Global News Podcast: The head of the UN says 'climate breakdown has begun'

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

I'm Valerie Sanderson and at 14 hours GMT on Wednesday the 6th of September,

these are our main stories. A catastrophic warning about the future of the planet is

issued by the head of the UN. The US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, is in Ukraine four

months after the start of Kyiv's counteroffensive against Russian forces. Our security correspondent

has been looking into Ukraine's use of drones and artificial intelligence in its war with Russia.

Also in this podcast, Brazil Federal Help is promised after 21 people die in bad weather,

prompting a huge search and rescue effort. Hundreds of people were saved, hundreds of people were

rescued. We begin with this warning. The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, says climate

breakdown has begun. It comes as two studies show this year is likely to be the hottest

in human history. Claire Nullis is from the world meteorological organization, which is warning that

climate and air quality are intrinsically linked. Earth just had its hottest three-month period on

record with unprecedented sea surface temperatures and much extreme weather. Global sea surface

temperatures are unprecedented. Antarctic sea ice is unprecedentedly low for this time of year,

and it was the hottest August on record by a big margin. This record-breaking summer sets the scene

for the fact that we are seeing more extreme heat. We are seeing more heat waves. This does have an

impact on human health and on air quality. Our European regional editor, Danny Eberhard,

has been looking at the details. The findings of this scientific study

is that the last three months, the average has been 16.77 degrees Celsius, which is higher for

that period by some considerable margin, 0.29 degrees Celsius, which in climate terms is huge,

and the deputy director of the Copernicus Service, Samantha Burgess, says that basically

these last three months have been the highest period, she believes, in 120,000 years, which is

broadly speaking much of the time that modern humans have been on this earth, and it's not just

this year. The warmest nine periods for June, July and August have been in the last nine years,

so there's a consistent pattern here. The size is absolutely overwhelming. It relies on billions

of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft, weather stations, and you're seeing it not just

over land, but also on the sea. It also highlights that August has had the highest global average

sea surface temperatures ever, and you're seeing the lowest amount of Antarctic sea ice 12% down

on what it normally is. So we're talking about the changes in the weather. What does it mean for

people? Yeah, basically, as scientists have been warning for a long time, that the more

the climate warms, the more you'll get intense weather events, droughts, heatwaves, flooding,

that sort of thing. So what you've seen is, for example, the massive wildfires we've had in Canada,

where it's the worst wildfire season on record, an area bigger than Tunisia has burnt in Canada this

year. 16.5 million hectares, that's about 165,000 square kilometers, also fires in Algeria, for

example, in North Africa. Recently, we've seen ones in Greece. We saw the fire hurricane that hit

Maori in Hawaii. We've also seen flooding. So you've had China hit by three typhoons in July.

We've had mudslides set off into Jiquistan due to heavy rainfall and also, of course, droughts. So

huge impact not just on people and property, but also agriculture. Any hint of optimism?

Very little, although Guterres, he has been ringing the alarm bells now for a number of years, and he

said, basically, you know, that people need to wake up, they need to be immediate and dramatic

action on cutting greenhouse gases. 17.5 million hectares, that's about 165,000 square kilometers.

Daniel Bahad. The US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, has made a surprise visit to Ukraine to

meet President Zelensky and senior officials there. Speaking at a joint news conference with

Ukraine's foreign minister, he said his visit, four months into Ukraine's counteroffensive

against Russian forces, is to show America's ongoing support.

We've seen good progress in the counteroffensive, which is very hard. We want to make sure that

Ukraine has what it needs not only to succeed in the counteroffensive, but has what it needs

for the long term to make sure that it has a strong deterrent, a strong defense capacity,

so that in the future, aggressions like this don't happen again.

And we're also determined to continue to work with our partners as they build and rebuild

a strong economy, a strong democracy, all of which is necessary to ensure that Ukraine not

only survives, but it thrives in the future. So what kind of assistance will the US give Ukraine?

Our diplomatic correspondent, Paul Adams, is in Kiev. If you bear in mind that the US has already

committed around $43 billion to Ukraine just in security assistance since Russia launched its full

scale invasion last year, what we're going to hear today, we understand, is another billion

in a mixture of security and other assistance. We haven't been told the details, the mix yet,

but it is yet another pledge by the Americans in what has become a very, very constant stream

of pledges of all sorts of assistance to keep Ukraine afloat and fighting as this war goes on.

I think what's interesting about this visit, which is the sixth visit by the Secretary of State

since the war, full scale invasion, happened, is that it comes, it's his first trip since

Ukraine launched its counteroffensive in the South back in June. So I think it's an opportunity

for him to hear directly from the Ukrainians about how that offensive is going. You'll bear in

mind that in recent weeks we've heard quite a bit of criticism from unnamed American officials

about the way the counteroffensive was being managed and how slowly it was going. Well,

in the last week or so we've been hearing signs of progress and so that's definitely an opportunity

for the Ukrainians to tell you the Americans exactly what's going on down in the South.

Paul Adams in Ukraine. And staying in the country after a year and a half of conflict,

it's increasingly clear that technology is playing a central role on the battlefield.

Now, speaking to the BBC, the Ukrainian security service has revealed how it uses

artificial intelligence and drones in a daily high-tech battle with the Russian military,

while also fighting off cyber attacks. Our security correspondent,

Gordon Carrera, reports from Ukraine. In a location we've been asked not to disclose, Anton

is training operators how to use drones. We have a pilot and we have a car driver. The trick is not

learning how to fly the drones, but how to stay alive, since the operators are having to move

closer and closer to the front line. Right now the distance is getting shorter and shorter and

because of enemies jamming systems. Even though the battlefield of Ukraine can sometimes resemble

something out of World War One with artillery pounding trenches, the high-tech battlefield

of drones and cyberspace is vital. We have a number of responsibilities, like field officers,

technical specialists, people who are directly involved in combat on the front lines.

Inside the heavily guarded headquarters of the Ukrainian security service, the SBU,

I sat down with Ilya Vityuk, the head of its cyber department. Undercover teams will manually guide

a kamikaze drone onto surveillance cameras being used by Russia to watch Ukrainian troop movements.

Using artificial intelligence, we penetrate their surveillance cameras and we understand

the movement of the troops and we understand which type of weapons they are about to use on

what direction and that also goes to military and they decide how to act. And there are some other

things, but I cannot reveal it because otherwise we don't want our enemy to know.

Using artificial intelligence in some cases to analyze?

Absolutely. We use artificial intelligence as well, facial recognition, and then we understand who

was exactly guilty in different war crimes conducted by Russian troops.

This is the entire number of cyber incidents.

Viktor Zhora is the man in charge of cyber defense for Ukraine.

In his incident response center where his young staff work, he shows me the scale of Russian

cyber attacks. These are often combined with missile strikes and military operations,

for instance, on Ukraine's energy grid.

One of the major cyber attacks we prevented happened on April 8th in the beginning of the war,

but later on in autumn the aggressors continued to attack our energy objects,

both conventional way and in cyberspace.

Back at the security service, the SBU, Ilya Vityuk's teams are trying to take the fight to

Russia's spy service hackers, hacking into their systems. And in doing this, he argues,

Ukraine is absorbing attacks that would otherwise head towards its allies.

Most of aggressive cyber potential of Russia, it goes here to Ukraine. So if Ukraine and cyber

defense would fall, this whole cyber potential, they would use it somewhere else, whether

in European countries, in states, Great Britain or whatever.

Ukraine may be absorbing Russian attacks for its allies, but it's also teaching them

how to fight a new high-tech war of the future.

Gordon Carrera in Ukraine.

The murder of a 10-year-old girl who was found dead at her home in England last month

has provoked investigations by police forces here in the UK and in Pakistan.

A post-mortem revealed that Sarah Sharif had suffered multiple and extensive injuries.

Her father and stepmother flew to Pakistan with other members of the family the day before her

body was found and has been a search for them ever since. They're still on the run, but they've

now released a video statement the first time we've heard from them since Sarah's death.

Here's the stepmother, Benesh Batul.

There are a couple of things I would like to address. Firstly, I would like to talk about

Sarah. Sarah's death was an incident. Our family in Pakistan are severely affected by all that is

going on. They are harassing my extended family. They have also illegally raided many more of my

family members' homes. We have already approached our lawyer and our lawyer is representing us in

Rawalpindi High Court. The next court hearing is on 19th September 2023. My main concern is that

the Pakistani police will torture or kill us. That is why we have gone into hiding. Lastly,

we are willing to cooperate with the UK authorities and fight our case in court.

Our Pakistan correspondent, Caroline Davis, Tuamumor.

In this video, you have Arfan Sharif, Sarah's father, sitting next to Benesh Batul, her stepmother.

Throughout the course of the video, and it's two minutes 36 long, we don't hear from Arfan Sharif.

We only hear from Benesh Batul, who is reading from a notebook that is in her lap full of what

appears to be written notes. During the course of this video, she mentions Sarah once. She refers

to Sarah's death as an incident. The majority of the video is Benesh Batul alleging various

harassment cases against the Pakistan police, saying that the Pakistan police have been harassing

her family and Arfan Sharif's extended family in the process of trying to find them. So she

alleges that they have been illegally detaining her family members that they've been raiding people's

homes. She even alleges that they've taken jewelry and mobile phones from members of their family.

Now, we have spoken, of course, to the Pakistan police and they have said that these are all baseless

allegations that this is not true. During the course of this video, near the end, Benesh Batul

also says that the reason they are not currently handing themselves in to the Pakistan authorities

is because they are scared, in her words, that they might be tortured and killed. Now, again,

the Pakistan police have said that this is baseless and that they have said that if the

family have any concerns, they should just speak to the courts to provide forms of protection.

I think what's also quite crucial is the timing of this video. During the course of the recording,

Benesh Batul mentions a court decision that was made yesterday morning. So we believe that this

video has been made in the course of the last day. I think crucially important as well is that we are

not able to verify the conditions under which this video was filmed and we are not able to identify

the location of where this video was filmed. Crucially important, of course, because the

family have been in hiding since they left the UK on the 9th of August and the police here in

Pakistan have been searching for them. But what is the major development, of course, from this

video is that during the course of the video, Benesh Batul says that her and the family are

willing to work with UK authorities, in her words, so that they can fight their case.

So do we know what happens next? No. Ultimately, we don't know what the next

stage is. We are in touch with both the UK authorities and with the Pakistan authorities

and we're waiting to hear what happens next. But after nearly a month and in fact it is four weeks

today since Al-Fanjshari, Benesh Batul and Faisal Malik left the UK to come to Pakistan,

at the moment their location is still unknown, the police have not said that they know where

they are, they are still in hiding and so it is fairly interesting that we now have

this first piece of publicly speaking about this situation. Caroline Davis. Now this next story is

making my skin crawl just thinking about it. A cinema chain in France has apologised to customers

who have emerged from seeing a movie with blotchy red skin and bites after falling victim to an

invasion of bedbugs. The UGC chain has admitted the bugs are present in some of its cinemas,

but insists there are no grounds for compensating victims because the insects are currently rife

in France. So how widespread is the problem? Well our correspondent in Paris is Yusuf Erfeld.

Well it's not just in cinemas, it's not just in France. I mean this is a problem across the

developed world. There's been a resurgence in bedbugs, samex, lectularius across developed

countries in the last 20 years to the point where it's becoming, you know, recognised and very

worrying phenomenon. Paris were regularly told about the risks of our homes being

infested by bedbugs. My son's flat was infested by bedbugs and it's a very serious problem.

It's no surprise that cinemas have fallen victim to because bedbugs like the dark, they like places

where people sit down to providing warmth or lie down and that's why, you know, lovely plush

cinema seats are a perfect place for them. Why they're spreading so much recently is probably

to do with wide international travel. It's also to do probably with the banning of dvts and other

insecticides for health reasons for humans which has meant that they're less prone to being eradicated

by insecticides. Yes because they were nearly eliminated weren't they back in the 1950s?

As I understand it that is the case and I mean if you read the literature you'll see you know

that this is a phenomenon right across America, Britain, Australia, Europe. Oddly one of the

things that they think may have been useful in keeping their numbers down in the past was

cockroaches but then cockroaches have been more s eliminated in cities like New York or here

they're much less common and that may be why bedbugs have appeared so one solution may be to

reintroduce cockroaches. I'm sure hotels are going to do that not. What are they going to do though

because obviously this is going to have a presumably an impact on for example tourism. Well it's very

very worrying and it's a sort of unreported scare really. Hotels I think quietly are very worried

about it. It's very very easy to pick them up pick up an infestation. I've certainly been in the

hotel where I've had an infestation in Brussels a few years ago and it's not it's not pleasant.

Now hotels are very very mindful of this home owners are very mindful of this cinema owners

are very mindful of this there are ways they're eradicating them but it's very difficult to do

it and you've got to get in there early. Basically you've got to treat your fabrics and your home or

your cinema with a heat treatment that they fall victims of either very cold or very hot

temperatures but you basically need specialists to do it. Bringing out insecticides merely chases

them into a into a neighbouring apartment. The trouble is you know ordinary people will not

have the equipment needed to to eradicate them. He's go field on bedbugs.

Still to come we're in Bangladesh. Everything every product price hike salt oil vegetable

rice fish chicken everything just almost doubled. Where the cost of living crisis is affecting the

most vulnerable. Unexpected elements is the podcast that sifts through the week's news to

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And uncover the unexpected connections between them. I think now's the time to talk about worms.

Really worms. Absolutely. Unexpected elements from the BBC World Service. Amazing stuff.

Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Ever wondered what the world's wealthiest people

did to get so ridiculously rich. Our podcast good bad billionaire takes one billionaire at a time

and explains exactly how they made their money. And then we decide if they are actually good bad

or just plain wealthy. So if you want to know if Rihanna is as much of a bad gal as she claims or

what Jeff Bezos really did to become the first person in history to pocket a hundred billion

dollars listen to good bad billionaire with me Simon Jack and me zing sing available now wherever

you get your podcasts. Welcome back. One of the European Union's highest courts has dismissed

a claim for damages against the bloc's border agency Frontex by a family of Syrian asylum seekers

who were deported from Greece. Their lawyers are considering an appeal. Bethany Bell has more details.

The Syrian family which included four small children arrived in Greece in October 2016

but 11 days later they were put on a plane to Turkey by Frontex and the Greek authorities

without having been able to apply for asylum. Their lawyers argued that Frontex was accountable.

But the court dismissed that. It said Frontex's task was only to provide technical and operational

support to EU member states. It said EU member states alone were competent to assess return

decisions and examine applications for international protection. Bethany Bell a powerful cyclone has

killed more than 20 people in southern Brazil. Videos show families on the rooftops of their

houses pleading for help as rivers overflow their banks. The governor of Rio Grande de Sul

Eduardo Lete described it as the state's worst ever weather disaster. Hundreds of people were

saved. Hundreds of people were rescued. But unfortunately I've now received information

that 15 bodies have been located in the town of Mosul. This causes us immense pain. It raises the

number of dead to 21 already making it the highest death toll in a weather event in the state of

Rio Grande de Sul. It's winter in Brazil but that part of the world is experiencing warmer

temperatures with unprecedented levels of rainfall this year. So why is this happening?

Professor Francisco Aquino is a climatologist in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil. In this year

we know like everywhere in the world we have much more higher temperatures for our winter and the

atlantic oceans the temperatures much much above of the normal. So it's increased the

cyclogenesis. During the last two decades we are exploring in our laboratory the number and the

intensity of the extra tropical cyclones in the area around the southeast of South America.

We didn't observe an increase of the number of cyclones but we clearly observe an increase in

the intensity of the cyclones. It's been described or called the worst cyclone disaster in Brazil's

history. Looking now ahead is there anything that people in the region in the world can actually do

to prevent or make sure that they have the tools necessary to withstand such kind of events and

disasters? Yes we can say that around the whole solar hemisphere in the same latitudes we observe

the same pattern of events extra tropical cyclones or meteorological events. Unfortunately we talk

about 21-22 deaths in our region in the last three days and by lucky we can say the the

local government and the municipalities are working together since the beginning of the first

alerts. So I suspect we can mitigate much more if we keep improving the meteorological alerts

and try to explain the whole society in our region and nowadays and the next decades this kind of

weather we will start really much more common and more intense. Professor Francisco Aquinos

speaking there to the BBC's Victoria Aonhonda. In Bangladesh thousands of people have taken to

the streets in recent months demanding the government do more to tackle rising food and fuel

prices. The government has blamed high inflation on the war in Ukraine. Rajini Vajranathan reports

from Bangladesh in the last of our series on the global cost of living crisis and its effect on

youngsters. We've driven more than seven hours from the capital Dhaka and we've come to the

village of Uchakandi which is in Jammalpur district. You can see jackfruit growing very

verdant fields where rice is harvested. This is one of the country's poorest areas and we've come

here because we've been told that one in three children here is malnourished. Almost 90 percent

people are dependent on the agriculture. Murshid Ali an NGO worker is taking me round. This is

poverty prone areas there is no option to get any type of profession so they have no option without

agriculture. So that means that when the cost of living crisis drove prices up things like fuel

and fertilizer it really hit an area like this HOD. Yeah if you talk with any people they just say

about everything every product price height like salt oil vegetable rice fish chicken everything

that's almost double. Last year as global oil cost rose due to the war in Ukraine the government

in Bangladesh hiked fuel prices by 50 percent overnight. It was another blow for this area

after the impact of covid and devastating floods which decimated crops. We're just heading to meet

a family who say that this cost of living crisis has meant that they're really struggling to feed

their young children. Riza falls cradling her tiny baby Israq who won't stop crying. The 15 month

old is severely underweight her ribs are protruding. I am hungry my children cry because they are hungry

we can't eat meat or fish anymore even fresh vegetables are so costly what can we do. And

with prices rising she's worried she may have to start begging. The family gets some rice rations

from the government but it's not enough. From the villages to the big cities the cost of living

crisis is hitting hard nearly a third of low income families are unable to afford nutritious food.

A growing economy which has faltered Bangladesh was forced to get help from the IMF this year

as its foreign currency reserves dwindled. We're in the capital Dhaka and we're on the way to

one of the top children's hospitals in the country. We've come to see a healthy eating

workshop here sitting cross-legged in one of the wards are around half a dozen mothers holding

their babies who've all been treated for malnourishment. At the front a nurse holds up a potato telling

them it's a vegetable they should try to include in meals but the price of a potato is now up by 75

percent on last year. Basics which were affordable are now considered luxuries.

Rajini Vajanathan it's been described as one of the greatest mysteries in rock and roll history

Paul McCartney's lost bass guitar. He bought it in Hamburg back in 1961 but it disappeared eight

years later. A global search was launched on Saturday and already the team has received hundreds of

potential leads. Nick Was a Hofner bass expert that's the type of guitar Paul lost is leading the

search. We've had a lot of messages I suppose about 600 have come in over the in the last two or

three days and some of them are very interesting for us. There's always been some rumors we've had

in the past a little bit of information here and there and one or two of the messages actually have

started to confirm what we thought may have happened in the past so that's really useful to us. As I

say we've had one or two theories and ideas put to us. It potentially disappeared from the Beatles

headquarters in London. Somebody stole it it may have disappeared slightly after that we're not

sure it's stolen while it was on the road or something like that. We really have to be stuck

together carefully now before we jump to conclusions I suppose. Nick Was and finally a man has been

arrested in the US after he was caught trying to cross the Atlantic in a vessel resembling a human

powered hamster wheel. Court papers filed in Florida detail a three-day standoff last month

between the Intrepid Voyager and the US Coast Guard. Benedict Kehoe takes up the story. The US

Coast Guard was patrolling about a hundred kilometers off the Georgia coast last month

when 44-year-old Reza Baluchi was spotted in a bizarre giant metal drum being kept afloat with

inflatable red boys on each end and paddles that he was operating inside. When intercepted he said

he was running in his hamster wheel all the way to London. Resisting attempts to thwart his mission

he threatened to kill himself with a 12-inch knife and falsely claimed to have a bomb on

board his contraption. A three-day standoff at sea ensued. Officials determined his craft was

manifestly unsafe and is now facing federal charges. The Iranian-born former athlete has

attempted three other extreme voyages in homemade self-propelled vessels all have ended in failure.

The most spectacular fail was two years ago when he tried a journey from Florida to New York

but washed ashore after just 40 kilometers. His report had said it's all part of efforts to raise

money for charitable causes insisting he'll never give up on his dreams.

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 Chesney Fox Porter, the producer was Tracy Gordon.

The editor as ever is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sonderson. Until next time, bye-bye.

One of the fuels of the future. How can we sow curiosity to harvest ingenuity?

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.