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Deadly attack at Manchester synagogue
00:31:44
A man has been shot dead by police in Manchester after a deadly attack at a synagogue
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This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janak jalil and at 16 hours GMT on Thursday 2nd October, these are our main stories. An attack on a synagogue in northern England on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur leaves two two people dead. Latest indications from Hamas suggest it may not accept Donald Trump's Gaza peace plan. Hope turns to anguish in Indonesia as rescuers at a collapsed school where dozens of boys have been trapped for days say there's no sign of life. Also in this podcast, the reason we're so excited about it is because we hope it's going to be the longest ever continuous ice course spreading back at least 1.2 million years, maybe a bit older. Scientists hope to unlock the mysteries of the world's oldest ice by melting it. Police in the UK say two people have been killed and three others seriously injured in a car and knife attack at a synagogue in the northern English city of Manchester. Mobile phone footage from the scene shows two armed police officers warning people to get away from the building because they fear a suspect has a bomb. Everybody else get back. If you're not involved, move back. The officers then shot the suspect, who it's now confirmed was also killed. It took time to establish this because he appeared to have an explosive device to strapped to him. A bomb disposal unit has been at the scene. The attack happened on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur. Christian Wakeford, a local member of Parliament, spoke of his shock and sadness. Day of Atonement and for something like this to happen any day, let alone today, it's shock for everyone in this community, which is a diverse area. But for a community that can't even let their loved ones know they're safe because they can't pick up a phone, it's challenging for everyone. So, again, nothing but respect for GMP and the emergency services that got here straight away. Absolutely. Thoughts and prayers for all those suffering from the attack, either directly or indirectly, as they're waiting to hear from their loved ones. It's now been declared a terrorist attack by British police. The Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, who was attending a European security summit in Denmark, cut short his trip to rush back to the UK to chair an emergency meeting. He's ordered security to be stepped up at synagogues across the UK and said the fact that this attack had taken place on Yom Kippur made it all the more horrific. Our religion editor, Alim Maqbool, spoke to me about its timing. The timing of it seems significant to a lot of Jews who feel that if you are trying to maximize the amount of harm that is felt most broadly across Jewish communities, this is the day on which you'd carry out an attack. And particularly Yom Kippur is, as you say, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. It's a solemn day already. It's a day of atonement. It's the day on which Jews believe God is sort of sealing the fate of each person for the coming year. It's a day, interestingly, where a lot of Jewish people don't work, but they also, a lot of them don't access social media or television. So some people here may not know details of this attack until nightfall today. A lot of people would be oblivious to what has happened, but it is also a day on which a lot of Jewish people who don't necessarily regularly visit a synagogue for services will do so. And so security is something that we've seen increased on Yom Kippur, certainly in this country, synagogues. And this has given, obviously, more reason for security to be increased in the future. Absolutely. We've got the authorities promising to do that. But this kind of attack is, for a lot of Jews, their worst nightmare. This is something they feared for a long time, even before the October 7 attacks from Gaza into Israel two years ago. A lot of Jews have spoken about their security concerns, no question. And for many years now, there is an organization that's set up in this country, the Community Security Trust, that provides security at synagogues, at Jewish schools, at Jewish community centers. They also have over the last 40 years, recorded anti Semitic incidents. And they had the highest number, number of antisemitic incidents on record in 2023. And that has sustained really over the past two years. There have been spikes in the past when there's been conflict in the Middle east because we've had a sustained conflict. So we've had a sustained level of anti Semitic attacks. Now for the most part, over the last couple of years, it's been abuse. There has been some desecration and vandalism at synagogues and Jewish schools. But it was always the fear, as you say, that would become more violent. We would have an incident like this. And so I've spoken to a number of Jews today, this morning who are willing to speak on a day like Yom Kippur, who say perhaps now people might listen to our fears. The thing is, you know, there is a huge spectrum of belief across Jewish communities across Europe. We've seen increasingly those who question Israel's policies and military policies. But clearly those carrying out the person who carried out an attack today, those who carry out anti Semitic incidents are not thinking in that way. They're looking to cause harm in any way they can. Our religion editor, Alim Maqbool. When President Donald Trump set out his 20 point plan to end the war in Gaza earlier this week, he also gave Hamas an ultimatum of three to four days to accept it or, in his words, pay in hell. The plan, which is backed by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, proposes an immediate end to the fighting and the release of all remaining Israeli hostages within 72 hours in exchange for hundreds of detained Palestinians. Hamas has yet to issue an official response, but the BBC now understands that the head of Hamas's armed wing in Gaza, Izzaldine Al Haddad, has told mediators he does not agree to the plan. Our Middle east correspondent Yolande Nell told me more. This is information that is coming to us via BBC sources. And Azzedine Al Haddad is the most senior Hamas commander left in the Gaza Strip after Mohammed Sinwar and Yahya Sinwar were killed by Israel during the war. And this is really a strong reminder that whatever is agreed by Hamas leaders outside of Gaza, whatever assurances they can be given via regional mediators who are putting a lot of heavy pressure on them, Qatar, Egypt and Turkey in particular, they cannot really agree anything without the cooperation of Zedine Al Hadad. He is the person who is controlling the cells, who in the end are holding the hostages. Now, we do Know what the main sticking points are for Hamas when it comes to this deal? They've made that very clear, this requirement for the group to disarm. It has said that it would not do that unless there's a sovereign Palestinian state created. And Hamas is really said to see this 20 point plan as being a kind of surrender document. Hamas also hasn't wanted to give up the hostages that it's holding within 72 hours as the plan requires, without more guarantees that there'd be a full Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza and an end to the war, because the hostages for them are seen as their last bargaining chip. And it's also been saying that this idea of an international stabilization force coming to Gaza, well, that would amount to a new occupation and that it would oppose it. Meanwhile, Yoland, the Israeli navy has intercepted boats carrying aid to Gaza overnight and detained some of the activists on board. The Mexican filmmaker Carlos Perez Osorio was among those on the global Simurt Fliteler and just listen to this voice note that he sent to the BBC while this interception was happening. Our command is to keep going forward and that's what we're doing. We're going forward and we're losing communication with other ships. We have to stop this and we will not stop this mission might be intercepted, but the spirit is alive and we won't stop until Palestine is free. So a very defiant note there from this activist. There are hundreds of activists on board this flotilla, some of the boats still heading towards Gaza, these activists from dozens of countries. What's the international response been to Israel? Seizure of the boats and the detention of the activists. There's been a remarkably strong international response. This is the biggest flotilla of its kind that has set out to try to challenge Israel's naval blockade of Gaza, saying that this is illegal and to get humanitarian aid to the strip where it's desperately needed. Israel says that the flotilla set out as a provocation and it said that alternative routes were offered to get the aid into Gaza. It's been a huge operation by Israeli naval commandos on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar when most people are fasting and it's pretty much a lockdown in Israel. There's about 500 passengers on about 45 boats and they do come from all around the world. There have been protests in Italy and Spain about the flotilla and what's happening and a measure of how much international tension there's been. You know, both governments of those countries sent naval vessels to protect their citizens, particularly while they were in international waters. Yoland Nell for the past few days, we've brought you news of the frantic efforts in Indonesia to try to reach dozens of people, most of them boys, trapped under the rubble of a school which collapsed in east java. So far, five deaths have been confirmed. More than 10 survivors have been pulled out and placed on stretchers with a line of rescuers carefully passing them along, like this student who had to be pulled out of a cramped space below a massive slab of concret. Rescue teams have avoided using heavy machinery until now because the structure of the building is so unstable. But now it's the news the parents waiting nearby have feared. With around 60 people still believed to be missing, rescue workers say they've detected no more signs of life in the wreckage. The boarding school collapsed suddenly on Monday while construction work was going on to add additional floors, even as the rest of the building was still being used. Teach children Shortly before we recorded this podcast, Astidestra Ajangrastri gave us this update from the site of the disaster. As of this morning, the rescuers announced that they have found no more signs of lives and they are bringing the heavy equipment, they're bringing cranes to take away slabs of massive concrete in the hope that they could recover more bodies at the site. And what do we know about the cause and what could have been done to prevent this disaster? So yeah, after it went down on Monday, the investigation, or a lot of experts also involved in the assessment of the building told us that the original building of two story mosques is not strong enough to sustain the additional floors that they're adding. And it's just that the infrastructure is not recommended for taller buildings. And now the collapse has become sort of like a pancake, layered labs. And it's also, the rescuers say, looks like a spider web. So when they're trying to take out some pieces of the buildings from upstairs, it is connected to other parts of the building. And so they are very worried that a little bit of wrong move and it will create another collapse. But now since they see no more signs of life, recovery efforts they think would be much faster when they still have people underneath the life. Right. They have to be extra careful not to make any hazardous moves. And you've had parents at the site for the past three days, it's hard to imagine what they're going through right now. After the announcement this morning saying that there's no more signs of life. The parents, they're sad, but I see they're also relieved because in the past few days there are many people frustrated because they don't know what happened to their sons or their children. And now when they already know that there's no more hope. Now the aim is to get their bodies back and bury them properly. Now they also started the identification process because a lot of the dead bodies that already been recovered from the scene has no identities. So now the families of people who are missing collecting their DNAs to the authorities so that it can be compared to bodies that would be recovered as Didestra Ajing rastri in Indonesia. Britain's Royal Society is marking 75 years since the mathematician and early computer scientist Alan Turing created a test to help distinguish a machine from a human. The test was first published by the Second World War codebreaker as an idea he called the Imitation Game, later the title of a film about his life. The anniversary comes at a time when artificial intelligence systems have advanced so far that the Turing Test is arguably obsolete. Our technology editor Zoe Kleinmann explains the Turing Test is used to measure not a machine's actual intelligence, but how convincingly human that machine can be in written responses. The idea is to see whether human judges can be fooled into thinking they're interacting with real people. The test was proposed decades before modern artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT came along, and it was used for many years. But in 2014, a chatbot called Eugene was reported to be the first machine to pass the Turing Test. Some scientists dispute this on the grounds that Eugene had been given the Persona of a teenage Ukrainian boy, and they claimed this provided a convenient excuse for any English language issues or odd replies the chatbot generated. The Turing Test is now considered outdated as technology has advanced, but distinguishing AI from a human has arguably become more important than ever. Zoe Kleiman still to come on the global news podcast, a half trillionaire Elon Musk becomes the first person to see his wealth top $500 billion. At the BBC, we go further so you see clearer. Through frontline reporting, global stories and local insights, we bring you closer to the world's news as it happens. And it starts with a subscription to BBC.com giving you unlimited articles and videos, ad free podcasts and the BBC News channel streaming live 24. 7. Subscribe to trusted independent journalism from the BBC. Find out more@BBC.com join Stadiums are here, but where are the hospitals? That's become a familiar chant in Morocco this week during protests by young people over worsening public services. The protesters argue the government has instead prioritized spending on preparations for the Football World cup, which Morocco will co host in 2030. On Wednesday night, police Opened fire on demonstrators attempting to storm a police station, killing two people. Since the rallies began last weekend, there have been hundreds of arrests and hundreds of people injured. Our global affairs reporter Sebastian Usher told me more about the deadly violence at the police station. This was in a city in the south, Leclea and security forces essentially opened fire when a group tried to break into their headquarters and get their firearms. Again, that giving a sense that this could be mutating into something moving away from a peaceful protest, that the group, which, I mean, there's no leader to this, but there's one group called Gen Z212. And you can tell from that this is the youth of Morocco that really is out on the street. Streets has been insisting that they should remain peaceful. But as I say, what happened last night, what's been happening the last two or three nights, gives a sense that this may be getting out of control. And this seems to be an echo of similar youth protests in countries like Nepal and Kenya. Just tell us about specific concerns of these young people in Morocco because they're really angry about the lavish preparations for the football World Cup. It's the comparison, as you were saying in that quote and in the chant, it's a comparison between the large amounts of money, the billions that's being spent on developing those stadiums for 2030, when, along with Spain and Portugal, Morocco is going to be hosting the World Cup. And I mean, this is not a new problem in Morocco. But, you know, unemployment is rising, social services have been bad in many, many places. I mean, Morocco, way back, you go back to 2011, the Arab Spring, when the protests erupted, it looked like Morocco might go the same way, but something about its system and the monarchy kept it in place. So there have been protests since, but they're generally kept within limits. This one has the chance of bursting out of that and becoming something far bigger than Morocco's seen for years. And it's harder for the authorities to handle because there is no formal leadership, as you say. Yes, I mean, that is an issue, but that also has become an issue we've seen in many other countries. When there isn't that leadership. It means that the protests can become, in a sense, without any real clear driving purpose. And then this movement towards violence, towards other people joining it who maybe have different concerns, means that the protest can kind of be diminished. And that's something which, you know, the authorities will always use, if they can, to try and break up that momentum. Sebastian Usher A liquefied natural gas platform meant to bring prosperity to the West African Nation of Senegal, is at the centre of controversy. The facility, mainly run by the British multinational oil and gas company bp, was built on the maritime border between Senegal and Mauritania after natural gas was discovered there in 2015. But local fishermen in San Luis, a major fishing hub in northern Senegal, say the platform has greatly disrupted their trade and caused unemployment. The BBC's Paul Nadjie has been to St Louis to hear more about their concerns. In this once busy fish Market in St. Louis, the bustle is gradually fading away. Locals say it's because fishing, the main economic activity of the more than 250,000 people who live here, is on the decline. To find out what's changed, I'm hopping on a canoe and accompanying local fishermen to the sea. 10 kilometers offshore, I'm struck by the sight of a giant liquefied natural gas platform run by the British multinational oil and gas company BP and its partners. 25 year old fisherman Gora Fowl tells me access to the platform built on the natural reef where they mostly got their fish, is restricted. But BP says safety zones around infrastructure are standard practice to protect people and assets. After nearly an hour of Fishing within a 500 meter limit, Fowl's catch is nothing to be proud of. We are frustrated because before from noon we were satisfied with the catch made. But now we can stay until 4pm twiddling our thumbs without fish. The fisherman has brought me to a place on the sea which he says BP plans to erect an artificial reef to attract fish. But according to him and several other fishermen I've spoken to, the Era is highly unfavourable because it lies just 4km away from the coastline. After spending time at sea, we return to land to meet with representatives of the local fishermen's association. Seated by the seashore under a shelter made of sticks. The spokesperson Nala Diop tells me they don't believe in BP's promise to build the artificial reef. When they came in 2019, they told people we are going to build you eight artificial reefs to at least replace our Diatara, which is the natural reef. They said it written in black and White in 2019. From 2019 to 2025, nothing has been done. It's been six years. However, in a statement to the BBC, BP said it is building an artificial reef complex with 10 clusters within. Added that work is already underway as the reef is expected to be completed by the end of this year. Regarding concerns about the site chosen to host the reef complex, the multinational said a technical assessment concluded that a cluster of reef pyramids in one location allows more effective management and protection of that reef. But uncertainty is growing, and the community believes the entire supply chain is reeling from the impact of the scarcity of fish to bp. Though concerns about Senegal's fishing stocks predate the Gaz project, another fear is that marine life could become endangered following a gas leak witnessed in the sea last February. BP said it acted in a swift and transparent manner when the incident happened. But Mamadou Bar, an ocean campaigner with the environmental NGO Greenpeace Africa, doesn't quite agree. It's not an accident, because in the environmental impact impact study, normally this type of disaster is taken into account and there are mitigation measures. Staying for a month or a month and a half to find a solution means the environmental impact study was not very serious. So we can't describe this as an incident. It's a disaster. BP has already begun exporting liquefied natural gas. Unsure though, the people of St. Louis now wonder what the future holds. Paul Nijiya, reporting from Senegal Can Europe shield itself from Russian threats? It's a question European leaders have been wrestling with in recent weeks after a series of airspace intrusions by Russian drones, some of which forced a temporary shutdown of the Oslo and Copenhagen airports last month. Now the European Union is working on a plan to establish what it calls a drone wall, a defense system meant to shield the bloc's eastern flank from Russian incursions. On Thursday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, told a meeting of EU leaders in Denmark that any drones encroaching on European airspace should be destroyed. A close neighbour of Denmark's is Norway and its defence minister is Ture Osanvik. My colleague Priya Rai asked him how Norway planned to defend itself. We see the drone wall as more and a concept systems of systems where we can integrate different radar systems and surveillance systems to watch the space over Norway and the eastern flank of the EU and to standardize solutions. And first of all, learning from Ukraine, which is the world champion of air defense right now. So we are learning from the Ukrainians, we are developing technology together with the Ukrainians and we want to integrate and be a part of this with the EU states to develop it further. But are you doing enough? I ask you this question about after the fact that there were incursions over Danish airspace and also drones affecting airports in your own Norway. So what specifically is Norway doing in contributing to this? First of all, I think it's important to remember we are not in war. Norway is not attacked. We have had drone observations too many of them but we have not yet got them confirmed. The police are looking into it. We have not concluded who the actor is who's doing this. We have had some arrests on some tourists. But it's legal to fly drones in Norway and we're not talking about attacking armed drones like Shaheds as we saw in Poland. It's more like a surveillance or civilian drones that are reported of. Sure. But nonetheless it has also caused high level European leaders to come together and discuss a drone wall. We spoke earlier to an Estonian MP, Marco McKelsen who Europe's plans for its defence to be 2030 ready is just too late. The Danish Prime Minister has said we do have to be able to defend ourselves totally by 2030. But is that soon enough? Do you think we have capacities both within NATO in Norway to shoot down drones? What we're talking about is that we cannot use our most expensive, most advanced systems to shoot down cheap drones like we saw over Poland and like we know that they are flooding the air in Ukraine with if there were going to be an attack. So we want to develop cheaper systems, more multi layered air defense systems. The Norwegian Defence Minister Ture Osanvik the electric carmaker Tesla had a bumpy start to 2025. CEO Elon Musk's political interventions in the US and elsewhere and increased competition are thought to have contributed to weak sales, particularly in Europe. But things are now looking up for the Tesla boss. As the company's share price has gone up again, so too has Mr. Musk's net worth. The Forbes Billionaires Index has reported that he's the first person to achieve a net worth of 500 billion or half a trillion dollars. Also taking into account his many other businesses, the economist Simon French spoke about the uptick in his fortune. This is largely the return of Elon Musk from the political fray in Washington to lead the business. The sense from investors not backed up by certainly European car sales of Tesla, the Stardust that he sprinkled over that brand in the past can return. And that's rather aligned to the incentives that the Tesla board have put in place which could make him, if he achieves those very, very stretching targets, a trillion dollar compensation package in 2033. So investors have concluded that his incentives financially are aligned with their incentives as shareholders. There are certainly investors that do worry about executive compensation, but there are probably an equal number of investors who worry that if you don't offer that compensation in what is a, whether we like it or not, a global battle for talent, that talent will often take in its location elsewhere, its intellectual property elsewhere. So I think it's a pretty mixed split, actually, between those who worry about the societal impact and those who worry, probably more saliently, actually, on the impact that does to economic growth, to earnings, to development, to innovation. Economist Simon French. European scientists have been busy over the past few weeks trying to unlock one of the major mysteries of our planet's climate. They're analyzing the oldest ice ever recovered from Antarctica, thought to be around 1.2 million years old. But it's not the ice itself the researchers are interested in, it's what's trapped inside. Once melted, it releases materials that give them a better understanding of what wind patterns, temperatures and sea levels were like more than a million years ago. Our science editor, Rebecca Morel, has been to the British Antarctic Survey Base to see the process firsthand. It has been a hive of activity here for the last six weeks because scientists have been working around the clock to study some of the most precious samples collected from Antarctica. And it all starts here in the freezer. So we're going to go in. It's minus 23 degrees, so we're not going to go in for too long because all of our kit stops working, which makes it a bit more exciting. I'm joined by Dr. Liz Thomas, who's head of the ice core team team here. Just tell us how precious these samples are. Where were they collected from? First of all, these are really valuable pieces of ice that we're currently melting, and they come from a core that was drilled in East Antarctica over many seasons as part of a big international collaboration funded by the eu. And the reason we're so excited about it is because we hope it's going to be the longest ever continuous ice core spreading back at least 1.2 million years, maybe a bit older. Liz, the ice looks so clear, but there's a lot of stuff in there that you're studying, isn't there? It does. It looks exceptionally clear and it's very beautiful, in fact. But that is quite deceiving because inside there, we know from using all of these instruments that there is a huge amount of information about our planet, so about the climate and how the environment has changed. And what we're doing is measuring that further back in time to be able to reconstruct what's been happening beyond a million years ago. And up to now, you've only had ice that's 800,000 years old. So this pushes it back way further. I mean, why is it important to look back? Is it all about looking forward? I Suppose ultimately, yes. So our longest previous ice core went back 800,000 years. It was able to really place the current increase in carbon dioxide in this longer term context and show, show that it's outside of the range of natural variability. What we're doing now is we're starting to get even further back in time to an important period in our climate history when we believe that the ice sheets were smaller than they are today, sea levels were higher, and we think it may have been that the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere was actually higher. This makes it a really interesting analogue for how our climate is currently evolving and how it may look, look in the future. It's all about trying to find out what happens next. And the only way you can do that is to look back. Exactly. Liz, thank you very much. We're going to let the scientists get on with their work here because they've got, this is their last day of melting. So after that the ice is gone and it's still mind blowing to me that you've spent, you know, years collecting the stuff, hundreds of scientists working on it and then essentially to study it, you have to destroy it, really. But there are still going to be months, even years, years worth of research to continue after the ice has turned to liquid. But yeah, really important stuff going on in this freezer here. Rebecca Morell. And that's all from us for now. But there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcastbc.co.uk you can also find us on X@BBC World Service. Use the hashtag lobalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Chris Hansen. The producers were Chantal Hartle and Chaz Geiger. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janat Jalil. Until next time. Goodbye. At the BBC we go further so you see clearer. Through frontline reporting, global stories and local insights, we bring you closer to the world's news as it happens. And it starts with a subscription to BBC.com giving you unlimited articles and videos, ad free podcasts and the BBC News Channel streaming live 24. 7. Subscribe to trusted independent journalism from the BBC. Find out more@BBC.com join.