Fatalities in Hawaii as wildfires engulf Maui

00:00: Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service with reports and analysis

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00:33: This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC WOD Service.

00:39: I'm Robin Brandt and in the early hours of first day,

00:41: the 10th of August, these are our main stories.

00:44: Officials in Hawaii have described apocalyptic scenes

00:48: on one of the US state's main islands after wildfires destroyed buildings

00:52: and forced residents to jump into the ocean.

00:55: The death toll from a migrant shipwreck off the coast of Italy rises.

01:00: Police officers in Northern Ireland say they are worried

01:02: about their own security after a massive data breach.

01:08: Also in this podcast.

01:10: Back in 1997, very tired chicken farmer

01:13: bought some rocks from a local quarry.

01:15: And as he was turning over one of the stones

01:17: and hosing it off, this amazing fossil appeared underneath it.

01:20: Scientists in Australia have identified a new species

01:23: of large amphibian that lived in the trassic period more than 240 million years ago.

01:33: But let's start in the United States

01:35: and specifically on the island Archipelago of Hawaii,

01:39: where authorities are scrambling to rescue people who fled from numerous wildfires, whipped up by horror-constraint winds

01:46: on one of the U.S. state's main islands.

01:49: As we record this podcast,

01:50: at least six people are confirmed dead on Maui.

01:54: Emergency services in one town there

01:56: was said to be overwhelmed. Reports say the mobile phone and emergency networks went

02:01: down. At a news conference in the capital Honolulu, the state's Lieutenant Governor Sylvia

02:06: Luke said Maui was not a safe place to be.

02:09: On certain parts of Maui, we have shelters that are overrun, we have resources that are

02:15: being taxed, we are doing whatever we can and the state is providing whatever support

02:22: that we can to give support to both Maui and to the big island.

02:27: Some people who fled their homes on Maui had to be rescued by helicopter after jumping into the sea.

02:33: I spoke to the local journalist Malika Dudley, who was forced to flee her home

02:38: and she described what happened in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

02:42: I smelled smoke and for a couple of hours there, I was bugging my husband

02:47: and saying I think something's wrong, I smell smoke.

02:50: I think maybe our house is on fire and he was checking around the house and there was nothing there and we knew that a red flag warning was posted

02:56: We knew the winds were high and that fires could spread very quickly

03:00: So we just figured it's not uncommon that the fire is somewhere else on the island

03:05: Unfortunately at 3 a.m. We were woken up by our neighbors who said it was right near us and

03:11: At 3 a.m. We looked out the window and the sky was red

03:15: We grabbed our children and a couple of suitcases with some toiletries and ran out the door.

03:20: We went down to where I am now in Haleemaili.

03:23: It's far enough away down the hill and upwind of where the fire was spreading at the moment

03:29: and felt like we would be safe there when we have been.

03:33: Now we hear that hurricanes have whipped up these fires very quickly, but do we know how the fires actually started?

03:39: So to clarify that, I'm a meteorologist, so I actually was on the news on KiTv4 here

03:44: year on the weekend warning of this, the hurricane is well to the south of the island.

03:49: It's more than 500 miles away. However, it's a very strong hurricane and that low pressure

03:53: system with high pressure to the north of the islands sandwich right in between those

03:58: two pressure systems. The gradient got really tight and that's what whips up the really

04:04: strong winds. So we knew we were going to have winds upwards of gusts of 60 miles per

04:09: hour. What ended up happening was up to 80 mile per hour gusts. And that really

04:15: found the flames. But do we know if these are fires that started naturally or

04:18: were, is there any kind of suspicion that people were setting fires? When you

04:22: have winds that strong, we know that it pushes down power lines and trees and

04:27: things. And so power lines did go down. In fact, 29 power lines went down in

04:31: Lahaina alone and 30 total on the island. We do not have investigations have

04:36: not been conducted yet because we're still in recovery and preserving life and property

04:41: mode. We just found out that six people lost their lives, countless structures, homes,

04:46: businesses have been lost to the fire. So at this point, we do not have the official word

04:52: that it was naturally started. But the fact that we knew that, you know, this could happen

04:56: with power lines going down, it's a safe assumption to make that at least one or more of the fires were started of natural causes.

05:04: Is there a sense that some parts of the island were just overwhelmed in terms of the emergency services,

05:10: the ability to call them out, hospital provision? I mean, did it get that bad? That serious?

05:15: Absolutely, absolutely. In my neighborhood alone, we had firemen there. They were monitoring

05:21: situation. First of all, they couldn't even get in there because the winds were so high, they

05:25: couldn't man the helicopters and water drops. It was too dangerous. So they were waiting. They

05:30: They were just waiting for the brush the burn and then they would protect the homes if it got to that point.

05:36: Unfortunately, once the other fires started popping up around the rest of the island, all firefighters were asked to work if they could and they just did not have enough

05:46: resources. It just happened so, so quickly.

05:49: Malika Dudley speaking to me from Hawaii.

05:52: Now, in Brazil, the president, Louis Inacio Lula da Silva, has brought a summit of eight

05:57: countries that share the Amazon to a close, saying that for the first time, the rainforest

06:02: has spoken for itself. The meeting ended with a commitment to work together as a region,

06:07: but fell short of promising to end deforestation by 2030, as had been proposed by the host

06:14: Brazil. The declaration was drawn up in the Amazonian City of Belém from where our South

06:19: America correspondent Katie Watson reports.

06:21: This was a much heralded summit, bringing together leaders from the countries with the most at stake.

06:27: Those who share a piece of the world's largest rainforest.

06:30: In a region that often feels very fragmented and with huge political differences between

06:34: neighbours, the fact that South America wants to be seen as a leader on climate change is a big change in itself.

06:41: But those hoping to see an end to deforestation may be disappointed.

06:45: Instead, the country's issued a loose commitment to tackling the problem without giving big details on how.

06:51: A head of the summit, President Lula De Silva, said this week would be a milestone, one

06:56: that would offer solutions rather than just talk.

06:58: Critics may disagree, but today, Marina Silva, Brazil's Environment Minister, remained upbeat.

07:06: Even though we didn't get disretaining to the Belaying Declaration, because we didn't

07:11: come to our consensus, Brazil is already committed to it, and we will carry on with trying to achieve the goal.

07:18: The Amazonian nations did say, though, that hunger, poverty and violence needed to be

07:22: tackled in order to effectively protect the rainforest from environmental crimes.

07:27: There were 50 million people living in the Amazon, and without giving them a future, conservation will be harder.

07:33: Maria Susana Ferreira-Consalves lives deep in the rainforest of Pará,

07:37: the states with the highest rate of deforestation.

07:41: The small farmer doesn't commit a crime because he wants to.

07:44: It's because he needs to prepare the land so we can use it for our own use.

07:49: So do we commit crimes? We do. We do it because we have to commit crimes.

07:54: If we don't, we go hungry.

07:59: This week has put the land and the Amazon in the spotlight,

08:02: This region can, and wants to play a big role in securing a better future for the rainforest,

08:07: the world's experts and politicians will be back here in two years' time for the COP30 climate summit.

08:13: Katie Watson in the Amazon.

08:15: Now just under 14,000 kilometres to the west of there lies the Pacific Island nation

08:21: of Tonga, where in recent days there's been a rush for warm clothing, as its experience

08:26: is an unusually cold winter, driven by the El Niño weather phenomenon.

08:31: Tom Stora and his say hooded sweatshirts have completely sold out.

08:34: Jersong Lee reports.

08:36: Tonga's National Weather Agency says it recorded 9.3 degrees Celsius at the end of July,

08:42: slightly above the country's lowest ever recorded temperature.

08:45: For many, that might feel rather warm for winter, but Tonga usually sees temperatures of

08:50: around 18-21 degrees Celsius during the season.

08:54: Children have been pictured in their hoodies with arms wrapped around their body to beat the cold.

08:58: call snap is expected to continue with temperatures as low as 10 degrees predicted next week.

09:05: The Italian authorities have begun an investigation into the drowning of 41 migrants of the island

09:10: of Lampedusa. 45 people have been aboard a boat which set off from Tunisia last Thursday

09:16: before it capsized. Four survivors, originally from the Ivory Coast to Angini, gave their

09:22: accounts to Italian coast guards after being brought ashore. One of the groups involved

09:27: in the rescue mission was sea watch, which monitors the Mediterranean for migrant boats in distress.

09:33: Paul Wagner from the group said the kind of boats used on the route from Tunisia were particularly

09:38: dangerous. There's no life saving equipment normally that the refugees have on their boats

09:44: so they're all very insecure. They're unspoken boats that are used on the Tunisian road,

09:49: a specific insecure as they think very fast. So you're met around the middle of the ocean

09:55: and your boat sinks and you're on a wooden boat, you can at least hold on to something that floats.

10:01: Well, if you're about sinks and you're on iron boat, they disappear like within less than two minutes.

10:07: In the last few days alone, more than 2,000 people have arrived in Lampedusa.

10:12: Many had to be rescued at sea by Italian patrol boats after strong winds hit the coastal waters.

10:18: This assessment of the latest tragedy from our Arab affairs editor Mike Thompson.

10:23: the Lampedusa is just what 150 kilometres from Tunisia, from Sfax. So it's about the nearest

10:30: land point you could get to. And when you talk about the numbers, yes, I mean Tunisia has taken

10:36: over from Libya as the biggest departure point for migrants. And when I was there, I saw boats

10:42: piled high, literally maybe two meters high, one upon each other, all iron boats that we were

10:48: we're hearing about just now complete wrecks.

10:51: And so you look at those and you understand

10:54: just by that sight the loss of life.

10:56: And Tunisia in particular,

10:57: what are the push factors in terms of Tunisia at the moment

11:00: that are forcing these people to seek to undergo this perilous route?

11:04: Well, there are really two things.

11:05: The first is people looking for a better life

11:07: and that's the reason they fled the country they came from in many cases.

11:11: But there's also the racism and the growing anti-migrant sentiment in the country

11:18: There was a speech by President Kaisai in February,

11:21: in which he talked of, in his own words,

11:23: hordes of migrants heading to the country

11:26: intent on a criminal plot to change the country's demography.

11:30: And that's led to a lot of attacks on migrants.

11:32: They've been pushed out of lodgings

11:34: and sack from their jobs, bust into the desert

11:37: to border regions without food or water.

11:39: And for many, they just want to get out.

11:42: What about the place that many are initiating their journey from, S-Fax?

11:47: He tells a bit more about that, why that's particularly problematic at the moment.

11:50: Well, it's a place where I remember standing early morning on the coastline there,

11:55: and it looked beautiful. The Mediterranean was like a mill pond,

11:58: and suddenly the wind gets up, and it's ferocious.

12:02: And you can imagine what happens if you're out in a small iron boat, and that whips up.

12:07: It really is terrible. I mean, you find taught people they had found bodies

12:11: on the beach almost every day, and a fisherman who'd fished 15 migrants bodies out of his nets. in just a few weeks.

12:19: Mike Thompson.

12:20: Let's stay in Europe where Ukraine has refused to confirm reports that several dozen of

12:24: its troops have managed to cross the Deneepro River in key southern battlegrounds, break

12:30: Russian defences, and then advance almost one kilometer.

12:34: Sasha Schlister reports.

12:36: On Tuesday, several of the Russian war bloggers reported that seven Ukrainian boats conducted

12:41: the daring cross river raid, landing near the settlement of Kuzachilakhiri and advancing

12:47: up to 800 meters. They reportedly exploited a Russian troop rotation which meant they

12:52: faced an inexperienced enemy. The Dnieperer forms a natural front line in the war. Crossing

12:58: it in high numbers would give Ukraine an immediate advantage, opening the way to occupied Crimea

13:04: and cities like Militoppol and Mariopol. But Ukraine's deputy defence minister,

13:08: Sir Janus had to stick to official information and not Russian blogs.

13:13: Sasha Schlikter reporting. Now scientists have identified a new species of large and

13:18: fibion, about 1.2 metres long that lived in what is now Australia at the start of the

13:24: Triassic period. Lacklain Hart is the PhD student who decoded the fossil. He's based at the

13:30: University of New South Wales and the Australian Museum in Sydney, and he first told Crouper

13:35: Paddy how it was discovered. Back in 1997, very tired chicken farmer who was living on the

13:41: central coast of New South Wales, bought some rocks from a local quarry to build a retaining

13:46: wall for his garden that he's property. And as he was turning over one of the stones

13:51: and hosing it off, this amazing fossil appeared underneath it.

13:54: Why has it taken so long to identify it? Simply because there hasn't been somebody

13:59: who's had enough time and patience to do so. So it's a big part of my PhD project.

14:06: And so I've been ponding about this thing for about four years.

14:09: Yeah, I mean, I have to say you first encountered this fossil as a child.

14:13: Yeah, so obviously the man who found the fossil alerted the Australian Museum,

14:17: which is based in Sydney, and they had a few experts look at it, but it was just

14:21: coincidence that at the same time there was a touring exhibition called The Donuts or World 2R.

14:27: And so they decided to put this fossil on display at that Donuts or World 2R stop in Sydney.

14:32: And yeah, I went there with my family, my parents and my little brother,

14:35: and I saw the fossil for the first time then when I was 12 years old.

14:38: From the data we have, what can we understand about what this amphibian looked like when it was alive?

14:46: It was rather large, especially for its time. It looks a bit like a cross between a crocodile and a giant salamander.

14:53: It's got a quite rounded shaped head with lots of tiny little teeth inside and also two quite large tusk-like fangs.

15:01: What more do we know about it?

15:02: So it lived about 240 million years ago in what's now called the Sydney Basin.

15:08: It was swimming in fresh water lakes and streams hunting fish more likely.

15:13: And in terms of the significance of this discovery, it's quite the rare find, isn't it?

15:19: It is. So in paleontology, we don't often find skeletons as complete as this one.

15:24: So this one has the head plus most of its skeleton of its body.

15:29: and it's also got soft tissue preserved,

15:31: in principle, its skin and fatty tissue around the outside of its body.

15:34: And does it give us a better understanding of evolution?

15:37: Is it some kind of missing link, perhaps?

15:40: Not a missing link, per se, but what it does tell us

15:42: is that these amphibians were going to considerably large sizes immediately after what's called the end Permian mass extinction event.

15:51: The end Permian mass extinction event

15:53: was the greatest mass extinction in Earth's history,

15:55: over 80% of all living things were wiped out.

15:58: Timeless bondles managed to survive.

16:00: And there was a theory that there should have been larger ones hanging around, especially in Australia, early on after this extinction event,

16:08: but this new discovery has cemented that theory.

16:11: Can I just confirm it's got a name now?

16:13: It does.

16:14: So one of the great fun things about being a paleontologist

16:17: is we get to name the species that we work on.

16:21: So the name of this animal I've given is arena urpaton, supernatus.

16:26: So, Arena Erpeton translates from Latin into Sand Creeper,

16:30: and the supernardist part refers to the fact that it's lying belly up.

16:34: So we can see parts of its chest bones and the underside of its head

16:38: and its ribs and its spine, but we can't see the top of its head or its eyes.

16:42: Lachlan Hart from the University of New South Wales in Australia.

16:48: Still to come.

16:49: Sugar man, won't you hurry?

16:54: Because I'm tired of these scenes.

16:58: Sisto Rodriguez, the searching for Sugarman musician, has died aged 81.

17:08: Do you ever feel a bit overwhelmed when you check the news on your phone first thing in the morning?

17:13: Whenever I open up my phone, they're just endless warnings of more extreme weather to come.

17:19: I'm Hannah, I'm the presenter of a new podcast called What in the World from the BBC World Service.

17:24: We're going to be here trying to help you make sense of the world around you,

17:27: so you can feel a little bit better about what's happening in the world.

17:32: You can find What in the World wherever you get to your BBC podcasts.

17:36: Welcome back to the Global News Podcast.

17:38: Next to Yemen, a poorest country in the Arab world,

17:43: which has been brought to the brink of collapse by almost a decade of civil war.

17:46: war. Back in 2014, Houthi forces, who are backed by Iran, seized the capital. A Saudi-led

17:53: coalition supported by Britain and the United States, intervened. But the Houthis have

17:58: not been dislodged and still control Sainte and the North, where most of the population

18:03: live. Has been less violent since a temporary truce last year between the Saudis and the

18:08: Houthis. But there's no sign of a comprehensive peace deal. Few places have suffered more

18:14: than Taze, a city which for more than 3,000 days has been virtually besieged by hooty forces.

18:22: A senior international correspondent, Olga Giron, spent several days in the city's main hospital.

18:30: We're in the emergency department of Althaurah Hospital. The main hospital in Taze is very busy here, very chaotic.

18:38: There's just been a rush of people coming in.

18:41: Soldiers have been brought in, injured on the front line.

18:46: We meet a local man, Abdul Sayeed Ahmed, who arrived with the casualties.

18:52: He blames hoothy forces for the attack

18:54: and says they don't just target soldiers.

19:00: They attack civilian areas where there are children and innocent people.

19:04: They hit hospitals.

19:05: They strike randomly.

19:07: kill people who are not connected with the war. Sometimes they hit military targets.

19:14: These days in Tyres and in Yemen, it's not all-out war, but it's not peace either.

19:20: The guns are quieter, but this hospital is still receiving plenty of patients wounded by the conflict.

19:29: On the bed just in front of me, there's a little boy. He's seven years old. His name is Muhammad Al-Wan.

19:40: He's having a dressing changed on his hand. It's distressing for him. It's painful.

19:46: He's lost several of his fingers. His uncle, Farhan, tells me what happened.

19:53: He was playing with his brothers and suddenly there was an explosion.

19:58: We didn't know what had caused it. The danger will last for hundreds of years

20:01: years because of the explosive remnants of war. The people who planted the land winds here

20:07: did not leave a map, so the pain and the injuries will continue for a long time.

20:14: I'm surrounded by workbenchers and technicians in white coats,

20:19: cutting, sewing, drilling and filing. They're making artificial limbs. Many of those who come here

20:29: I'm sitting with Shema Ali Ahmed, who's 12, and Shema has just had her weekly physiotherapy

20:37: session here at the prosthetics clinic, and she's been telling me what life is like in Tias for children like her.

20:45: Children here suffer.

20:49: They've lost their arms and legs.

20:51: They don't go out and play like other children around the world.

20:55: They play in comfort, but we play in fear.

20:58: We just send by the doors of our homes.

21:00: When we hear shelling or gunfire, we run back inside.

21:05: Shai Ma was maimed by a land mine which took her right leg and killed her friend.

21:11: She is determined to be a lawyer and she has a question for the international community.

21:19: Why don't you see the children of Thais?

21:21: Why all this neglect?

21:23: Are we not humans in your eyes? report from Uligerin in Yemen.

21:29: Next, let's go to Northern Ireland.

21:31: Where officers and civilians working for the regional police service there, also known

21:35: as the PSNI, have expressed fear and anger after some of their personal details were published

21:41: online by the force in a major data breach.

21:45: The data released on Tuesday is particularly sensitive because of Northern Ireland's troubled

21:50: past and security threats facing police from dissident paramilitary groups.

21:56: Our island's correspondent Chris Page has more.

21:58: Police everywhere face danger.

22:01: In this part of the UK, the risks are especially stark.

22:05: Members of the police service of Northern Ireland

22:07: take particular steps to protect their identities.

22:10: But information appeared online about all 10,000 staff.

22:15: Two serving officers have told the BBC

22:17: about the distress the leak has caused.

22:19: Their words are spoken here by BBC producers.

22:23: We go to great lengths to hide what we do,

22:25: even from our children to protect them,

22:27: so they don't innocently tell the wrong person

22:29: and put themselves or us as a family at risk of danger.

22:32: I have chosen to do this job

22:33: and over time I've become accustomed to the risks, but what this breach has done

22:37: is highlight the fear and concern that my family have.

22:41: The problem came a bite after a routine request for data under freedom of information laws,

22:46: but the police also released a huge Excel spreadsheet by mistake, containing the serenium, initials and work departments of every employee.

22:56: The details were on a website for about two hours.

22:59: The policing board, which holds senior officers to your kind, has called an emergency meeting.

23:04: The storm at assembly member Mike Nezbit,

23:07: who represents the Ulster Unionist party on the board,

23:10: said he was mainly concerned about three categories of officers.

23:14: That's undercover officers, that is officers

23:17: who have an unusual surname, because they will actually

23:20: be somewhat easier potentially to trace. And the third category is officers from a Catholic

23:26: Nationalist background and it's that last category who have been most in touch with me

23:31: over the last 24 hours. During the conflict known as the Troubles, more than 300 police

23:37: officers were killed. Attacks are much more rare now, but dissident Republican paramilitaries

23:43: who oppose the peace process continue to target members of the security forces. Earlier

23:48: this year, a detective, John Coldwell, was shot and critically injured by the group known

23:54: as the new IRA. Northern Ireland's former Justice Minister Naomi Long said the terrorism threat

24:00: was already stretching police resources, and the service might not have the budget to deal with

24:06: the consequences of the data leak. The reality is that at the moment the PSNI don't have that

24:11: capacity, but a security assessment would need to be made by the Chief Constable, where someone

24:17: did need and potentially to have either additional security or to be moved.

24:21: The attend individual officer would have to be at the south."

24:23: The police said they were investigating another data breach.

24:27: In July, a police laptop and documents were stolen from a car.

24:31: They included a spreadsheet with the names of 200 workers.

24:35: Chris Page reporting from Northern Ireland.

24:37: Let's go to China now and the aftermath of widespread flooding there.

24:42: A more detailed picture is emerging of the impact and scale of floods following a

24:46: typhoon that first hit in the east of the country almost two weeks ago.

24:51: Dozens of people have died, tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed.

24:55: The impact on the country's economy is estimated to be in the billions of dollars.

25:00: Now as is often the case with state controlled propaganda in China, the coverage of what

25:05: happened is not always the same as other stories that are now emerging from affected communities.

25:11: As our China media analyst, Kerry Allen explains.

25:15: media dominates the media environment within the country. So there is yes, this very much,

25:21: this focus on we did tell you and the positives of the community pulling together. So it's

25:28: very much saturated by that, whereas on social media platforms like Weibo, for example, you

25:33: will see censorship if people try to vent their frustration specifically against the government.

25:38: But there is a lot of anxiety at the moment because these floods persist in the country and people are being warned, but the cleaner populations are not happening quickly enough.

25:48: So yeah, there's a lot of anxiety in the country at the moment.

25:51: When I was living and working in China, I covered a flood in her

25:53: NAN in Zhengzhou back in 2021, where 14 people drowned in an

25:59: underground metro carriage. And part of the reason for that was

26:03: that essentially there's a man-made problems in that city itself.

26:06: And it was dealt with very quickly by the authorities there.

26:09: Is there any sense in media coverage or beyond that on social media platforms

26:12: that parts of the problems they're facing in these massive Chinese cities and beyond

26:17: is partly man-made. Oh, absolutely, yes. I mean, you know, even though the media has been so focused

26:22: on the northeast in recent weeks, I've seen media coverage of cities like Xi'an in the north,

26:28: for example, where there's been infrastructure damage in urban regions. Also, today I've been

26:33: reading a report on how an underground garage was flooded in Hongzhou, a city in the east.

26:38: So there's social media frustration from people that these immense be areas where you hear

26:45: that China is ahead of the game when it comes to dealing with floods, especially as we're entering

26:50: an era of climate change and you're going to be hearing more and more about these in the future.

26:55: And just fine, all that issue of climate change, does climate change in this being the impact

26:59: of climate change for which China is obviously partly responsible at the moment? Does that feature in

27:04: state media coverage or just that feature kind of down the coal phase, as it were in terms of

27:08: those people who have lost their livelihoods, lost their cars. Do they talk about climate change as

27:11: well? Well one thing I always find really interesting is when I'm reading Chinese media, you will

27:17: often never see if there's a domestic story, any mention of climate change whatsoever. Normally

27:23: you'll see the words climate change in reference to events like fires and floods that happen in the

27:29: west particularly. So you'll often see messaging on how when it comes to climate change, there's a

27:34: global responsibility. Whereas when it comes to China and stories of tackling floods, tackling

27:39: heatwaves, for example, you'll see instead this message of pulling together the community,

27:43: pulling together technology moving quicker and quicker. So real focus is on the positives and

27:49: this other story of climate change very much being an other issue that affects the West more than

27:54: anywhere else. Kerry Allen. Now the Culture Minister in Lebanon, Mohamed Motada, has asked

28:00: censors there to ban the film Barbie, saying the billion dollar movie promotes homosexuality

28:06: and transgender culture and undermines the family. The film may now be pulled or have scenes cut

28:12: from it, as Tom Bateman explains. Barbie's digs at patriarchy obviously fell flat at the summer

28:18: residents of Lebanon's Maronite Patriarch or local leader of the Eastern Catholic Church.

28:24: He had hosted a meeting of cabinet ministers after which the culture minister asked

28:28: censors to ban the movie. The news may be surprising from Beirut, a cosmopolitan city in an

28:34: often conservative region, and the LGBTQ movement has one considerable victories in Lebanon,

28:40: including the Arab world's first Pride Week in 2017. Tom Bateman on Banning Barbie.

28:46: Now, we're going to mark the death of a musician who for many many years didn't know how successful

28:52: he was. Sister Rodriguez, the American musician and subject of the documentary

28:57: searching for Sugarman has died. He was 81. Originally from Detroit in the US, his music resonated

29:04: far away from his hometown in a country deeply divided by racism, prejudice and violence.

29:11: But for a long time, he didn't know that he'd struck a chord in South Africa. I spoke to our entertainment reporter Stephen McIntosh.

29:28: Sixty-Oradry Guests is a really interesting singer in the sense that he released his first

29:33: albums in the early 1970s and yet he didn't have much success when they first came out

29:39: particularly in the US. He was born into Troy, he was a Mexican American singer, because

29:44: the songs didn't have that much success. They ultimately led to him being dropped by his record label,

29:50: but then a really interesting thing happened over the following couple of decades. He developed this

29:55: cult following in South Africa, and that's where he enjoyed the most success.

29:59: Now, I mean, infamously, he didn't know about this, did he? But just explain why he became so popular

30:05: in South Africa, unbeknownst to him. Well, it ultimately stems back to bootlegged copies. You

30:11: You've got to remember this is back in the days when tape to tape or a CD to CD recording was really very popular

30:16: There was a lot of piracy around so these albums one of his albums in particular was just kind of being copied and passed around the country

30:24: And he was developing this following and it was kind of adopted if you like by young people as a kind of

30:29: Protest as part of the anti apartheid movement

30:32: His popularity was growing and yet you know as far as he knew he'd been dropped by his record label two decades earlier

30:38: He didn't know that he was enjoying all this success in South Africa.

30:41: He just went back into construction work and was living a life of relative obscurity back in America.

30:45: So it was politics and it was the apartheid era at the time and a protest against that by young black people in South Africa

30:52: That was the reason for his success at the time

30:54: But let's talk a bit about the music. I mean, what kind of music was it?

30:57: The closest comparison and perhaps it's an obvious and perhaps lazy comparison, but it's a fair one is Bob Dylan

31:07: It was kind of like a mixture of blues folk.

31:10: Their voices actually were quite similar and it was just this quite so full folkcy music.

31:15: I mean, the albums are very good.

31:16: You know, this is high quality music.

31:18: It was just underappreciated in its time, if you like, and he didn't enjoy anything like the success that Bob Dylan enjoyed.

31:23: So once he did eventually discover his success in South Africa, which he did because his

31:29: his daughter came across this website dedicated to him in 1997.

31:33: That's how he found out, is it?

31:34: That's how he found out.

31:35: And you've got to remember in 1997, this is the days of the internet really and it's relative infancy to be honest.

31:40: But his daughter came across this website, found that he had this huge following in South

31:43: Africa.

31:44: He then ended up going on this tour decades after these albums were first released in South

31:48: Africa.

31:49: And that ultimately became the subject of this documentary about his life searching for sugar.

31:53: So literally was that was it?

31:54: You found out online and then suddenly an explosion, he's touring South Africa, I think

31:57: He taught Australia as well and you're going from a kind of a famine to a kind of a feast.

32:02: Exactly, yes, that's a really good description.

32:04: He was going on tours in South Africa, not just South Africa, I should say.

32:07: You know, there were pockets of support for him in Australia and New Zealand as well, so he was doing all these tours.

32:12: Then the story of his fame being discovered, if you like, was made into this documentary

32:16: in 2012, searching for Sugarman, and then it happened all over again.

32:19: His career enjoyed another resurgence.

32:21: I don't hide, I'm not in.

32:27: Looked about the sky, began to cry.

32:32: The sounds of Sister Rodriguez and that was Stephen McIntosh on the life of the musician who's died.

32:38: He was 81.

32:41: And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.

32:45: later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send

32:50: us an email, the address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Caroline

32:57: Drisco, the producer was Liam McChaeffrey, the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Robin brand that's it goodbye