Global News Podcast: UN finds 'dramatic increase' in Myanmar war crimes

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Do you ever feel a bit overwhelmed when you check the news on your phone first thing in the morning?

Whenever I open up my phone, there are just endless warnings of more extreme weather to come.

I'm Hannah, I'm the presenter of a new podcast called What in the World from the BBC World Service.

We're going to be here trying to help you make sense of the world around you

so you can feel a little bit better about what's happening in the world.

You can find What in the World wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

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

I'm Alex Ritzen and at 13 Hours GMT on Tuesday, the 8th of August, these are our main stories.

United Nations investigators say they've gathered evidence of frequent and brazen war crimes by Myanmar's military.

A BBC investigation into widespread sexual abuse and violence by supposed spiritual healers in Sudan and Morocco.

A report from the Amazon as South American leaders gather to try and stop the chopping of the rainforest.

Also in this podcast, July was the world's hottest month ever, according to EU scientists.

A stark warning from the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, to the Ku-Leaders in Niger about Russia's Wagner mercenaries.

Every single place that this group, Wagner Group, has gone, death, destruction and exploitation have followed.

We begin in Myanmar, where UN investigators say there's been a dramatic increase in war crimes and crimes against humanity under the military junta.

We got more details from our Geneva correspondent, Imogen Fuchs.

This is their annual report, looking at the period July 22 to July 23.

They have hundreds, more than 700 sources, including 200 eyewitness accounts.

They have satellite imagery, forensic evidence.

And what they're pointing to particularly are what they say are really indiscriminate attacks on civilians.

From the bombing of entire villages, burning villages.

Mass execution of civilians detained during military operations, as well as mass executions of detained fighters.

And the investigators completely dismiss Myanmar's claim that only opposition fighters are targeted.

This is a purely strictly military operation.

They say that's absolutely not the case.

They should have indeed, possibly, did know that they were und intended to target civilians.

Do reports like this, though, make any difference?

Well, that's a really good question, because traditionally UN human rights reports, their power lies simply in publicity.

They carefully investigate and then they publish their findings.

This rather clunky UN independent investigative mechanism is designed to build cases which can be used in prosecutions.

So the investigators are building case files on individuals leading Myanmar, leaders in its military.

And the evidence that they have can be and indeed is being passed to bodies like the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice.

So there is the potential, at least, for prosecutions for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Which will scare, presumably, the military leaders.

Well, it will certainly tell them that it's going to be a bit risky for them to ever leave Myanmar.

We have seen these prosecutions in the past, but typically, if you look at, for example, the former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic,

he had to lose power and was then delivered to the Hague.

Others you see with the Syria war crimes trials that people who have passed as refugees into Europe are then tried with countries using universal jurisdiction and trying them on their territory.

So it's either lose power or leave Myanmar. We will see Myanmar's military in court, but not before that.

Imogen folks in Geneva.

July saw forest fires across large areas of North America, Southern Europe and Northern Africa,

severe heat waves in South America and China, and typhoons and flooding across much of Asia.

Now it's been confirmed that last month was the hottest ever recorded on Earth.

The European Union's climate observatory Copernicus says the average global temperature was 16.6 Celsius,

a third of a degree higher than the previous record in 2019.

While that may not sound very warm to some people, it is very significant, as our environment correspondent Matt McGraw told me.

You're right, it doesn't sound like an awful lot considering some of the temperatures we've seen around the world in the 30s and 40s over the last couple of weeks.

But you have to remember, this is a global average taken from billions of readings from aircraft, from satellites, from weather stations all over the world,

and it's day and night, it's from valleys and mountains, so it's a very comprehensive view across the world.

And as you say, July this year was the hottest on record, hotter than July 2019 by about a third of a degree,

but the long term average here, and the long term average is only from 1990 to 2020.

It beats the July figure for that period of three decades by three quarters of a degree,

and I think scientists will see that as very significant, that even in the recent decades it's three quarters of a degree warmer than those figures.

And the scientists have repeated last week's warning about ocean temperatures too.

Yes indeed, ocean temperatures last week were peaking around 21 degrees.

The Gulf of Mexico is described as being as warm as a bath, and I think this record from Copernicus also shows that this has been happening for several months now,

including July, we saw that temperatures have been going up since April in the North Atlantic,

that was about one degree warmer than average in July, and all of this is compounded by heat waves at sea,

these big marine heat waves as they're called, threatening species, and also reducing the ability of the oceans to absorb carbon dioxide,

which may in turn make warming worse in the near future.

Warnings are all well and good though, but it does sometimes feel as though scientists with reports like this are just shouting into the abyss.

I think there's a real danger here that both for politicians and for many people that we're becoming enured to record breaking,

becoming used, if you like, to these kind of record breaking temperatures that people are reporting.

And I think that governments and people are also realizing that making the changes to move away from fossil fuels,

which are the main cause of these rising temperatures, is an expensive business and difficult for many people to do in the midst of a global cost to living crisis.

But I think and I fear that over the rest of the year we will see more records and more data as El Nino kicks into gear in the waters of South America,

driving temperatures ever higher.

I think politicians come, the big climate meeting at the end of this year will have to make some very tough decisions,

faced with the reality of climate change as we're experiencing it now.

Matt McGraw.

Climate change and how to tackle it is also at the top of the agenda in the Brazilian city of Belam.

Leaders from South American countries that share the Amazon rainforest, a meeting to discuss measures to save it.

The latest figures show deforestation has fallen by 66% since Brazil's President Lula came to power.

After several years of rising deforestation under far right leader Jair Bolsonaro,

Lula has promised zero deforestation by 2030.

Is that an impossible task?

Our South America correspondent Katie Watson reports from Para, the most deforested state in Brazil.

Delegates are being welcomed with a lively folkloric dance routine as they pass through arrivals at Belang Airport.

President Lula de Silva called this summit to bring together the eight South American nations

who share a slice of the Amazon to find ways of protecting it.

I think the world needs to look at this meeting in Belang as a milestone, he told me last week.

I've participated in several meetings and many times they talk, talk, talk, approve a document and nothing happens.

This meeting's the first great opportunity for people to show the world what we want to do.

Für those on the ground though, it's been a difficult few years.

Hobson Gonçalves lives a 13-hour boat ride from Belang on Ilha da Marujan.

This part of Brazil has been the hardest hit by deforestation.

You have no idea how much pressure there was in our community under the Bolsonaro government.

Landowners circling in the plains, soya farmers wanting to buy the land to deforest it.

But Hobson's community stood firm and they're now being quartered by a newer industry.

Businesses that emit carbon dioxide can buy carbon credits to offset the pollution they create

and those credits can be found in sustainable projects.

But such as the growth of this industry, carbon credit companies operating in Ilha da Marujan

have been accused of harassing people to sign their contracts.

Much of the problems arise because the state is so absent in the Amazon.

Para's Public Prosecutor has since got involved to halt projects that have caused concern.

Prosecutor Eliane Moreira has helped draw up guidelines in what is still an unregulated market.

When the state is on there, it creates a no-man's land where anything can happen.

On the banks of the Amazon River, Hernández Pantoja is hopeful that carbon credits can give him a better future.

He proudly shows off his Asahi in cacao plantations.

The machinery and training were provided for by CarbonExt, a Brazilian carbon credit company

that's received investment funding from Shell.

Just last year we checked out five illegal sawmios from our land.

The community knows that defending their territory from illegal logging is a challenge on their own,

but partnering with a company like CarbonExt with the funds behind it is the best way forward.

We won't support to look after our forests. We don't want to cut down trees anymore.

For CarbonExt, empowering the communities to look after their land is important,

Janaína Dalán is the CEO.

When Global North comes to Global South and say, I have a solution, we're like, really?

Have you been to the Amazon? How do you know what's good for them?

How can you solve that problem? If you've never been there, you don't have your boots on the ground.

People on the ground in the Amazon and those at the summit this week

are determined to make South America's voice heard when it comes to climate change.

Katie Watson.

The world's second biggest economy is having problems.

China has suffered big falls in both exports and imports.

Exports for July were 14.5% down on the year before, the weakest level since February 2020.

As Nick Marsh reports from our Asia Business Hub in Singapore,

China appears to be suffering from the economic version of long COVID.

These figures for trade are actually even worse than economists had anticipated in terms of exports.

It's the weakest data since back in February 2020 when China, of course,

was right in the thick of the pandemic.

Why is this data so bad?

Well, it's mainly to do with China's customers abroad.

They're really struggling with high inflation, high interest rates,

so they're spending less money on Chinese goods.

And if you're a policymaker in Beijing, well, it's difficult to say what you should do about that.

You can't just force other countries to start buying more of your goods.

But there's also more to contend with.

If you look at the spending within China, that's also looking not very encouraging at the moment.

Tomorrow we're expecting some more figures to be coming out,

which will probably show deflation, prices actually going down in China.

That's a bit more difficult to explain,

but there are some people who think that China's zero COVID policy went on for so long.

That customers just aren't ready to splurge post-pandemic like they did in Europe,

like they did in the United States.

So you've got problems outside of China,

people not ready to spend on Chinese goods,

and within China as well.

Nick Marsh.

If you use your laptop in public,

you might want to be careful about who might be listening in.

Researchers in Britain have shown it's possible to work out what you're typing

by recording the sound of tapping on your keyboard

and then putting it through an AI model.

The paper by researchers from Durham, Surrey and Royal Holloway Universities

was published at the European Symposium on Security and Privacy.

My colleague Oliver Conway spoke to the lead author Joshua Harrison.

This paper was a proof of concept,

in which we tried to show the possibility of a machine learning model

at recognising which key is being pressed,

purely based off the sound recorded from just an iPhone sat nearby on a table.

No further away than you might get to someone sat next to a coffee shop.

We recorded a big amount of key presses on this laptop.

Then we filtered them through this machine learning model

and the machine learning model broke a good amount of records

in terms of the accuracy of the predictions that it made.

When you gave it a sound, how well could it predict that sound's key

from the recordings that we made.

So each key has a different sound

and is able to work out from the sound which key you've hit.

Yes, so if you think of a drum,

the different areas that you hit on the drum will make different noises

and there's not so dissimilar a system going on here

where you have in this case a laptop with four feet on the table

and where you hit on that kind of plate,

that metal plate with four feet on the table

is going to change the sound similar to that drum.

And so these little variations in the sounds that are produced

when you hit those keys can be picked up with something like,

in our case, a deep learning algorithm.

So would this only work on, say, a traditional keyboard

rather than if you're tapping on your smartphone, for example?

Our model specifically works on the model of laptop that we tested.

But in terms of touch screens specifically,

these have been found to be vulnerable to using the microphone in the device.

So, for example, if we were on FaceTime

and you were typing on your phone while we were on FaceTime,

I'm listening to those taps through the microphones in your device.

And those in different papers that we have cited,

those papers have found that these touch screens are vulnerable

to a similar kind of attack where the different bumps

and sounds coming from you typing on that touch screen

are detectable within the microphones of your phone.

But in your experiment you found that if someone was typing away

and you had this computer listening in,

it would more or less know what is being typed.

So the way our experiment works

is you take a bunch of random recordings of these keystrokes

and, yeah, given that bunch of random data,

it was able to predict 95% of those keys.

What we're trying to show with this paper or what this paper does show

is that specifically machine learning is provably quite good at this,

it's better than other models that have been used in the past.

And so the likelihood of someone being able to exploit these flaws,

the flaws being the sound a keyboard makes,

that likelihood does go up with this paper showing that progress.

Software engineer Joshua Harrison.

Still to come in the Global News Podcast.

A few moments before the Cortège passed,

there was a massive sing-along.

People broke out into their own version of nothing compares to you.

An update from Ireland on the funeral of singer Sinead O'Connor.

Walking out into that stadium and everybody's there.

There's just such a big crowd and so much family and noise.

I remember growing up and watching the Olympics

and realizing that one day this could be me.

I felt that the whole world recognizes.

To win was something I had never imagined.

A podcast about the incredible journeys of Olympic and Paralympic Athletes.

On the podium from the BBC World Service.

Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Schieze, volles Kulturprogramm, so wie Parks, Gärten und Seen.

Buche jetzt eine Berlin-Reise.

Mehr Infos auf visitbellin.de slash World of Berlin.

Niger was a key ally of the United States

until last month's coup, the seventh military takeover

in West and Central Africa since 2020.

It comes as the Russian mercenary group Wagner stepped up activity in the region.

They were supporting several African governments.

The United States sent a top official, Victoria Nuland to Niger

to try to pave the way for a restoration of democracy.

But after talks she said no progress had been made.

The BBC's Wahiga Moira spoke to her boss,

the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken,

and began by asking him if the sight of Russian flags

on the streets of the capital Niami was of concern to the US.

For sure we have concerns when we see something like the Wagner Group

possibly manifesting itself in different parts of the Sahel.

And here's why we're concerned.

Because every single place that this group, Wagner Group, has gone,

death, destruction and exploitation have followed.

Insecurity has gone up, not down.

It hasn't been a response to the needs of the countries in question

for greater security.

And I think what continues to happen in Niger

was not instigated by Russia or by Wagner,

but to the extent that they try to take advantage of it

and we see a repeat of what's happened in other countries

where they brought nothing but bad things in their wake,

that wouldn't be good.

With the troops of the US stay in Niger if the coup holds?

Well, I don't want to get into hypotheticals

or get ahead of what's happening in Niger.

I strongly support the work that Iqawas is doing

to try to help restore the constitutional order.

In Niger, I've been in close touch with President Bazoum,

with many colleagues in the region,

including the Nigerian President Tanubu,

colleagues at the African Union.

And it's very important that that constitutional order be restored.

And right now I think Iqawas is playing a very important role

in moving the country back in that direction.

Herr Secretary of State,

for those who support the halting of the Black Sea Grain Deal

or are really look at it,

they argue that the West is mainly concerned

about Russia's growing influence over Africa.

And the issue isn't just about food supply,

bearing in mind only 3% of Ukraine's grain

actually got to the African continent.

Do you have any views on that?

Well, again, the majority of the grain

that was getting out through the Black Sea Grain Initiative,

more than 50% was going to developing countries,

including many in Africa.

Two thirds of the wheat going to developing countries,

including countries in Africa.

But meanwhile, what's so important is this,

resolving this situation,

Russia getting back into the Black Sea Grain Initiative,

would be the quickest thing anyone could do

to actually effectively address food insecurity.

The US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken.

Spiritual healing is very popular in many countries in the Middle East,

but there have been concerns as the practice is not regulated.

Now, a BBC News-Arabic investigation

has uncovered allegations of widespread sexual abuse

and coercion by spiritual healers in Sudan and Morocco.

80 women accused healers of offences including rape,

sexual assault and manipulating them into sex.

Hanan Razek visited Sudan before the recent conflict

and sent this report, which contains distressing details

of sexual abuse and violence.

At this center in Khartoum,

women believe that spiritual healing can cure illnesses

and solve emotional problems by expelling evil spirits.

Shaykhah Fatima is one of the few women who works as a healer.

The practice is unregulated.

She says many of the women she sees have been sexually exploited.

Many women told us that part of the treatment

involved the Shaykh or healer, touching part of their body.

Out of 100 women, undoubtedly a quarter of them

would have been sexually abused.

One of the women Shaykhah Fatima has helped is Sousa.

He said he would have sex with me

and use the resulting body fluids to concoct a potion

I should feed to my husband.

He said this is the treatment.

In the first investigation of its kind,

we spent months verifying stories of abuse.

50 women in Sudan accused 40 healers of harassment, assault

and manipulating them into sex.

Afaf is one of those women.

She went to a healer called Shaykh Ibrahim

to help with her son's illness.

I saw his shadow behind me, then he groped me.

When he approached me, I swore to God

I would scream and alert his children.

I took his hands off me and I left.

After hearing accounts from two other women,

we sent an undercover journalist to visit the healer.

While we were speaking, I suddenly found him next to me.

I'll do prayers and recite 5,000 times over prayer beads.

He put his hand on my thigh, I pushed his hand away.

Then he put his hand on my stomach

and pushed one of his fingers all the way down.

With that touch, I got up and left.

We contacted Shaykh Ibrahim to put our allegations to him

and he agreed to be interviewed.

I asked him if he had ever tried to have sex with women

who had come for treatment.

Only treatment, I only do treatment.

What about our evidence that he had sexually assaulted women,

including our own journalist?

No, no, that didn't happen.

God will hold her accountable for that.

Then he abruptly ended the interview.

We brought our evidence to Alaydina Buzaid,

an advisor to the Islamic Affairs Ministry.

It's become a profession for those who have no profession.

We don't deny there are sexual anomalies.

We undoubtedly support treatment with the Quran,

but in the current form, it's chaos.

With no help coming from the authorities for women like Afaf,

she has her own advice.

I tell them to forget about the healer

and to solve their problems in another way.

That report by Hanan Razek.

In 1959, the Soviet Union made history

with the first uncrewed landing on the moon.

Soviet Russia scores a dramatic victory in the exploration of space

with the launching of the first rocket through the moon.

An historic scientific feat,

bearing the Soviet code of arms and hammer and sickle penance,

it traveled 35 hours through space.

More than 60 years later, Russia is hoping to return to the moon.

The Lunar 25 Lander, which is due to launch on Friday,

aims to take and analyze soil samples

and conduct long-term scientific research.

Originally, the project was to have been a joint venture

with the European Space Agency,

but all cooperation with Moscow

was ended following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Thomas Horazenski works for the European Space Policy Institute.

Gary O'Donoghue asked him why Russia was returning to the lunar surface now.

I would say it's not the program or the mission itself

is not really a new development,

as often in the space sector,

the missions, especially missions that are really ambitious

that go maybe to other celestial bodies,

take years to emerge from the initial idea

to the actual launch of the mission.

The suppose going to the moon is in space terms

a bit of a sort of muscle flex, isn't it?

It's what countries want to do

when they want to prove their space credentials.

I would argue that it is becoming such again.

For maybe 10, 20, 30 years, if you look to the past,

we haven't really seen so much activity.

I mean, we can say that it has been done in the past,

like with the US, with the Soviets,

but it's still not that easy to go to the moon

to softly land there.

And there has still been some unsuccessful tries,

for instance with some of the recent missions,

like the Israeli mission

or the recent private landing mission

by the ice-space company.

But yes, you're right in the sense of,

it has sort of become again kind of a matter of prestige.

The technological advancements in the sector

driven down the cost of accessing space

or flying to space

or purchasing space technologies,

which basically opens up the possibilities of such ambitious

and costly endeavors also to some smaller actors.

And yes, indeed, we are seeing that more countries

and especially smaller countries are now going back to the moon.

It's an interesting decision for them to press ahead with this

at a time where money must be short politically inside Russia

with them fighting the war in Ukraine and all that.

Is the space program in Russia well funded?

In the past maybe 10, 15 years

what has really kind of surfaced

in terms of space news or space policy

from Russia has not really been good news.

There has been a lot of indications

of a very strong presence of corruption

in the Russian Space Agency.

It has changed its structure several times.

The leaderships have changed.

This is clearly a signal that something is not right

in the Russian space program.

The Russian Space Program have not been able to kind of sustain

the levels of investments when you compare to the GDP

or to the overall public expenditure

as it has been during the Soviet era.

And more recently there have been again some budget cuts.

But what we have clearly seen is that the achievements

that the Soviet Union has been successful in achieving in the past

Russia has not been able to repeat it in the past few years.

And I think that is really signaling

that the Russian Space Program has not been able to sustain

the excellence compared to the Soviet program in the Cold War.

Thomas Ruzenski from the European Space Policy Institute.

The Vakita porpus found on Mexico's Pacific Coast

is on the verge of extinction with only around 10 animals still surviving.

The Vakita is the smallest of all the porpuses

similar to dolphins but with shorter beaks and more rounded bodies.

Now the International Wailing Commission

has issued the first extinction alert in its 70-year history

to one of the danger facing the Vakita.

I spoke to our science correspondent Helen Briggs.

The main problem for the Vakita is entanglement in Gilnets.

So these are these flat fishing nets

suspended vertically in the water.

Now fishing with Gilnets has been banned in Mexico

but illegal Gilnets fishing goes on

and that's driven by the high prices poachers can get

for an endangered fish called the Totober

prized for its swim bladder in Chinese medicine

and sold for vast profits on the black market.

So there are efforts to clamp down on illegal Gilnets fishing.

Last year for example the Mexican Navy placed concrete blocks

in an area to try and stop this Gilnets fishing

and increased enforcement efforts

but there are questions over whether enough is being done

and diplomatic tensions over this between the US and Mexico

and also concerns by CITES,

the body that regulates trade in endangered species.

Poachers notoriously tend to care very little about issues like this.

Are there any reasons to think that the Vakita porpus

isn't going to be gone within a fairly short time?

This message from the IWC,

the International Wailing Commission

does speak of a grim future for this creature

but it says it's speaking out now

because it believes extinction is not yet inevitable

so there is a glimmer of hope

and scientists a few years back did actually do some DNA testing

on samples of these porpoises

and they reckon that actually there is enough

genetic diversity in this population

even though it's down to 10.

If you were to be able to stop this fishing

and the population were able to recover naturally

there's no reason why it couldn't bounce back

but increasing concerns about whales, dolphins, porpoises,

the Citation and the IWC acting now

to highlight some of these extinction threats

and I think we're likely to see more of these warnings from the IWC.

Helen Briggs

Ireland has been saying farewell to the singer

Sinead O'Connor on the day she was buried.

The streets of the town of Bray were filled with crowds

paying their respects.

Our reporter Sarah Gurvin was among them.

Despite her international stardom

Sinead O'Connor was part of the community in this seaside town

for 15 years.

Today that community turned out to mourn, celebrate and honour her

as a singer and as an activist.

The thousands of fans who lined the route of her final journey

sang and danced as her greatest hits blasted out from a van

decked in floors and pride flags.

As her funeral court hedge passed by her former home

they fell silent.

But just for a moment before applause broke out.

After that a private burial.

At the end of a life lived for so many years

in the public gaze.

Sarah Gurvin

This edition was mixed by Chris Ablakwa

and the producer was Anna Murphy.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Alex Ritzen. Until next time, goodbye.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.