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Global News Podcast
LA unrest: First federal charges for protesters
00:24:14
The two people who have been charged could face up to 10 years in prison
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- [00:00]
Rachel Wright
This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Rachel Wright and in the early hours of Thursday 12th June, these are our main stories. Police in Los Angeles announced the first federal charges against two people after unrest in the city. The general leading the deployment of U.S. marines to Los Angeles says they will not have power of arrest, but will be allowed to detain protesters until police arrive. The disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein has been found guilty on one charge of sexual assault at his retrial in New York. Also in this podcast, the United nations says a deadline to end child labour has been missed.
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Reem
And 17 children came out of Gaza today. That's just a tiny fraction of the number who are actually seriously ill. But today, for them, a day of hope.
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Rachel Wright
A rare piece of good news from Gaza. Mass arrests and the first federal charges. Authorities in the United States have detailed the fallout from days of unrest in Los Angeles and other cities. But as we record this podcast, the streets appear so far to be peaceful. Two people were charged with federal offenses, including possession of unregistered explosive devices and the use of Molotov cocktails. The United States Attorney for the Central District of California, Bill S. Sally, said the defendants faced up to 10 years in prison if found guilty. The last few days we have seen vicious attacks on our agents and our properties here in the federal government. The escalation of violence by these rioters poses a serious threat to our agents and the safety of the public. Throwing rocks, explosives, assaulting agents and committing other acts of violence are extremely dangerous and will not be tolerated. In Los Angeles, 4,000 members of the National Guard are being deployed, as are 700 Marines currently being being trained quickly in crowd control techniques outside the city. The officer leading the troop deployment, Major General Scott Sherman, clarified what the soldiers could do. Strictly for the protection of the federal personnel and the protection of the federal building. They're allowed to temporarily detain and wait for law enforcement to come and arrest them. They do not do any arrest. They are strictly there to detain, to wait for law enforcement to come and handle those demonstrators. Our correspondent in la, Reagan Morris, told me more about the federal charges that were announced.
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Reagan Morris
They are pretty serious. I just came out of that press conference and, you know, they made a point of saying they were intentionally filing these as federal charges, not state charges, because the consequences can be so much more severe. And These young men, two of them could be facing up to 10 years in prison if convicted. It was surreal in the press conference because they showed footage that I was in and so was our cameraman, Chuck, much more prominently, because we happened to be there on Saturday in Paramount when that Molotov cocktail came over the fence. And it didn't hit anyone, although an officer did catch his pants briefly on fire while trying to stomp it out. But there were no injuries. But they used media, social media footage that somebody else had shot to identify them. And they said they're going to be doing more and more of that and that they will pursue federal charges.
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Rachel Wright
And the White House press spokesperson, Caroline Levitt said they won't allow mob rule. Meanwhile, the Marines are about to come onto the streets. Are people worried? I mean, what's the atmosphere like?
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Reagan Morris
Well, I'm in Westwood at the federal building, and you would never know. There's, I mean, there's certainly no mob rule. The only different out in West LA is that there are heavily armed National Guard troops guarding the building, which is unusual. But other than that, most of Los Angeles is. Life goes on as normal. The demonstrations have been in a really small area in downtown Los Angeles, although I've just been told about one scheduled for the city of Inglewood, not far from where I am now for later on today. So maybe because of the curfew, people are going to start gathering in other places in the city, but that was announced as a peaceful protest. And what happens is during the day they are mostly peaceful protests, and then at night things can get a little hectic.
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Rachel Wright
And briefly, the head of the troops has been speaking. What more do you know?
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Reagan Morris
Well, he said that the Marines were going to do a training course for two days to learn how to patrol the streets. Really? Because that's not something they normally do. You know, these are America's most highly trained killers, really. And the Marines, they're not police. So he said they're going to do a training course for two days and that they would not have live ammunition in their rifles.
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Rachel Wright
Reagan Morris in la for months now, there's been talk of a full blown trade war between the United States and China, but peace may have broken out between the two countries. Two days of trade talks in London have ended with what appears to be the beginnings of a deal. The US Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, said that after the talks he, he was optimistic. We are going to go back and speak to President Trump and make sure he approves it. They are going to go back and speak to President Xi and make sure he approves it. And if that is approved, we will then implement the framework that we have worked hard over these last two days. Obviously, the Team stayed at it until it was done late into the evening. What's not clear yet is exactly what's in the deal, though. There does seem to be a pledge from China to supply the US with much needed so called rare earth minerals and magnets which are vital for many American industries. Henry Sanderson is an associate fellow with the Royal United Services Institute. Just why are these rare earth metals so important? My colleague Owen Bennett Jones asked him.
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Henry Sanderson
The rare earth magnets that they're talking about are critical for defense industries, but also especially automotive industries. You know, most cars contain, you know, dozens of magnets and especially electric vehicles contain very powerful magnets. So China has a lot of leverage. It produces over 90% of the world's rare earth magnets. And it's used this leverage, it's used this weapon. You know, it doesn't have that many tools in its toolbox, but it's used this weapon in this trade war with the US and it's been, it's been quite effective.
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Owen Bennett Jones
Yes, slowing down the supply of those magnets to Western markets. Now why doesn't the US produce this sort of stuff? Because they used to, didn't they?
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Henry Sanderson
Yeah, the US used to be the largest producer, used to be the largest, have the largest rare earth mine in the world. Is really a story of globalization, neoliberal economic thinking. A lot was offshored to China, but also China domestically produces a lot of rare earths and they basically moved up the value chain. They worked out how to process them. Then they became dominant in producing magnets. Until today China's the lion's share of demand. Two thirds of electric vehicle sales are in China. They produce most of the world's robots, so they have the demand. So they're mostly supplying their own market with the export market being much smaller part of demand.
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Owen Bennett Jones
Nonetheless, a lot of this stuff is vital for US Defense, isn't it, in missiles and drones and this sort of thing. So it really is a leverage that the Chinese have got, and I presume they got a lot back for offering to resume these exports.
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Henry Sanderson
Well, we still don't know the details. I mean, Trump is saying that China's agreed up front to supply these rare earth magnets. But the Chinese system that they've come up with is a license system. So they can at any point they maintain this control. Right. So they, they have control over who gets a license for export, where it goes, they know where it's going to. So they can at any point restrict exports again. So it's really quite a clever system, you know. So that they do have leverage to, to restrict it going forward.
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Owen Bennett Jones
I think Japan some years ago sorted out its own supply lines of rare earth metals so that they wouldn't be in this situation. Is America doing the same thing?
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Henry Sanderson
Yeah, you're right. So Japan, you know, China restricted exports in 2010 to Japan. They spent about a billion dollars at the time supporting Australian rare earth producer. But they still do rely on China for some rare earths they need for magnet production. The question now with the US is, you know, they've learned the lesson we can the impact of China's leverage, but will they sustain the focus and the determination to actually rebuild an industry that's going to take five to 10 years. It's going to take sustained investment, sustained support. Can the US keep the focus? Because it's not going to be necessarily economically competitive or easy to compete with China.
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Rachel Wright
Henry Sanderson talking to my colleague Owen Bennett Jones. Now the European Space Agency has released the first ever video and image of the Sun's South Pol. The footage taken from a Solar Orbiter spacecraft will help scientists get a better understanding of why the Sun's poles switch from north to south and back again every 11 years. Our science correspondent Palab Ghosh has the details.
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Owen Bennett Jones
The video shows that the Sun's south pole has a super hot atmosphere which is 1 million Celsius. It appears as a shimmering brighter band at the bottom of an already bright yellow surface. Interspersed are darker, cooler wisps of gas gent waving in what seems like a solar breeze. But there's nothing gentle about this picture. Flashes of even brighter light that appear tiny are in reality planet sized explosions. Complex magnetic fields conjure up flares and loops of gas, parts of which hurtle towards the Earth. This new view is important because what happens at the top and bottom of the sun gives an insight into how its north and south poles regularly switch places. This switch is also related to why the sun shifts from having a quiet period to raging storms. According to Professor Lucy Green of University.
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Rachel Wright
College London, the reversal of the polar magnetic fields on the sun is for me, I think one of the big open questions in science and what we'll be able to do with Solar Orbiter is measure for the first time really important fluid flows that grab pieces of the magnetic field of the sun and transport them to the polar regions.
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Owen Bennett Jones
As the solar poles are in transition, the sun is less contained and bits of it are more likely to be spat out towards the Earth. These solar storms can damage communication satellites and power grids, but they can also cause beautiful auroras. In the sky. The ultimate goal is to develop computer models so satellite operators, power distribution companies, as well as Aurora watchers can plan for the sun's turbulent activity.
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Rachel Wright
Palab Ghosh the United nations says that there are nearly 138 million children still working worldwide. UNICEF and the International Labour Organisation released a joint report which said that despite progress, a deadline to end child labour had been missed. Max Horbury reports more than one in every 12 children works. This represents, the United nations say, an improvement, but it still means that 138 million children aged between five and 17 work, equivalent almost to the entire population of Russia. Nearly 40% of those children have been risking their health working in mines, factories or fields. Sub Saharan Africa has the highest number of child laborers, while most progress has been made in the Asia Pacific region. There had been an aim to bring the global number down to zero by 2025, but at the current rate, it will take hundreds of years before the world is free of child labor. Max Horbury and now some rare good news from Gaza. Some Palestinians have been able to leave the territory. One of them, Siwa Ashur, just six months old and facing starvation. The BBC filmed her just over a month ago in hospital suffering from severe malnutrition. On Wednesday, Siwa was among a group of children, some with canc, pulled out of Gaza to be taken for treatment in Jordan. Our special correspondent Fergal Keen traveled with Siwa and her mother Najwa, from Jordan's border with Israel out of Gaza.
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Reem
A small story of hope. Siwar Ashur. Her tiny frame carried onto Jordanian soil. Siwar weighs three kilos. She should be at least twice that. Welcome, Reem, Welcome. And so Siwar has just arrived. She's now going to be taken to a man where there'll be a diagnosis and the beginning of her treatment. And while this is a wonderful moment for her family and for the hopes of this child, of course there are so many other sick children in Gaza who will not make it out to treatment here. Sixteen other sick children joined SIWAR today, some suffering from cancer here. No chaos, no pleading for food, peace and plenty. You're here in Jordan. I just have to ask you, what does it feel like?
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Rachel Wright
It feels like there is a truce. We will spend our night without rockets and bombing, without anything in God's will.
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Reem
Our journalist first filmed Siwara Shour back in April. A child who struggled to cry. Her mother and doctor spoke of a severe shortage of the right baby formula to feed her under the Israeli blockade. She's like a skeleton whenever I look.
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Henry Sanderson
At her, I cry.
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Reem
I cannot bear how thin she is. What you notice most is the utter weariness of parents and children, all that they have lost. Siwar's father, Salah, who is blind since before the war, and Najwa, who's pregnant and exhausted on the last miles to a man in Jordan's capital, just over 100 miles from Gaza. The last transfer into the arms of a nurse taking Siwar for specialist treatment.
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Rachel Wright
Thank God I have got out of the crisis. It felt like I'd been there a hundred years. My heart is finally at ease. Away from the tanks and the rest. We couldn't sleep at all. Not a single night. Baby Siwa's mother Najwa ending that report by Fergal Keen. Still to come, the original plays were.
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Christine Hainsworth
Considered too old fashioned. So we have to do him a favor and update them and jazz them up with a bit of singing and dancing.
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Rachel Wright
A very different take on William Shakespeare. The disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein has been found guilty on one charge of sexual assault. At his retrial in New York, he was found not guilty of a second sex assault charge. As we record this podcast, the jury has not yet reached a verdict on a third rape count. Weinstein's previous conviction in 2020 was overturned by a state appeals court last year. Weinstein has yet to serve a 16 year sentence after being convicted of sexual crimes in Los Angeles. Our correspondent Neda Taufik was in court in New York.
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Neda Taufik
After five days, we now have a decision where the jury has found Harve Weinstein guilty of a criminal sexual act with Mimi Haley. Now, she was a production assistant that worked with Weinstein and she has accused him of forcibly performing oral sex on her. So they have found Weinstein guilty on that charge. They have found Weinstein not guilty on the third new accuser, a Polish model who said that she was hoping that Weinstein would help her with her career but then also forced oral sex on her. Now there is a third woman who was part of the original case, Jessica Mann. She actually had a long consensual relationship with Weinstein but accused him of rape. Now the jury is going to return to continue deliberating on that count. But look, we are years from the MeToo movement. Harvey Weinstein, of course, was kind of the poster man for that movement because of how many women in Hollywood had come out and saw spoken out against him. And so his initial trial where he was found guilty was really seen as a victory for that movement. Years on, many were waiting to see what the result would be this time around. So a partial victory for one of the women who the jury heard her case and believed her. But more to come as we wait to see what the jury has to say about the rest of the case.
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Rachel Wright
Nida Taufique in New York. And now to Poland. The moment it was announced in Parliament that a vote of confidence had been won by Poland's pro EU government, it had been called by Prime Minister Donald Tusk after his political candidate lost the presidential election to Carol Novrodsky, a national conservative historian supported by the opposition Law and Justice Party. The new president is expected to use his presidential veto to block the government's more liberal legislation. From Warsaw, Adam Easton reports.
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Owen Bennett Jones
Donald Tusk's broad coalition united and voted.
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Henry Sanderson
To stay in office, he said.
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Rachel Wright
He called the vote to end speculation.
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Henry Sanderson
About his government's future the next two years before scheduled parliamentary elections will not be easy.
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Owen Bennett Jones
The socially conservative president elect, Karel Navrotsky.
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Henry Sanderson
Is widely expected to use his presidential.
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Owen Bennett Jones
Veto to block legislation to depoliticise the judiciary.
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Henry Sanderson
As the prime minister promised to both Brussels and his voters, liberalizing the country's.
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Owen Bennett Jones
Strict abortion law will probably remain on the shelf. The government will have to find creative.
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Rachel Wright
Solutions to introduce its reforms, but many.
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Owen Bennett Jones
Areas require legislative changes.
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Henry Sanderson
Many voters are displeased with the government's lack of Progress during its 18 months in office. Mr. Tusk gambled that his presidential candidate.
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Rachel Wright
Would win and the obstacle to effective.
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Henry Sanderson
Governance would be removed. He lost the bet, and getting re.
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Owen Bennett Jones
Elected in 2027 will not be easy.
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Rachel Wright
Adam Easton in Warsaw, one of the most respected antique experts in France, has been jailed for helping to pass off fake antique chairs as genuine. One pair, which he claimed were made for Marie Antoinette, was sold for $2 million. Here's our Europe regional editor, Paul Moss.
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Owen Bennett Jones
It apparently started as a joke.
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Rachel Wright
The antiques expert Georges Palo and wood.
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Owen Bennett Jones
Carver Bruno Denou say they wanted to.
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Rachel Wright
See if they could people by making furniture and artificially aging the wood to make it, appear to be the work of master craftsmen from two or three centuries ago.
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Owen Bennett Jones
Galleries and antique dealers were indeed fooled.
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Rachel Wright
Even curators from the palace of Versailles.
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Owen Bennett Jones
But now Paolo Denou and four others.
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Rachel Wright
Have been convicted for their role in the forgery. In court, Mr. Denou said he was.
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Owen Bennett Jones
Motivated only by the pleasure of making beautiful things.
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Rachel Wright
Paul Moss it's hard to believe today with William Shakespeare, hailed as the greatest British playwright and perhaps the greatest the world has ever known, that there was ever a time when his works were not regarded as great literature. Yet according to 18th century actor manager David Garrick. It wasn't actors or writers that thrust the poet into the spotlight, but a group of determined noblewomen. Christine Hainsworth tells the story in her new book, the Shakespeare Ladies Club, co written with her husband Jonathan. She told my colleague Sean Lay how it all started in the 1730s.
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Christine Hainsworth
Susanna, the fourth Countess of Shaftesbury. She was only 26 when she formed the Shakespeare Ladies Club and it comprised a duchess, a countess, a baroness and a working writer. They got together, they loved reading the original Shakespeare, so they would read them together and then naturally want to see them on the stage. And when they went to the theatres, they found that they were a censored version with all the fun bits taken out, all the tragedy taken out, all the rude words taken out. They lamented that and they felt that Shakespeare had really been lost and the original plays were considered too old fashioned. So we have to do him a favour and update them and jazz them up with a bit of singing, dancing and happy, happy ending. So they got together and they decided that they'd lobby theatre managers to put on more Shakespeare. And they were really up against it because people quite liked these musical versions and all the fun songs and acting. By the end of their campaign, they had a quarter of all productions being Shakespeare.
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Owen Bennett Jones
What, in the London film?
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Christine Hainsworth
Yes, yes. So it really works. They also wanted a monument put in Poets Corner, Westminster Abbey, because Shakespeare had been dead for over a hundred years and there was nothing there.
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Owen Bennett Jones
And one of the most famous men of the theater at the stage pretty much gave the Shakespeare Ladies Club the credit, didn't they, for reviving the playwright's reputation?
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Christine Hainsworth
Well, that was David Garrick and at his jubilee he said it was the ladies that formed a society and saved Shakespeare. But unfortunately he didn't name them.
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Owen Bennett Jones
The man got the credit once again.
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Christine Hainsworth
Yes. And they did raise the money and they did put the monument of Shakespeare and Poets Corner. And the problem again was that as women, they weren't by tradition at that time able to conduct business with men. So they had to appoint a committee to oversee the statue going into Poets Corner. And that was a committee of men, four men. And of course, when the Abbey recorded the particulars, they put the names of the men down as being responsible for the monument.
- [23:26]
Rachel Wright
Christine Hainsworth. And Westminster Abbey has now updated its website to reflect the role played by the Ladies Club in getting the Shakespeare Memorial built. 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 or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcastbc.co.uk you can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll. The producers were Alison Davis and Arian Kochi. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Rachel Wright. Until next time, goodbye.