mismanagement. Now, UEFA claims his plan to sell a 20% stake in the World Cup for three billion pounds was an absurdly low figure, as they put it. That was not independently verified or openly auctioned and was promoted for his own benefit, they claim. UEFA has also warned that if found guilty, he could face a prison sentence. UEFA also wants evidence from thrive capital, the business involved in the scheme, and its founder, Josh Kushner, the brother of U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law, in Fantino's not yet responded. He may have felt emboldened today by UEFA dropping their threat of a boycott, of FIFA competitions, and indeed the qualified backing of the highly influential Saudi Arabian FA, but UEFA's not letting up in its fight, and will hope that this legal threat is enough to oust him. If not, it's pledged to find a candidate to challenge in Fantino in March his presidential election. Football perhaps has never felt quite so divided as this. Damn rowing there. Right, let's end on something that will be exciting for parents of children who are big readers. The never fear. The third installment of Catherine Rundle's bestselling Impossible Creatures series has been released, and she says she's already begun work on the screenplay for a film. Sean Lay asked Catherine Rundle why fantasy has such an appeal. I think that we have been turning to fantasy to think about large ideas and to go on large adventures for thousands of years. You can trace our desire to think about methodical creatures and impossible happenings all the way back to the odyssey, to bear wolf, to the very queen, to the moat data, on to Tolkien and CS Lewis. I think there is something in it that captures our sense of the world as fully been possible things. Your childhood years were spent, I think, in Zimbabwe. Does that give you a different fantasy, a different magical tradition to draw on in addition to the British one? So I spent part of my childhood from about eight to 14 in Zimbabwe because my father worked in International Development. And I think the main thing it gave me was a sense of the natural world as full of creatures that are so astonishing that if you were told they were mythical, you would find that easy to believe. A giraffe is as extraordinary as a Griffin. And for some time, we were absolutely sure that Griffin's did exist and were a little bit unsure about giraffes. So there is a sense, I think, when you are lucky enough to be in a country where there is still wilderness and you have access to extraordinary natural beauty that gives you a sense that our beauty is so exquisite as to be almost fantastical. The never fear is the third of what will be a five-book sequence. Do you worry at all about sustaining this story? No, it has been the great creative joy of my life to work on these books. And I already know what will happen in book four and five. I have written part of the ending and I know that there will be, you know, there are berserkers who feel no fear, who have to learn to fear in order to learn to love. There is a princess who announces her throne and discovers that she too has berserk and blood. So I know where I'm going and it will be for me a great adventure to go to. Catherine Rundle speaking to Sean Lay. That's all from us for now. This edition of the Global News Podcast was mixed by Charlottes Hadroy Tosimpska and the producer was Emma Joseph. The editor is Karen Martin and I'm Will Chalk. Until next time, goodbye. Support comes from Wise. The smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world. Your life is global. Don't be fooled. Choose Wise. You can send, spend, and receive money in over 40 currencies. Be smart. Get Wise. Visit Wise.com. T's and C's apply.