Global News Podcast: North Korea to deport US soldier Travis King

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I'm Robin Brandt and at 13 hours GMT on Wednesday the 27th of September, these are our main stories.

North Korea says it will deport the American soldier Travis King, who ran across the border

from the south in July. The exodus continues, it's reported almost half of the Armenian population

is now thought to have left Nagorno-Karabakh, and German police have raided homes and offices

as they target an extreme neo-Nazi group. Also in this podcast is this one way to try to treat

Ukraine's war veterans. For me, cannabis is helpful. Without it, I can't sleep. It helps me to relax.

I think it's important that everybody should have this.

Well, let's start on the Korean Peninsula, where an American soldier who crossed into

North Korea two months ago is now being expelled. The fate of Travis King has been unknown since

he ran across the border into North Korea in July. He'd been serving with US forces in the south.

In the last couple of hours, Pyongyang has now announced it will deport Private King.

So what happens next? Well, our correspondent,

Jean McKenzie, is in the South Korean capital Seoul.

Well, we don't know, Robin, because actually there are two crucial things that are missing

from this statement that Pyongyang has released tonight. It's when they're going to deport him,

and it's how they're going to deport him. So what country they're going to deport him to.

All we know from tonight is that basically they have been investigating ever since Private

Travis King crossed into the country two months ago. They've been absolutely stumped on his whereabouts,

and tonight that they have concluded that they have finished his investigation,

and they are going to deport him because they say the soldier has admitted to crossing into the

country illegally. But much more than that, we don't know at this stage. So I mean, a serving US

soldier who is serving with those large number of US forces in South Korea crossing to the north

is highly unusual. Can you just remind us a bit about the circumstances around that moment?

Yes. So Private Travis King was serving here in South Korea. He was on tour in South Korea

because we've got an enormous amount of US soldiers that come through South Korea, and he

essentially was due to be sent back to the United States because he had got into trouble here in

South Korea, and it was thought that he was going to be disciplined by the US Army when he got back

possibly even discharged. So on the day he was due to be sent back, he got to the airport, but he

managed to leave the airport unshaperoned. He then booked himself onto a tour of the demilitarized

zone, which is the strip of land that divides north and south Korea. And while he was on this tour,

this tourist trip, he managed to run across the border. And just quickly, is there a sense of

tall that there are other things going behind closed doors that may have precipitated this

announcement? We don't know at this stage. I mean, look, there are various options about

what North Korea could choose to do with him. They could send him back across the demilitarized

zone, so where he came from, and give him to the UN forces that run that area. They could be arranging

for the United States to come and pick him up and take him home, although I think that is quite

unlikely because the US and North Korea don't have diplomatic relations, and they're not talking to

each other at the moment, and it doesn't seem that the North Koreans want to talk to the United

States. Another option that is being touted by analysts and experts is that North Korea might

send him to a country that they're currently friendly with. So China, perhaps, may be Russia.

But of course, we will have to wait and see. I think there are some certainly, though, who think

that this is a better outcome than they were expecting because, of course, the North Koreans

could have decided to hold private Travis King indefinitely. They could have put him on trial

and sent him to a prison camp. They could have used him as a pawn in negotiations with the US

at a time they felt like. But we will have to wait and see, of course, what happens.

G. McKenzie in Seoul. For days now, tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians have been fleeing the

mountainous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Today, it's being reported that almost half the Armenian

population that's around 50,000 people have left. That is despite Azerbaijan insisting that the people

in the enclave will be safe. Elchin Amoebaov is a special envoy to the president. There is no

intention from our side to limit in whatsoever way the opportunities for the local population to

enjoy their own language or culture or religion, as it is the case with the rest of the Azerbaijani

population. The only red line that we would never allow to be trespassed is that they would put into

question our sovereignty and territorial integrity, and they would not put into question the unitary

nature of our state. Well, despite those reassurances, Armenia says ethnic tension persists.

These people are among those who are leaving Nagorno-Karabakh and fear reprisals.

We went to the airport. Everyone was collected in one spot. Everyone was in a terrible state,

stressed out, children crying, old people crying, hungry, cold. No one is going back.

That's all. We have turned the Karabakh page over. It was tough there, but it was our land

for generations, Armenian land. And now today, we are here. We are homeless.

Well, just to remind you, Azerbaijan secured a quick victory over separatists in last week's

military offensive. It lasted just 24 hours. The confrontation was the latest episode in

decades of tension between Armenia and Azerbaijan. So what are the authorities saying now? Well,

our correspondent Olga Ivshina is in Baku. My biggest question to them was how long is this

checkpoint and this Vachin road, how long this is going to be open, because there is panic among

people in Stepanakert, among those who I'm talking to, that this road may close soon. And the queue

is so huge that you can already see it from the space. One challenged authority said that they're

ready to keep checkpoints. As the authorities who control the road told me that they're ready to

keep checkpoints open as long as it's needed. They also promised to let people back in if that's

going to be needed later. As you rightly said, it's a very long and painful congregate. And it's

important to remember that horrific scenes, which we are seeing now, 30 years ago, similar

scenes were happening on the other side when around one million Azeris had to leave Nagorno-Karabakh

and urgently escape to the Azeri territory. So people are permitted to leave, but it's taking

a long, long time. They're leaving in large numbers as we're reporting. There are some reports that

some people are being arrested as they try to leave. Do you have more on that? Yes. Azeri side

said that they guarantee security of civilians, but they reserve right to detain those who they

can see as armed separatists, of those accused of what they call war crimes, and also who they

call separatist leaders. And among them was a minister of under-recognized Republic of Hatzakh,

Rubian Vardanyan, who was detained earlier today. Azerbaijan says it has a list of people

they are interested in. And that's exactly what's happening. At the same time, it seems that the

flow of people is still moving slowly. So that's a good sign for the humanitarian situation

on the ground. And yeah, I think it's important to know that from the international point of

view, all of that is Azeri territory. And that's the reason they are sort of facilitating that move.

And just quickly, the Americans and the Germans have called for independent observers to be

allowed in to kind of oversee what's going on. Is there any chance that's going to happen?

Well, you know, that's what everyone is asking here. And we are asking access as well, because

Azeris are saying all these correct things, so to say that they're giving promises,

but there is no access for independent media and independent observers.

Olga Ivshina reporting on the flow of people currently leaving Nagorno-Karabakh.

Let's go to Iraq now, where three days of national mourning has been declared after a fire at a wedding

left more than 100 people dead, including the bride and groom. Dozens more have been injured.

State media in Iraq say the authorities have issued 13 arrest warrants for staff

and the owners of the venue. Investigators think fireworks may have started the fire.

Ahmed Dubaadani, a health official in Nineveh province, said the injured had been taken to

hospitals in Merzel, Karakorchandinia and Erbil. Most of them were completely burned,

and others had up to 60% of their bodies burned. This is terrible. Most of them were not in a

good condition. Well, I spoke to our correspondent, Lina Sinjab, who's in Beirut.

Unfortunately, the news are coming in bits and pieces about the situation

overnight that was supposed to be a lifetime celebration that ended into a nightmare.

The Red Cross recently just said that they've counted 450 casualties,

but they couldn't confirm the number of that. Officials earlier said that they confirmed that

so far are 100 people so far. The initial reports that we've heard that, unfortunately,

fireworks were used inside the wedding hall and some flammable panels that were installed in the

hall helped the spread of the fire and also caused some damages to the ceiling.

People were rushing out, rushing for their lives, but they were suffocated with lack of oxygen,

and many, unfortunately, were burnt alive. I know it's early stages, but is there a sense

that this building was unsafe in terms of how it had been constructed, in terms of viable safety

exits for people to be able to leave, because that death toll is such a high number?

Indeed, and the problem is that it's still early to investigate the situation. People are rushing

to still help the survivors, but given the history in Iraq and what's the situation,

the corruption is widespread, lack of accountability, lack of efficiency, and in the past, there were

many reports of construction violating the standards or even safety measures are not

taking up to standards that caused the loss of life in many past incidents. So not surprising

that something like this would happen in this issue, but to start with is the big question

marked to be raised, why would they use fireworks inside the closed wedding hall, which everyone

is confirming that was the spark of the reason why the blaze started. I did want to ask you just

quickly, Lena, for those of us not familiar with these kind of celebrations in Iraq, would that

be common at all, inside the building to use those kind of fireworks? Logically speaking,

you wouldn't think that anyone would use that, but some of these celebrations, they do some

sort of the fireworks, they do some sort of like the birthday kind of fireworks that are small,

but if there is no safety measures around, anything could happen, like what happened yesterday.

Lena Sinjar reporting. In Germany, members of a neo-Nazi extremist group regarded as one of

the country's most dangerous have been targeted in a series of police raids. In the early hours

of Wednesday, officers entered dozens of homes and offices linked to the racist and anti-Semitic

group, artgemeinschaft, which means racial community. Our correspondent in the capital

Berlin is Damian McGinnis, and he told me more about why the group is seen as such a threat.

They were set up shortly after the end of the Second World War by a former SS officer.

They are effectively a sect with neo-Pagan racist beliefs, anti-Semitic. It's a small

grouping with around 300 members, which sounds very insignificant, but they are spread all

over the country and they have networks with lots of other far-right groups, and the aim really is

to spread far-right racist anti-Semitic ideology to the next generation, because a lot of the

members are families and have a lot of children. The aim is to pass on this racist ideology to

young people, to children. It's a broad network that supports other extremist groups as well,

and which is very dangerous. For example, in 2019, a centre-right politician, Walter Lubcker,

was murdered, assassinated just outside his home. That was carried out by a member of this group.

Also, in the early 2000s, there was a network called the NSU. They murdered nine people with a

migrant background, plus a police officer over the space of almost a decade. One of the members

of that group was given shelter by people belonging to this neo-Nazi network at Gemeinschaft. So,

it's a broad community, it's an extreme community, and the only question really is why it's taken

so long for the government to clamp down on them, because as I say, they've been around since the

50s, so some people are saying, well, this is long overdue really. I was going to ask you as well,

am I right that there have been some legal manoeuvres to ban this group? I mean, why haven't

they been banned, or why hasn't membership of it been banned up to this point? Yeah, so the

Interior Minister, Nancy Feas, announced this morning that the group had now been banned.

It's taken months to prepare this, almost a year really to prepare legally for the ban,

because it has to be legally sound. There's a very high hurdle legally to ban independent

organisations in Germany, but a lot of people, as you say, are questioning why is it taken so long,

because it is clearly a very radical group, and there's evidence that members of this group have

either carried out crimes themselves or supported other people carrying out neo-Nazi crimes. One

theory is that Nancy Feas herself is facing an election in the region of Hessen. She wants to

take over that region as Premier. She's under fire. She's not doing well in the polls. Some

critics are saying that, well, this is part of her political campaign, if you like, to show

she's a tough Interior Minister. But there are high legal hurdles, and it is part of a broader

campaign of the government, really, to clamp down on far-right extremism. Since being elected two

years ago, this government, which has centre-left parties within it, defines far-right extremism

in Germany as the biggest terror threat facing the country. So it is something that's being taken

very seriously, and we are seeing a string of organisations being banned, including one last

week, Hammerskims, which is an American neo-Nazi organisation. Also, some people say overdue,

because clearly far-right extremists, but it is happening. So I think we are seeing action from

the government to clamp down on what is quite a worrying trend within Germany, within the more

radical ends of the far-right. Demi McGinnis speaking to me from Berlin. Now, here in the UK,

after a week in which the government made decisions to slow down the move to hit some of its targets

on cutting carbon emissions, energy companies have been given the go-ahead to extract oil and gas

from a new field. It's off the coast of Scotland. Rose Bank, as it's known, is thought to have

the largest quantity of untapped fossil fuel in Britain, and the government argues it could increase

this country's fuel security. Simon Jack has more. Rose Bank will be one of the largest new

oil and gas fields for decades, and is thought to contain 300 million barrels of oil. Permission

to develop it will prove controversial, as many will argue such a big new oil and gas project is

inconsistent with the UK's legally binding net zero 2050 targets. The government has already said

it wants to max out North Sea resources, as even the 2050 target allows for some oil and gas use,

and the Prime Minister has argued it makes no sense to import what we still need from abroad.

But others argue this oil will be sold internationally to the highest bidder,

and will make no difference to energy prices or security. Simon Jack reporting.

Coming up, what would you do if a bear, yes, a bear, crashed your quiet picnic?

Well, we'll explain how one Mexico family reacted.

The attacker had very good knowledge of banking systems, $3.1 billion in stolen funds,

money laundering operations, a cybercriminal group, these are smart guys.

Seasons 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.

Oh, wow. Oh, my God. I'm so excited. Thank you.

That's the sound of Casey getting a random act of helpfulness.

We just told him the helpful SoCal Honda dealers will be replacing his old manual wheelchair

with a brand new power wheelchair. And we paid him for sharing that story on the radio.

And we can help you too with a great deal on a reliable award-winning Honda,

like the 2023 Accord. To find the helpful SoCal Honda dealer near you,

and to submit a random act of helpfulness for someone you know, visit SoCalHondaDealers.com.

Welcome back to the Global News Podcast. Let's go to India now, where demonstrators have

clashed with police for a second day in the capital of the northeastern state of Manipur.

There are reports of dozens of people being injured. Violence broke out in the city of

Impal on Tuesday. Protesters were angered when photographs emerged of the bodies of two students

from the Maitai community who were missing back in July. Here's the BBC's Samira Hussein.

The teenagers had been missing for two months. When the BBC spoke with the families in August,

they remained hopeful. But the photographs which emerged on Tuesday confirmed they are dead.

Protesters have again taken to the streets demanding justice. In response to the latest

flare-up, India has imposed a controversial anti-insurgent law, which gives the army absolute

power in the state. The situation in Manipur has been tense since ethnic violence broke out

between the majority Hindu Maiti and minority Christian Kuki communities in May. Nearly 200

people have been killed so far. Samira Hussein reporting. Ukraine has seen heavy losses in

its fight against Russia and it is constantly trying to find ways to help treat its war veterans.

US officials believe more than 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been wounded,

while tens of thousands have been traumatised. One option being proposed is medical cannabis,

but the idea and how to legalise it in Ukraine are prompting debate there, as our correspondent

Paul Adams reports. In a key of apartment, off-duty soldiers meet, smoke cannabis and forget for

a moment the things they've seen. They don't want to be identified, one is being treated for PTSD.

For me, for us, cannabis is helpful. Without it, I can't sleep. It helps me to relax.

I think it's important that everybody should have this. Danilo Yevtukhov suffered terrible

burns to his face and hands during the Russian siege of Chanihev in the early days of the war.

Cannabis, he says, helped him deal with the pain. I was sleeping better. I was less nervous. I started

to have good appetite, not like from classic painkillers. When I thought about my injuries,

I felt painful, but my tension started to be more flexible.

At the Forest Glade Rehabilitation Centre, just outside the capital, treatment takes many forms.

They try a bit of everything here, acupuncture, physical therapy, group discussions,

but the staff say they need more tools, including cannabis. Ksenia Voznitsina is Forest Glade's

director. Yes, yes, because, as I'm always saying, our soldiers on the frontline need

different powerful weapons. We need an arsenal as well. The broader it is, the more effective

our treatment can be. People have to deal with symptoms like anxiety, sleep disorders,

and of course, they take it not to get high, but to get rid of the symptoms which bother them.

Around the world, research suggests cannabis may be useful in the treatment of PTSD and trauma,

but here in Ukraine, the law gets in the way. The production of marijuana, including for medical

research, is still banned. At a forensic lab in Kiev, Professor Viktor Dosenko from the National

Academy of Science is frustrated. We have to do clinical research to get more convincing evidence

that it works and use that research to help our military and civilians, because we really are

the global epicenter of PTSD. President Zelensky is urging change, pushing parliament to legalize

medicinal cannabis, allow research and production. But ministers are divided over what's needed.

The legislation is blocked. Serhiy Vlasenko of the Opposition Motherland Party says he has

nothing against medical marijuana, but he says the proposed new law does nothing to address

Ukraine's urgent needs, and he's worried that it invites corruption. The law is not about helping

people today. The law is about growing the morikuana in Ukraine and making that big business and

making that private business. Today, in the period of war, such a risky for the society businesses

should be controlled directly by the government. Most Ukrainians agree that medical cannabis

ought to be available. Some of those we spoke to said privately they believed politically connected

criminal interests were preventing change, protecting the country's lucrative black market.

Until the politicians can agree on how to move forward, soldiers will have to carry on medicating

themselves. Paul Adams reporting from Ukraine. A major international study of women and cancer

has concluded that a more female-centric approach to treatment could save tens of thousands of

lives every year. A report published in the medical journal The Lancets examined women in 185

countries. It calls for what is known as an intersectional feminist approach to cancer

Dr Ophira Ginsburg from the National Cancer Institute in the United States was one of the

people behind the recommendations. An intersectional feminist approach to cancer means that we're

looking really at the power dynamics that influence a woman's opportunities to prevent getting cancer,

to understand her risks, to make decisions about her own health care as it relates to cancer

prevention screening and treatment, and also as it relates to women as providers of care.

So the 800,000 number comes from a study that we also published in The Lancet Global Health today

in conjunction with The Lancet Report and that refers to the number of women's lives who

that could be saved from a premature death under the age of 70 if every woman everywhere

had access to the optimal care. And so we did that by looking at the best performing countries in

terms of survival. We looked at how the best performers were doing. And so this was an opportunity

to take a deeper dive also into the numbers of cancers that could be prevented in the first

place and women's lives that could be saved. 1.3 million saved a premature death if all women

also had access to prevention and early detection. Stigma is also a major issue and we covered this

in the Commission Report, in some cultures more than others, but this is in every country.

2.1 million saved a premature death if all women also had access to prevention and early detection.

Ofira Ginsberg from the National Cancer Institute in the US.

Now to an exhibition here in London, email is dead is the provocative title. In fact,

the word dead has a delete line through it, reflecting the stubborn survival of email,

because despite all the other forms of communication now available to us, email is still used by more

than 4 billion people, 50 years after its invention. The exhibition at the Design Museum includes

sound exhibits which aim to show an email's journey, making its way from one sender to another.

Josephine Chanter, Director of Audiences at the Design Museum, told my colleague Martha

Carney about the concept of the exhibition. So we wanted to look at email as it's one of the

tools and technologies that's all around us, but we don't take the time to really stop and see how

it's impacted our lives really over the last 50 years. At the museum we look at a lot of tools

and technologies. We've recently done an experiment with AI and a robot who identifies as an artist,

and so when MailChimp approached us to look at email, we realised this was something intangible

that we could do something really interesting with. And why do you think it has survived despite

WhatsApp tweets, ever so many other forms of communication? Well in many ways it's replaced

the letter, it's become the formal communication channel that we all use. It's also so instant,

it's so global, it can reach people in huge volume, sometimes you know too much volume

that it can go wrong. You should see how many unread emails I've got. Absolutely you know email

on Armageddon when you accidentally reply to 40,000 people and we touch upon some of those

incidents in the exhibition and how we might be able to improve and develop email to make it a

more effective tool. There was a romance about the letter, I know it makes me sound so old-fashioned

but I can remember travelling and going to post-restaurant places and finding those little

blue forms that you just don't get with an email. I think so that particularly letters the way they

are physical and I know lots of people have said to me that they print out emails to get that

physicality. But we have a part in the exhibition where we've looked at significant emails that

people have received, you know a diagnosis or an invitation or a job offer and those seismic events

happen through email and that's a really interesting space that we wanted to explore.

My colleague, Martha Carney, who clearly really still misses the letter, talking to Josephine

Chanter from the Design Museum here in London. Now to a picnic in Mexico and a stray bear,

it was a friendly bear though and happily not a very big one. No one got hurt in the peaceful but

anxious encounter and it was all caught on camera. Here's Harry Bly.

Chipinque Ecological Park in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon. A mother, her son and a friend

are sat having lunch when a black bear leaps onto the table.

It's the boy's 15th birthday and for lunch there's a celebratory spread of traditional

Mexican enchiladas and tacos, all of which are sampled by the intruding bear.

The mother is seen covering her child's face, presumably so as not to scare him,

with the bear just centimetres away. After eating, it moves across the picnic table,

jumps down and runs off. The video taken by the mother's friend was uploaded to TikTok,

where already it has over 10 million views. The Chipinque park is located in the natural

habitat of the North American black bear. It's a species that's listed as endangered

by the Mexican authorities because of destruction to its habitat and illegal hunting.

The park website says encounters with black bears have increased in the area and has provided

a list of recommendations of what to do if you encounter a bear.

One of them is that visitors should never try to photograph a bear up close.

Well that report from Harry Bly and if you want to see the video add your name to the list of 10

million who already have you can go to our website bbc.com slash news. Let's end this global news

podcast on something the US and Russia are still doing together happily.

Well that is the sound of mission control, monitoring the journey back to earth from the

International Space Station. The American astronaut Frank Rubio and Russian cosmonaut

Sergei Prokobyev and Dmitry Patelin travelled home together aboard the Soyuz MS-23. Here is

the moment they landed side by side in Kazakhstan. Touchdown. Touchdown confirmed at 6.17 a.m.

Rubio's record ride comes to an end as he, Prokobyev and Patelin return to earth

after a 371 day 157 million mile journey at the International Space Station.

The third longest flight ever in human spaceflight history is over with a pinpoint landing on the

step of Kazakhstan. Well that pinpoint landing was a while coming though because get this the

trio are six months late returning to earth because of a malfunction on their original

spacecraft. That gave the two Russians and Rubio an unexpectedly extended mission of 371 days in

orbit. It's the longest space mission for an American but not for the Russians because that

world record is held by Russia's Valery Polyakov who spent 437 consecutive days in space.

Okay that's all from us for now but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast

later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it you can send us an email

the address is globalpodcastatbbc.co.uk. You can also find us on ex formerly known as Twitter

at Global News Pod. Now this edition was mixed by Louis Alsop and the producer was Tracy Gordon.

The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Robin Brandt. Until next time, thanks for listening. Goodbye.

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