Global News Podcast: Officials say thousands have starved to death in Tigray

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I'm Nick Miles and at 13 hours GMT on Friday the 18th of August, these are our main stories.

The BBC has been told that 1400 people have starved to death in Ethiopia's northern region of

Tigray since international food aid was suspended in April. Russia has accused Ukraine of launching

a drone attack on Moscow's business district. The growing power of China is expected to occupy

the leaders of the United States, Japan and South Korea at a summit later today.

Also in this podcast, I don't think I've had a second yet to think about the potential

consequences here, because if things don't turn for the better, I might lose my house in a couple

of days time. But I haven't really had a chance to stop and think about that. People are evacuating

the Canadian city of Yellowknife as wildfires close in, but some are yet to do so. And as we

record this podcast, the deadline is less than five hours away. There was huge relief last year

when the Ethiopian government and rebel fighters from the northern region of Tigray signed a peace

deal. Thousands of people were killed and many more displaced during two years of fighting.

Normally the end of the conflict brings humanitarian relief, but now the BBC has been told that at

least 1400 Tigrayans have died from starvation in recent months because of a lack of food,

although a senior official says the number of dead could be much higher. I spoke to our

correspondent in the region, Mercy Giver. The situation in Tigray right now is difficult. I think

that's the best word to describe it, because we have spoken to people and also just seen what's

happening in Tigray of people going for days without food. They are not getting what can

sustain them, and especially people who are in refugee camps, but who are being displaced by

the two years of war that they cannot even sustain themselves within the camps that they have to go

out and beg in the local markets for them to be able to feed themselves and their children. And

what led to this is because after the two-year war, we had the WFP in the USAID coming in and just

rallying to assist about six million Tigrayans to give them food aid and help them come back to

their feet. But now they announced a pause in food aid about three months ago, and this is after

they discover that their donations were being stolen and diverted, and a lot of people are

being allegedly implicated in this Tigray food aid scandal. So right now people are struggling to

get by, and the local officials, they are quoting more than about 1,400 people dying in just about

three regions, and this number does not include other regions that have not been tallied. And as

much as BBC cannot independently verify this 1,400 figure, we can see the impact of what's happening

in Tigray. Mercy, many, many people are suffering because a few people allegedly stole this food

supplies. When is this pause in the food aid going to end? So first of all, the pause happened

three months ago, and we have been speaking to WFP, and what they are saying is that they

are making plans to resume. They don't know when they will be resuming, but they want to resume

at a point where they are fully confident that the assistance will be able to be, you know,

full proof, and that the food and donation that they are giving will be able to reach the intended

recipients. So we don't know really when that will happen. That was Mercy Juma.

On the battlefield, air support is seen as critical to troops on the ground, and that's why

ever since Russia invaded Ukraine last year, President Zelensky has been urging the West

to provide his country with fighter jets. Well, now the transfer of F-16 jets could soon happen.

The US has said they'll move quickly to approve the transfer of the fighter jets

when Ukrainian pilots are ready to fly them, and that training program was agreed back in May.

Yuri Sak, an advisor to Ukraine's Minister of Defense, gave his reaction to the BBC.

This is a very significant reassurance. Acquiring fourth generation aircraft,

acquiring F-16s will make our skies more secure, and essentially it will bring our victory closer.

Earlier, I asked our correspondent, James Waterhouse, who's in Kiev,

if we know when Ukraine will get these jets. Well, if you ask Kiev, not this year, I think

the downbeat assessment we had this week was that they weren't expecting to get them

as early as the autumn or winter reason being that even with this US green light, which let's

be frank, these F-16s will not arrive without the US's say so. Nevertheless, you have that pilot

training program going on involving 11 countries, those aircraft, and all of the hardware needed,

all of that support equipment and support staff will have to make their way over to Ukraine,

and that equates to a time delay of several months. That is clear, and that is long been the

frustration to Ukraine. Why? Well, as you said, it is Russia enjoying air superiority,

not in the traditional sense where we see Russian jets roaming Ukrainian airspace,

but there are more of them in the skies around occupied territories or inside Russia itself,

where they are launching relentless missile attacks on Ukraine, as well as making incursions on the

front line. And this is why it loops back to President Zelensky's repeated claim. It's not

been a subtle messaging campaign, has it, where he said, we need fighter jets and we need them

yesterday to unlock that. And I suppose analysts there are thinking it could be a game changer,

but it depends on the numbers, I suppose. It does depend on numbers. I mean, if we take the

Netherlands, for example, one of the countries that has been given the green light to provide these

F-16 fighter jets after training, it's about the models they have that are scheduled to be taken

out of service. So with the Netherlands, we're talking about a couple of dozen, roughly. So if

you have 11 Western allies, which form part of this green light from the US, then that could

add up quite significantly. But they do need to arrive. Pilots do need to be competent in them.

They rely completely different systems to the Soviet era migs that are used in Ukraine. And it

also depends on Russian air defences. But there is a concern that hasn't gone away here. The West

has always been worried about an escalation with Russia. Yet their confidence has grown and we've

seen an increase in military aid. But that concern is especially prevalent when we're talking about

fighter jets. Because take this scenario. Say you have an American-made fighter jet

flying in Ukrainian-occupied airspace and it's engaged with an air defense system and it targets

that air defense system, which is in on Russian territory. You then have a much more sizable

Western intervention than you could argue with, say, an armored vehicle being driven over the

front line. So there are those nerves. But there is clearly a direction of travel that Ukraine

will welcome, despite its frustrations. That was James Waterhouse. Well, as Ukraine waits for

the fighter jets to arrive, Russia's Defense Ministry says its anti-aircraft systems have

shot down a drone over the capital, Moscow. Defense officials say Ukraine is responsible. Air

traffic at Moscow's airports was also disrupted. More details from our correspondent, Will Vernon,

in Moscow. The authorities say air defense systems shot down a drone in the west of the city centre

overnight. The statement claimed Ukraine was responsible. Video posted on social media shows

an explosion near the Moscow city business district, an area that's been attacked before. Today,

a major exhibition centre was damaged, although it's not clear whether this was caused by falling

debris or whether the drone hit its target. Drone attacks in areas around Moscow are common.

This incident took place just five kilometres from the Kremlin. That was Will Vernon.

Back in May, the World Health Organization declared an end to COVID-19 as a global health

emergency. But it did emphasise that coronavirus was still a threat. Now, the WHO has just announced

that it's closely monitoring a new variant, which has been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United

States. Imaging folks in Geneva, where the WHO is based, tell me what we know.

Not as much as the WHO would clearly like to know. What it's been called is BA 2.86, and how it could

be a distant relative descendant of Omicron. But what is worrying the WHO and why they've classified

it as a variant under monitoring is because it shows quite a lot of mutations. Some variants

only show a couple. They're almost identical to their parent, if you like. This one not,

and the more mutations a new variant shows, the more likely the way it affects a human being could

change, the more likely, crucially, it could evade existing vaccines. Early days, though,

not much sequencing going on, and that's part of the problem. So close analysis before we know

exactly what we're dealing with this variant. So prudent to be cautious at the moment about

this particular variant. What about the way countries are testing? A lot of them have stopped

testing for coronavirus, haven't they? But what do we know about the impact or spread of the disease

globally now? Well, we know that people are still dying, and there are still many, many, many

cases. Unfortunately, some of the country's best resource to carry on with testing, tracing,

and sequencing, and this is where you spot a new variant, have relaxed those systems. And I think

here in Geneva, there's a certain amount of frustration at WHO headquarters, because

it's this kind of taking your eye off the ball, which could allow not just COVID, but a new

infectious disease to emerge, which could send us back to, well, hopefully not, but could send us

back to all the rigors of 2020 and lockdowns. So the WHO really would like countries to focus hard

on testing people and analyzing new strains so that we know what we're dealing with. And also,

in case we need a new vaccine for COVID, drug companies need to know what the new variant

looks like exactly to make the vaccine as effective as possible.

Image and folks. Camp David, the country retreat of US presidents, has a long track record of being

the setting for historic foreign policy agreements. And later, for the first time, President Biden is

hosting both the Japanese and the South Korean presidents there. So what's brought these three

leaders together? I spoke to our Asia Pacific editor, Michael Bristo. This is actually a major

diplomatic event. United States, South Korea, Japan are already allies, but essentially what is

going to happen later today is they're going to deepen that alliance, agree to share more information

on security, that kind of thing. A major moment really in the diplomatic history of these countries

brought about partly because President Biden has reengaged America with its traditional allies

after President Trump, but mostly because the leaders of both South Korea and Japan have decided

to put the antagonism over Japan's wartime aggression in Korea behind them and look to the

future and particularly ahead they see the growing power of China in East Asia and they want to come

together to try and essentially do something about that. They know that on their own, they don't really

stand a chance against China, so they're reengaging with each other and re-energizing their alliance.

And it's quite predictable, but what do China's views on this? Well, already they've shown their

opposition, their annoyance to this kind of alliance. Foreign Ministry spokesman today said

really the Asia-Pacific region shouldn't be a wrestling ground for geopolitical rivalry. Essentially

China, from what it said and done over recent years, sees itself as a growing power in the region,

the United States as the waning power and doesn't want something like this where

countries coming together to form an alliance against themselves. And over recent weeks they've

become actually the Chinese quite desperate in trying to persuade South Korea and Japan

not to engage with America in this way. This is what the Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at a conference

quite recently. American see all visitors from China, South Korea and Japan as Asians.

They can't tell the difference. No matter how yellow you dye your hair or how sharp you make

your nose, you'll never turn into a Westerner. You have to know your roots.

A really quite strident comment there by the Chinese Foreign Ministry and there were

understandably some accusations of racism, but on the diplomatic front I think it's

quite telling actually that it suggests to me that China's losing the argument. If you have to

appeal on racial grounds for countries to support you then essentially you're not doing a very good

job at persuading you to support them because of the arguments. That was Michael Bristo,

a woman in South Africa who made headlines when she was jailed for kidnapping a baby

Zephanie nurse and raising her as her own will be released on parole and placed under correctional

supervision for three years. In 1997 Livona Solomon abducted Zephanie from a hospital in Cape Town

when she was just two days old taking her from her sleeping mother's bedside. The crime came to

light in 2016 when Zephanie unknowingly made friends with her biological sister. After their

friends noticed the striking resemblance, the girls decided to take a DNA test which led to

Solomon's arrest and imprisonment. She served seven years of her tenure sentence. My colleague

James Coppnell spoke to our correspondent in Johannesburg, Nomsa Maseca. The nurse family,

they have always celebrated Zephanie's birthday to commemorate it and when they did find out that

she's still out there and she's alive and she lived just a few kilometers from their home,

that was something else for them and that is why it's still making headlines here in South Africa

with people beginning to ask questions about how many more children are out there and not too far

from their families where they were stolen from. So it is possible that there are other cases like

this that haven't been in the news. Absolutely, particularly in the early 1990s when security

was not as tight in hospital maternity or it's particularly where anyone who claims to be family

was allowed to walk in and visit a mom and a baby and what are the chances most mothers at that time

after they have given birth of course they exhausted, they're sleeping and the baby disappears.

What happened do we know to Zephanie nurse in the subsequent years?

Well Zephanie continued to live with Levona Solomon's husband because he raised her as his own even

during the trial. It was very difficult for her to come to terms with the fact that the two people

that raised her were actually not her biological parents but they raised her as such but when

the truth was revealed she has tried to build somewhat of a relationship with her biological

parents and she has in the past said that relationship is going well but she's also spoken

about Levona Solomon the woman who raised her as her own and said that she's very happy that Levona

is finally going to be released from prison and that she hopes that she will be rehabilitated

so that she's able to move on with her life. Does the fact that Levona Solomon is going to get out

on parole does that suggest that she has expressed remorse for what she did? You know from the

beginning of the trial you know there were several lies that she told during the trial

where she says she was also a victim of the circumstances because she claimed that she

was given this baby at a train station and not that she actually went in and stole the baby herself

but the judge at the time said you knew that this child was not yours you had so many opportunities

to take her to authorities and report this child as you found her as you claim however you continued

raising her so where's the remorse and also the fact that she pleaded not guilty to the charge

also made the nurse family and of course the judge believe that she did not show any remorse.

Nomsa Maseko in Johannesburg speaking to my colleague James Cocknop.

Still to come. Parmesan is one of the most counter-fated cheeses and it's estimated that

these knockoffs made two billion dollars in the last year alone. So could microchips stop the

production of counterfeit cheeses? Wow what an experience to be a part of the Tokyo Olympics.

It's so edged in my memory. It's one of the pinnacles of my athletic career.

On the podium is the podcast where Olympic and Paralympic athletes share their remarkable stories

from the struggles. Lots of sacrifices, lots of hard work, tears, a lot of things that the outside

world doesn't know. To the victories. In the water I could do anything that anybody else could do.

On the podium from the BBC World Service find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Welcome back to the Global News Podcast. Evacuating an entire city is a huge logistical challenge.

The authorities in Yellowknife in Canada's far north have the added problem of a raging wildfire

bearing down on them. There are just two options. You can either fly out if you can get a flight

or there's just one road out with safe evacuation centres hundreds of kilometres away.

They've set a deadline of noon local time for the 20,000 residents to get out and that's just

four hours away or so as we record this. Whilst most residents are now fleeing their homes to nearby

towns, Dr Michelle Tuma from an organisation called Veterinarians Without Borders is still

in Yellowknife for the moment. In Yellowknife we're the capital city of Northwest Territories.

We have a population of about 22,000 people and in our city there's only four veterinarians.

I'm one of them. We have been working for the last few weeks on evacuation responses for animals

in other nearby communities in the Northwest Territories that have also been devastated

with wildfires and now my hometown of Yellowknife needs support and it was just a no-brainer that

I needed to stay and help have people safely evacuate with their pets but then also help to

take care of any pets that had to be left behind. What about those who've already left?

Olly Williams is a journalist from Yellowknife who evacuated the city on Wednesday and is now in

Fort Simpson. People have been leaving since yesterday evening. Some people left even before

the evacuation order was declared. They saw the writing on the wall. They realised that this looked

like a relatively bleak situation and they got themselves on the road. I was one of those to

be frank with you. About 12-13 hours before the evacuation order was declared I left the city

because I think some of us have concluded that this situation was starting to look beyond the

control of the authorities and that of course has now proved to be the case and about 20,000

people are being told they've got to get out of the city and get south to safety. There is only

one road south and it's not a very big road either. It's one lane in each direction so thousands of

people have got to fit down that road. There is one petrol station worth talking about between

Yellowknife and Alberta, the province to the south which represents safety. People have been getting

in their cars. They've been packing up and I'll be honest with you they've been in relatively

good and ordered spirits about it so far and I'm touching word here on fingers crossed and I hope

for the best. So far this evacuation has proceeded by road. I think about as well as it could have

done. As I say there's one petrol station there. It hasn't run out of fuel. They've kept refuelling

that again and again and again. There are line-ups kilometres long to get through that because it's

such a long drive but it's going okay. There haven't been any major accidents as you can imagine.

All it would take is one. The road would be closed. I don't know what we'd do then. So far so good on

that front. The airlift is a different story. They didn't get the airlift going in time this morning

because of weather issues so they didn't get as many flights out the door as they wanted to.

Now they've got to make up for that tomorrow. They didn't get a flight out from the hospital

today to get all the patients out safely the way they hope. Now they've got to get that done tomorrow

the clock's ticking. I don't think I've had a second yet to think about the potential consequences

here because if things don't turn for the better I might lose my house in a couple of days time

but I haven't really had a chance to stop and think about that. There has never been an evacuation

on this scale in the Northwest Territories. Very very rarely has there been an evacuation on this

scale in Canada. We are facing a critical 24 to 48 hours. Absolutely we are.

Olly Williams. Well as the wildfires in Canada rage on across the Pacific to the west on the

Hawaiian island of Maui the devastation caused by the wildfires there is starting to have more

widespread ramifications. The head of the emergency management agency for the island has resigned

following criticism that the agency did not sound sirens during the wildfires last week

which have left 111 people dead and a thousand missing. Herman and Dyer defended the decision

not to use the sirens because of their usual use to warn of incoming tsunamis and that may

have caused people to run towards the fires. North America correspondent Sophie Long sent

this update from the island. On Wednesday the head of Maui's emergency management agency

defended the decision not to sound those sirens. He said that people could have gone Maui. Now

Maui is a Hawaiian directional term it means into the mountains or inland. He was implying that

people may have been panicked and gone in the wrong direction. Well you'll find very few people

here in Maui who will agree with that and today Thursday still Thursday here in Maui the same

man Herman and Dyer resigned. Now the only reason he gave for that resignation were unspecified

health reasons but of course it comes just 24 hours after he defended that decision

not to sound the sirens and this comes while the search and recovery effort is still ongoing

the search and recovery teams have now recovered 111 bodies only six of those have been identified

so it's still in its early phases really a mobile morgue has arrived in Maui with extra coroners

to help with the painstaking task of identifying those who lost their lives. Sophie Long

Ecuador was once widely regarded as a safe friendly travel destination a stable nation

with a functioning political system. Now it has become the most murderous in South America.

Ecuadorians go to the polls this weekend in the first round of presidential elections.

Last week a candidate was shot dead which sent shockwaves through a nation that was once peaceful

but in the past few years has seen a huge rise in violence because of drug trafficking and organized

crime. Our South America correspondent Katie Watson sent this report from Guayaquil.

Out on patrol in Ecuador's biggest city Guayaquil is home to the country's largest port

it's a key part of the lucrative drugs routes and now the epicenter of violent crime.

Curfew is about to kick in in Durán an industrial part of the city overrun by traffickers.

The police set up checkpoints patting drivers down and using a flashlight to check for drugs

and weapons inside vehicles. Some officers are so scared of reprisals by gangs they cover their

faces with black balaclavas. Captain Victor Quezpas Valencia is head of tonight's operation.

Gangs want to win territory we're dealing with very violent deaths people being found hanging

from bridges or cutting to pieces international criminal organizations are recruiting people here

but they have lots of money there's a total imbalance between organized crime and the police

trying to stop it. Mexican and Colombian cartels have infiltrated local gangs as they vie for

domination of the cocaine trade. Ecuador was hit hard by covid and they've taken advantage of a

country broken by a pandemic and by corrupt politics. We just stopped and the police have

got out and they're doing another operation basically checking cars they go along and I've

just been told that we're at an important area where on the one side there's a particular gang

the latin kings and on the other side gangs including los treneros there are several but

basically this is a turf war along this road. As the campaign draws to a close ahead of this

weekend's elections crime is top of the agenda. The words peace and security are repeated at

candidate Daniel Noboa's closing campaign. Organizers know that will chime with Ecuadorians

still in shock after Fernando Villavicencio's murder last week. We live in an unsafe society

we have to do campaign even with our buddha proof vest so that is a very negative sign.

I think that we need to also work on the social side and problem is that by not giving people

opportunities we're feeding these organizations with with young new members.

But parading through drug trafficking territory carries big risks shortly after our interview

a nearby shootout brought a halt to the rally.

The chaos filmed on social media Daniel Noboa's team left sheltering in the campaign truck.

These elections were called early after the current leader dissolved the national assembly

to avoid an impeachment vote. The chaotic politics in this country makes solving Ecuador's problems

a challenge but the crisis is one that goes far beyond Ecuador's control.

As long as demand for cocaine keeps soaring the cartels will fight for domination and the

body count will keep rising. That was Katie Watson reporting from Ecuador.

Seductress vamp a woman of easy virtue. They're uncomfortable words to say and offensive obviously

to many people and I've said them because they're all words that judges in India have been able to

use up until now in their written judgments and in the courtroom but this is all set to change

as they've been handed a new guidebook which details a list of 40 words to avoid when describing

women. I spoke to our correspondent Divya Arya in Delhi.

One would assume that they would not be part of ordinary life or especially judicial pronouncements

but they have been in fact I've reported extensively on judgments that stereotype

women using such words and this is exactly what the handbook is saying that in some cases

stereotypes about women in terms of their character in terms of how they should behave

especially in the context of sexual violence in the context of domestic violence

those stereotypes are absorbed by judges and lawyers as much as by general society and if

we don't call them out they either end up impacting outcomes that is judgments or even

the way the judgments are pronounced by just reinforcing those stereotypes so it has a glossary

of 40 words as you said and just to give you a flavor some of the recommendations in those

words are like seductress slut whore all of these words should just be replaced by women

or Indian women western women should be replaced by women or women of loose morals

chased women career women should all be replaced by just women because these are all attributes

that are being associated with them another thing that it suggests is things like ravished

should just be replaced by assaulted because it suggests certain aspect of how assault happens

from a perspective of a man in terms of enjoyment not really violence which is the

prison from which it should be viewed similarly the use of the term violated which indicates

that when a woman is raped her honor is violated she's demeaned in a certain way and it says that

violated should again be replaced by neutral terms like assaulted and raped that was Divya

Arya in Delhi now as a good meal often ends with a cheese course so today's podcast ends with a

cheese story parmesan is one of the world's most famous but for it to be truly called parmesan it

has to be made in italy and under certain conditions and now cheese makers in italy

are turning to the world of tech in order to protect their precious cheese brand a new

microchip is being trialled in the north of the country all with the aim of stamping out

a rise in fakes the newsroom's keres maidment reports the process of making parmesan cheese is

a craft that dates back to the middle ages and this technique has been protected ever

since thanks to strict european guidelines these state that a cheese can only be classed as true

parmigiano reggiano if it is made in a specific region of northern italy it's matured for 12 months

and a team of experts have given their seal of approval however this system is being threatened

by fakes which have stormed the market in fact parmesan is one of the most counterfated cheeses

and it's estimated that these knockoffs made two billion dollars in the last year alone a figure

that's not too far off the real version which made just under 2.4 billion so how can you make

sure you're buying the real deal parmesan producers have turned to the world of tech

and are testing a new microchip the same size as a grain of salt it's inserted into the waxy

rand on the outside and consumers will be able to scan and see exactly where their cheeses come from

its placement on the wheel means it's unlikely to be eaten but the chip is food safe and can sit

in stomach acid for weeks without leaking any harmful substances it's thought that these cheesy

chips could pave the way for a whole new form of product verification as the same technology

could be used in livestock, car parts and drug authentication but for now we'll have to wait

and see how the 120,000 chipped parmesan wheels fare in this trial and whether they'll be able to

grate out the fraudsters that was Kerris Maidman and that's all from us for now but before we go

here's Jackie with news of the next happy pot yes in this edition the director determined to

improve the representation of disabled people in film and tv an invitation to brilliant people to

join in a competition to bring light to places without reliable electricity the ukrainian soldier

who became a ballet star after losing both legs in the war the surfers rescued after 36 hours out

at sea and a story of community art and a really good dress all in the happy pod available from

saturday august the 19th and if you want to comment on this podcast all the topics covered in it you

can send us an email the address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk you can also find us on twitter of

course at globalnewspod this edition was mixed by Lewis Alsop and the producer was jack graismark

the editor is Karen Martin i'm nick marz and until next time goodbye

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.