Gunmen attack South African house party

This BBC Podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Hey, it's Roman Mars, host of the 100 Objects series. This week, I'm joined by former Mythbuster Adam Savage to dial into the story of the Bell Telephone, an invention that completely transformed the way we communicate. We'll uncover the history behind a very specific beloved model of the telephone, how it changed the world and the story behind when the most influential objects ever created. Listen to 100 Objects on the 99% of visible feed wherever you get your podcasts. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Jeannie Wazilewski and in a Women's Revolved in Germany, I've been speaking to a new generation of activists looking to tackle violence against women online. But is it the law that needs to change or a culture? Listen now, by searching for the documentary wherever you get to your BBC Podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 14 hours GMT on Wednesday the 23rd of September. Gunman killed 11 people at a house party near Durban, and South Africa struggles to combat violent crime. Fears of a return to civil war in Ethiopia is to grind fighters, battle, government forces. And the head of the IMF warns advanced economies to reduce their debt burdens. Also in this podcast, China is growing. We are now leading the world. This is no longer the China from the 1960s. No sign of a slowdown on AI in China. We report on the new data centres being built in remote areas. And the archaeologist hoping to search for the tomb of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti. South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world with around 60 people killed every day. In one particularly deadly incident on Tuesday night, Gunman attacked a house party in a township outside Durban, killing 11 people, including a pregnant woman. I heard more from our correspondent in Johannesburg, Pumza Fichlani. The police have said Oliver that it's still very early in their investigation, but they are also following a lead where some of the victims, they say, had been on their crime watch list. They are saying this may mean that there was a rival feud involved. That was behind the killing. It's something that's not that widely common in South Africa, mass shootings, although the murder rate is high. It is something that does still shock a lot of people in this country to see mass shootings happen anyway. But case and end, Guadalu Nantal, that area where that happened in, it's just another insight that's important to share there. It's a place where murder for hire is right. The police have said so they're also looking at whether that was behind the motive. Whether somebody paid these gunmen to carry out the shooting last night. Yeah, and tell us more about the high levels of violent crime that are affecting South Africa at the moment. Certainly it's one of the highest across violent crime in the world with the murder rate continuing to be something that's very difficult for the authorities from the government to the police to get a handle on. It's something that South Africans are widely concerned about. And that persecution rate, they've said, isn't as high as it can be. It takes very long for cases to get through the courts. And some instances for even arrests to happen. But it is something that is front of mind for a lot of South Africans because of how prevalent it is. And just how widespread there isn't one specific area. Oliver, that you can zero in on and say if we solve it here, it goes away everywhere. It happens in each province and for various reasons. But the police have said that they are trying their level best in terms of renewing their training and getting as much resources as needed so they can get a handle on the situation. Yeah, the government even sent in the army earlier this year. Is there anything more they can do? So that should tell you how serious of a problem it is. We don't see the army on the streets of South Africa often. They only are ever called in when they spend a spike really. And they're there to help the police affect arrests. So they don't affect arrests themselves. But they're there as extra backup because there are certain parts of the country where even the police themselves cannot just willingly go in. They need that added support in terms of gunfire. And we see in areas where that does happen, there is temporarily a reduction of violent crime. Bums Efechlani in Johannesburg. The head of the International Monetary Fund has warned advanced economies to cut their borrowing. Kristalina Jorgieva said debt levels had been pushed up by global shocks but governments hadn't done enough to tackle the spiraling cost of interest. She spoke to our economics editor, Faisal Islam, at the UN General Assembly. Our message to everybody is you cannot control exogenous factors but you have control over your domestic policies. So make sure you stay ahead of inflation, keep inflation back and to governments get on top of your debt issue. I have seen shock after shock pushing debt levels up like a spare case not to heaven and no action to contain the debt service cost. So time to take that action. You are the world's financial and fiscal watchdog. You mark the homework if you like of entire governments, especially at times like this. There's been a government bond market, borrowing market, shock, frankly, over the summer affecting the biggest nations in the world. The policy advice you're saying quite clearly is to respond to this shock with lower borrowing, potentially lower spending, potentially tax rises. So there are these two things that must be done. Bring debt levels down, put fiscal consolidation as a priority and make sure that the central banks deliver on their mandate for price stability. I am F boss, Kristalina Jorgieva. Listening to that was our business reporter, Ijoma Nduquay. I asked her first why debt costs were so high at the moment. The war in Iran has certainly exacerbated this issue because it's disrupted the supply of oil. Of course, we've been hearing so much about the the straight of Hormuz and its blockade and because it's restricted the flow of oil, that's reaching the international markets. That in turn has fueled inflation, which means government borrowing costs have gone up as the government uses tools to bring down inflation. And one key tool to bring down inflation is raising interest rates. And that makes it more expensive to borrow, and that in turn makes it more expensive for governments to service their debt. So here in the UK, for example, the interest on government debt in August, it was the highest figure since monthly records began in 1997. And just looking at the US, another advanced economy, their borrowing costs pushed up debt to more than $40 trillion, which has doubled in the space of a decade. OK, so a lot of interests that has to be paid, how can governments bring that down and will they take action? I think one of the things that Ms. Gorgieva alluded to is this difficulty politically with trying to cut spending. I mean, what do governments cut? Here in the UK, we're expecting Prime Minister Andy Burnham's first budget next month, and speculation is already building over his tax policy and what spending policies will be. I mean, the key thing here is that governments need to bring down their debt levels. And to do that, they have to cut government spending. She also talked about central bank stabilising prices, which could mean raising interest even further, which isn't popular. That means mortgage rates going up even more. Another mechanism is policy reform that encourages the private sector to come in and invest, because governments simply don't have the cash to boost economic growth. The IMF boss also warned about AI, huge amounts of investments going in that possible disruption it can cause. How worried should we be that a possible AI bubble could burst? There are still concerns that companies might not, investors might not realise the returns expected from investment in artificial intelligence, because we've been seeing so much money funneled into developing the infrastructure, building things like data centres. So there are concerns that perhaps the industry has exaggerated their abilities to boost their performance and profit. That's something we'll have to wait and see. Business reporter Ijoma Ndukui. Well, AI is one of the issues likely to be on the agenda when the US and Chinese presidents meet at the White House on Thursday. They've been calls from inside the industry for a slowdown, but both Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are keen to push on. The US president says whoever wins AI wins overall, while China is investing heavily to build a computing power it needs to compete in the AI race. Much of that construction is far from China's major cities, as Laura Bicker now reports. I'm wondering through the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, this is a land of extraordinary race scale in front of me. I have towering wind turbines, endless rows of solar panels, and of course, beautiful horses rambling beneath them. To build the infrastructure that is desperately needed for AI, in Mongolia is key because it has vast amounts of wind and solar resources. And that's why China has chosen to build its AI data centers here at remarkable speed. Buildings have risen out of the farmland in a matter of months. This country has fewer data centers than the US for now, but this hub is a way of catching up. If China is going to lead the world in artificial intelligence development, this is where it is building the engine room that will drive that change. Just a few months ago, this corner of Inner Mongolia was farmland. Now, dozens of data centers have sprung up for the likes of Huawei and others. There is no sign that China is slowing down on this technology. Across China, AI is becoming part of every day life. From programming robot deliveries to aiding police on patrol, it's all part of Beijing's ambition to embed AI in its economy. Officials have bristled at any mention of a slowdown. Jingyang is Asia-Beurotief of the business and tech media outlet, the information. The Esmeral country really has knee-capped China's AI development in the last several years, and in spite of that, Chinese labs have managed to catch up, why would China be incentivized to collaborate with America, which in Beijing's view has been knee-capping China's technological development, unless there is something that Washington can offer to straighten the deal. But others do see the urgency. David Finkelstein from the Center for Naval Analysis told a defense forum in Beijing that it was time for the two leaders to talk. I'm not sure they're going to come to any agreements anytime soon, but there's a lot of motivation to talk about these things. The use of AI and command and control and warfare, who's using it in their nuclear chain of command, this is scary stuff. Back in Inner Mongolia, the building work continues, while farm workers gather up rows of plump potatoes for market. There has been little opposition to data centers here, unlike in the west, but there are still some quiet skeptics. If they demolish the village for a data center, you won't be good. I prefer living by the farmland. Away from the microphone's perhaps feeding reprisals, a few farmers told us they saw no benefits and feared for their land and their way of life. Others were keen to praise the country's leadership. Of course, the data center brings us benefits. It creates jobs. President Xi is raising living standards for the Chinese people. China is growing. President Xi has set the direction and will feel that in the long term, China can compete with the US on this technology. His government is focused on securing an AI-powered future, even as some of its people wonder whether they'll be part of it. Barraport by our China correspondent Laura Bicker. Barbie, salt burn and film and Louise, all successful films, all written by women. A study analysing almost 200,000 films across three decades has found that productions with female screenwriters made higher profits, and yet women remain underrepresented among filmmakers. Ella Bicknell has the details. Frozen, Avatar Wave, The Water and Mama Mia. Blockbuster films with one thing in common. They were written or directed by women. But such films remain a minority. Just 27% of those made over the past 30 years had a female director or screenwriter. Researchers at the University of Mints in Germany analysed earnings from the internet movie Database, known as IMDB, and concluded there was no financial logic to the disparity. Among films with similar budgets, those written by women generated 34% higher medium profits than those with all male writing and directing teams. Greta Gerwig's Barbie is one example, taking almost 1.5 billion dollars at the global box office, 2023's highest grossing film. "If I may be so honored to have all the female nominees in every category stand with me in this room tonight. The filmmakers are the 2018 Oscars, Francis McDormand used her best actress speech to call for greater inclusion." "Look around ladies and gentlemen, because we all have stories to tell and projects we need finance." The number of female directors and writers has grown in recent decades. But the researchers behind this latest analysis says risk-averse studio financing is enforcing the status quo, even when there's more money to be made. Ella Bicknell, archaeologists are trying to get permission to drill into the rock next to the tomb of Tutankhamun. After new surveys suggested there may be other structures hidden behind it. They hope the chambers may house the tomb of the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti. When Tutankhamun's tomb was found more than a century ago, it contained remarkable treasures. The archaeologist Howard Carter described the moment of discovery to the BBC. "Light shining to the sarcophagus. A gospel-wenderman escaped our lips. So gorgeous was the sight that met our eyes. This was but the lid of the series of three coffins nested one within the other, enclosing the mortal remains of the young King Tutankhamun." Howard Carter in 1936. Bettany Hughes is a historian and author of a new book about Egypt called a History of Egypt in Seven Treasures. Sarah Montgu asked her if she was excited about this new endeavor. I have to say I'm constantly excited when it comes to ancient Egypt. There is definitely something interesting going on here at the back of Tutankhamun's tomb. I really just want to qualify. We have no idea whether or not it's Queen Nefertiti. That's that was something that was posited around ten years ago. It's not impossible, but what is more exciting is that it looks like there are chambers and corridors behind Tutankhamun's resting place. And did we not know that before? No, we didn't. I mean, this is as a result of lots of very cutting edge techniques. So thermal imaging, ground penetrating radar, geological mapping, tomography. So that means that the team working in the tomb have worked out. It's not sheer bread rock behind the west wall of the tomb, but there is some kind of ancient structure there. And it's what's brilliant now is that because we can use all these new techniques. You can do this kind of work in a completely non-invasive way. So you're not chiseling through the back of the beautiful decorations surrounding his sarcophagus. So there is something interesting there. You know, can we ultimately, you do need to sort of make a hole and go in? No, it's, you know, this is the genius area you don't need to now. So we can now unwrap whole mummified bodies and look at the amulets left inside the bodies without raising a single bandage. So it's the polar opposite of dear Howard Carter and Lord Knath. And when he did that, did they work a hundred years ago, who basically kind of ripping it all apart? So no, no, no, no, we actually, that is what's truly exciting. You've just been talking about artificial intelligence. And this is a way that, you know, we can use artificial intelligence to uncover ancestral intelligence in these tomes. So it really could be possible that this is discovered completely remotely without moving a single brick. Okay, and I know you might think this is a bit cheap, but Tudon Carmine's tomb didn't it have an enormous amount of gold treasures inside it? And are people going to be excited at that prospect? 100%. I mean, Tudon Carmine's tomb had at the latest count 5,398 treasures within it. So there was exquisite gold. There were beautiful games that he used to play with as a child, incredibly touching, his little socks with, with toes stitched in duck lunchboxes in case he needed a snack on his way to the afterlife. So I mean, it was, you know, it was the most astonishing find. And of course, if there is something new in the Valley of the Kings, it will be game changing and history making. We just don't know whether it's his, whether it's Nefertiti. That's an he who's talking to Sarah Montague. And still to come on this podcast. This planet has literally just formed. We normally can't see planets until they're about 10 million years old. It tells us so much about planet formation. The youngest planet ever discovered. This week, I'm joined by former Mythbuster Adam Savage to dial into the story of the bell telephone and invention that completely transformed the way we communicate. We'll uncover the history behind a very specific, beloved model of the telephone, how it changed the world and the story behind one of the most influential objects ever created. Listen to one hundred objects on the 99% of visible feed wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Genie Wazilewski and in a women's-revolved in Germany, I've been speaking to a new generation of activists looking to tackle violence against women online. Why does the world want American surrogates? I'm Asma Khalib and I host the Global Story Podcast from the BBC. Paying someone to carry a pregnancy is banned in most of Europe and large parts of Asia as well. But here in the US, business is booming, though as the popularity has grown so too has the public debate around the ethics of it all. For more, listen to the Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. World of Secrets is where untold stories are exposed. In the new series, a scandal inside one of Indonesia's vast network of Islamic boarding schools. I kept telling myself, "Don't end up with him alone." And how former pupils have turned detective, daring to speak out against an institution that wants them silent. Cover the shame of your teacher. World of Secrets, catching my teacher. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast. Reports from Ethiopia say local forces in the northern region of Tigray have seized the airport in the regional capital, Mekele. The Tigrayan rebels said they were combating an invasion by federal forces, raising fears of a resumption of the two-year civil war in the area, which left as many as 600,000 people dead. Catherine B. Aruhanger got the latest from our former Ethiopia correspondent, Calcadan Yibaltal. All flights to and from Tigrayan cities have been suspended. The flag carrier Ethiopian Airlines announced this morning that they have suspended all flights to the three major airports in the Tigrayan region. And local sources and then residents in the city told us that Tigrayan forces have interred into the main airport in Mekele city and not taking control of it. That airport had been under the control of a few federal police forces. And it's not clear what happened to these federal police forces. But this signal is a major escalation and it's coming in the backdrop of recent weeks of increasing tensions and increasing instances of drawn strikes in Tigray and around Tigrayan. And also it happens a few days after an armed groups have announced that they're forming an alliance in an effort to try to overthrow the government of Prime Minister of Yemen. And just give us the context to this and why it's so worrying because this comes some four years after the civil war in Tigray where hundreds of thousands of people were killed. This was a brutal conflict. Yes, it was indeed a brutal conflict and it's one of the most devastating and the dead less conflicts this century anywhere. Some estimates put the number of people who were killed in the region of 600,000. That was the civil war in Tigray between 2020 and 2022. But at late 2022 there was a pistol signed between Tigrayan forces and the government of the federal government that silenced the guns. And normal activities have resumed to the region and it seems that things were returning back to normality. However, tensions remained and there were so many unresolved issues in other parts of Ethiopia, there are other conflicts. And it seems now that we're seeing all these are in a converging that the grand forces have repeatedly accused the federal government of breaching that pistol. While the federal government says that they are the ones who are breaching the pistol by trying to forge an alliance with other armed actors as well as foreign countries, particularly the Northern neighboring area. And that was, as you said, very devastating. The humanitarian crisis was very consequential. If another war of a similar scale were to break out, it's going to be very destabilizing not only for Ethiopia, but for the home of Africa region. Which, as you know, is still, you know, plagued by other conflicts, including in neighboring Sudan. A former Ethiopia correspondent, Calcutta and Yibel Tal, talking to Catherine B. Arohanger. The civil war that Calcutta and mentioned in Sudan has also affected South Sudan, which split off 15 years ago. But since it gained independence, South Sudan has also suffered its own civil conflict, as well as widespread corruption and high levels of hunger. Now there is a political row in South Sudan. After President Salva Keir dissolved the government and removed all the vice presidents ahead of the country's first ever elections. His actions have been condemned by the opposition. South Sudan analyst, Daniel Akech theong, spoke to James Coppnell. We are watching July 2013 repeated so that the time the president dissolved the whole cabinet. And within a few months exchanging hard words between him and his rivals, the country went into civil war. The 2018 peace agreements was the only guerrilla against the absolute presidential powers hidden in the transitional constitution of 2011. So the parliament just stripped those guerrillas away and allowing the president to legally patch his rivals and install a critical government of strict loyalists in a badly divided country. So is that the concern then, a return to outright war? Because there have been successive ways of conflict, power dynamics have shifted. You could argue that the rebels are not as militarily strong as they were before and that people have fed up with fighting and the need for more conflict. You though seem to think that South Sudan could be heading back down that path. Yes, but that needs to be once first is that the the Keteka trap we are seeing now it is brilliant engineer trap. That's how the opposition and civil actors would look at it with absolute control over the state apparatus. The president's function cannot lose even if they go for elections. And I will say momentarily like why that election might not be possible and they will either push through entirely control elections and win it. So that leaves no rooms for the oppositions and other groups that want to participate in the process and democratic process. They could also cite logistical failures which are known to everyone to indefinitely extend this new loyalist mandate. It is a win-win for the executive and a disaster for the transitions because it would exacerbate an already conflict that was already happening in the country or it could even get worse. So that's could lead to a return to more violence. Daniel, a catch the on of the international crisis group. When Dolly Parton died last month at the age of 80 the news was announced by her nephew Brian Sever. He worked as the singer's head of security for more than two decades taking over from his father. But now Dolly Parton's longtime manager has requested a restraining order against him in a growing row over the estate. Our music correspondent Mark Savage told us more. These were court papers filed in Nashville yesterday and they accused Brian Sever Dolly Parton's nephew of what they call an intense and escalating campaign of threats against the estate. There are emails and text messages included in the court papers which appear to show him threatening other people who are looking after Dolly Parton's legacy. He will launch a podcast dedicated to ruining Dolly's brand. He calls himself the hand of retribution for the Parton family. And he says everyone needs to be worried. Now he has disputed his characterization in the lawsuit. He says that these messages were taken out of context and nothing that he said was a threat in a statement to TMZ. He said a lot of the messages are two guys rage talking and crying on the phone together while they were grieving. So what happens next? So Danny Nezel who was Dolly Parton's manager for more than 20 years has asked for a civil restraining order against Brian Sever her nephew. They've also requested a jury trial and after the temporary restraining order is made in order to extend it that is of course if the restraining order is made. And they say you know this has affected their business already they have lost lawyers and other employees as a result of what they call Sever's threats. And they also say that some members of the company have had to take out private security because they're worried about their own safety. And again I would have to say that Brian Sever does deny that he poses a threat to these people. Of course there was a huge outpouring of emotion when Dolly Parton died. Is this at risk of souring her legacy somewhat? I mean I think you know obviously everybody loved Dolly Parton because she was so serene and peaceful and generous. And the kind of ugliness of a family on an estate fighting over her $450 million fortune is bound to sour people's opinions of those who are left to look after her legacy. But I don't think it will make people think any worse of her. I think you know when money comes into families it often turns pretty nasty. But by all accounts Dolly did leave her estate in such a way that there won't be a huge ongoing rise. She left a lot of her properties and a lot of her business interests and trusts which makes the likelihood of legal action much much less than if she had died in probit. BBC Music correspondent Mark Savage. Astronomers have discovered the youngest planet on record. 450 light years from earth. IS-224B is less than a million years old. Newborn planets can be difficult to find, as stars, which provide the building materials, are themselves born inside clouds of gas and dust. This one could give scientists a way of studying what our own solar system may have been like billions of years ago. Astronomers Sarah Casewell spoke to Rick Edwards. The original discovery of this planet was done through looking at the disk around this very young star has got a big disk and we looked at the disk and we saw there were gaps in the disk and those gaps are likely to be caused by a planet that's forming and now people have used a technique called coronography. They've covered up the star so they can see something that's very faint nearby and they've seen the planet exactly where people predicted it to be. We normally can't see planets until they're about 10 million years old and all that disk has been got rid of and it tells us so much about planet formation and model, whether our models were right. How long does it take for a planet to kind of like reach maturity? Like is it fully developed at this point or is it still going to be evolving? At this point, it's still very hot and it possibly is still grabbing all the dust and gas that it can and after about 10 million years, the big disk around the star will disappear and we'll be left with the star and the planet. And just to give us a kind of a benchmark, what's the oldest planet that we've identified? Oh my goodness, that's a question and a half. So most planets that we tend to look at are about the same age as our son, maybe a little bit older, so they're between five and ten billion years old. And does this help us then understand more about the early stages of planet formation? It really does finding objects within these gaps in the rings where we can see them really allows us to understand whether our theory of planet formation is correct and in this case, it looks like this planet is doing exactly what it should be doing at this age. All of why a lot of us do this is to understand how unique our solar system is and whether there are other solar systems out there that look like ours and trying to understand the early stages of planet formations is a big part of that. Sarah Casewell, astronomer and lecturer at Lester University. And that is all from us for now, but if you want to get in touch, you can email us at [email protected]. You can also watch our episodes in full by searching for the global news podcast on YouTube. This edition was mixed by Jack Wilfen and produced by Alice Adely. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye. We'll uncover the history behind a very specific beloved model of the telephone, how it changed the world and the story behind one of the most influential objects ever created. [BLANK_AUDIO]