Global News Podcast: 3 dead in Kosovo monastery stand-off

Hello, this is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service with reports and analysis

from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are

supported by advertising. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Andrew Peach and in the early hours of Monday the 25th of September these are our main stories.

Police in Kosovo kill three gunmen to end a standoff at a monastery. A space capsule which

could shed light on how planets will form lands in the US. Touchdown of the Osiris Rex

sampler turn capsule. A journey of a billion miles to asteroid Bennu and back has come to an end.

And hundreds of ethnic Armenians lead the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Also in this podcast pornographic images of real Spanish teenagers created by artificial

intelligence. And the Thai elephants and their handlers who've ditched performing for tourists

in exchange for a more peaceful lifestyle. Let's start in Kosovo where a standoff between police

and heavily armed gunmen in a Serbian Orthodox monastery after they killed a policeman has

now come to an end. The incident took place in a town in the north which is mainly Serb.

The police eventually seized control of the monastery. Three of the gunmen were killed,

two were arrested and large numbers of weapons were seized. I found out more from our Borken's

correspondent Guy Delorny. The situation is now reported to be calm. The religious authorities

at the monastery are saying that the armed persons who broke through the monastery gate have left

and currently they have both Kosovo police and also Ulex which is the EU's rule of law

mission in Kosovo inside the monastery. So that's what the monastery itself is saying.

In terms of what's coming out of the authorities in Kosovo, the Prime Minister Albin Khurti is now

saying that they've arrested six people in connection with these incidents. The shooting

and the killing of the police officer as well as the sporadic shooting throughout the day.

There have been three people involved in this armed group who've been killed and now the process

of questioning these people will start to find out exactly who they are and what their motivations

were. Now obviously tensions are pretty high in the region before all of this. This can only

inflame them. What happens next do you think? Well it's really a very tricky situation indeed.

This is the most serious incident that we've seen in Kosovo for some time and any incident like this

has the potential to escalate and become extremely serious. So if this really has now ended with

arrests or the dispersal of this armed group and there's no further shooting that can only be a

good thing. What's going to happen next of course is working out who actually is responsible for all

this. Serbian officials have already said the Kosovo has been far too quick to point the blame

at Serbia. Prime Minister Khurti accusing Belgrade of funding this armed group. Serbia saying well

how can you possibly know this when you haven't arrested or questioned them yet. So all of that

has to be sorted out and the European Union wants to bring everybody back around the negotiating

table to try to de-escalate the tensions. While the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia have been trading

accusations against each other over this before the siege had ended Kosovo's Prime Minister

Albin Khurti who's from Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority said Serbia was behind the attack.

We condemn this criminal and terrorist attack. Organized crime with political,

financial and logistical support from Belgrade is attacking our country. The criminals and those

who give them orders will fail. They will be caught, tried and punished. The Serbian president

Alexander Vučić responded by blaming Prime Minister Khurti for continuing to provoke the

Serb population. He left people alone to worry about their future and all the time he kept

provoking them. I regret that some Serbs succumbed to those provocations.

Albin Khurti is the only one to blame. Albin Khurti is the only one who wants conflict and war.

His life's desire is to drag us into war with NATO. That's the only thing he wants.

Next to Nagorno-Karabakh, an area so badly damaged by fighting that people who live there

say they have nowhere to bury their dead. Now over a thousand ethnic Armenian refugees have

reportedly arrived in Armenia after fleeing the disputed territory that was captured by

Azerbaijani forces six days ago. The area has been largely controlled by ethnic Armenians for 30

years even though it's been internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. The Armenian

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, whose face calls to resign in daily protests, said he believed

the number of ethnic Armenians leaving the region would now grow. Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh

continue to face the threat of ethnic cleansing and unless real living conditions are created for

the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh and there are effective mechanisms of protection from ethnic

cleansing, then the likelihood that the Armenians will see exile from their homeland as the only

way to preserve their lives increases significantly. Ethnic Armenian separatists fighters in Nagorno-Karabakh

have now agreed to put down their weapons. In Azerbaijan's capital Baku forest, here's Olga

Ivshina. We got back from Shusha, which Azeri authorities considered the capital of Karabakh.

We were among the very first journalists which were allowed in since the start of the September

hostilities. However, this was a tightly controlled trip, so we were escorted into Shusha

and shown a large display of weapons including tanks, APCs, automatic guns, RPGs, a huge amount of

weapons all laid down by Karabakh Armenians in the recent 48 hours. This was one of the

prerequisites of the ceasefire. The situation in Karabakh, however, remains tense. Azeri authorities

are saying they are ready to provide security guarantees for all civilians in the region

and they will only target armed rebels. However, Karabakh Armenians who are trapped in Stepanakert

are very worried about their security. It's humanitarian crisis on the ground. People say

the food, water and medical supplies are lacking. There is no electricity. We were able to see it

with our own eyes because Shusha is overlooking Stepanakert, so as soon as it became dark,

Stepanakert was pitch black, which was a stark contrast with the brightly lit streets of Shusha.

Azerbaijan says it has established a few refugee camps and is ready to allocate refugees. However,

Karabakh Armenians are highly suspicious. These decades-long conflict has seen a lot of bloodshed.

Both sides are accusing each other of war crimes and there is a lot of mistrust on both sides,

which doesn't help the process. Despite all the statements, all the diplomatic agreements and

calls to action, it's clear that destiny of Karabakh Armenians is currently in Azeri hands.

Olga Evshina in Baku. A capsule carrying dust and rock from an asteroid which has been traveling

through the solar system for billions of years has landed safely back on earth.

And touchdown of the Osiris Rex sampler turn capsule, a journey of a billion miles to asteroid Benu and

back has come to an end, opening a time capsule to our ancient solar system. The craft touched down

in a desert in Utah at 8.52 local time, marking the end of NASA's seven-year mission and the

beginning of years of study of its precious cargo. The samples could answer fundamental

questions about the origins of our planet and how life upon it began. There's also a chance the

asteroid Benu could collide with the earth one day in the future. So how serious is that threat?

In Utah for us, our science correspondent, Jonathan Amos.

It's a possibility, an outside possibility, I should say, but it's useful to understand what

these objects are made of, how they're put together. Because if you do want to use some sort of defense

strategy, maybe you want to deflect it slightly so that when it intersects with earth orbit,

it either just goes in front of it or just behind it. And knowing what it's made about

will tell you something about the sort of thing you might do to move it, you know,

smash something into it. But that's one reason why we might want to study asteroid Benu.

Okay, now everything, every fact about this whole mission about how far away Benu is,

how long it's taken the spacecraft to get there and back is mind-blowing, as is the idea that the

cargo that's just landed in the desert where you are could explain all sorts that we don't already

know about how life on earth began. If you want to understand the history of planet earth,

it's quite difficult on planet earth itself because the rocks here constantly recycle,

like tectonics, weathering. So if you pick up a rock and you look at it, it's actually not a

very old rock, okay? You want rock that is original, stuff from four and a half billion years ago,

when the sun was forming and the planets were forming around it. And asteroids like Benu,

we think, are the leftover building blocks, if you like. And therefore the chemistry in an

asteroid like Benu probably preserves the chemistry that existed four and a half billion years ago.

So they'll look into that. They want to see things like the amount of water that the rock holds.

This beautiful earth of ours is covered in 70% water, the oceans. Where did that water come from?

When we consider how earth started, it would have been this hot boiling rock. It would have

evaporated all of its water. But it is here now. And the other fascinating thing is the carbon

chemistry. How did life get started? We're based on carbon. Is there carbon compounds in this

asteroid that can tell us about the origin of life? Jonathan Amos with some big questions for us

in Utah. A small town in southern Spain has been rocked by a case involving fake nude photographs

of young girls, which have been generated by artificial intelligence. More than 20 girls

have been the victims of the fakes, which raised questions about the use of AI. From southern

Spain, here's Guy Hedgeko. Almendra Lejo is a sleepy town on the plains of Extremadura. But in

recent days, the rest of Spain has been watching it closely, as many of its families have had their

worlds turned upside down. Nude images of girls from the town, aged between 11 and 16, have been

circulating on social media. But the pictures are not real. They were created using photos of the

same girls fully clothed, often taken from their own social media accounts. These were then fed

into an AI application, which provided imagined images of the girls, either partly or fully

unclothed. Maria Blanco Rayo is the mother of a 14-year-old girl who was targeted.

One day, my daughter came out of school. She got in the car and I asked her what was the matter.

She said, Mom, there are photos of me circulating of my naked torso. I asked her if she had taken

any photos of herself nude. And she said, no, Mom, these are fake photos of girls that have been

created a lot right now. And there are other girls in my class that this has happened to as well.

A total of 28 girls have come forward so far, complaining that fake nude pictures of them

have been posted on social media. I felt impotent. I asked myself, how could this happen? You don't

imagine this kind of thing. There are some girls who are in a very bad way. There are girls who

won't even leave their house. The police are investigating at least 10 boys aged 12 to 14

who have been identified as being involved. The case came to light in great part because

of Miriam Al-Adib, a gynecologist and the mother of one of the girls affected.

I said to the girls affected that they should not be afraid or feel ashamed or feel responsible

because they had done nothing wrong. I also recorded a message for the boys in which I said,

perhaps you don't realize, but this is very serious and it has very serious consequences.

These are normal kids. They are not criminals. But if you give a normal kid a gun to play with,

he might end up committing a crime. And if you give him a toy to play with like artificial

intelligence, he might end up committing a serious crime. It's still not clear what charges, if any,

the boys believe to be responsible could face, particularly given their ages.

But while this case has shaken this small town in a corner of Spain,

it's clear that with AI technology so readily available, this could have happened almost anywhere.

Guy Hedgeko reporting. When one of Britain's worst serial killers was arrested in January 1981,

it finally put an end to the biggest manhunt the UK had ever seen. Peter Sutcliffe,

otherwise known as the Yorkshire Ripper, murdered at least 13 women and tried to kill others,

stabbing them and brutalizing their bodies. Countless books and TV programs have been

devoted to the subject. More recently, attempts have been made to look at the story from the

perspective of the women and why the police didn't pay more attention to the testimonies of survivors.

A new program is being released in the UK called the Long Shadow.

Rebecca Kesby spoke to Joan Smith, a journalist who covered the story,

but first we'll hear from Mo Lea, who was attacked by Peter Sutcliffe in October 1980.

How does she feel about the new program? It doesn't catapult me back in time as it used to,

because I've kind of become accustomed to talking about this into the breath.

I mean, is there a sense that as a survivor you feel maybe some responsibility to talk

because you can and there are those women that obviously can't?

Absolutely, as a survivor, I do feel a responsibility for all of the other women involved

and my responsibility is to try and get justice to see if we can somehow rectify the legacy of the

sheer stupidity of the press and the police in particular.

Well, let's bring Joan Smith in because it took years to catch Peter Sutcliffe. There were so

many clues pointing to him. He was interviewed by police nine times in the course of their

inquiries and never arrested and carried on killing people and it's been one of the biggest

scandals, if you like, of this. Why do you think the police didn't catch him sooner?

They didn't listen to women. What the police did was because the first murders took place in a red

light area, they wrongly assumed that the first victim was a prostitute. They told the world that

this was a man who hated prostitutes and they missed absolutely crucial eyewitness evidence.

One of the other major criticisms was that the police got sidetracked by what turned out to be

a hoax. Another man who wanted his moment of fame claimed responsibility and sent the police

some audio tapes and letters as well claiming to be this ripper character and it sent the police

off in the wrong direction partly because of his very distinctive accent. We've got a little

clip of it just here now. So a lot of money and effort went into chasing this character and it

wasn't him. It was an obvious hoax. I was at a press conference in Manchester. There was a big

build up to it, you know, we're inviting you to a press conference where you will hear the voice

of the Yorkshire Ripper. It was very like that. Then they played the tape and I said there is

nothing on that tape that isn't in the public domain. I really thought it was a hoax but of

course they didn't listen because they never listened to women. Now they'd been told by several

of the surviving victims that he was local but they knew better and several women died and were

attacked directly as a result of them falling for that hoax. Mo, you were a young student at the

time in Leeds which is the scene of many of the killings and can you describe how women felt at

that fear? It was palpable. The art studios were empty. Women didn't go out during the evening.

There were billboards all over the town. These ridiculous recordings of this hoax that were

played on the bus, it was nuts. He did target you, didn't he? Yeah, he did. A group of us would go

out to a pub in Headingley and my friends after we left, I think it was about 10 past 10, said

do you want us to walk you into town to catch the bus? And I'm like no, it's fine, don't be silly.

And I carried on walking home alone and I thought I'd take a shortcut and as I walked down this

road this young man I could hear a voice to my right. He was on the other side of the street.

I turned around and he started walking towards me. I didn't recognize him even though it was dark.

I could see his eyes and I could see his hair. I made my excuses out now. I'm sorry I've got to

catch my bus and I carried on walking down the street and I could hear his footsteps behind me.

So I started to run and as I ran I heard his footsteps getting quicker and quicker and then

I felt this massive blow to the top of my head and that was it. I blacked out. I survived because

of the intervention of a passerby who apparently heard me let out a scream as I fell but I don't

remember doing that. And he wasn't even caught by the detectives who were searching for him.

He was actually caught by South Yorkshire Police and it was just that a sort of you know sharp-eyed

traffic cop saw that he had rather crudely attached fake number plates to his car

and they stopped him and he was sitting there with a young woman who he claimed was his girlfriend

but of course he just picked up another potential victim and by then 13 women were dead definitely.

Nine had been attacked and injured very very seriously. You know there's an instinct now to

say well it's all different now and I don't think that it is because in London where we have the

largest police force in the UK the Metropolitan Police nearly 500 police officers are actually

under investigation for domestic or sexual violence themselves. Police forces were riddled

with misogyny in the 1970s. They are now and misogyny affects the way they carry out investigations

but for me as a young journalist what I realise is that women are on our own. We can't trust the

police and I feel very strongly that that's still the case. And the new programme is called

The Long Shadow. Still to come the Ethiopian athlete who smashed two minutes off the women's

marathon world record. This victory shows that hard training and good preparation prove their

worth and for Ethiopia as a country it will probably be a big boost for both men and women for the

Olympics. The attacker had very good knowledge of banking systems. 3.1 billion dollars in stolen

funds. Money laundering operations. A cybercriminal group. These are smart guys. Season one and two

of The Lazarus Heist from the BBC World Service are available in full right now. Following the

twists and turns in the incredible story of The Lazarus Group Hackers. The Lazarus Heist from

the BBC World Service. Catch up with the whole series now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Ukraine and Russia will face each other for a second week of hearings at the UN's highest

court on Monday. Kiev brought the case to the International Court of Justice arguing that

Moscow had used false claims of genocide to justify the 2022 invasion. But these hearings

are focusing on Russia's claims that the ICJ doesn't have jurisdiction, a legal mandate to rule on

the case at all. Anna Holigan has been following the hearings in the Hague. Kiev is arguing Moscow

violated the 1948 genocide convention when President Putin claimed the Russian invasion

was an effort to stop Kiev from committing genocide. Kiev, which argues this justification

for the war is illegal under international law, wants the ICJ to order Russia to stop hostilities

and pay reparations. Russia claims the use of force between states is regulated by a different

charter and if there is no genocide in Ukraine then a complaint filed under the genocide convention

should be thrown out. Today Russia's lawyers have all day to make their final arguments.

Last week every single European Union member state with the exception of Hungary plus Australia,

Canada and the UK took part in a full day of hearings all speaking in support of Ukraine's

legal stance. Indigenous communities around the world have often seen their land taken and their

people exploited. Now many countries provide legal protection and organisations support them.

Two sisters and their mother have been charged with fraud in Canada after allegedly pretending

to be Inuit in order to receive benefits from Indigenous organisations. Here's Terry Egan.

Members of Canada's Inuit community who live in the sparsely populated northern territory

are able to receive benefits such as grants and scholarships. That's part of an Indigenous

land claim settlement going back to 1993. In March though an organisation that represents

Inuit interests in the territory said it had become aware of possible fraudulent enrolment.

They named two sisters Amira and Nadia Gill and their mother Karima Manji. Miss Manji is reported

to have said the children were adopted and Inuit by birth. Because of that the three were entitled

to money provided by two local groups as well as various other benefits. But the woman named as

the birth mother said she was not related to the sisters and after an investigation the three women

were removed from a list of beneficiaries. The matter was also referred to the police.

Some Canadians have referred to those falsely claiming Indigenous ancestry as pretendians.

One community member said the term though downplays the severity of the issue because it

sounds harmless. She said she preferred to call it fraud. Now the women are due to appear in court.

It's not yet clear how they'll plead. Next to Berlin.

This is the moment that Ethiopia's Tigis de Safer spashed the women's world record for the marathon

taking more than two minutes off the previous record. The details from Alex Capstick.

As one of the fastest marathon courses on the planet it's no surprise a world record has been

broken. But even by Berlin standards this was an astonishing run by Ethiopia's Tigis de Safer.

The defending champion who only began competing in the marathon in April last year

maintained a blistering pace from start to finish. She won in a remarkable two hours 11 minutes and

53 seconds obliterating the previous best by over two minutes. It overshadowed another

dominant performance from Elliot Kipchogi in the men's event. The 38-year-old Kenyan chalked up an

unprecedented fifth title on Berlin's flat inner city route although he wasn't able to challenge

the record time he set in the race 12 months ago. And this is what Tigis de Safer had to say after

her win. In the first part I ran in a way that made sure I wasn't exhausted for the second part

which is why the first was a bit slower than the second. This victory shows that hard training

and good preparation prove their worth and for Ethiopia as a country it will probably be a big

boost for both men and women for the Olympics. Now if you recognise this theme tune you'll know

which story from the past few days we're talking about next.

This is the music from HBO's global hit Succession about a vastly wealthy and elderly media tycoon

trying to decide which of his children should inherit his media empire. People have drawn

parallels between its main character Logan Roy and the real-life media tycoon Rupert Murdoch

who stepped down in recent days age 92 handing over his succession to his son Lachlan. The man

who plays Logan Roy is the Hollywood star Brian Cox. Well I think he's been watching too much

succession. You know you can't predict these things but the fact that he chose one son over

the other you know it's quite funny really there comes a time you know I've just lost my sister

she was 92 I think he's doing pretty well. I mean we've no idea what his mental health is like I

suspect it is pretty good but I think the workload must be just too much now. I mean not surprised

actually because he is probably the most tenacious human on God's earth but he's just kept ongoing

and but I think eventually there comes a point when he has to stop and it had to happen and it's

happened. I mean it's interesting in his statement he's nailing his legacy of his family and his

business in one or two sentences my father firmly believed in freedom and Lachlan is absolutely

committed to the cause. Well that's a kind of generalization statement doesn't it freedom for

what freedom to impose his ideas and other people freedom to kind of manipulate certain things in

certain directions. I mean he's certainly done a lot of that in his life. It's so weird you know when

you play somebody and people keep saying oh well of course it's Rupert Murdoch and you go no it

isn't it's Logan Roy he's a very different animal really from Rupert. You know the one big difference

is that Rupert inherited Logan he didn't have anger and he started from round zero. And of course the

big similarity is that Logan Roy and Rupert Murdoch one in real life one on your TV creation

had children whom they basically either pitted against each other or had to choose the talents

of to run the business that's the big similarity. Yeah well that's where it falls into the sort of

succession mode. So I think there's a sort of I think James was backing off in many many ways so

the air position was pretty vacant for Lachlan to kind of move into it. So I suspect that there

are some family fishers there which we will hear about in due time but not at the moment. You joked

at the beginning you know that Rupert Murdoch had been watching too much succession and in fact we

do know that a member of the family did find you in a coffee shop. Oh yeah that's happened to me

because it was his son-in-law very nice where I was just sort of waiting for my coffee and this voice

was by the Indian that said well you know it's very interesting and I thought what's he talking about

and he said yeah it's an interesting series. I think my wife finds it not easy at times but on the

whole she's good about it and I said I'm sorry so what is it you're talking about. He said well my

wife is Elizabeth Murdoch and I went oh I see he was a very very nice man and at the end of the

conversation he sort of gave it away a bit by saying do you think that maybe the writers could

be a bit nicer to him next season. Just reading your biography I know that in 1990 you were

Lear in Deborah Warner's production you began as a Shakespearean actor and our listeners would love

to know what it says about us the Lear story the choice between daughters the Roy's story the choice

between children the Murdoch story that there's something in us we want to know how blood and

treasure divide we want to see the anger the jealousy the pain. From the word go when the show

was pitched to me by Jesse Armstrong and Adam McKay and I knew the series was going to work

because the public loved those series of dynasty Dallas so they're obsessed by families because

everybody has a family so naturally it reflects on your family or the lack of success in your family

or the opposite of your family the success of your family and I think that's what the

audiences enjoy they want and they want more. The actor Brian Cox with Paddy O'Connell.

For years Thailand's elephant handlers known as Mahoots have put their elephants to work

performing in tourist hotspots despite concerns from animal rights campaigners. Covid restrictions

meant that work dried up and hundreds of elephants were taken to a remote part of Thailand to see

lockdowns. Three years on some Mahoots and their elephants now making that move permanent. Lucy

Hedges has been to meet some of them. I've come to the Thai province of Surin it's a beautiful

and remote area 300 miles from the capital Bangkok and known as the spiritual home of the Mahoots

or elephant handlers. I'm here to meet Sayab who used to work in the northern city of Chiang Mai

charging tourists for elephant rides. His companion Eki Set munches grass beside us

and how old is he? 38. Is that quite old in elephant years?

It's not old elephant years are like human years so he is in middle age. We've been together for

23 years. When we are apart I miss him and feel lonely. During the Covid lockdown when tourism

shut down hundreds of Mahoots brought their elephants back to Surin where government institutions

offered them a salary and free veterinary care. Many Mahoots like Sayab decided to stay.

I've got a place to live. I've got a land to cut the grass. I've got grass seeds,

plant and I've got a salary. The elephant is close to the elephant's hospital and they have

bills there. An estimated 3,000 elephants are used across the country to entertain tourists

from animal rides to painting pictures with their trunks or even riding bicycles. Animal

rights charities say they are routinely mistreated. The Thai government says it plans to strengthen

laws governing their welfare. Elephants like Eki Set are now a world away from the busy tourist

hotspots though I notice he is still chained to the floor. Sayab says it's for his safety due

to his large size. You know he's in the same place for a long time. Is he a happy elephant?

He's an extremely happy elephant definitely. He loves a simple life and now we live simply,

eating, going for a walk. Now his life is easy. It's more than three years since the first

Covid lockdowns and Sayab says he has no intention of putting Eki Set back to work.

He plans to continue living on land provided for him by an institution called the Elephant Kingdom

which tourists can visit though there'll be no rides or circus tricks.

Since Thailand reopened for tourism many Mahouts have returned to their old places of work,

taking their elephants with them but increased awareness of their welfare has meant some of

the old attractions have either disappeared or are making new ethical promises. Campaigners

though say the only truly responsible way to see these magnificent beasts is at a distance in the

wild. Lucy Hedges reporting. And that's all from us for now. There'll be a new edition of Global

News to download later. If you'd like to comment on this edition do drop us an email globalpodcast

at bbc.co.uk or you'll find us on X, formerly Twitter where we are at Global News Pod. This

edition was mixed by Pat Sissons, the producer was Emma Joseph, the editor is Karen Martin.

My name is Andrew Peach, thanks for listening and until next time, goodbye.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.