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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk. Hi, I'm Susan Glaser. I'm Jane Mayer. And I'm Evan Osmos. And we host the Washington Roundtable from the New Yorker's Political Scene podcast. For me, this is the water cooler. This is a wonderful chance to sit down with two of the smartest colleagues in the country and, you know, just kind of compare notes. Now that's so true because first of all, we are actually friends in real life. But I, I can't wait till Fridays to hear what you guys think. Everybody sees the headlines, but you guys fill in the gaps. I also think, though, occasionally we get somebody to come on and I'm always smarter for it. If you get a great historian who can tell you about a presidential election 50, 60 years ago, often it can help you understand about what's happening today. So if you're looking for weekly insights into what's going on inside the Beltway, please join us every Friday on the Washington Roundtable, part of the New Yorker's Political Scene podcast. Foreign this is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson and at 1300 hours GMT on Thursday the 11th of September. These are our main stories. A huge search is underway for the killer of the influential conservative activist and ally of President Trump, Charlie Kirk. Britain's Prime Minister has sacked the UK ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, over his ties to the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Also in this podcast, a BBC investigation has revealed the scale of an international charity's involvement in the systematic disappearance of children during former Syrian President Bashar Al Assad's regime. An inquest is being opened into the death of the anti apartheid campaigner Steve Biko, nearly 50 years after he died in police custody in South Africa. And the mating call of one species of peacock spider. Scientists explain their unusual diversity. We start in the United States where vigils have been held for 31 year old Charlie Kirk, a US conservative activist and influential ally of Donald Trump who was fatally shot in the neck on Wednesday while speaking at Utah Valley University. A manhunt is now underway for a lone sniper. Here's FBI Special Agent Robert Bowles. As soon as we heard about the shooting, special agents and personnel from the Salt Lake field office responded immediately. We have full resources devoted to this investigation, including tactical, operational, investigative and intelligence. To be clear, the FBI will fully support and co lead this investigation alongside with our partners. The University says the shot was fired from around 200 metres away, thought to be from a rooftop Charlie Kirk was known for his polarising debates on hot button topics including transgender identity and abortion. He was famous for verbally taking on and taking down liberal students on campuses. The interactions gained millions of views on social media. Charlie Kirk had an appeal among Generation Z or Z Americans, those aged 13 to 28, which he explained at one of his rallies. We are in a place where decisions need to be made, a time for choosing, and our leaders in D.C. better start to get the memo because there is a movement coming and yes, it is the most conservative generation, but that doesn't mean they're going to support every single Republican. If you're a Republican and you support, yay, more foreign aid to endless countries, Gen Z doesn't want that. Actually, they want Americans to be put first, not foreigners to be put first. President Trump called him a great American patriot and ordered flags across the US to be flown at half mast. This is a dark moment for America. Charlie Kirk traveled the nation joyfully, engaging with everyone interested in good faith debate. His mission was to bring young people into the political process, which he did better than anybody ever. For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. Mr. Trump went on to describe Charlie Kirk as the best of America, whose legacy will live on for countless generations to come. Former US President Joe Biden said, there is no place in our country for this kind of violence. This was Utah Governor Spencer Cox's tribute. This is a dark day for our state. It's a tragic day for our nation. I want to be very clear that this is a political assassination. Charlie Kirk was first and foremost a husband and a dad to two young children. He was also very much politically involved and that's why he was here on campus. Charlie believed in the power of free speech and debate to shape ideas and to persuade people. Our North America correspondent, Neda Tofik is at the campus in Utah. This manhunt is still very much underway. Earlier in the day, there were two people of interest that authorities had questioned but then released. They say that they are going through security footage from the campus, but they noted how grainy that footage is, and they believe that the suspect was wearing dark clothing and fired the single fatal gunshot from a rooftop that was near and close by to the tent and stage where Charlie Kirk was debating with students. But beyond that, there's very little else we know at the moment about the suspect's motive. I mean, given that Charlie Kirk was such an effective voice in the MAGA movement and on the right, many have just very quickly said this is to them clear political assassination. But as far as getting more details, we still are waiting for authorities to shed more light on that. I'm actually on campus at the moment and there are police still patrolling. They say the campus is still under investigation, but they are allowing people to go and collect their belongings. Many of the eyewitnesses have reflected on just, again, the shock of it, the fact that this is a small town. They never thought something like this would happen here. So it becomes more personal when you talk about, you know, gun violence and political violence in America. This community is very much feeling that a lot of questions must be being asked, particularly, particularly about security at this event, or lack of it, because it happened, you know, in the wake of an assassination attempt on Donald Trump himself. Yeah, I think it's important to note that some students were protesting this event before it happened. Keep in mind, while he is very popular on the right, he is loathed for his controversial political views, his spreading of certain conspiracy theories by others. And so some students had protested that, but the authorities said, look, we believe this will go off smoothly. You had about 3,000 people, according to authorities on campus. There were only six university police officers. This was also in an area that was kind of open air, low lying, kind of courtyard with many tall buildings around it. And you just have to remember back to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and the sniper that was able to get up high and get a clear shot of Donald Trump. Well, this was as well, a very precise, clear shot from somebody who clearly had thought about and premeditated this. And Charlie Kirk did have his private security with him. They actually rushed him immediately to the hospital. But the nature of the gunshot just meant it was incredibly difficult to survive that so many people are asking questions about the security. Charlie Kirk in the past had noted that he knew there were threats against him, but he was still determined to keep these open air campus events that he wanted. He was young, wasn't he? Very important to the MAGA movement. What about his connection with young people? Yeah, so Charlie Kirk actually dropped out of College, and at 18 years old, he started his organization, Turning Point USA. And the whole goal of it was that he wanted to get students more politically active, engaged. He wanted to spread conservative Christian and values. This was somebody who wasn't attached at all to the Republican establishment. And so as Donald Trump was on the Rise. Charlie Kirk really kind of found an ideological ally in him. He actually got close to Donald Trump, close to Don Jr. His son. Charlie Kirk somehow was very effective at reaching these youth on campuses, on social media, consistently. His podcast was in the top 10 on the Apple charts. And I can tell you, being at Donald Trump's victory party on election night, I was speaking to people in the crowd, and a few were young men who told me they had canvassed and were volunteers because of Charlie Kirk. So you could just see how he was a juggernaut in the maga movement. He was good at mobilizing organizing that was extremely effective to the Trump campaign. And some Democrats have even reflected on the fact that they wished they had a figure on the left like Charlie Kirk. Ned Ataufik at Utah Valley University. During the last couple of days, there's been growing disquiet here in Britain about Peter Mandelson, the UK Ambassador to the United States, and his links to the late American convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Now the British government has sacked him. The announcement was made in Parliament by the Foreign Office Minister Stephen Doughty. In light of additional information in emails written by Peter Mandelson, the Prime Minister has asked the Foreign Secretary to withdraw him as Ambassador to the United States. The emails show, Mr. Speaker, that the depth and extent of Lord Madison's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is materially different from that known at the time of his appointment. In particular, Mr. Speaker, Lord Mandelson's suggestion that Geoffrey Epstein's first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged is new information. James Roscoe has been named as the interim US ambassador. The sacking of Mr. Mandelson comes just a week before President Trump is due to visit London. We heard more from our UK political correspondent, Rob Watson. We know that what's really problematic for the government is the idea that Mr. Mandelson, as you heard there, challenged the convictions of Jeffrey Epstein and maintained a friendship with him and had urged him to fight those conditions, fight those convictions, and essentially to come out swinging. And that is just massively, massively embarrassing. As, of course, is the prospects that Mr. Mandelson warned about that there were more emails to come. How damaging then is this for the British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer? It's undoubtedly damaging, Val. And it comes on top of a bad week last week when he lost his deputy, his deputy prime minister, deputy leader of the Labour Party, Angela Rayner, after initially standing by her, because essentially it ra raises questions about why did he. Why did he approve of the appointment of Peter Mandelson? As Britain's ambassador to the us, given that he was no stranger to controversy. Right, Val? He'd been sacked several times over matters of impropriety, so absolutely his judgment comes into question. And it's particularly problematic because if you think about it, Sakir Starmer's whole pitch to the voters at the general election in June of last year was, look, after 14 years of conservative government, what I'm promising is change. We're going to do away with the sleaze, the drama, the emotion, the division. It's going to be no drama. Starmer and super clean. Super clean. And clearly this is in contradiction with that, certainly, at least in terms of how the voters might perceive it. And what about the impact of this sacking, possible impact on the relationship between the UK and the us, Particularly with President Trump in charge? Well, there's the rub, Val, because there's no doubt, I think, that Keir Starmer would have sacked him immediately had he not been balancing up. How do I do this without upsetting Donald Trump, who is visiting the UK and who himself, of course, has had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein? And I think Keir Starmer was worried about thinking, oh, my goodness, if I sack Peter Mandelson, how is that going to leave my relationship with Donald Trump? Given that Donald Trump's position has been, oh, all this stuff about Epstein is a distraction. But in the end, what you've seen here, Val, is his domestic politics here in the UK trumping international relations. And that is, I think, Sir Keir Starmer felt that within the governing Labour Party, within the British press, within public opinion here in the uk, it was just impossible to stand by him, whatever the consequences. Rob Watson. Last week, they were detained and handcuffed during an immigration raid in the southern United States. Now, several hundred South Korean workers are being sent home. The US authorities claim the workers were in the country illegally. They're among many thousands of foreigners who've been detained by immigration officials in recent months. But South Korea disputes the claims. At a news conference, South Korea's president said the incident could seriously impact companies willingness to invest in the United States. Our Seoul correspondent, Jean Mackenzie reports. There was complete shock here last week when more than 300 Koreans were led out of the car battery plant they'd been helping to build in handcuffs and chains. Now, after nearly a week in detention, the workers are to be flown home. There's been confusion over whether they had the correct visas for the work they were doing. Speaking at a news conference earlier, South Korea's President Lee Jae Myung called The situation bewildering. The workers had been sent to set up the facility. He said they were not planning to work in the US long term. Mr. Lee said that unless the US helped facilitate visas for South Korean workers, its companies would be very hesitant to invest in America and something President Trump wants to happen. Gene MacKenzie in Seoul. A day after Russian drones were shot down over eastern Poland. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, says Moscow was trying to humiliate Poland and he's called for strong countermeasures, including coordinated action to protect the airspace of both Ukraine and the Western allies. Our Eastern Europe correspondent, Sarah Rainsford told us what Ukraine wants to happen. Now, what Ukraine is saying is that Russia needs to feel a clear and a strong response because it's describing what's happened over the last day or so as an escalation by Russia, a deliberate attempt to probe NATO's defenses, to look for vulnerabilities. And the sort of message that President Zelensky is sending is that Ukraine knows from its own experience very clearly that when there are dozens of drones, usually there will be hundreds. What we've seen here in this country is a clear increase in the frequency and the scale of the attacks by Russia, the number of drones coming over, how often they are launch. And, you know, Ukraine itself is struggling to cope with that. The decoy drones that are included, these Garbara drones that are included in every salvo, they try to overwhelm the air defenses. And we saw last weekend that one of the missiles that Russia launched did manage to get right through to the most pretty protected heart of Kyiv, the most protected part of this city, and it struck the main government building. So this is a risk. And it looks from Ukraine's perspective and from the perspective of many people, including Poland's foreign minister, that this was a deliberate attempt by Russia to violate NATO airspace to test the response. Sarah Rainsford in Kyiv. Still to come, Nigerians, already reeling from the effect of extremist Islamism, are still counting the cost of the collapse of a dam a year after it happened. I had my small child in my hand all the hospitals were closed My boy had a fever till he died. Hi, I'm Susan Glaser. I'm Jane Mayer. And I'm Evan Osmos. And we host the Washington Roundtable from the New Yorker's Political Scene podcast. For me, this is the water cooler. This is a wonderful chance to sit down with two of the smartest colleagues in the country and, you know, just kind of compare notes. Now, that's so true, because first of all, we are actually friends in real life. But I can't wait till Fridays to hear what you guys think. Everybody sees the headlines, but you guys fill in the gaps. I also think, though, occasionally we get somebody to come on, and I'm always smarter for it. If you get a great historian who can tell you about a presidential election 50, 60 years ago, often it can help you understand about what's happening. So if you're looking for weekly insights into what's going on inside the Beltway, please join us every Friday on the Washington Roundtable, part of the New Yorker's Political Scene podcast. A BBC investigation has revealed the scale of an international charity's involvement in the systematic disappearance of children during former Syrian President Bashar Al Assad's regime. There are almost 4,000 children still missing dating back to the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011. The BBC World Service, in collaboration with the investigative media organization Lighthouse Reports, has found that the children of hundreds of political detainees were taken by security forces and held in orphanages in order to put pressure on their families. One of those orphanages is called SOS Children's Villages International, headquartered in Austria but operating in 130 countries, including Syria. Jess Kelly reports. Sorry Mummy. He was being naughty and I got annoyed with him, so he said, sorry Mummy. Reem El Qari is looking through pictures and videos on her phone of her husband Osama and her two and a half year old son, Karim. Our life was normal. We'd go to the countryside or to the beach. The last time I saw Osama he drove that way and he didn't come back. Her husband had been on his way to drop off a friend and had taken Kareem with him. That was indeed 2013, well into the civil war sparked by pro democracy demonstrations in Syria. She was one of many who experienced their family disappear or who were separated from their children. Hadil al Muaddin was with her two sons, three and a half year old Said and one and a half year old Yazin, when she was stopped at a checkpoint and searched. She was then put into a van and taken and held by Syrian intelligence. A young soldier came to me, he said they will put them in a school called the Children's Village. Hadil spent two months in prison and then a judge told her she was innocent and let her go. She was watching a report on TV about mothers. It featured a video from an orphanage called SOS Children's Villages and she saw her son Yezin. In it. She remembered what the soldier said to her about where he would be. She went to the SOS village. I knocked. It was an iron gate. I started banging on it. I told them, you baby thieves. SOS told her to go to seek permission from intelligence services, where she was told she was not allowed to take her children home. The thousands of documents, messages and family and orphanage staff testimony gathered and verified by BBCI has revealed at least 320 children were held in orphanages by the Assad regime to extort their relatives. Fourteen of them were newborns. Some children were given new names or falsely recorded as abandoned orphans. With the founding of SOS Children's Villages, a new concept for caring for children was born. More than 100 detained children were held in SOS Children's Villages in Syria. The BBC spoke to one former senior employee. A small Assad considered the children's villages a prison of a different kind for the children of detainees. SOS International had all the details about how children were coming in illegally, because every time a child was brought in, we had to send reports to the main office in Austria. SOS say they first became aware of children of detainees being admitted to their orphanages in 2017. The charity said they would stop these admissions in Syria in 2018, but the BBC has uncovered they were still being transferred until 2022. The interim international CEO, Benoit Piot when the fall of the regime in December 2024 arrived, we had an opportunity for the reunification of these children with their family. We have successfully reunited 14 of them, but we still have 104 miss the regime and the ministry came to take them. We don't know where the regime took them. We have commissioned an external and independent investigation to know the truth. After the regime fell, Reem went from government ministry to several orphanages and found records missing, incomplete and falsified. There was no trace of Karim. She was told by SOS they would get back to her by November. Karim would be 16 by then. For Reem, it's a hopeless situation. It's been six months since the liberation, and yet there is still no clear path for mothers looking for their children. Still, the Syrian mother Reem ending that report by Jess Kelly. The fallout is intensifying from Israel's audacious attack on Tuesday against Hamas leaders in Qatar. The Gulf nation now says it will host an emergency summit to discuss the attack on Wednesday. The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu warned Qatar to either expel Hamas or bring them to justice, because if you don't, we will. Qatar described his remarks as reckless. And President Trump has also weighed in on the argument as we Davis reports from Jerusalem. Qatar is a major American ally, home to a huge US airbase and had been mediating along with the US and Egypt and attempts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza. Israel's bombing raid on the Qatari capital, which appears to have failed to assassinate Hamas's top leaders, has reportedly incurred the wrath of Donald Trump. The Wall Street Journal reported a heated phone call between Mr. Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, who was told in no uncertain terms that his decision to unilaterally target Hamas on Qatari territory was unwise. Qatar's Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed Al Thani said the attack had killed any hope for the safe release of hostages in Gaza. But Israel remains defiant. A succession of politicians have defended its right to attack those they hold responsible for the events of October 7th, wherever they are. In the same way they say that America pursued Osama bin laden for the 911 attacks. Wiry Davis, Steve Bikou became one of the earliest icons of the anti apartheid movement in South Africa and is regarded as a political martyr in the country. He's been immortalized in numerous songs, works of art and the film cry freedom. Nearly 50 years after his death in police custody, prosecutors are reopening an inquest. I asked our Africa correspondent Maenie Jones, who's in Johannesburg, why now? Basically because no one's been held accountable 48 years later. This is an attempt by the government to address some of these injustices as part of a string of moves where they've tried to re examine high profile apartheid era deaths. In April, President Cyril Ramaphosa launched an inquiry because 25 relatives and survivors of these crimes had sued the government claiming that they'd been past interference in attempts to give justice to victims of apartheid era crimes. And so this is an attempt by the authorities here to try and address this and to try to show that somebody will be held accountable for some of these high profile deaths. And reminders about the circumstances surrounding Steve Biko's death. Well, In August of 1977 he was arrested at a roadblock. He'd been restricted for the past five years before that to his hometown. He wasn't allowed to leave and so police detained him for breaching that order, took him to a police cell where he was allegedly tortured while shackled and kept naked in a cell. And he only received medical care after 24 days in police custody. He was taken in the back of a police Land Rover to a hospital that was over a thousand kilometers away. And he died unfortunately of his injuries at the time. So he was aged 30. The cause of death was named as extensive brain injury. But despite repeated inquest, one in 1977, the year of his death, and one 20 years later after the fall of apartheid in 1997, no one's ever been prosecuted prosecuted for it. Maenie Jones the threat of flooding is once again looming over the Nigerian city of Maiduguri, a year after torrential rains and the collapse of a dam left dozens dead and entire neighbourhoods submerged underwater. Our reporter Chris Eberkor returned to the city, which has also been the epicenter of an Islamist insurgency, to see how those affected are coping. Men at work at the Lao dam, Meduguri's major water source, the dikes collapsed last year causing severe flooding and massive displacement. Engineer Mohammed Shetima, Executive Director, Engineering Services of the Chad Basin Development Authority, the agency in charge of the dam, said lack of maintenance due to 16 year Islamist insurgency caused the collapse. The dam is located on the fringes of because of the insurgency, the maintenance routine has been obstructed for about 10 years. And because of the weak set states of the dikes and coupled with the heavy downpour, the dikes collapsed. The devastation was massive. Nearly 2 million residents were displaced one year after many victims are still counting their losses. Sadato Dahiru, a mother of six children, said she lost her youngest child during the flood. We were sleeping on the roadside for a while. I placed the children under a tea seller's table. That was where they lay down. We had to tie sacks together to sleep on. In the morning, rain fell and beat us. I had my small child in my hand after that. He kept having fever and there was no hospital to go to. All the hospitals were close. My boy had a fever till he died. My two year old child, he's the one I will Never forget. For 72 year old Miriam Jida, it was a double tragedy. She fled Boko Haram attacks four years ago in Damboa. Now she's been rendered homeless again in Maiduguri. I came here because they attacked us with guns. When the flood happened, we barely escaped. The children carried us out. There were many women in our house. The water carried all our belongings. The iron bars in the house and the doors were all broken and carried away. The Brno state government said it spent $12 million supporting more than 100,000 families hit by the floods. But as Sadatu tells me, the reality of the support is different for her. When the governor came, he gave us ten thousand naira. NGOs were the ones coming to distribute free bread to us. They also gave US sacks which we used to spread on the ground to sleep on with our children. Borno State Governor Mr. Babagana Zulum said it was a daunting task. Responding to the flood and grappling with the state's 16 year struggle with violent extremism, Borno State has faced serious challenges only the last 100 years since 1904. To date, we have a lot of competing demands. The nexus between peace, security and development need not be overembarthive. While we were addressing our security challenges, we had the flooding. It's not easy, but people of Orlando State remain resilient all the time. The support that we receive from the federal government, the support that we receive from individuals has complemented the effort of the Borno State government in addressing these challenges and I think we are doing well. Nigeria has predicted another flooding this year. For the people of Maiduguri, the fear of the next rainfall hangs heavy. Families here are left to wonder if the future will bring safety or another wave of losses. Chris Ewokor and finally Scared of Spiders well, maybe this will change your mind. The peacock spider is the size of a pinhead. It makes it drumming sound with its feet and moves rhythmically, showing off its vibrant colours. Scientists have been trying to figure out why this spider is so diverse and they may have found the answer in a mysterious part of the colorful spider's DNA. More from our science correspondent Palab Ghosh. This is the mating song of a peacock spider. Now listen to the song of another of its species. They're different as are their dances and dazzling colors. The same is true of more than 100 species of the spider, whereas most animals have only 5 or 10 different varieties. The question is why peacock spiders are so much more diverse. Early indications suggest that the answer lies in a mysterious part of their DNA called dark DNA. These are parts of the genetic code that are not genesis genes are the bits involved in developing various physical and behavioral features. No one really knows what the other bits dark DNA does, but peacock spiders have three times more than humans. So one idea is that it might be involved in helping animals to adapt to changing environmental circumstances and so form new species. Palab Ghosh and that's it from us for now. But there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. A heads up that from next week the Global News Podcast will be available at new times at 17:00 hours and 0500 GMT. In the meantime, if you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, send us an email. The address is globalpodcastbc.co.uk you can also find us on x@bbcworldservice. Use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed with by Rosenwin Durell. The producers were Muzaffa Shakir and Marion Straughan. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time. Bye. Bye. Hi, I'm Susan Glaser. I'm Jane Mayer. And I'm Evan Osmos. And we host the Washington Roundtable from the New Yorkers Political Scene podcast. For me, this is the water cooler. This is a wonderful chance to sit down two of the smartest colleagues in the country and, you know, just kind of compare notes. Now, that's so true, because, first of all, we are actually friends in real life. But I can't wait till Fridays to hear what you guys think. Everybody sees the headlines, but you guys fill in the gaps. I also think, though, occasionally we get somebody to come on, and I'm always smarter for it. If you get a great historian who can tell you about a presidential election 50, 60 years ago, often it can help you understand about what's happening today. So if you're looking for weekly insights into what's going on inside the Beltway, please join us every Friday on the Washington Roundtable, part of the New Yorkers Political Scene podcast.