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tv   BBC News The Context  PBS  August 22, 2023 5:00pm-5:31pm PDT

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♪ ♪ narrator: funding for this presentation of this program is provided by...
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woman: architect. bee keeper. mentor. a raymond james financial advisor tailors advice to help you live your life. life well planned. narrator: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation; pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. announcer: and now, "bbc news". >> hello. i am christian fraser. this is "the context." >> we have just had confirmation that all of these individuals, six children and two adults have been brought safely back down. >> you will see the moment that you can see the rescuers actually physically moving that zip wire along. we have the two final children on board the cable car being
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brought down by the rescuers, which you can see in the hardhats there. >> unfortunately, pakistan, you can see -- getting between from one area to another. this is the shortest road. -- wrote. ♪ christian: lives that were quite literally hanging by a thread. the pakistani military celebrating an extraordinary rescue. red faces at the british museum is the bbc reveals directors were born two years ago some of the most precious artifacts had gone missing. and a falling drug death in scotland. scanned calls for celebration. scott and has the worst figures in europe. we will talk about the young
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indian pretender who holds his own against the number one ranked magness carlsen in the first game of the chest world cup. good evening. welcome to the program. some good news tonight from pakistan, that all eight people who were dangling in a cable car, hundreds of meters above a ravine, have been saved. five were rescued by helicopter. tonight after the aircrews were grounded by desk and high winds, the team completed the rescue using the zipline. six children had been on their way to school with two adults in a remote and mountainous region in the north of the country, when two cables snapped. our pakistan correspondent picks up the story. sorry, i don't think we have that report. let me fill in the details for you. all six children and two adults were rescued, thanks to that zip
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line rescue. there are pictures here of the last people being brought to land. caroline davies spoke to us a short while ago when news of the rescue broke. reporter: we have just had confirmation that all of these individuals, six children and two adults, have been brought safely back down. this is obviously, i am running in quickly to tell you this because we have heard this news confirmed by the interior minister, and subsequently by people on the ground at the cable car site. we now know those individuals are art -- are all off the cable car. the vastness geordie were rescued by locals and rescue workers, who were taking them from the cable car, using a zip wire. initially, we had seen one rescue that had taken place with an army helicopter that had dropped a rope down and been able to take people out that way. one child was rescued that way. the remainder through the zip wire system.
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it seemed difficult doing this with the helicopter because there were strong winds, there was a concern about the draft and the wind being created by the helicopter's blades, as well as this precariously hanging cable car. even though it is late at night, it is 11:00 at night at pakistan, but the final individuals are now out i think apple card. -- out of the cable car, and safely and back on firm ground. christian: caroline davies there with her instant reaction. we have dusted o her report. let's play that for you. reporter: hanging over a perilous drop with just a rope to safety. as an army helicopter hovers over the cable car, a leap, then swept away to safety, as the crowd cheers. this was the moment many hoped for, the first rescue after hours. makeshift cable cars are common in the rural mountains of pakistan, taking minutes over
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rev wiens while roads take hours. children were on their way to school when one cable snapped. at first, army helicopters could not rescue them. buffeted by winds, scared the downwash from the blades could make the situation worse. on the ground, frustration. after the first rescue saving the others inside became more complicated. as the light went, the helicopters left. and instead, locals and rescue officials used a zip line, pulling another child to safety. christian: let's get perspective on this with the former winch man with cornwall and devon search-and-rescue, ex royal navy. thank you for being with us. talk to me about the early part of this rescue. one of the difficulties for the pakistani military was the downdraft from the helicopter, at a time when they had these high winds in that region. jay: massively challenging rescue from start to finish.
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a great effort and great outcome. but the aircraft side of things, had challenges with the height of the aircraft while they were operating the engines that we will be working to keep those aircraft in the air. not least the gusts of wind and the downwash, which could have caused major issues for the rescue, the cable car itself. christian: what is the challenge for the winch man in a position like that? jay: it is a bit of a nightmare. this is a unique job. i have done many different jobs from ships to cliffs, to all sorts. but to go to a cable car that is dangling is quite unique. there is many unknowns, and would have meant a lot of planning had to have taken place. and of course, dangers to the winch man. how do you get to them? how do you keep them safe? how do you stop them coming out before you are ready? and your own protection of the wire. if the winch wire creates any
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friction on the cabletself, you could part the winch wire and it could be at the bottom of the ravine. christian: i imagine, i mean, i can't imagine what they were going through dangling by that wire. but one of the dangers presumably to the winch man is panic, that they jump before he is ready. jay: yeah. jump, grab, and everything in between. you see this in rescues, especially at sea. when you are stuck on a rock or ship and it is going down. people don't react as you want them to and how you would expect them to. it is sort of ery person for themselves. it is a real concern if the -- that the rescuer needs to think about. christian: there was a moment tonight where we thought three of the people, two of the children and the teacher, were going to be left behind, dangling through the night. because the could not get the aircraft off the ground, not in the darkness. does it become easier for those
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on the zip lines if there are fewer people in the cable car? jay: i guess so. you have less weight on the cable car. maybe it swings more or less, depending on the strength of the winds. it is a fantastic effort, and i will be keen to see how they got the zip wire set up. and of course, there were many questions of why can't the aircrew fly at night? it depends on the equipment they've gotand the training they've had. christian: i'm interested you say that you are keen to see how they did this with the zip line. in rare instances like this, is there a situation where teams swap notes and you learn from one another how to do something like this? jay: definitely. especially in the aviation community. we share a lot of information, especially preventable accidents , so you learn from others mistakes.
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it is such a dangerous area to work in. and i would like to think the same, in these situations, here in cornwall and all over the country. the coast guard, search and rescue volunteers, regularly train and do systems, rope systems, to get up and down cliffs to people that are normally inaccessible. worst an area, you would have to helicopter to them. similar mess -- similar methods are used in the u.k., but this is quite special, on the zip line. it's intriguing. christian: incredible rescue. good to start the program with some good news. jay o'donnell, think you very much. jay: thank you. christian: the british museum was warned two years ago that objects from its collection were being cut ash put up for sale. an email exchange seen by bbc news reveals the museum's directors were told but responded by telling staff there
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was no evidence of the theft. the museum now says a large number of objects have been stolen. one estimate is that more than 1500 objects are missing, stolen, or damaged. number of staff has since been dismissed. our culture editor has the story. reporter: the emails appeared damming. suggesting first that the deputy director, and then the director of the british museum, where allergic to allegations of theft more than two years ago. the whistleblower was dr. it tigray doubt, a dealer based in denmark, who bought items on ebay which he discovered were british museum property. he wrote to johnathan williams the museum deputy in february 2021, about a disturbing discovery i have made, involving theft from the british museum. he followed it up in june, asking the director if an internal investigation had begun. a month later, can this response from the deputy, confirming the museum has conducted a thorough investigation, has found the objects concerned are all
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accounted for with no suggestion of wrongdoing. mr. williams adds, the collection is protected. in fact, we now believe or than 1500 objects, were stolen, damaged or missing in a crisis that is rapidly becoming damaging to the british museum. >> this is being reported across the globe in the media. the british museum is probably the world's most famous museum. the culture department will be wanting to assure itself from the board of trustees that it has the governance in place to protect these items now and in the future, enterprise rent anything like this from ever happening again. reporter: just as damaging as what happened later. . according to the female chain, he sent his evidence -- the email chain, he sent his evidence to the chair of the museum in october 2022, saying he was certain the british museum management have preferred to sweep the affair under the carpet. george osborne emailed hartwig fincher. these are very serious allegations, he says, and asked
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for answers. that same day, hartwig fisher emailed the trustee who had been the go-between, saying the case had been thoroughly investigated, adding there is no evidence to substantiate the allegations. that is a demonstrable docked -- falsehood. mr. osborne replied, saying he was taken your comments very seriously. finally, scotland yard was called in to investigate more than two years after the original allegations were first brought to the museum door. raising red flags for former detective with the mets are to squad. >> clearly, objects being sold into a global art market can change hands very quickly, and many times. over a relatively short period of time. say, two or three years, that really adds a complexity which the police will not thank you for. reporter: i understand the british museum is restricted from commenting on the details of what happened because of the police investigation.
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but these emails pile more pressure on this u.k. institution. katie lazo, bbc news. christian: joining me to dcuss is the ceo and founder of art recovery international. they specialize in locating and recovering works of stolen art worldwide. welcome to the program. the reporting today is not done museum may never know exactly what is being stolen because of the gaps in its inventory. how much more complicated does that make it in terms of recovery? >> it makes it virtually impossible. you can imagine something that has not been catalogued in the museum ends up being sold on ebay, purchased by a collector inference, sold to another dealer. then my role is to contact the possessor of the stolen objects and say, where did you get this? and they say, how do we know it was stolen? how do we know it belonged to the british museum? we will have that proof that will allow us to recover the object. christian: how important is speed in an investigation like
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this? presumably ithe emails are right, there has been two years before the investigation began. >> i have recovered $600 million worth of stolen art over the years. and i can tell you, without qualification, speed is everything. the instant they knew something was missing, it should have been disseminated to the media, it should have been placed on the database, it should have been available for the trade, for collectors to search against. . that database this was a critical error. and probably malfeasance. christian: many of these objects may have been objects out of view, maybe they are not on general display all the time. you would presume some of them have been photographed. i would have thought, given that they are so valuable, that when they appear on the international market or black-market, alarm bells would start to ring. is that the case is there a trade out of view? >> we are getting reports from
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art historians all over the world who may have studied these objects, who believed they were published on a website of the british museum. the key is that until the british museum informs the public what has been stolen, a proper inventory needs to be done and compared to previous inventories, and then that needs to be made public as quickly as possible. christian: how typical is this? i remember when i was based in cairo, that the cairo muse had a similar problem. that security was not tight enough, particularly in areas where it stored its precious artifacts. is it just the british museum, where do you think this is a worldwide problem? >> we get reports every day of small museums and cultural institutions that have had thefts. one does not expect this from the british museum. but 10 years ago, i had a very similar case, almost exactly like this, in sweden where a
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curator was stealing objects from the museum, the library, smaller museums, buying armani suits and cars. . when he was confronted, he committed suicide. the objects he sold are still being found by our organization today. this was 10 years ago. eerily similar case. in this case, we have someone to interview and put pressure on to tell us where these objects they have gone. christian: this is no small museum. this is the british museum. when you consider the controversy surrounding the artifacts they hold, the argument goes that they are nearly custodians, that they are protecting and guarding a country's cultural heritage. how damaging is that to a museum's reputation? >> extremely damaging. the worldwide press has gotten a hold of this. the greek media is all over it.
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they are now confronting the british museum with decades of a very arrogant and patronizing argument that greece could not safeguard their own treasures. now come to grace's pointing the finger at the british museum and saying, maybe our parthenon marbles are not so safe in london after all. christian: fascinating. good to talk to you this evening. thank you. around the world and across the u.k., this is bbc news. let's take a look at the stories making headlines in the u.k. former metropolitan police officer, who abused his position to prey on women and girls, has been in jail for a series of rapes spanning eight years. the court heard the 44-year-old's predatory behavior dating back to the 1990's, and went unchecked until one of his victims came forward. the train driver and passenger christopher stock very died when the train to railed at carmen in
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august, 2020. the train hit a landslide after heavy rain. the caseill be heard at the high court in aberdeen next month. a children's charity in england says the cuts to the hours of young people spend doing sports should be a national concern. new data shows a further 4000 hours of physical educatn have been lost from the curriculum in state-funded secondary schools last year. youth port trust says it is a further threat to pupils well-being. you are live with bbc news. they used to be a time when globalization appeared to be spreading the wealth, knitting all types of countries into a new prosperous order. not anymore. the world is splitting in two. the tear -- the deteriorating relations between the u.s. and china, the way the west reacted to the covid pandemic, follow-up from the war in ukraine, all of it has ushered in a renewed competition. an ideological struggle.
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that is what underpins the meeting today in johannesburg, south africa. the leaders of the brix group of countries, brazil, russia, india, china, south africa, want to break free of the perceived western constraints. they are talking about a new and expanding grouping of countries to challenge washington's control. xi jinping arrived this morning ahead of the meeting and traveled to pretoria for talks with president -- that president. it is his fifth trip to south africa since he became president in 2013. the russian foreign minister sergey lavrov is attending in the absence of vladimir putin, who is subject to an international arrest warrant. the group already represents more than 40% of the world's population and auarter of global gdp. on the table is a framework and criteria for admitting new countries. over 40 have expressed interest in joining, and half of them have already asked to be formally -- formally admitted. what does it mean and how aligned are these countries?
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looks sleek to graham allison, professor of government at the harvard kennedy school. he is in cambridge in the united states. . welcome to the program. let's start with that. the headline today is that these five countries want to expand the grouping. how closely aligned are they? >> good question and a good topic. i would say that obviously, they have differences among themselves. but so do the g-7, the counterpart. i think the main te away from the meeting there, and especially the enthusiasm of 23 other countries that are in line, trying to join up to the brics, is welcome to the multilateral world. the idea that the u.s. itself or the u.s. and its european allies, and japan, should be able to dictate what we think to
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be the appropriate rules and behavior in the international order. is contested by all of these parties. and we will see it across the whole agenda. i would say it is welcome to the more complex thai lateral world. christian: is it the inevitable result of america first? >> i think it is a little bit of that, but it is fundamentally a result of the fact that the seesaw of power in the world has shifted, steadily, from a period in which, from the.s., the u.s. had half the world's gdp at the end of world war ii. we had about a quarter. at the end of the cold war. and we have less than 20% today. in that same period, other countries have grown and power
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has been dispersed. the fundamental fact is that structurally, saudi arabia, or south africa, or brazil, for china, or india, or many other countries no longer feel obliged to ask permission from the u.s., or to listen particularly to what we say. and the g7, which a way of shoring up the western form of leadership, ever since it was founded, and it is now almost 40 years old, its share of gdp has been shrinking, so that when you compare it with, for example, even the birds -- the brits, it is now approximately equal. if you look at it in terms of trade, in terms of other metrics of power, and particularly, if you are successful in saudi arabia, indonesia, nigeria, so
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the brick --brics spokesman would say you are europeans and americans and you think you set the agenda, and you set the town. you have told us all the world condemns and is sanctioning russia for its aggression against ukraine. who does that not include? ? it does not include the largest country in the world, the largest democracy in the world, india. the largest democracies in africa, south africa, nigeria. the largest democracies in south america, brazil. it is a unanimous among you all, but not among the rest of us. christian: one of the things that joe biden, every american president, struggles to impress on a domestic audience is the relevance of foreign policy to the economy and to the united states security.
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and i wonder when you see at least 40% of the world splitting off into a new block, whether that suddenly does become more relevant. >> it certainly is a good observation. i think for americans in particular, the idea of a multipolar world, which is quite attractive for other parties, because who likes to be dictated either by the americans or in the case of at least the global self-criticism of the g7, kind of an aging white shrinking form of colonial blah blah blah. the proposition for saudi's or brazil, or mexico, that they should make more choices about how they see the world and what th think should be done about it. in that they represent more
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people, if you just did it population wise, than we do. and increasingly, more and more of the gdp. went -- in a multipolar world, power is shared and it will be more complex for all of us to try and find our way. christian: i've just got about one minute left. very quickly, when you look at niger and the problems the former colonial power, france, had there, is that self-evident, that g7 countries have to do a lot better in those countries where they have close ties? >> absolutely. it is a wonderful example. the idea that somehow, france should be able to manage affairs in niger or the whole swore there, is a little bit presumptuous. and it reminds us that we are all the inheritors of a position in which the west was
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essentially the engine of marginalization, and has played a very important role there. when increasingly, the relative decline in power of the western countries, and the relative increase for the others, mean that we have to be smarter, and we probably also have to adjust our understanding of our interest a little bit. christian: professor allison, good to talk to you. thank you very much indeed. we will talk that -- talk about that more and the rest of the narrator: funding for this presentation of this program is provided by... narrator: financial services firm, raymond james. narrator: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation; pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. ♪ ♪
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♪ ♪ narrator: funding for this presentation of this program is provided by...

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