UN finds 'dramatic increase' in Myanmar war crimes

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

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00:38: world wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

00:48: I'm Alex Ritson and at 13 hours GMT on Tuesday 8 August, these are our main stories.

00:55: United Nations investigators say they've gathered evidence of frequent and

00:59: brazen war crimes by Myanmar's military. A BBC investigation into widespread sexual abuse

01:05: and violence by supposed spiritual healers in Sudan and Morocco. A report from the Amazon as South

01:12: American leaders gather to try and stop the chopping of the rainforest.

01:20: Also in this podcast, July was the world's hottest month ever, according to EU scientists.

01:27: At a start warning from the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken to the co-leaders in

01:32: Niger about Russia's Wagner mercenaries.

01:35: Every single place that this group, Wagner Group, has gone.

01:38: Death, destruction and exploitation have followed.

01:45: We begin in Myanmar where UN investigators say there's been a dramatic increase in war

01:50: crimes and crimes against humanity under the military junta.

01:54: We got more details from our Geneva correspondent, Imogen Fogs.

01:59: This is their annual report looking at the period July 22 to July 23.

02:03: They have hundreds, more than 700 sources, including 200 eyewitness accounts.

02:11: have satellite imagery, forensic evidence, and what they're pointing to particularly are

02:18: what they say are really indiscriminate attacks on civilians from the bombing of entire villages,

02:26: burning villages, mass execution of civilians detained during military operations as well as

02:33: mass executions of detained fighters. And the investigators completely dismiss Myanmar's claim

02:41: that only opposition fighters are targeted—this is a purely, strictly military operation—they

02:49: say that is absolutely not the case. They should have, indeed, possibly did know that they were intended to target civilians.

02:58: To reports like this, they make any difference.

03:00: Well, that is a really good question, because traditionally, you and human rights reports their power lies simply in publicity.

03:08: They carefully investigate and then they publish their findings.

03:12: But this rather clunky UN independent investigative mechanism is designed to build cases which can be used in prosecutions.

03:24: So the investigators are building case files on individuals leading Myanmar, leaders in its military.

03:34: And the evidence that they have can be and indeed is being passed to bodies like the International

03:41: Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice.

03:44: So there is the potential at least for prosecutions, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

03:51: Which will scare presumably the military leaders.

03:56: Well it will certainly tell them that it's going to be a bit risky for them to ever leave me on Mar.

04:01: We have seen these prosecutions in the past, but typically, if you look at, for example,

04:06: the former Serbian leader, Slubod and Milosevic, he had to lose power and was then delivered to the hage.

04:15: Others you see with the Syria war crimes trials that people who have passed as refugees

04:21: into Europe are then tried with countries using universal jurisdiction and trying them on their territory.

04:29: So it's either lose power or leave Myanmar.

04:32: We will see Myanmar's military in court, but not before that.

04:36: Imagine folks in Geneva.

04:38: July saw forest fires across large areas of North America, southern Europe and northern

04:44: Africa, severe heat waves in South America and China, and typhoons and flooding across much of Asia.

04:51: Now, it's been confirmed that last month was the hottest ever recorded on Earth.

04:55: The European Union's climate observatory, Copernicus, says the average global temperature

05:00: was 16.6 Celsius, a third of a degree higher than the previous record in 2019.

05:07: While that may not sound very warm to some people, it is very significant as our environment correspondent Matt McGrath told me.

05:16: You're right, it doesn't sound like an awful lot considering some of the temperatures

05:19: we've seen around the world in the 30s and 40s over the last couple of weeks.

05:23: But you have to remember this is a global average taken from billions of readings, from

05:28: aircraft, from satellites, from weather stations all over the world, and it's day and night,

05:33: it's from valleys and mountains. So it's a very comprehensive view across the world.

05:38: And as you say, July this year was the hottest on record, hotter than July 2019 by about a

05:43: third of a degree, but the long-term average here, and the long-term average is only from 1990 to 2020.

05:49: it beats the July figure for that period of three decades by three quarters of a degree.

05:54: And I think scientists will see that as very significant that even in the recent decades,

05:59: it's three quarters of a degree warmer than those figures.

06:02: And with scientists have repeated last week's warning about ocean temperatures too.

06:06: Yes, indeed, the ocean temperatures last week were peaking around 21 degrees.

06:09: There were just the Gulf of Mexico described as being as warm as a bath.

06:13: And I think this record from Copernicus also shows that this has been happening for several months

06:17: now including July. We saw that temperatures have been going up since April in the North Atlantic.

06:22: That was about one degree warmer than average in July. And all of this is compounded by heat waves

06:28: at sea, these big marine heat waves of the cold, threatening species. And also reducing the ability

06:34: of the oceans to absorb carbon dioxide, which may in turn make warming worse in the near future.

06:40: Warnings are all well and good, though, but it does sometimes fail as scientists with reports

06:44: like this are just shouting into the abyss.

06:46: I think there's a real danger here that both for politicians and for many people that we're

06:50: becoming ennured to record breaking, becoming used, if you like, to these kind of record-breaking

06:55: temperatures that people are reporting. And I think that, you know, governments and people

06:59: are also realizing that making the changes to move away from fossil fuels, which are the main cause

07:03: of these rising temperatures, is an expensive business and difficult for many people to do in the

07:08: midst of a global cost-to-living crisis. But I think, and I fear, that over the rest of the year,

07:13: we will see more records and more data as el-Ninial kicks into gear in the waters of South

07:19: America, driving temperatures ever higher. I think politicians come the big climate meeting

07:24: at the end of this year, we'll have to make some very tough decisions faced with the reality

07:29: of climate change as we're experiencing it now. Matt McGraw. Climate change and how to tackle it

07:35: is also at the top of the agenda in the Brazilian city of Bellem, leaders from South American

07:41: countries that share the Amazon rainforest. A meeting to discuss measures to save it.

07:46: The latest figures show deforestation has fallen by 66 percent since Brazil's President

07:52: Lula came to power. After several years of rising deforestation under far-rightly debt

07:57: giant Bolsonaro, Lula has promised zero deforestation by 2030.

08:03: Is that an impossible task? Our South America correspondent Katie Watson reports from the most deforested state in Brazil.

08:16: Delegates are being welcomed with a lively folkloric dance routine as they pass through

08:20: rivals at Belling airport. President Lula De Silva called this summit to bring together the

08:25: eight South American nations who share a slice of the Amazon to find ways of protecting it.

08:30: I think the world needs to look at this meeting in Belling as a milestone he told me last week.

08:38: I've participated in several meetings and many times they talk, talk, talk, approve a document and nothing happens.

08:45: This meeting is the first great opportunity for people to show the world what we want to do.

08:52: For those on the ground though, it's been a difficult few years.

08:55: Hobbes and Goncalves lives a 13-hour boat ride from Belén on Ilya Nemarujo.

09:01: This part of Brazil has been the hardest hit by deforestation.

09:07: You have no idea how much pressure there was in our community under the Bolsonaro government.

09:11: Lent owners, circling the planes, soya farmers wanting to buy the land to deforest it.

09:18: The Hobson's community stood firm and then having courted by a newer industry.

09:23: Businesses that emit carbon dioxide can buy carbon credits to offset the pollution they create

09:28: and those credits can be found in sustainable projects.

09:32: But such is the growth of this industry, carbon credit companies operating in Elid

09:36: de Marajoy have been accused of harassing people to sign their contracts.

09:41: Much of the problems arise because the state is so absent in the Amazon.

09:44: Paras public prosecutor has since got involved to hope projects that have caused concern.

09:49: Prosecutor Eliani Moreira has helped draw up guidelines in what is still an unregulated market.

09:58: In the state is on there, it creates a no-mins land where anything can happen.

10:03: On the banks of the Amazon River, Hernandez Pandoria is hopeful that carbon credits can give him a better future.

10:10: He proudly shows off his assay in Cacao plantations.

10:14: The machinery and training were provided for by CarbonX, a Brazilian carbon credit company that's received investment funding from Shell.

10:22: Just last year we took five illegal sawmirs from Arlen.

10:27: The community knows that defending their territory from illegal logging is a challenge on their

10:31: own, but partnering with a company like CarbonX with the funds behind it is the best way forward.

10:37: We won't support to live after our forests.

10:42: We don't want to cut down trees anymore.

10:47: For CarbonX, empowering the communities to look after their land is important.

10:51: Janine Dullan is the CEO.

10:53: When Global North comes to Global South and say, I have a solution.

10:57: We're like, really?

10:59: Have you been to the Amazon?

11:00: How do you know?

11:01: What's good for them?

11:02: How can you solve that problem?

11:04: If you've never been there, you don't have your boots on the ground.

11:07: People on the ground in the Amazon and those at the summit this week had determined to

11:12: make South America's voice heard when it comes to climate change.

11:17: Katie Watson.

11:20: The world's second biggest economy is having problems.

11:23: China has suffered big falls in both exports and imports.

11:27: Exports for July were 14.5% down on the year before the weakest level since February 2020.

11:34: As Nick Marsh reports from our Asia Business Hub in Singapore,

11:38: China appears to be suffering from the economic version of Long COVID.

11:44: These figures for trade are actually even worse than economists had anticipated in terms

11:49: of exports. It's the weakest data since back in February 2020 when China, of course, was

11:55: right in the thick of the pandemic. Why is this data so bad? Well, it's mainly to do with

12:01: China's customers abroad. They're really struggling with high inflation, high interest rates,

12:08: so they're spending less money on Chinese goods. And if you're a policymaker in Beijing,

12:12: well, it's difficult to say what you should do about that. You can't just force other

12:16: countries to start buying more of your goods. But there's also more to contend with. If you look at

12:21: the spending within China, that's also looking not very encouraging at the moment. Tomorrow,

12:28: we're expecting some more figures to be coming out, which will probably show deflation.

12:33: Price is actually going down in China. That's a bit more difficult to explain, but there are

12:40: some people who think that China's zero-coded policy went on for so long that customers just

12:45: start ready to splurge post-pandemic, like they did in Europe, like they did in the United States.

12:50: So you've got problems outside of China.

12:52: People not ready to spend on Chinese goods and within China as well.

12:57: Nick Marsh.

12:59: If you use your laptop in public, you might want to be careful about who might be listening

13:04: in. Researchers in Britain have shown it's possible to work out what you're typing

13:09: by recording the sound of tapping on your keyboard and then putting it through an AI model.

13:15: The paper by researchers from Durham, Surrey and Royal Holloway universities was published

13:21: at the European Symposium on Security and Privacy.

13:24: My colleague Oliver Conway spoke to the lead author Joshua Harrison.

13:30: This paper was a proof of concept in which we tried to show the possibility of a machine

13:35: learning models at recognising which key is being pressed, purely based off the sound

13:41: recorded from just an iPhone sat nearby on a table. No further away than you might get

13:46: to someone sat next to a coffee shop. We recorded a big amount of key presses on this laptop,

13:54: then we filtered them through this machine learning model and the machine learning model

13:58: broke a good amount of records in terms of the accuracy of the predictions that it made.

14:03: you gave it a sound, how well could it predict that sounds key from the recordings that we made?

14:10: So each key has a different sound and it's able to work out from the sound which key you've hit.

14:16: Yes, so if you think of a drum, the different areas that you hit on the drum will make different

14:20: noises and there's not so dissimilar a system going on here where you have in this case, I'll

14:26: laptop with four feet on the table and where you hit on that plate, that metal plate with

14:33: four feet on the table is going to change the sound similar to that drum.

14:37: And so these little variations in the sounds that are produced when you hit those keys

14:41: and be picked up with something like, in our case, a deep learning algorithm.

14:46: So with this only work on, say, a traditional keyboard rather than if you're tapping on your smartphone, for example.

14:53: model specifically works on the model of laptop that we tested. But in terms of touch

14:59: screen specifically, these have been found to be vulnerable to using the microphone in

15:04: the device. So for example, if we were on FaceTime and you were typing on your phone while

15:10: we were on FaceTime, I'm listening to those taps through the microphones in your device.

15:16: And those in different papers that we have cited, those papers have found that these

15:21: touch screens are vulnerable to a similar kind of attack where the different bumps and sounds

15:26: coming from you typing on that touchscreen are detectable within the microphones of your phone.

15:31: But in your experiment, you found that if someone was typing away and you had this computer

15:37: listening in, it would more or less know what is being typed.

15:41: So the way our experiment works is you take a bunch of random recordings of these key

15:47: and yeah, given that that bunch of random data, it was able to predict 95% of those keys,

15:55: what we're trying to show with paper or what this paper does show is that specifically machine

16:00: learning is provably quite good at this better than other models that have been used in the past.

16:06: And so the likelihood of someone being able to exploit these flaws, the flaws being, the sound

16:14: a keyboard makes. That likelihood does go up with this paper showing that progress.

16:20: Software engineer Joshua Harrison.

16:25: Still to come in the global news podcast. A few moments before the court

16:30: has passed, there was a massive sing-along people broke out into their own version of nothing compares to you.

16:37: An update from Ireland on the funeral of singer

16:40: Shunne Do Conner.

16:47: Walking out into that stadium and everybody's there.

16:50: There's just such a big crowd and so much family and noise.

16:53: It's a dream.

16:54: I remember growing up and watching the Olympics

16:57: and realizing that, you know, one day this could be me.

16:59: An event that the whole world recognizes.

17:02: to win was something I had never imagined.

17:06: A podcast about the incredible journeys of Olympic and Paralympic athletes.

17:11: On the podium from the BBC World Service, find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

17:18: Niger was a key ally of the United States until last month's coup,

17:23: the seventh military takeover in West and Central Africa since 2020.

17:28: It comes as the Russian-Murson-Rigrupp Vagna stepped up activity in the region.

17:32: It's been courting several African governments.

17:35: The United States sent a top official, Victoria Nulund, Tunisia,

17:39: to try to pave the way for a restoration of democracy.

17:42: But after talks, she said no progress had been made.

17:46: The BBC's where he get Moira spoke to her boss,

17:49: the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken,

17:52: and began by asking him if the site of Russian flags on the streets of the capital,

17:57: and the Army was of concern to the US.

18:00: For sure, we have concerns when we see something like the Wagner Group possibly manifesting

18:05: itself in different parts of the Sahel.

18:08: And here's why we're concerned, because every single place that this group, Wagner Group,

18:13: has gone death, destruction, and exploitation have followed.

18:18: Insecurity has gone up, not down.

18:20: It hasn't been a response to the needs of the countries in question for greater security.

18:25: I think what happened and what continues to happen in Niger

18:30: was not instigated by Russia or by Wagner,

18:34: but to the extent that they try to take advantage of it.

18:36: And we see a repeat of what's happened in other countries

18:39: where they brought nothing but bad things in their wake.

18:41: That wouldn't be good.

18:42: Would you, with the troops of the US,

18:44: stay in Niger if the coup holds?

18:46: Well, I don't want to get into hypotheticals.

18:48: We get ahead of what's happening in Niger.

18:52: We strongly support the work that Eko Was is doing

18:54: to try to help restore the constitutional order.

18:58: In Niger, I've been in close touch with President Bazaum with many colleagues in the region, including the Nigerian president

19:05: to Nubu, colleagues at the African Union.

19:08: And it's very important that that constitutional order be restored.

19:15: And right now, I think,

19:17: Iqawas is playing an important role

19:19: in moving the country back in that direction.

19:21: Secretary of State, for those who support

19:23: the halting of the Black Sea grain deal or I really look at it.

19:27: They argue that the West is mainly concerned about Russia's growing influence over Africa

19:32: and the issue isn't just about food supply bearing in mind only 3 percent of Ukraine's

19:36: grain actually got to the African continent.

19:39: Do you have any views on that?

19:40: Well, again, the majority of the grain that was getting out through the Black Sea grain

19:45: initiative, more than 50 percent was going to develop in countries, including many in

19:50: Africa, two-thirds of the wheat going to developing countries, including countries in Africa.

19:55: But meanwhile, what's so important is this, resolving this situation, Russia getting back

20:01: into the Black Sea Grand Initiative, would be the quickest thing anyone could do to actually effectively address food insecurity.

20:09: The US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken.

20:14: Spiritual healing is very popular in many countries in the Middle East, but there have been concerns

20:19: as the practice is not regulated. Now, a BBC News Arabic investigation has uncovered allegations

20:25: of widespread sexual abuse and coercion by spiritual healers in Sudan and Morocco.

20:32: 80 women accused healers of offenses including rape, sexual assault and manipulating them

20:37: into sex. Hanan Razek visited Sudan before the recent conflict and sent this report,

20:43: which contains distressing details of sexual abuse and violence.

20:49: At this center in Khartoum, women believe that spiritual healing can cure illnesses and

20:57: solve emotional problems while expelling evil spirits.

21:03: Shaykh Fautama is one of the few women who works as a healer.

21:08: The practice is unregulated.

21:10: She says many of the women she sees have been sexually exploited.

21:17: Every woman told us that part of the treatment involved the sheikh or heeler touching part of their body.

21:24: Out of 100 women undoubtedly a quarter of them would have been sexually abused.

21:30: One of the women sheikh of Akma is helped is Sousa.

21:35: He said he would have sex with me and use the resulting body fluids to concoct a potion

21:40: I should feed to my husband.

21:42: He said this is the treatment.

21:44: In the first investigation of its kind, we spent months verifying stories of abuse.

21:50: Fifty women in Sudan accused 40 healers of harassment, assault, and manipulating them into sex.

21:58: Afef is one of those women.

22:01: She went to a healer called Sheikh Brahim to help with her son's illness.

22:06: As you lay fe hekabdir.

22:08: I saw his shadow behind me, then he grobbed me.

22:11: When he approached me, I swore to God I would scream and alert his children.

22:16: I took his hands off me and I left.

22:19: After hearing accounts from two other women, we sent an undercover journalist to visit the healer.

22:25: While we were speaking, I suddenly found him next to me.

22:30: I'll do prayers and recite 5,000 times over prayer beads.

22:34: He put his hand on my thigh.

22:36: I pushed his hand away.

22:38: Then he put his hand on my stomach and pushed one of his fingers all the way down.

22:47: With that touch I got up and left.

22:54: We contacted Sheikh Rebrahim to put our allegations to him and he agreed to be interviewed.

23:00: I asked him if he had ever tried to have sex with women who had come for treatment.

23:06: Only treatment, I only do treatment.

23:09: What about our evidence that he had sexually assaulted women, including our own journalist?

23:14: No, no, that didn't happen. God will hold her accountable for that.

23:19: Then, he abruptly ended the interview.

23:22: We brought our evidence to Alaydina Buzait and advisor to the Islamic Affairs Ministry.

23:29: It's become a profession for those who have no profession.

23:32: We don't deny there are sexual anomalies.

23:34: We undoubtedly support Tremor with the Quran, but in the Quran form, it's chaos.

23:40: With no help coming from the authorities for women like our FF, she has her own advice.

23:47: I tell them to forget about the healer and to solve their problems in another way.

23:52: That's report by Hanan Razek.

23:56: In 1959, the Soviet Union made history with the first uncrewed landing on the moon.

24:01: Soviet Russia scores a dramatic victory in the exploration of space with the launching of the first rocket to the moon,

24:14: an historic scientific feat, bearing the Soviet coat of arms and hammer and sickle penance in travel 35 hours through space.

24:22: More than 60 years later, Russia is hoping to return to the moon.

24:26: The Lunar 25 lander, which is due to launch on Friday, aims to take and analyze soil samples and conduct long-term scientific research.

24:36: Originally, the project was to have been a joint venture with the European Space Agency,

24:41: but all cooperation with Moscow was ended following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

24:46: Thomas Harsensky works for the European Space Policy Institute.

24:51: Gary Adonahu asked him why Russia was returning to the lunar surface now.

24:56: I would say it's not the programme or the mission itself is not really a new development.

25:01: As often in the space sector, the missions and specially missions that are really ambitious

25:07: that go maybe to other celestial bodies, take years to emerge from the initial idea to the actual launch of the mission.

25:15: I suppose going to the moon is in space terms, a bit of a sort of muscle flex, isn't it?

25:20: It's what countries want to do when they want to prove their space credentials.

25:24: I would argue that it is becoming such again.

25:27: For maybe the 10, 20, 30 years, if you look to the past, we haven't really seen so much activity.

25:34: I mean, we can say that it has been done in the past, like with the US, with the Soviets,

25:39: but it's still not that easy to go to the moon to softly land there.

25:42: There has been some unsuccessful tries, for instance, with some of the recent missions like

25:47: the Israeli mission or the recent private landing mission by the ice-based company.

25:52: But yes, you write in a sense of it has sort of become again kind of a matter of a prestige.

25:59: The technological advancements in the sector have driven down the cost of accessing space

26:03: or flying to space or purchasing space technologies, which basically opens up the possibilities

26:08: of such ambitious and costly endeavors also to some smaller actors.

26:13: And yes, indeed, we are seeing that more countries and especially smaller countries are now going back to the moon.

26:19: It's an interesting decision for them to press ahead with this at a time where money must

26:24: be short politically inside Russia with them fighting the war in Ukraine and all that.

26:30: Is the space program in Russia well funded?

26:33: And past maybe 10-15 years, what has really kind of a surface in terms of space news or

26:40: space policy from Russia has not really been good news.

26:44: There has been a lot of indications of a very strong presence of corruption in the Russian space agency.

26:51: It has changed its structure several times.

26:53: The leaderships have changed.

26:55: This is clearly a signal that something is not right in the Russian space program.

26:59: the space program have not been able to kind of sustain the levels of investments when

27:04: you compare to the GDP or to the overall public expenditure as it has been during the Soviet

27:09: era. And more recently there have been a game, some budget cut. But what we have clearly

27:13: seen is that the achievements that the Soviet Union has been successful in achieving in

27:18: the past, Russia has not been able to repeat it in the past few years. And I think that

27:22: it's really signaling that the Russian space program has not been able to sustain the excellence

27:28: compared to the Soviet program in the Cold War.

27:30: Thomas Razzenskiy from the European Space Policy Institute.

27:36: The Vaketa Purpose found on Mexico's Pacific coast

27:40: is on the verge of extinction, with only around 10 animals still surviving.

27:44: The Vaketa is the smallest of all the purposes,

27:47: similar to dolphins, but with shorter beaks and more rounded bodies.

27:51: Now, the International Wailing Commission

27:53: has issued the first extinction alert in its 70-year history

27:57: to one of the danger facing the Vikita,

28:00: I spoke to our science correspondent Helen Briggs.

28:04: The main problem for the Vikita is entanglement in Gillnet.

28:08: So these are these flat fishing nets suspended vertically in the water.

28:14: Now, fishing with Gillnet has been banned in Mexico, but illegal Gillnet fishing goes on,

28:21: and that's driven by the high prices poachers can get

28:24: for an endangered fish called the Tatober, prized for its swim bladder in Chinese medicine

28:31: and sold for vast profits on the black market.

28:34: So there are efforts to clamp down on illegal guill� fishing.

28:39: Last year, for example, the Mexican Navy placed concrete blocks in an area to try and stop

28:46: this guill� fishing and increased enforcement efforts.

28:49: there are questions over whether enough is being done and diplomatic tensions over this

28:55: between the US and Mexico and also concerns by sighties the body that regulates trade

29:01: in endangered species. Yeah, poachers notoriously tend to care very little about issues like this,

29:07: so there are any reasons to think that the Vikita purpose isn't going to be gone within

29:13: fairly short time. This message from the IWC, the International Wailing Commission,

29:18: does speak of a grim future for this creature. But it says it's speaking out now because it

29:25: believes extinction is not yet inevitable. So there is a glimmer of hope. And scientists,

29:32: a few years back, did actually do some DNA testing on samples of these purposes. And they

29:39: reckon that actually there is enough genetic diversity in this population, even though

29:43: it's down to ten. If you were to be able to stop this fishing and the population were

29:48: able to recover naturally, there's no reason why it couldn't bounce back. But increasing

29:55: concerns about whales, dolphins, porpoises, the cetaceans and the IWC acting now to highlight

30:03: some of these extinction threats. And I think we're likely to see more of these warnings from the IWC.

30:09: Helen Briggs.

30:11: Ireland has been saying farewell to the singer,

30:14: Shenado Conner, on the day she was buried.

30:16: The streets of the town of Bray were filled with crowds paying their respects.

30:20: Our reporter, Sarah Gervin, was among them.

30:23: Despite her international stardom,

30:25: Shenado Conner was part of the community

30:28: in this seaside town for 15 years.

30:31: Today, that community turned out to mourn, celebrate,

30:34: and honour her as a singer and as an activist.

30:43: The thoisons of Vans who lined the root of her final journey sang and danced as her

30:49: greatest hits blasted out from a van decked in floors and pride flags as her funeral

30:54: court hedge passed by her former home they fell silent.

30:59: But just for a moment before Applaus broke out.

31:02: After that a private burial.

31:05: the end of a life live for so many years in the public gaze.

31:10: Sarah Gavin.

31:15: And that's all from us for now.

31:17: But there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.

31:21: If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it,

31:25: you can send us an email address as always, globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

31:33: you can also find us on Twitter at Global NewsPod.

31:36: This edition was mixed by Chris A Blackwa and the producer was Anna Murphy.

31:42: The editor is Karen Martin.

31:45: I'm Alex Ritz and until next time, goodbye.