Global News Podcast - Commonwealth leaders to defy UK over slavery

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

Commonwealth leaders to defy UK and discuss reparations for slavery. Also: Polar bears face new threats due to rising temperatures, and Italian politician sparks row by praising WWII soldiers as heroes.

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising. Hello, I'm Sumi Somos-Gandha from the Global Story Podcast where we're looking at America and immigration. Illegal immigration has made the southern border a lightning rod for fiery political debate. How is that shaping the upcoming election and how might the outcome impact America's neighbors to the south?

The Global Story brings you unique perspectives from BBC journalists around the world. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles and at 13Hours GMT on Thursday 24th October. These are our main stories. Leaders of Commonwealth countries are expected to defy Britain at their summit in Samoa and agree to look at ways to secure reparations from London for historical slavery.

A senior member of the Italian government has been criticised for praising the country's soldiers who fought alongside the Nazis in the Second World War. More than 30,000 factory workers at Boeing have rejected a new wage offer. Also in this podcast, researchers say polar bears face a greater risk of disease than they did 30 years ago. There's potential that pathogens could be an additional stressor for polar bears that could impact their health. Rubbish carried by a balloon sent from North Korea, has landed in and around the presidential

compound in South Korea. We begin this podcast in the Pacific nation of Samoa, where dozens of political leaders have gathered for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. A number of mostly Caribbean nations have raised the issue of securing reparations from London for historical slavery, including the Foreign Minister of the Bahamas, Frederick Mitchell. There appears to be even a reluctance to have the conversation start. Many of the institutions in the UK have already conceded the point of apology. The British government isn't quite there, but at this time the discussion needs to be had about the history of this and the ill effects of what happened

After slavery was abolished which continued to affect our societies today Britain was one of the major slave trading nations a UK government spokesman said Reparations were not on the agenda and would not be paid Political editor Chris Mason who's at the meeting in Samoa, told me what the draft communique includes. There is a reference in it, a couple of paragraphs long, to the whole question of reparations. The argument made by some countries in this context, disproportionately Caribbean countries that are members of the Commonwealth, around a desire to see compensation for the impacts of slavery. They feel there has been a long-standing

historical injustice, that it is the duty of countries like the UK to firstly acknowledge with an apology and then secondly to acknowledge with compensation. Now the argument that comes from the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, we were talking to him on the 28-hour plane journey from the UK to here in the South Pacific. His argument is that the British government's position has not changed, in other words it's the same as it was under Conservative leadership prior to the UK general election in July. There is no desire to say sorry, nor is there any desire to offer compensation and instead, as the British government sees it a desire to focus on forward-looking questions around for instance the impacts of

climate change rather than getting bogged down in a conversation about the past. So how is this likely to play out it's going to be embarrassing for the UK government particularly at a time when the Commonwealth is seen as a way of projecting the UK to the world, particularly post-Brexit? Yeah, it's an intriguing collection of countries, the Commonwealth. You've got 50 odd countries, about 2.5 billion people in those countries, members scattered all over the place on every continent, rich and poor, big and small, where the historical underpinning of the organisation

is the British Empire. The vast majority of Commonwealth members were part of that Empire. Not all, because some countries have volunteered to join since then. And yes, it is an arm, if you like, or an aspect of British foreign policy, a collection of countries of which the UK is a significant player. I detect from conversations I've had that there's an irritation from some of those Caribbean countries that the UK's dismissal of their request and the tone of their dismissal

has been particularly irritating. They weren't necessarily expecting some grand movement or gesture in and of this meeting. But I think it points to the fact that this issue is not going away. Those who make the argument think that it's time has come and they're determined to carry on pressing the case. So as far as we know the UK won't have the power to squash this communique completely?

No, no it won't. It's still a conversation that's ongoing so these things are drafted in advance by diplomats because realistically when leaders get together for a handful of days they haven't got time between themselves to couple together quite an extensive document on which they can all agree. It's quite possible, in fact easy, for leaders to raise what they choose to raise rather than being necessarily restricted by a formal agenda beyond which they can't really move. So it looks like this topic is going to feature. And of course, don't forget there's domestic politics

playing into all of this with every country very conscious about how their argument plays back home. Chris Mason. The United Nations says nine out of 10 people in Gaza have been displaced by the conflict there. That's 1.8 million in total. That along with a lack of access and the continuing Israeli bombardments has caused the United Nations to postpone an emergency polio vaccination campaign in northern

Gaza. As the healthcare system continues to deteriorate treating people injured by the bombardments is becoming very difficult indeed. Dr Nizam Mahmoud is a British surgeon who's recently returned from Gaza and he spoke to the BBC's by the bombardments is becoming very difficult indeed. Dr Nizam Mahmoud is a British surgeon who's recently returned from Gaza and he spoke to the BBC's James Copnell about his experiences there. The case that I remember most often now I think is a seven-year-old called Amar who was living in a tent with his mother and a few other relatives, like so many other people are in the so-called Green Zone in southern Gaza.

A bomb was dropped. After the blast, he described a drone coming down, which then shot him. It hovered over him, took its time and then fired pellets into him. When he came to us, he had life-threatening injuries with his stomach coming out of his chest. He'd injured his liver, his spleen, his bow, and we had to operate on him. Luckily he survived, but he was one of the lucky ones. So many other children didn't survive and indeed most of the casualties that we treated were women and children. Were you treating a lot of people every day?

Yeah, I was working in NASA hospital which was pretty much the last hospital in the whole of Gaza with any significant facilities and even those facilities were very limited. We would get one to two mass casualty events every day. By comparison, if you take a major trauma centre in the UK, they might expect one or two a year. The hospital I think is in Hanyunis, more towards the south of Gaza, but we're talking a lot at the moment about northern Gaza. Have you had word from colleagues, contacts there about the situation, particularly in regards to food, but also I suppose the medical aspect there? A large number of the people that I was working with in NASA Hospital were originally from the north and still have relatives there, so I hear a little bit about the situation.

I can't imagine what it must be like for the people in northern Gaza because all the aid workers said that they'd never seen anything as bad as this in any conflict area and that certainly applies to me. I've worked in a number of conflict zones. There is no effective medical care really at all. Food is being restricted, water is not available. In the south we experience people living in tents, the side of the road sometimes in the middle of the road with no sanitation, no running water. All of that was difficult. One question perhaps on polio. We've heard about the risks of it spreading in war zones. I believe a mass polio vaccination campaign has been halted in northern Gaza. Is that one of the perhaps more longer term

concerns about what's happening in Gaza? If there's a polio epidemic, it will obviously devastate the lives of so many children, not just in Gaza, but I think the reason that the Israeli army has allowed vaccinations to happen is because it's concerned that it could then spread into Israel itself. Dr Nizam Mahmoud. The Israeli military says it struck several Hezbollah weapons production facilities on Wednesday night in southern Beirut. The ongoing bombardments are forcing more and more people to flee their homes and the country is struggling to deal with the huge numbers displaced. Most of the bombing has been in Shia Muslim areas as our correspondent Jonathan Head reports. This is causing tension

between the displaced Shia and other communities. of the They'd sought shelter in Beirut's Hamra district. They hurled bins, boxes, anything they can at the riot police. Lebanon is absorbing hundreds of thousands of newly displaced people, and this risks reopening old sectarian divisions. I've come to Hamra, to the place where the clash with the police happened. Lots of people just standing around, looking very jumpy and nervous. And I'm outside the building where dozens of Shia families displaced by the bombing moved a few weeks ago. It was empty then.

Now they've been given just 48 hours to leave. So this is a very bare entrance hall to what must have been quite a grand building, but it's very run down now and it's packed full of people. So we're just looking into one of the rooms in this building. Yes, you want a single room? Yes, very small for you. How many people here? Eight people. But there's not much space, it's very crowded. How long have you been here? 20 days. 17 days. Hello. One man, a father of five from Beirut's southern Dahya neighborhood, says the landlady wants them out because they are Shia.

If she accepts to pay rent, we already can pay rent, but she didn't accept. She wants you to go. She wants to go. It's not only about the building, it's something else. I think, and this is my opinion, okay, she wants to kill the Muslim here. The Shia? Exactly. Sarah Al Sharif has been helping IDPs in the northern city of Tripoli,

which has been taking in large numbers of them. This street seller said he worries that some of the incomers might be affiliated with a political organisation by which he meant his buller, making them a possible target of an Israeli airstrike. But he didn't want to say more. He was fearful of being overheard. overheard some of the shops though were pleased with the extra customers they were getting it's not been a problem it's increase in business business has been good lately all the displaced people are buying new clothes new stuff but it's also tragic what happened it's not good it's not good either for the father of five, now facing an eviction order from the building

he's made his home for the past three weeks. What we can do. And now, today, we have 48 hours to leave it. And where will you go? I don't know. Maybe I will back to Dahi. That's not safe. If I will die like that, I will die like man. I will back to my home. That Shia refugee was ending the report by Jonathan Head in Beirut. A senior Italian politician has praised soldiers from the country's Second World War Armed

Forces saying they had sacrificed their lives for freedom. Paolo Chiesa represents the governing Brothers of Italy party which has its origins in the country's wartime fascists. Our Europe regional editor Paul Moss reports. This really doesn't go with the image Italy's Prime Minister wants to project. Georgia Maloney has been at pains to distance herself from her party's wartime fascist roots. But that war saw Italian soldiers fight alongside Nazi Germany's army at the Battle of El Alamein in North Africa.

And on the anniversary of that battle, her close colleague Paola Chiesa described it as heroic, saying the heart of the nation was there. Critics were quick to condemn her comments, one saying it was incomprehensible to argue Italy's soldiers had died for freedom. Paul Moss. There is perhaps no more uncomfortable image of the warming Arctic than seeing a polar bear balancing on a small melting block of ice. But the changing climate means they're not only forced to spend more time in the water but also on dry land. And new research says this is leading to the risk of diseases that they may not have encountered 30 years ago. Dr. Karen Rode is a wildlife

biologist from the US Geological Survey and is the study's lead researcher. I think our study shows that there's potential that pathogens could be an additional stressor for polar bears that could impact their health. I think the biggest concern for polar bears, including this population specifically, is loss of their sea ice habitat and continued loss of their sea ice habitat. Our science correspondent, Victoria Gill, told us more about the research. It's an amazing set of data that was actually gathered. It's a group from the US Geological Our science correspondent, Victoria Gill, told us more about the research. It's an amazing set of data that was actually gathered. It's a group from the US Geological Survey that do health checks on polar bears. So it's very intensive. They go out in the

high Arctic. They're looking in the Chukchi Sea, which is between Alaska and Russia. This is actually a really stable population in the very cold high Arctic where the effects of climate change aren't playing out quite so quickly. But they gathered this data 30 years ago doing these health checks on sedated polar bears. And they've basically gone back and repeated it three decades later. And they've looked at 30-year-old blood samples and blood samples today and screened them for pathogens, for parasites, viruses and bacteria. And they looked at six different pathogens that are mainly associated with land-based animals, so livestock diseases and wildlife diseases. The headline finding

is that they're much more common today in polar bears than they were just 30 years ago. So as the sea ice has diminished with climate change, the disease landscape is changing. So they don't know if the polar bears got sick, they can only tell from their blood whether they've encountered that pathogen. They've had it at some point but it's showing that things are changing in the Arctic in terms of disease. So what we're seeing is perhaps the polar bears having had these pathogens they've survived clearly from having that pathogen so it hasn't killed them but the concern is that the sheer number of pathogens coming in there could have really bad impacts in the future.

Yeah, and that they're different pathogens as well. So as their lifestyle kind of changes, so there's good evidence that even in the very high Arctic, these polar bears are spending more time on land because there's longer of an ice-free or very kind of low ice summer. So they have to come on land and on land they can't really hunt, they forage but they can't get enough calories so their diets changing, their environments changing and with that the disease landscape, how it shifts, what prey species they're eating and what they're encountering in their environment and how they could catch disease is changing too. Interestingly I was looking online before we came on

air, the number of polar bears has actually increased since the 1960s, up from about 12,000 to 30, but that really does belie the underlying threats for polar bears. Yeah, the main threat to polar bears is climate change and is the diminishing sea ice. The numbers are really interesting because it depends where you look in the world in terms of what is happening to the population,

but certainly the future and what is playing out in the Arctic and the measurable reduction in sea ice in just recent decades is having an impact and is forecast to have an impact going forward. So we're seeing that play out in this population now. Victoria Gill. Still to come in this podcast. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. The Hollywood journey is an Alice in Wonderland kind of journey. You go up, you go down, you go sideways. That's just the way it is.

Ahead of the opening of a major career retrospective in London, the filmmaker Tim Burton talks to us about his work. Hello, I'm Sumi Somesganda from the Global Story Podcast, where we're looking at America and immigration. Illegal immigration has made the southern border a lightning rod for fiery political debate. How is that shaping the upcoming election? And how might the outcome impact America's neighbors to the south? The Global Story brings you unique perspectives from BBC journalists around the world.

Find us wherever you get your podcasts. North Korea has sent another wave of balloons filled with rubbish into the South. For the first time, the balloons carried propaganda attacking the President and the First Lady. Pyongyang has sent thousands of balloons since May in response to South Korean activists who fly propaganda leaflets into the North. The contents from some of these latest balloons have landed in the presidential compound in downtown Seoul. Our Seoul correspondent, Jean Mackenzie, has the details. Pyongyang has now sent dozens of waves of these balloons over to South Korea, filled with rubbish.

But the contents of today's balloons were different. They carried leaflets criticising South Korea's president and his wife, the First Lady, calling him a thug and accusing her of extravagant spending. One of the balloons burst over the presidential compound in Seoul, scattering the leaflets across it. This latest launch follows claims by North Korea that the South Korean military used drones to drop leaflets over Pyongyang, which criticised Kim Jong-un and his daughter.

The plane maker Boeing has been facing problems on several fronts. On Wednesday, the company reported a multi-billion dollar quarterly loss. And then a few hours later, the people who billed the planes rejected a new contract that would have ended a strike by more than 30,000 of them. I voted no and I'm feeling like they're continually trying to give us the bare minimum. And it's ridiculous. We all have families to feed. I'm not really liking it so far. I mean, there's some things that got better,

like the wage increase. And that's really it, honestly. I still voted to reject the contract, just because I feel like I would like a larger wage increase. I think the way they have it set up to get 12% then 8% over the course of four years is kind of dumb. I think we have the upper hand on Boeing and it's good to just keep looking for something better. I asked our business correspondent Theo Leggett how much of a problem this is for Boeing. It's very serious for Boeing now. This strike has been going on for the best part of six

weeks and it affects 33,000 workers, mainly in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Now that's where Boeing has some of its most important plants, Renton where they make the 737 MAX and at Everett where they make the 777. So every day that this strike goes on is costing the company a lot of money. And this was the second version of the contract to be rejected. It promised a 35% pay increase for workers over four years, a big ratification bonus, a one-off bonus of $7,000 if they signed up to it, and improved retirement packages. But what Boeing is fighting against here is years and years of built-up resentment among the workforce, who, when Boeing's management were in a position of strength, saw their terms and conditions eroded.

And now it's very different. Boeing is facing worker shortages, it's fighting battles on multiple fronts. The last thing it needs is a battle with some of its most important workers. And therefore those workers are now in a position of strength and they're using that strength. And Boeing is in a political financial weakness. I mentioned those quarterly losses. What's that down to? The losses are across the board.

So the defence business has been losing quite a lot of money, around $2 billion in the last three months. The commercial side of the business losing four billion dollars. Now some of that is one-off charges due to specific problems with specific programs. But what we're also looking at here is the rate at which Boeing is burning through cash. And obviously if you're a plane maker the way you bring cash in is by delivering planes. Boeing cannot deliver planes at the moment. It can deliver the 787 because that's made it a different plant in South Carolina, but it can't deliver its best-selling 737 MAX, or at least those deliveries are going to dry up as the completed planes move out of the factory.

So it's not bringing in cash, it's burning through cash, and the only way to deal with that really is to go to your shareholders and say, give us more money, or to borrow more, and Boeing's trying to do both at the moment. But it already has 57 billion dollars worth of debt. Most of it accrued since 2019. So this is a debt ridden company, debt has to be serviced, that costs you money and it's not building planes and fundamentally if an aircraft company isn't building planes it's in trouble and if Boeing's in trouble so is a huge network of suppliers as well because Boeing's tentacles

feed out into the wider US economy and a lot of the suppliers are now feeling the pinch as well. Theo Leggett. Football is one of Britain's most lucrative and influential products and it's potentially about to become a lot more regulated with new government intervention. The football governance bill would change the financing and the culture of clubs. Our reporter David Lewis told me more. Yes, football is one huge export.

The game was invented here and now the top league of English football is watched and loved by supporters in the UK and overseas. An incredible 1.87 billion people follow the English Premier League worldwide. But as it becomes bigger and bigger business, fans have felt sidelined, watching on forlorn as their clubs switch stadiums, jack up ticket prices, update long-held logos, even – and this is too much to bear for some of us football fans – changing club colours. Sacrilege. And now politicians are stepping in.

Their aim is to hand more power to club fans, not just owners and shareholders. The Football Governance Bill is being presented to Parliament today. The government believes it will steady club finances too, as well as improve club equality and diversity. The regulator is also expected to have powers to distribute more money from the muscle of the Premier League to the lower tiers. And the figures are eye watering. Global Investments saw the EPL generate record revenues of almost 8 billion dollars last year

but down the food chain it's not all massive paydays and sold out stadiums. Lisa Nandy is the Culture Secretary and she outlined what practical steps this proposal will take. The bill will enable the independent regulator to take action, to take much tougher measures, including imposing licensing conditions if clubs aren't compliant. The bill doesn't propose that fans have a veto over issues, it proposes that they must be part of the conversation and there are different ways that different clubs choose to engage their fans but what this makes clear is that they must do so or face consequences to put fans right back at the heart of their clubs because fans are the biggest assets that football clubs have.

It was Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary. Not everyone is happy with this idea though. That's right. This new legislation would impact clubs in the top five tiers of the game. And the big beasts of the Premier League are concerned about excessive financial redistribution to lower league teams. Claire Sumner is Policy Chief and Social Impact Officer at the Premier League. She spoke to the BBC. I think it goes to the core of the financial regulation, which is based on banking style, quite rigid regulation, which if it's sort of applied equally to all 116 clubs, could really damage the competitiveness of the Premier League. And it's the competitiveness of the Premier League that's so important because that's what drives a 20 club competition. Fans get excited because they don't know who's going to win. And I think that's really, really

important. And then the other element, which is an unprecedented intervention potentially, into the distribution arrangements from the Premier League to the Championship, which are currently in place and actually one of the most generous settlements in football. Well, Rick Parry, chairman of the English Football League, those are the three tiers below the Premier League, said those clubs welcome the new bill. He said, we believe it's been framed in a way that will enable the new regulator to protect and achieve the sustainability of clubs across the entire football pyramid. David Lewis, the Ping Pong Parkinson World Championships is an annual table tennis competition that brings

together people with Parkinson's disease from around the world. Gillian Lacey-Solomar, a former BBC journalist, has just won a gold medal in the latest single tournament. She also co-presents the Movers and Shakers podcast about life with Parkinson's. Gillian spoke to Emma Barnett about the benefits of the sport. Not only was I not a ping pong player, I'm not sporty at all. And the irony of course is that if I were able-bodied still I'd never have won anything at all. But the very best thing about it all was the effect it had on my health. It was amazing. I mean the only disease modifying thing out there is exercise and it has a specific sort of exercise. Exercise which combines mind and body, which means that you have to be thinking at the

same time about something else, preferably as your body is charging around. So ping-pong does exactly that because you're running around the table and at the same time you're trying to strategize, thinking if I put it at the back are they less likely to get it, then will they put it at my front etc. So you're constantly thinking and it works works wonders. It really does. I mean, one of the things that goes is parallel processing, the ability to do two things at the same time. And I've got it back. I mean, it may only be temporary, but I have got it back for now. And did that happen while you were playing? Is that what you realized? Or it then goes into your everyday life?

Do you know, I don't know the answer to that yet, because it did happen while I was playing, but I've become completely obsessed with the game. So I've been playing an hour every day since I got back, and it's still there. So I don't know, I'll have to report back what happens when I, or if I ever stop playing. Gillian Lacey-Sullimar.

He's one of the world's most acclaimed directors known for his eccentric and surreal filmmaking. Now Tim Burton's archives of costumes, models and drawings from films and programs like Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and Wednesday are going on display in London. Our correspondent Charlotte Gallagher went to meet him. I can't believe I'm doing this. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. I can't believe I'm doing this. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice! The Hollywood journey is an Alice in Wonderland kind of journey. You go up, you go down, you go sideways.

That's just the way it is. But I did feel lately, doing Wednesday, going to Romania and just doing it, and then doing Beetlejuice, you know, yeah, it kind of reconfirmed the fact that if people want me to do something, it's best to let me do what I, you know, there's often a case of like, once you become a thing, that they want you, but then they don't want you. Yeah.

And so you get into this sort of Kafkaesque sort of environment of like, well, they don't want you, but they don't want you. So what I realize now, and maybe because I'm older as well, it's like, okay, I'm just going to do what I want. And if you want to do it, fine. If not, then you don't have to go on this journey with me. I think you're quite rare among directors and writers and creators in that you're a bit similar to Roald Dahl in that you don't patronize children, you don't patronise kids and they're drawn to the monsters and the scary stuff.

It's exactly, I mean I can't tell you how many films, every film I ever did. And first of all I never said I'm making this for children or adults, right, so but they go you can't tell if it's too scary for kids, even like Nightmare. And you know what, it's the big, I've heard this every single time and every single time it means nothing. It's funny because like little kids nightmare, little kids... I grew up watching monster movies so I know some kids can handle it, some kids can't and that's fine. Everybody's an individual. You don't have to force them clockwork to Orange Style to sit there and watch a horror

movie. They'll either go for it or they won't go for it like I did. Can you be scary? What do you think of this? When you're making one of your films or you're making a sequel to one of your films, you just kind of have to block out what's going on the internet, what people are saying and just make your own film. Yeah, anybody who knows me is I'm a bit technophobe and so

what I find is, that's why I don't go on to it much, if I look on the internet, I found really that I got quite depressed. It was interesting. It scared me because I started to go down a dark hole. I looked up things like buying some dinosaurs, which was good, but looking up things that I just felt like I was going down a dark path and it didn't make me feel good. So I try to avoid it because it doesn't make me feel good. How do you feel about artificial intelligence?

Does it scare you? Well, I mean, it's something I can't even quite fathom. All I know is from what I say where there was an AI version of characters, Disney characters designed by me, AI, right? And until it happens to you, you really don't understand it, but it was quite disturbing. Intellectually, it was emotionally disturbing. I felt like my soul had been taken from me.

And the monsters in your films are often the ones that, visually, they look scary, they're monstrous, but they're the ones that people connect with the most and they tend to be the heroes. Is that intentional? When I grew up on watching these movies, I mean it was very clear, all from King Kong to Frankenstein to Creature from the Black Lagoon, all the monsters were the most emotional. You know, the humans were the ones that scared me. They were the ones, the angry villagers in Frankenstein,

like the internet, these nameless faces Tim Burton And that is all from us for now But before I go it is still not too late to send in your questions about climate change for a special podcast We're recording ahead of this year's UN meeting a lot of you have already sent in questions about the impact of wars on our climate, how companies could be held to account over the emissions cuts they promised, how the wealthy world is helping nations

most at risk of sea level rises, many, many more questions besides. Please just send us your questions in the form of a voice note with your name, where you're from and your question. Our top climate change experts will be here to answer them. Send them to the normal address globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. Thanks very much. This edition was mixed by Wladimir Muzeska and the producer was Stephanie

Tillotson. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles and until next time, goodbye. Hello, I'm Sumi Somos-Gandha from the Global Story Podcast, where we're looking at America and immigration. Illegal immigration has made the southern border a lightning rod for fiery political debate. How is that shaping the upcoming election? And how might the outcome impact America's neighbors to the south? The Global Story brings you unique perspectives from BBC journalists around the world. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.