This BBC Podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Something is happening in Dawson Creek. A wave of violence has swept over this community of just 13,000 people. It's like the kind of stuff you only hear about on TV. 15 murders in the last five years. Some criminals, I put them into the category of supervillains. I'm Timothy Sawa, and from CBC's uncover and the fifth estate, an investigation into deaths and disappearances in Dawson Creek and what's behind it all. I'm not saying another word, leave me alone. The Miles Ero murders, available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. Four years ago, relations between Poland and Ukraine were at a historic high, but things have changed, and many polls are now calling for Ukrainian refugees to go home. I'm John Murphy, and I've been to Poland to explore what's happening and why. Listen, though, 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 Tuesday, the 22nd of September. A UN reporter accuses the Nicaraguan authorities of systematically attacking civilians. Scientists say the current super El Nino is approaching record-breaking levels, weeks before it's peak, and new research suggests baby girls are more sociable than boys. Also in this podcast, "It looks like it's from a galaxy far, far away, but the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is right here on Earth." George Lucas' art collection goes on display. And given the amount of images on tiles, on drawings, on prints, in this painting, you can imagine that the game of golf, as we know it nowadays, it started out in an endless. Who really invented the game of golf? Nicaragua had a troubled history in the 20th century, with decades of dictatorship followed by the US-backed Contra War. That ended in 1990, but UN experts say crimes are being committed once again against civilians in Nicaragua. The UN report accuses the authorities of disappearances, torture and arbitrary detention. In July, Nicaragua's long-term ruler, Daniel Ortega, a former revolutionary leader, banned elections. I heard more of my Global Affairs reporter Mimi Swaby. This new report by UN experts accuses Nicaraguan the state, institution the authorities of committing crimes against humanity to crush any dissent in the country and essentially control the population. They say authorities have coordinated enforced disappearances, torture and arbitrary detention of any political opponents, all being part of this widespread and very systemic crackdown on civilians. It went on to say that actually since 2023, the authorities have shifted to a long-term use of these enforced disappearances and nationwide police raids, aimed at basically eliminating any remaining pockets of dissent in the country, solidifying the absolute power that President Daniel Ortega has shared with his co-present, his wife Rosario Morillo. They have expanded these raids to new targets to include church members, indigenous leaders and former state as well as military officials. This is on top of the verified disappearances the UN experts have confirmed since 2018, being more than 160. That is the date of a significant date in Nicaragua is when a wave of anti-government protests rippled across the country, the largest in years. That left one 300 people dead and led to a mass exodus in the country as well as Nicaraguan's. Now, are we seeing a return of the dirty war, at least the tactics seen in them, because Daniel Ortega was in power, left-wing leader, when his government was destabilized by the U.S. back countries? We're definitely seeing a iron fist get even stronger. Daniel Ortega in July came out and said there will no longer be elections in the country as he put it to stop the opposition from seizing the government again. In September, we then saw the Congress pass a constitutional reform, which essentially would ban the opposition parties from taking part in that election. So, again, solidifying the fact that he is going to maintain himself and power as long as he can. This unsurprisingly has received a lot of criticism from the wider region as well as global leaders. The authoritarian leader, though, is also being accused by this report as well as other organisations of essentially exercising centralised control over the very institutions, the police, the courts, the prisons that are meant to protect people from abuse. So, he not only has concrete control over the government, but over the whole country according to reports. And it's being blamed for the deaths of custody of at least eight people since 2018 who were detained on political grounds. And we've heard, again, in this report, how dire the situation is in prisons with the lack of healthcare and gender-based violence being rife among women too. And why now? He's been in power for a long time. Is there any opposition to his rule? There's very little opposition. He has cut off ties with the US. US is a long time phone, not cut off ties, but he's got distance himself even further. Again, with this move in September, this congressional reform, again, distancing himself from that backing, he's leaning towards China as a stronger ally. But on the ground, he's been in power for nearly twenty years. There's very little opposition in the country. Majority have been excelled. Any Nicaraguan leaders, or politicians, lawmakers, figures in public life, I speak to, are routinely outside the country due to fear of oppression and oppression for their families in the country if they have any left there. Mimi Swaby. El Niño, weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean, is still a few weeks from its peak, but it is already breaking records according to the British Met Office. However, that conclusion hasn't yet been confirmed by all climate scientists, as our environment correspondent Matt McGraw explained. There's pretty much great consensus among scientists that this El Niño is likely to be the strongest we've seen possibly ever on record. But whether or not this is actually breaking records right now is still a bit unclear, because scientists use a number of different measures to actually record how warm this El Niño is versus the rest of the ocean and versus the historic temperatures that pertained a few decades ago. So on some of these measures, it's close to our breaking record. On others, it's quite a bit away. I think the direction of travel is very clear here. Scientists have signaled for a long time. They believe this to be the strongest they'll see at this particular time in the record. And it hasn't reached the peak of the event just yet. So I think it's likely to break records across the board, we may or may not be there just yet. What sort of temperatures are we talking about and what does it all mean? So the way that you measure an El Niño is once those temperatures of the waters in the center of the Pacific go about a half a degree above the long-term average, that's the start of an El Niño. Once they get above one degree, you're starting to get into more serious territory, above two degrees, then it's called a very strong El Niño. Now, we had the two-degree mark go past a few months ago. It's been a strong El Niño for the last couple of months. The latest data show that it's around three degrees warmer than the long-term average, but how much precisely it is above the long-term average, we're not quite sure as yet. The fear, I guess, from scientists is that this will continue, and that projections would show that somewhere between three and four degrees above average. Now, that is a phenomenal amount of heat and a phenomenal impact on the world. We've never really seen anything like that before, and what the impacts will be across the world, we're still not sure. But it'll be later this year, and definitely in the middle of next year, when we'll see the impact of all that heat much more clearly. Yeah, what kind of thing could it be, more rain, more heat? All of the above. We're already seeing in some places, in the monsoon areas, perhaps less rain than normal in other places, in parts of California, they're preparing for greater deluges. We're likely to see greater floods and downpours. We're seeing the Panama Canal, not at its peak or restricting traffic because of lower water levels. So all around the world, there'll be different impacts on food production, impacts on droughts, on heat, and on floods. But by the middle of next year, we'll see probably the bigger impact, which is on overall global temperatures, which would be expected to be break records by some distance. Our environment correspondent, Matt McGraw. Star Wars creator George Lucas has spent the past 20 years planning a museum to house his vast art collection. It finally opens today, following a star-studded party over the weekend with Stephen Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey among the guests. The BBC's Reagan Morris couldn't make it to the party, but she did get a sneak peek at the museum. It looks like it's from a galaxy far, far away. But the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is right here on Earth, in South Los Angeles, not too far from Hollywood. The new billion-dollar museum houses a starfighter. I'm standing right underneath it. It's got original C3PO and R2D2 droids, and Luke Skywalker's land speeder. Some of the most iconic Star Wars memorabilia imaginable. But this is not a Star Wars museum. The movie art takes up a fraction of the space in this collection from George Lucas, the man who brought us both Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies. The museum is dedicated to the history of visual storytelling, from cave paintings to ancient sculptures to Norman Rockwell, to Banksy Street Art Graffiti. George Lucas says it bothered him.
him that illustrators he worked with on movies were not considered serious artists, and that their work was rarely displayed in museums. It's something that I felt very, very strongly about in terms of honoring illustrators, people who artists, I think, who illustrate stories, they're already written, and most of the stories are myths, they're not real, but the illustrations make them real, and as a result, in the beginning, especially for the few thousand years, that was the only way you could tell a story, was with pictures. Hi. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much for doing this. Tracy Bates, CEO of the Lucas Museum. I know this is not a Star Wars museum, but when I walk into this building, it does feel like I'm entering a spaceship. How do you describe the Lucas Museum? There's always been a plan that the building itself would be an art, it would be a sculpture. So the future generations, hopefully especially children would look at the building and say, that looks really important, the art in it must be really important. We never put a value on any of the artists, so there's no hierarchy around the entire gallery space. We have a van Gogh, we have a Picasso, we have many deemed incredible artists, but the thread through all of it is a story. So a narrative art is a story in one frame, so you'll be able to look at it and understand a story, you don't need wall text to explain that. And does George call it a Star Wars Museum? What he does want to make sure is that people understand that it isn't just a Star Wars Museum. He's only 7% of our entire gallery hanging Star Wars. George Lucas is known for creating worlds adored by fans around the world. It took him nearly 20 years to build this museum, and it's transformed the skyline of South Los Angeles, and transfixed those of us lucky enough to get a sneak peek inside. They're brought by Reagan Morris. Now, who invented golf? Its long thought has started in Scotland, but the debate over its origins has been reignited by the purchase of a painting in the Netherlands, a 17th century picture called "Colf Players on the Ice", that's "Colf with a Sea", Richard Hamilton reports. While it's generally accepted that the modern form of golf developed in Scotland from the 15th century onwards, the upcoming exhibition of Hendrick Avacamp's painting "Colf Players on the Ice" has resurrected discussions about its earliest origins. The painting is considered a masterpiece, and costs two museums, the Reichs Museum in Amsterdam and the Moritz House in the Hague, $13 million in a joint purchase. Judith Niesen is head of collections and research at the Moritz House. We can never, never, be sure, but there is already mentioning of this game in the 1300s, which is quite early, given the amount of images we know already from the 16th and 17th century, at least it was really popular in the Netherlands, and maybe even more popular than it was in Scotland. So we tend to say it was invented here and there is a whole lot of variety in the way it was played already back then, but what I can imagine is it was really popular and given the amount of images we know on tiles, on drawings, on prints, in this painting, it is the subject of the painting, you can imagine that it started out, the game of golf as we know it nowadays, it started out in the Netherlands. Other Dutch historians have been even more adamant that golf was invented in the Netherlands, with some saying it actually began in the year 1297, but Professor Neil Miller, who is a golf historian and author of the book, Early Golf Royal Myths and Ancient Histories, is dismissive of that claim. There's absolutely no contemporary evidence for that. The two games are quite similar, historians argue about whether stickable games originated in one country or another, golf in Holland undoubtedly will have influenced golf in Scotland, but I'm sure it happened the other way as well. What is sometimes overlooked is that golf has a clear written history in Scotland that dates back long before painting such as this, golf was banned in Scotland in a Scottish act of Parliament in 1457, so that tells us that golf must have been played in Scotland earlier than the mid-15th century. The origins of golf have long been lost in the mists of time, with some suggesting the Romans or even the ancient Chinese played an early form of the game, and no doubt the arguments will continue long into the night over a glass of whiskey, perhaps as long as the search for the perfect swing, or how long a part should be before you concede it to your opponent. Richard Hamilton. And still to come in this podcast? Efforts to revive the only native cat still found in the wild in Britain. Everything is happening in Dawson Creek. Some criminals I put them into the category of supervillains. I'm Timothy Sawa and from CBC's Uncover and the 5th Estate, an investigation into deaths and disappearances in Dawson Creek, and what's behind it all. The Miles Iroh murders, available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Murphy and I've been to Poland to explore what's happening and why. Listen now by searching for the documentary, wherever you get to your BBC Podcasts. I'm Faelin Johnson, the host of Cewin Court, and we are back with an all-new season. Our first episode is about a woman named Gwen Jacob, who on a sweltering day in 1991 did what she had to do to cool down. She took her shirt off. She was cat-called, "Find" and "Arrested," but she refused to back down, sparking a national debate about bearing breasts. Listen to the story of Gwen's topless walk on Cewin Court, on CBC Listen, and everywhere 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. You're listening to the Global News Podcast. Baby Girls tend to be more people-focused than boys from the very first hours of their lives, that's according to research from Cambridge University, which also found that newborn boys generally show more interest in objects. The study was led by Yumna Khan from the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge. "In the experiment, we recruited newborn infants as soon after they were born as possible into the study, and as soon as they were awake and alert, we showed them a video clip of, on one side of the screen, a moving face, and on the other side of the screen, a moving object. We basically found that, regardless of their sex, newborn infants prefer to look at the face, which we believe is due to innate social interest in humans and faces from birth. But what was really interesting was that we found that girls on average looked proportionately longer at the human face compared to boys, whereas boys on average looked proportionately longer at the object. And why do you think that is?" There's been quite a lot of discussion about this in the scientific community. We know that sex differences are shaped by numerous, numerous different factors, such as upbringing, gender socialization, and environmental factors. But there have also been theories that some early biological factors might play a role. For example, during pregnancy, males are exposed to higher levels of testosterone compared to females. This is what creates sex differences in the body, but it's also hypothesized to create sex differences in the brain and behavior. So when we looked at these newborn babies, because it was so soon after birth, our findings suggest that potentially these early prenatal biological factors might be playing some sort of a role in shaping sex differences. And what does this tell us about the old nature, the nurture argument? I always say it's not nature versus nurture, but rather it's nature and nurture. Both nature and nurture play important roles in shaping sex differences. We know definitely that nurture plays.
a very, very large role. But what this research suggests is that nature, early biological factors, might also play somewhat a role. That's very important to note we did not directly test that, but this is the conclusion that we're reaching based on how early that we find these differences. So we hypothesize that yes, these early biological factors might be playing some sort of a role, but we need more research to confirm that it is definitely indeed these prenatal factors, rather than other external factors. The fact that girls tend to favor looking at faces more than boys just after birth does that play out later in life as they develop? This is something that we will better be able to understand from longitudinal research, which we are planning at the moment. But what our hypothesis is right now is that we know later in infancy girls acquire language and communication skills faster than boys on average. So what might be happening here is this social interest from birth might be facilitating the development of earlier social and communication skills in females faster. And does this say anything about the greater incidence of autism that tends to be found among boys rather than girls? Yes, that is possible. And again, that's something that we will better be able to understand through future research. But one theory is that if males on average, let's say, show reduced social interest compared to females from early life, then they might be at a higher likelihood of developing autism compared to females. You're Nakan from the University of Cambridge. Ukraine's president Vladimir Zelensky is due to meet President Trump on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. It comes amid fears that Russia is planning to intensify attacks on Ukraine's heating and power facilities ahead of the winter. To make matters worse, Russia has stepped up its use of jet-powered drones in recent months, and these are proving much harder to shoot down. Our reporter, Abdul Jalil Abdul Rasulov joined Ukrainian air defense units trying to combat this new threat. Emisal shoots into the sky, leaving a long white tail behind. Seconds pass very slowly. Destroyed, reports a Ukrainian soldier having spawned in a distance, a blank plume of smoke from the explosion. His unit has successfully shot down a Russian jet-powered drone. These new drones are much harder to intercept, so for now, Ukrainian forces primarily use fighter jets or Western-provided air defense systems to stop them. They might be very effective, but far too costly to use against a much cheaper threat. Soldiers from the 96 Air Defense Brigade show me their drone interceptors regarded a breakthrough technology just a year ago. A bullet-shaped device held the Ukrainian military to shoot down up to 95% of Russian drones, but it's simply too slow against the new type of threat, says the crew commander, Madzi. The speed of jet-powered drones is 300 to 500 kilometers per hour, which is twice as fast as our interceptors. It's like a cat and mouse game. We are inventing something Russia is trying to invent a contradiction and vice versa. Andrej Gritsynuk, the head of Brave One, Ukraine's main defense technology alliance. And right now, more than 20 companies are building very fast drone interceptors on different levels of readiness. And out of them, six companies, members of Brave One, already deployed to the combat, and have effective air defense. To deal with new threats, Ukraine is also trying to convert all the weapons they no longer make. Soldiers from the billet-circuit air defense regiment are driving their anti-aircraft missile system called Osir in the cover. This giant Soviet armored vehicle on wheels is a lucrative target for Russian drones. It helps to defend Ukrainian cities from air strikes. The problem is that there are massive shortages of ammunition for Osir. However, Ukraine has developed a new type of missiles that can be used by this old system, and they are fast enough to shoot down Russian jet-powered drones. Vladimir, a crew member, explains. The new missiles performed well. The first launches were not very successful, but then they were improved, and now they work even better than Soviet missiles. Ukrainian engineers believe that it's only a matter of time before they effectively shoot down jet-powered drones on a regular basis. But the challenge of this war is to predict and prepare for future threats that do not exist yet. "A duchile labdura sulov reporting from Ukraine." Now you may have heard of the "mile high" club, but it seems amorous couples are getting together in ground-based forms of transport too, specifically robo-taxes. In fact, researchers are meeting in the Swedish city of Gothenburg to work out ways of making driverless cabs less enticing venues for backseat romance. Our reporter Helena Burke has been investigating. "There's still only a handful of cities that have approved the use of driverless cars on their roads in the US, China and the UAE. But in those cities apparently this is a bit of a problem. The researchers say that the issue is that being alone makes passengers feel like they're in a private space, even though they're not. And people wanting to have sex in self-driving cars has apparently become a bit of a bucket list item, like joining the mile high club. The researchers say that the problem with this is that it makes the driverless car seem like a space where inappropriate behavior is okay. So not only does it normalize sex inside these taxis, but also things like drug use or crime. Dr. Pavlo Baselinski from I'd Hover University of Technology says this will only become a bigger issue as driverless taxis become a part of the public transport infrastructure. In the future cars and shuttles will likely be used by multiple people, just like buses today. But a bus today will have a driver which can save, can serve as a safeguard from misbehavior, which will be gone in the future. Research shows that that is likely to happen. So the current idea of how we're endeavor is to see how we can prevent bystanders from being hurt. And what can be done to prevent this kind of thing? Well, that's exactly what this group of engineers, tech experts and psychologists are trying to figure out at this workshop in Gothenburg. Dr. Baselinski does already have a few ideas though. Some obvious things which come up if you ask could my colleagues and people around me this conference is the cameras. Some physical barriers perhaps come in here and they're in the shared vehicle, but it's quite unclear yet. So they're still quite early in the process of trying to figure out what it means. Some of the other suggestions made by researchers include making the cars transparent or even installing a light that starts to flash if it senses inappropriate behavior inside the car. For now, though, Waymo, which is the largest manufacturer of driverless taxis, has said that anyone caught having sex inside their vehicles will be immediately removed and permanently banned. Helena Burke that. They are the only native cat still found in the wild in Britain, though wild cats have long been considered functionally extinct, with surviving populations too small and heavily interbred with domestic cats to recover on their own. But a small population has now been successfully reintroduced to the cangon mountain in Scotland as Launa Gordon reports. The call of a Scottish wild cat. They're critically endangered, but for the past few years experts have been breeding them for release into the cangons. Luckily the cats are not aware that we're watching them all the time, but yet it is a bit like big brother for cats. From behind a large bank of screens in a small, windalous room, Estelle Morgan, who is the animal team leader for the Saving World Cats partnership, is keeping an eye on her charges. So this is Cranican, and he has fathered a number of kittens that have gone on to be released into the wild. With 72 cameras, it is quite a surveillance program. We want to know what are the cats actually doing, what are they actually like without was there? Are they able to climb? Are they able to pounce? Are they active at natural times? The behavioural side tells us if that cat maybe has the potential to survive in the wild. 46 wild cats have so far been released into the flats and foothills here in the cangons. The cats live in grassy shrub land with a forest edge, and the population while small is growing. And the plan to reintroduce wild cats to other areas in Scotland aims to build on the work being done here. Dr Martin Gaywood is Species Projects Manager for Nature Scotland. We've had an enormous amount of success here. It's the only first step. In order to restore the wild cats to the whole of Scotland, we need to plan long-term and we need to plan at a big scale. Traffic, disease,
into breeding all have the potential to limit wildcat numbers as does climate change. The new National Strategy aims to spread the risk by having wildcat populations in multiple areas, as Dr Helen Sen, head of conservation and science at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, explains. The plan is to find new release sites for this species. You know, we've had some really big climate incidents here in the Strath over the last couple of years. We've had some major storms and flooding incidents. We've also had unfortunately a very significant forest fire in the north of the release area and all of these things have the potential to impact the population. Even after their release, the wildcats now roaming the Ken Gorms continue to be monitored, a tracker on a collar which will eventually drop off, sending back information. The hope is that in years to come, this precious and elusive species of cat will, with a little help, make its home not just here in the Ken Gorms, but throughout Scotland. That report by our Scotland Correspondent Lorna Gordon. And that's all from us for now, but we'll be back very soon. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at
[email protected] and you can also watch our episodes in full by searching for the global news podcast on YouTube. This edition was mixed by Robin Schroder and produced by Adrian White. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye. I'm Timothy Sawa and from CBC's Uncover and the 5th Estate, an investigation into deaths and disappearances in Dawson Creek and what's behind it all. I'm not saying another word. Leave me alone. The Miles Zero murders, available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.
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