Global News Podcast: 'Chaos' as thousands flee Nagornoh-Karabakh

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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Valerie Sanderson and in the early hours of Tuesday, the 26th of September, these are

our main stories. There are growing humanitarian concerns as the ongoing exodus of ethnic Armenians

from Nagorno-Karabakh causes chaos. Kiev claims the admiral in charge of Russia's black sea

fleet died following Ukraine's recent attacks in occupied Crimea. Also, it's a windfall,

it's on land, it's money that they've got by accident, and of course it adds up to

at least a trillion in windfall profits. Gordon Brown, the former British Prime Minister,

wants all rich nations to pay a windfall tax to fund the climate change needs of developing

nations.

Also in this podcast, we get a rare glimpse at what's thought to be the biggest contemporary

piece of art in the world in the Nevada desert.

If someone said, see something that aliens created, you'd be like, yes, I see that, that

makes sense. Or if they said it was like an ancient civilization that created it, you'd

be like, yes, that makes sense.

If the good scientists have cracked a perennial problem, how do you get rid of smelly garlic

breath?

We start in Nagorno-Karabakh, where Monday saw scenes of panic and confusion as more ethnic

Armenians tried to flee the disputed territory, which Azerbaijani forces seized control of

last week. Long lines of traffic continued to clog the road to Armenia, and there were

chaotic scenes at a registration point just across the border.

Azerbaijan's President Ilam Aliyev promised that the rights of Karabakh Armenians would

be guaranteed, but many don't believe the assurances. The Armenian Prime Minister,

Nikol Pashinyan, shared his concerns about the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The ethnic cleansing of Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh is underway, so that's happening just now,

and that is a very unfortunate fact, because we were trying to urge international community

on that.

The International Red Cross is stepping up efforts to cope with the exodus of people

from the territory, which is at the heart of one of the world's longest-running conflicts.

An explosion at a petrol station in the main city of Stepanakert is reported to have injured

around 200 people, many of whom are said to have suffered severe burns. The Armenia spokeswoman

for the International Red Cross, Zara Amatuni, says a humanitarian operation is underway to help

displaced people.

We're actually trying to really step up our sources and give up the scale of the

humanitarian needs to increase our presence in the region by adding personnel, for example,

specialising in health, forensics, protection issues and weapon contamination, among others,

but also we're trying to monitor and ensure the protection of people that are left behind.

Ben Thompson spoke to Gabriel Gavin, a political journalist on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

I've spent today seeing thousands of people coming in from Nagorno-Karabakh, people have piled up their

possessions high in their cars, put whatever little they could get together in the back of vans,

or riding quite literally in the open backs of farm yard vehicles and construction vehicles,

just doing whatever they can to get out. And once they've arrived in Armenia, there's been scenes of

chaos at a Red Cross evacuation point on the border. How it went out earlier today in a heavy storm,

the ground turned to mud. Effectively, people have been more or less left with nothing.

The people I speak to absolutely have no certainty about what comes next. The only thing they do

consistently tell me is they fear they will never return home. And they've left not just their

houses and their apartments and their flats, but they've left often their livelihoods behind

farms, factories, machinery, things that they know that they'll never be able to get back.

You touch there on some of the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding.

What is your assessment from what you've seen? What help is needed for people who are fleeing?

Well, I think the ICRC has done an incredible job meeting with people, ensuring that they're

getting the support they need in terms of food, blankets. The Armenian government is providing

them with hotel rooms. Well, ordinary Armenians are just pitching in to pick people up, drop them

at wherever they need to go, sharing sofas and lifts and whatever else they can do. But the real

question is, in a country that seems to be just a hair away from an all-out conflict, once again

with Azerbaijan, how are they going to rehouse these people in the long term? What jobs are they

going to give people? What education opportunities are they going to be able to offer for their

children? And people who've lived through three wars effectively in a very short space of time,

how are they going to have their mental health needs met? And as a result, you see people just

milling around in the center of the city with no one sitting there to help them. Some of the

scenes that we've had from the hotels here are just horrific. People sitting with their head in

their hands. I met an elderly death couple who just simply couldn't comprehend what was going on.

They'd left the place they'd called home for their entire lives and had a picture of absolute chaos.

Whilst that humanitarian crisis is unfolding, there is concerns that fighting between the

Armenians and the Azerbaijanis may not yet be over. And that is why people are fleeing.

The real reason that I think most people have decided to flee is because they're not worried

so much about the fighting. They're worried about what comes next. Azerbaijan, I spoke to

President Ilham Aliyev's foreign policy advisor today. He absolutely assures the international

community that ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh are going to have their rights respected. But

this is a country that for decades has built a real ethnic animus against its ethnic Armenian

population. And we've seen in 2020 and 2016 a large number of atrocities, the headings,

executions, and that looms large in the minds of people. They simply do not believe that they will

be safe. And it's now the job of Azerbaijan, if it wants to prevent a mass exodus, to convince them

that actually that isn't the case and that it will stand up for their rights. So far, given

we're just a few days out of having seen really fierce fighting, artillery barrages, it's very,

very unclear that they intend to do that. And they can rebuild that bridge with the ethnic Armenian

population as a result of not a fleeing for their lives. Gabriel Gavin speaking there to Ben Thompson.

Ukraine's special forces say 34 Russian officers were killed in a missile attack

on the Navy's headquarters in occupied Crimea on Friday. They say the commander of the Black

Sea Fleet was among those who died. Russia said at the time only that one serviceman was missing.

James Waterhouse is our correspondent in Kiev and gave me his reaction.

If these claims are true, then it would amount to a sizable blow for Russia in terms of its

command structure because we're talking about a military that has a very old-fashioned command

structure where it is only the most senior officers who can issue orders and officers have to be of

a certain rank to interact with admirals of that kind. So it does stifle potentially Russian

operations in this area, but it would be surprising if the main command centre of Russia's continued

invasion of Ukraine would be in Sevastopol. But it is significant in that the very least when we

saw the dramatic images of Western missiles landing on the Russian naval HQ in Sevastopol.

It was a symbolic moment for a few cranes in terms of undermining Russia's presence but also for

Russia itself because this is at the heart of its operation. It's sort of the cornerstone of its

invasion and the claim is that they took out the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, a fleet of vessels

that has been so dominant to date, General Sokolov. But the problem here is that we have no proof.

No evidence has been provided with this statement, but I think we are seeing Ukraine try to assert

that this was indeed more than a symbolic strike that we saw last Friday.

And what about the UN Human Rights Report, reporting continuing violations by Russian

forces in Ukraine? How significant is it, do you think, for Kiev that this backs out what

they've been saying all along? It's a huge moment for Kiev because Kiev has always been frustrated

with the lack of judicial proceedings, shall we say, from the International Criminal Court.

So that is why you've seen Ukrainian courts, its own judicial system, pursue criminal proceedings

against the more junior Russian officers who have been accused and even convicted of committing

war crimes in this full-scale invasion. And so we have this Human Rights Report which acknowledges

after investigation that Russian media, for example, incited genocide by the way

its state TV reports this war with the allegations that Russian soldiers have targeted civilian

infrastructure, that they have murdered, that they have raped, that they have tortured Ukrainians

so severely that they have died as a result of their injuries. On the ground we have seen

evidence of this. You know, the targeting of civilians, the deliberate targeting,

it is a core feature of Russia's invasion. Thus far there is only an arrest warrant out for Vladimir

Putin and one of his top officials on the charge of abducting Ukrainian children, but Ukraine will

see this as a vital body of evidence that will add to the dossier, if you like, around Russia's

continued invasion of Ukraine. James Waterhouse in Kiev. Meanwhile, there are growing indications

that Russian revenue from the sale of its oil is increasing, despite sanctions put in place by the

G7 group of advanced nations. They have attempted to use their influence in the shipping industry

to restrict the amount which Russia earns from its oil to $60 a barrel. But Ukrainian economists

say Russia is transporting its goods without Western insurance and as the price of crude oil

escalates. Our diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams reports. The rising price of crude oil,

now heading towards $100 a barrel, is helping Moscow recoup some of the losses incurred as a

result of Western sanctions. So is the fact that ships recruited as part of Russia's so-called

dark fleet are more and more willing to turn to insurers outside the traditional Western-based

clubs. Insurance was one of the levers that G7 countries assumed would enable them to enforce

a $60 a barrel price cap imposed on Russian oil last December. But research conducted by Ukraine's

Kiev School of Economics suggests that Russian oil revenues this year are likely to be at least

$15 billion higher than envisaged under the price cap. Sanctions on Russia are having a massive

effect, but Moscow is getting better and better at working around them. Some of the ships carrying

Russian oil are willing to engage in highly irregular behavior, from switching off their

transponders to avoid being tracked, to offloading their cargoes at sea in so-called ship-to-ship

transfers. According to Michel Bachmann, a senior analyst at Lloyd's List, two-thirds of the tankers

which shipped oil from Russia in August were not in compliance with G7 sanctions. Paul Adams

The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, has outlined how his country plans to meet the European

commitment of cutting harmful gas emissions by 2030. The aim is to reduce them to 55% of where

they stood in 1990. Presenting the conclusions of a government commission on ecology, Mr Macron said

that by 2027, France would have closed its last coal-fired power stations and be producing a

million electric cars a year. From Paris, here's Hughes Coffield. France is a country with a strong

tradition of central planning. There actually exists a branch of government called the High

Commission for the Plan. And this report into how, at the same time to protect both the planet and

the economy, bears the official title, the Grand Plan for Ecological Planification. It's no joke,

President Macron has been accused by green activists of being all-mouth and little action on

the environment. And this is his way of putting the challenge of France's economic transformation

at the heart of his second mandate. What we are planning is a middle course,

not a policy of denial, pretending there is no problem, but not a policy of self-inflicted

punishment either, which would be impossible in our social and economic model. What we seek

is ecological sovereignty, a sovereignty which will be reinforced by decarbonisation

because that will let us reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. The president said the best

policy was not simply to ban things that pollute and then try to find a solution,

but to provide incentives for people to make the right choices. So, gas heaters in homes will not

be outlawed as environmentalists want. Instead, there'll be a massive investment in the production

of heat pumps in France in order to bring their price down. There's to be a national program for

the cheap leasing of electric cars, and a billion trees planted by 2030. At this stage,

it is still all words, but at least if French policy fails, it won't be for want of planning.

Hughes Scofield. And staying on the same theme,

Britain's former Prime Minister Gordon Brown is calling for oil producing countries

to pay a special levy to help poorer nations tackle climate change. He says the rise in prices

last year created a lottery-style bonanza for countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab

Emirates, which is hosting the next UN climate summit, COP28. Mr Brown, who's the United Nations

envoy, says a 3% levy on their export revenues would provide $25 billion to fight global warming,

and he's been talking to Michel Hossein. We're in an extraordinary and explosive situation.

You've got droughts, floods, firestorms all over the world without support for the poorest countries

to deal with them, and you've got this extraordinary, unprecedented, the almost

unsinkable windfall of revenues that are pouring into the Petro States. The biggest beneficiaries

are Saudi and the UAE and Qatar and Kuwait, as well as Norway, and it's they that are causing

the high prices in the South, which are causing so much poverty. So they've got a duty to do

something about it. The chairman of COP28 has said he wants people to put the money on the table.

Well, it's up to them, first of all, to put their money and the Petro States money on the table,

so that we can get a settlement that can pay for some of the reparation that needs to be

done to mitigate an adaptive climate change. But historically, it's countries like us,

isn't it, and the US and many others who have got rich over the generations through industrialization,

and that's the period at which global temperatures have risen. That's why my proposal is that they

provide the seed money, and that would be $25 billion, that the Western countries that you're

talking about provide guarantees, perhaps up to $100 billion, that we refinance the World Bank,

turn able it to put money into mitigation and adaptation, to allow Africa, for example, to

make the energy transition, to get out of call, to invest in renewables, to deal with the situation

where Africa's got 50% of the adaptation bills, but of course, has been responsible for only

2% of the emissions. So it's part of a bargain between the richest countries based on their

capacity to pay and based on historic emissions. Do you think there is any credibility in the UN

process taking place this time in one of those petrodollar countries? Well, that's to be proven.

If the oil countries, and remember that the chairman of COP28 is ironically the head of one of the

biggest oil companies in the world, can put up, we're talking about $4,000 billion of revenues

that have come from oil and gas, a rise of $2.5 trillion over the last year. And if they can't

put up 1% of these revenues or 3% of their export earnings to help make possible climate change

settlement, then I do think that the COP28 process will find itself in difficulty in the future.

You know, and it really is up to those countries that have got the capacity to pay to put up the

money now. And it would make a huge difference to the ability of African and Asian countries,

and of course, the small island states, to deal with droughts, but also to deal with floods,

and to deal with forest storms. Britain's former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

Still to come on the Global News Podcast, the Hollywood star Tom Hanks on his fascination

with the moon. You know what is going to be the next great moment in human evolution

when the first child is born on the moon.

A small river that runs through a poor community in the Guatemalan capital

has overflowed after hours of heavy rain, sweeping away several homes. Six people have died,

including young children, and at least 13 others are missing.

Our America's regional editor, Leonardo Rosha reports.

Rescue teams and volunteers have been looking in the mud since the early hours of Monday.

One of the bodies was found three kilometers downstream. Residents say they heard a loud

noise in the middle of the night as the swollen river hit the area. It all happened

over very quickly and they had no time to escape. The incident highlights the situation of millions

of people living in dangerous and substandard conditions in Guatemala. The community affected,

Dios Esfiel, consists of dozens of precarious houses built at the bottom of a gorge under

one of Guatemala's city's main access bridges, El Naranjo.

Leonardo Rosha, a gymnastics medal ceremony in Dublin, which has been watched millions of times

on social media, has caused outrage around the world and drawn the attention of one of the

sports superstars, Simone Biles. Now, gymnastics Ireland has issued an unreserved apology to the

family of a young black girl who was in a line of children being awarded medals when she was missed

out. Our sports correspondent, Nesta McGregor, told me more about the video.

In the footage, we can see it's a gymnastics event. It looks like a large

profile one because we have photographers, we have dignitaries and we also have someone

acting on behalf of gymnastics Ireland at the medal ceremony, placing medals around the necks of

those who compete in this, probably about 10 to 12 girls in the lineup. She goes along the

line and gives everyone a medal except a young black girl who is seemingly ignored because we

don't actually know exactly why she wasn't given a medal. She just seems to almost miss her out

and gives the girls either side of her a medal. Now, it's since transpired that the girl's family

did make a formal complaint to gymnastics Ireland at the time and a resolution which,

according to the Federation, pleased both parties was reached in August of this year.

Why did it take so long? As we live in a social and digital age, since March 2022,

this video has been reposted and shared millions of times now, but it seems in recent weeks,

it's really accelerated and the footage has reached celebrities including Simone Biles,

who's of course one of the most famous gymnasts and best gymnast ever and was also a black woman.

Now, the American is a four-time Olympic champion said the video broke her heart and there was no

room for racism in any sport. She had previously sent the girl a message of support after the

initial incident took place. And I guess to answer your question, with the story back in the news,

gymnastics Ireland probably had no choice but to release this new statement and today they issue

what they call an unreserved apology to the family of the young black gymnast not given a medal.

The person involved, we understand, did write a personal apology letter to the young gymnast,

which the family of the gymnast say she never got. I think what's interesting about this story is

that gymnastic Ireland said they got someone independent to come in and review the situation

and as I mentioned before, an agreement had been reached that both parties were happy with,

but clearly that wasn't the case because it seems to me the family of this young girl,

they wanted a public acknowledgement of what had just happened. And what's interesting is that with

Simone Biles on board, this is as public as it could get. And gymnastics is a sport as well

that in recent years, the image of it has been tarnished over the treatment of young athletes.

So even though we are talking about an isolated incident, this is still a sport that's trying to

be more diverse in both genders and race in the young athletes it attracts. So any kind of PR

like this will not be good for the sports. So I think they had no choice but to address this

publicly. And if stories do have a happy ending, it's worth saying that the young black girl who

didn't get a medal did eventually get one. Nesta McGregor. The Hollywood actor and two-time Oscar

winner Tom Hanks has been speaking to the BBC about his latest project, narrating an immersive

show in London called The Moonwalkers. Co-written with space filmmaker Christopher Riley,

it uses NASA footage and astronauts from the Artemis program. The BBC's Paddy O'Connell

asked Tom Hanks what sparked his interest in the moon. When I was in school at my most malleable,

if I should say, from 64 to 1969, five years of the space program. Well, the space race.

That would be the first thing we learned about it. The race to beat the Soviets. The Soviets were

the bad guys in our world every single day. Not only the nature of the prestige, that was certainly

part of it. But just this mysterious, bizarro people on the other side of the world might do

something before we did. That could not happen. Did you think Americans would get that first?

I had no idea. Actually, it was a race. There was no promise that Americans would, quote,

get there first. That boot of Neil Armstrong, his left foot landed in 1969. But in 1968,

you went to see the film Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey. I can't speak enough. This is the other

thing about The Moon that holds its sway on me is that it is an artistic enterprise and a poetic

enterprise as well. I'm trying to do the math. I was in 12 in 1968 when I saw 2001, a space

odyssey. Literally, I'm seeing stuff that I don't know how they shot this movie. I looked at the

Moon through telescopes. I looked at pictures of the Moon. I knew that we were going to in a

race with the Russians in order to get there. And here Stanley Kubrick had Russians talk to

Americans on the way to the Moon. It was a time machine that took not into the past, but took

you into the future and said, this is how it's going to be. The thing is, it's going to happen

in a new race. You've got the Indians have just landed. You've got the Russians crash landed.

The Chinese are always sending a probe there. Can you see a world where the Americans are

on a permanent base? The Indians are over there and the Chinese land. We're in a new race. It's

like the script of one of your movies. I think a race would actually be not the best way of

put it. I would say that there was going to be a cooperative effort. They're not going to have

the same way of doing it. We are sending human beings. When they start sending people up there,

that means whoever is there for Artemis is going to have neighbors nearby.

And the world is better when you cooperate with your neighbors. The world is better when they

might need somebody. You can learn from each other. You know what is going to be the next

great moment in human evolution? When the first child is born on the Moon. You want to talk about

the fame of somebody like Neil Armstrong. Someone on the Moon who is there for a while

is going to get knocked up. And it might not be the best thing in the world to send that

pregnant woman back to Earth and deal with that. So maybe the thing to do is just keep them up there

and welcome the truly first alien born human being. And if we could figure out how to live there

and use that as the next stepping stone to whatever else is coming down the pipe, Mars,

or beyond, isn't that almost the spiritual quest of all mankind?

Tom Hanks speaking there to Padio Connell. It's taken more than 50 years to produce.

It's cost at least 40 million dollars and covers an area of about two square kilometers.

Cold City, it's a sprawling contemporary work of art in a remote corner of the U.S. state of

Nevada, which is now finally open to the public. Composed of shaped mounds and depressions made

of dirt, rock, and concrete, the land artist Michael Heiser spent much of his career moving

mountains to create what many believe is a masterpiece. The BBC's Reagan Morris has been to see it.

I'm walking through city, deep in remote Nevada desert. It is very difficult to describe

it looks like racetracks and lines and sculpted hills through the desert. But when you drive in,

you really can't see any of it. You just see some gentle rolling berms, hills,

and then you walk into this and you just get lost really for a few hours. And all you hear

are your footsteps. And when you stop, it's one of the quietest places I've ever been.

If an alien in a spacesuit landed here would seem just as normal as a keyman,

and like a loincloth showed up like a tiger. That's Tristan Tuckfield and Josh Poro grappling

to describe city. Only six people can visit per day and the tickets are 150 dollars each sold

through a lottery. They're already sold out for this year. If you do get a ticket, you need to

drive three hours north of Las Vegas, arrive before sunrise, bring good walking shoes, and an open

mind. If someone said, so this is something that aliens created, would you be like, yes, I see that

by Area 51, that makes sense. Or if they said it was like an ancient civilization that created it,

you'd be like, yes, that makes sense. Those are very valid comments. Michael Govan is the director

of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and one of the biggest champions of city and the artist

Michael Heiser. His father was a archaeological anthropologist. And so Mike is a young person

was exposed to quite a high level of knowledge and experience with ancient cultures. Of course,

he's also on highways and in California, which is super modern. And there's the sense about all

of his work that it feels like we have one foot in our ancient past and one footer in our modern

future, right? And those are hard to put together. So that feeling you just expressed is I would

argue is what's very unique about it. It's believed to be the largest contemporary work of art in

the world. The scale is rather astonishing. In this age of social media, when pop up art museums

are there for Instagram and Facebook, this is a place no selfie can capture this. And the artist

who says no really TV cameras can capture this, he doesn't want this to be documented in that way.

He wants it to be experienced. And I hear a jet high above going by and that's

one of the only artificial sounds I've heard. I'm told the staff will cover up our footprints

after we leave. The artist who rarely speaks publicly about his work has been quoted as saying

he thinks they can't wait for him to die so they can build a gift shop.

There's definitely no gift shop. We've had board meetings with Michael telling us what he will and

will not tolerate. And I can guarantee you a gift shop is number one on the list of will not.

Kara Vanderweg is a senior director at Gagosian Galleries, which represents Michael Heiser's work.

This crazy person decided in 1970, first just wanted to build one big sculpture in the middle

of the desert because he thought he was going to die. He thought that there was going to be a

nuclear war or Vietnam was happening. I mean, he didn't know what the future looked like,

but he wanted to make a grand gesture and he's been able to build it. And isn't that terrific?

It's kind of hopeful. Kara Vanderweg, senior director of Gagosian Galleries, finishing that

report from Reagan Morris. And finally, garlic, a delicious ingredient in many recipes across the

world, but one known to result in, not to put too fine a point on it, smelly breath. But now

scientists in the United States say they may have found the secret solution to bad breath

caused by the pungent vegetable. Phoebe Hobson told me more about what they discovered.

Well, Val, the science says that yogurt could be the trick of warding off garlic breath.

Everyone has had that paranoia at some stage after tucking into a delicious meal where there's

lots of garlic and then you have to go to an important meeting or even go on a date and you're

so worried that your breath might smell. So according now to scientists at the University

of Columbus in Ohio State, they say that a spoonful of yogurt taken shortly after eating can help

deodorize the sulfurous components in garlic that give it that odour that sort of lingers after

you eat it. It's the fat and the protein in yogurt. So previously research has suggested that

drinking whole milk could do the trick, but actually it's the fat and the protein in yogurt.

The scientists involved in the research said that in fact Greek yogurt would be particularly good

at doing, which is actually quite funny because Greek food does actually contain a lot of garlic

itself, so perhaps it's the perfect combination. Yeah, so if you do enjoy a garlic meal, you have

to look for the yogurt afterwards. Why Greek yogurt in particular? Just because it's thick.

It's very thick and so it's particularly high in protein and it's that protein,

garlic and deodorizes that stench. This works both fried garlic and also raw garlic.

Breaking news this. This is breaking news. Perhaps even more breaking news is you can also reach for

a raw apple or perhaps mint or lettuce if you don't have yogurt to hand. So perhaps having a salad

after dinner. Or indeed brush your teeth. Or perhaps brush your teeth as well. And now you know,

Phoebe Hopson there. And that's it from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the

Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it,

send us an email. The address is GlobalPodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X,

formerly known as Twitter, at Global NewsPod. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll and the

producer was Emma Joseph. The editor as ever is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time.

Bye-bye.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.