Manchester synagogue attacker named

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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Nick Miles, and at 5 hours GMT on Friday, the 3rd of October, these are our main stories.

Police in the English city of Manchester arrest three people in connection with deadly attacks on a synagogue.

The Trump administration says the US is in an armed conflict with drug cartels.

Colombian police arrest a senior member of the notorious Trendearagua criminal organization.

Also, in this podcast.

They tied us with ropes in our legs and hands.

I was fainted from time to time from the pain, starvation.

That was the worst thing.

We hear the testimony of a former Israeli hostage and get the latest from the ground in Gaza.

And is Formula One racing getting too hot to handle?

The day we hoped we would never see, but which deep down we knew would come as a result of an unrelenting wave of Jew hatred.

The words of the UK's chief rabbi, Ephraim Mervis, after an attack at a synagogue in which two Jewish men were killed in the northern English city of Manchester, their attacker had rammed a car into worshippers before he got out of the vehicle, armed with a knife.

He was stopped from getting inside the synagogue by volunteer security staff.

Soon after the attack in Manchester, police were sent to synagogues and other Jewish sites across the UK.

The British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, has been trying to give the community reassurance.

To every Jewish person in this country, I also want to say this.

I know how much fear you will be holding inside of you.

I really do.

And so I promise you that I will do everything in my power to guarantee you the security that you deserve, starting with a more visible police presence, protecting your community.

Well the attacker who was shot dead by the police has been named as Jihad al-Shami.

He was 35 and a British man of Syrian descent.

Investigators are trying to work out more about him as Danny Savage who's been reporting from the scene in Manchester explains.

He came here as a child, was given citizenship as a minor back in 2006, the BBC understands.

Police say records do not show any previous referrals relating to him through the government's anti-terrorism prevent scheme.

That's all they're saying about any history which they may or may not know about him at this point.

Three people have been arrested in connection with the attack on suspicion of commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism.

They say there are two men in their 30s and a woman in her 60s.

Now we know I think two of those arrests were made in the local area around here.

One of the other arrests was made at a home in Presswich, not too far from here in Manchester.

So police, you know, frantically working I suspect behind the scenes to work out who this man's other connections were and if there is any further risk going forward from anyone.

There have been a record number of anti-Semitic incidents in Britain ever since the October the 7th attacks two years ago.

Israel has accused the British government of failing to do enough to stop them.

Golders Green in London is a well-known Jewish community and my colleague Sean Lay headed there on Yom Kippur.

For your own safety, please use the designated home base.

It's about four o'clock in the afternoon.

I'm at the bottom of the Finchley Road in north London at the heart of what is the largest Jewish community in the whole of Europe.

It's centered around an area just a little bit away from here, Golders Green, which has according to the last census 49.9% of residents being Jewish and therefore on a day like today even the buses are quieter because people are either at home or they're going to and from the synagogue.

My wife and I with my toddler toddler were walking home from our synagogue or Shul and

someone came back and said to us that something had happened in Manchester.

We're very scared and my wife told me straight away to put my baseball cap on when we went back to Shul after we heard the news.

Rather than wearing my star cap.

Yeah, I mean I'm still identifiable I suppose but I just want to be safe.

I wear my kippah when I go to work and my wife tells to me make sure you wear a baseball cap on the underground, you never know what's going to happen, and

she's probably right.

I question what the security presence was of the police, but there's no visible presence.

It feels like 1930s Germany.

The fact that I have to ask them to put on a baseball cap is the sort of stuff that I learnt about doing history GCSE.

And what I'm concerned about is that the debate is however you feel about the issue of what's going on in Israel, and people are entitled to whatever their views are, there doesn't seem to be a distinction between what is going on in Israel and British Jews.

And so as a British Jew, when you then start hearing about these things that are happening, you shouldn't have to feel so intimidated and scared of going on the street and looking over your shoulder.

We should be able to have a free and open debate about what's going on without those fears.

Do you feel you're...

censoring yourself a bit at the moment?

I wouldn't even say it's censoring.

I don't even enter into a conversation about about it.

Slowly and indirectly people are starting to find out what has happened hundreds of miles away in Manchester.

I think this is the reality of Jewish lives today.

Jewish people in the UK aren't safe.

What is happening not just in the UK but across the globe of Jewish people being killed, being burnt, being rammed on the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year, it's absolutely dreadful.

I'm ashamed to be British.

Do you feel less safe now?

I've felt less safe for a long time.

What's happened doesn't surprise me.

Yeah, we're not safe, but we're not safe around the world.

I totally agree with Jude, and my husband got shouted at being a murderer just for walking along the road.

Whilst Jude was interviewing you, I'm standing that way to watch out if anyone else is coming.

And I could quickly then turn around to say, duck, or hide, or just get down on the ground.

Does it feel different now?

Definitely.

I'm very proud to live in this country.

I wasn't born in this country.

I'm proud of what I've achieved and what I've been given and life's given me and I've been very grateful and thankful for that.

But I wouldn't want to live here now.

I haven't wanted to live here for years.

That report from Sean Lay.

Despite his claims to be stopping conflicts around the world, Donald Trump has declared that the US is now effectively in one.

The President sent a memo to Congress saying the actions of drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea mean they should be classed as a non-state armed group, and this justifies the US in attacking them.

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro has accused Mr.

Trump of using drug gangs as an excuse to push for regime change.

Here's our South America correspondent, Ioni Wells.

Well, this leaked memo, which has been obtained by the New York Times and the Associated Press, was sent to Congress, and essentially it suggests that the US is now defining itself, the US administration is defining itself, as being in a non-international armed conflict with drug traffickers.

Now, this is significant because the administration has a legal duty to inform Congress when it plans to use the armed forces.

So, this is a suggestion that there could well be more military action on the way.

This comes after there have been three strikes so far on different vessels in the Caribbean Sea, which the US has claimed were drug traffickers.

They've claimed that this was an act of self-defence, although there has been widespread condemnation of these strikes, especially in the region, from Colombia, from Venezuela.

Seventeen people were killed in those strikes, and many international lawyers have questioned the legality of the use of that force in international waters.

Now, what is significant is if the US defines drug traffickers as being an armed group that they're in conflict with, it could potentially mean that they are granting themselves more wartime powers essentially to crack down on drug traffickers.

For example, potentially granting themselves the power to kill combatants, even if they weren't posing an immediate violent threat of any kind, and also the use of things like indefinite detention.

These were some of the sort of special wartime powers that the US applied to Al-Qaeda, for example, after 9-11 took place.

Now, it's not clear from the reports of this linked memo exactly which drug traffickers might be targeted or might be perceived as being in an armed conflict with the US.

It's also not clear why the US is defining drug traffickers as being part of an armed conflict, an active sort of war, so to speak.

This is, though, the latest escalation of rhetoric and designations that we've seen from the US after it has already designated some drug trafficking cartels in the region as terrorist organizations, which had already enabled the US to use further force against those groups than it had previously been able to.

Ione Wells.

Well, if American tensions with Venezuela are heightening, one Latin American country that will be hoping they've in some way appeased Donald Trump will be Colombia.

That's where the alleged leader of the armed wing of the crime group Trende Aragua, José Antonio Marquez Morales, has been arrested.

Luis Vajardo, our Latin America analyst in Miami, told us more.

Colombian authorities have said that they they arrested a Venezuelan national, Semarquez Alias Caracas.

They arrested him in the city of Valladupar, which is fairly near to the Colombian border with Venezuela.

They say he is an important member of the Trendi Aragua, this criminal organization originally from Venezuela that has moved into many other countries in Latin America.

It has become a substantial transnational criminal organization involved in things like drug dealing, weapons trafficking, and all of that.

And of course, it is

being mentioned by the Trump administration as a serious threat to the U.S.

as well as part of the U.S.

crackdown on drug trafficking.

The particular case of Alias Caracas, he seems to be a substantial member of this organization.

Colombian authorities say that the operation that arrested him took place with the cooperation of the US and the UK.

So the fact that several countries were involved in this seemed to suggest that he was a relevant figure.

And the arrest of this man known by the alias of Caracas, how significant is the arrest of this individual when others can perhaps just take his place?

That is the argument that is made often to the general anti-drug policy and that it has been in many cases unable to prevent these organizations from rapidly replacing people.

I don't think anyone is expecting that Trendiaragua to face a complete collapse of activities, but of course the Colombian government will present this as an important event and as a demonstration that they continue to fight these criminal organizations and also that they continue to cooperate with Western governments like the US, like the UK, despite the fact that the US is saying that they do not cooperate adequately.

Luis Fajardo from BBC Monitoring.

The last few weeks have seen a series of security incidents across Europe linked to Russia's war in Ukraine.

Russian drones and jets have been reported in NATO airspace amid heightened fears of hybrid warfare, although the Kremlin denies involvement.

And now it appears space is the next target.

The head of the UK Space Command says Russia has been deliberately targeting British military satellites to try to gather intelligence.

He's been speaking to our defence correspondent, Jonathan Beale.

Britain has half a dozen military satellites providing secure communications and surveillance.

And the head of the UK's Space Command says Russia's been stalking them.

General Paul Tedman says Russian satellites have been flying relatively close with equipment on board to see the UK satellites and try to collect information.

They're out there and they're patrolling and they're interested in what we're doing.

And flying close to satellites?

Relatively close, yeah.

I mean, they've got payloads on board that can see our satellites and can collect information off of them.

Are they jamming our satellites?

Yeah, we're seeing our satellites be jammed by the Russians on a reasonably persistent basis.

How often?

Weekly.

Germany's Defence Minister too recently accused Russia of shadowing its military satellites.

The government says it's boosting the defence of its space-based assets.

This week, it's announced it's developing sensors to identify lasers that could be used to dazzle or disrupt the UK satellite communications.

Jonathan Beale.

Staying in space, astronomers have discovered what's known as a rogue planet gobbling up gas and dust at an unprecedented rate of 6 billion tons a second.

They say it blurs the line between planets and stars, as Anna Aslan reports.

Unlike Earth and other planets in our solar system which orbit the Sun, rogue planets float freely through the universe not tethered to a star.

There could be billions of them, but they're hard to spot, as they exist in almost perpetual darkness.

But using two of the most powerful telescopes on the ground and in space, scientists in Italy have spent years monitoring this rogue planet 620 light-years away in the chameleon constellation.

It's 5 to 10 times bigger than Jupiter, but only 1 or 2 million years old, a baby in astronomical terms, and they found it's going through a record-breaking growth spurt, fed by a surrounding disk of gas and dust.

Victor Almendro Sabad led the study.

We were trying to study how fast is the rate of material getting into the object.

And what we suddenly found is that there was a very strong growth of material that was impacting the central object.

And when we saw this, it's when we realized that it was a very special phenomenon.

This is the first time that this kind of phenomena has been observed in such a low-mass object.

The research team found that during the process, the chemistry of the disk around the rogue planet changed, and magnetic activity and water vapor were detected.

This has previously only been observed in stars.

Experts say the unprecedented rate of growth could shed light on how these mysterious objects form and evolve.

Anna Aslam.

Still to come.

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The app that looks like TikTok, but everything's AI generated.

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A former Israeli hostage who was held in captivity in Gaza for 16 months has called on Hamas to sign President Trump's peace plan.

Recounting his experience, Eli Sharabi said the war is causing misery on both sides and must end.

He was speaking to our correspondent, Lucy Manning.

When Eli Sharabi was released in February, gaunt and emaciated after 491 days as a hostage, he asked to see his wife Leanne and his teenage daughters Noya and Yahel.

But, he told the BBC, a social worker told him only his mother and sister were there to meet him.

It's obvious what happened, that the worst scenario happened.

So I cried a few minutes, you know, for five minutes, and I said to myself, After that, I can cry all day, but it will not help me to bring back Leanne and Noya in the hell.

It was very tough.

Mr.

Sharabi, who's written a book called Hostage about his time in captivity, recalls acute starvation, beatings, and being held in chains for more than a year.

They tied us with ropes in our legs and hands.

I was fainted from time to time from the pain.

One time they broke my ribs.

Starvation.

That was the worst thing.

Especially the last six months.

We ate just one meal a day.

I arrived to Gaza on October 7 when I was more than 70 kilos.

And I was released 16 months later and I was 44 kilos.

He's worried the proposed peace deal won't happen and had this message for those holding his brother Yossi's body.

Please do it, you know, do it do it for your your people first of all, and do it for the world, for the area of the Middle East.

We fed up for fighting,

of losing people.

No matter what politicians or army people say to you, nobody wins in a war, everybody lose.

Around 20 hostages are still being held by Hamas, as well as the bodies of 28 more.

In Gaza, there's been no let up in the fighting.

Local authorities say at least 52 Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes across the Strip on Thursday, including a humanitarian worker.

The agency MSF said its staff were wearing vests that clearly identified them as medical workers when they were attacked.

Israel doesn't allow the BBC independent access into Gaza, so our correspondent John Sudworth is monitoring developments from Jerusalem.

On the ground in Gaza, international diplomacy seems remote.

Dozens of people were brought to this hospital, some of them said to have been injured while seeking aid.

And with no let-up in Israel's ground offensive in Gaza City, the remaining residents are still weighing the risks of staying against the risks of leaving.

I'm afraid for my son.

He's my only one, this woman says.

There was shelling.

All the residents from our building left, so we're leaving too.

Despite US optimism about its peace plan, the prospects still seem highly uncertain.

While Hamas's political leadership, based in Qatar, has reservations, reports suggest it's open to accepting the plan with amendments.

But the proposals which set a tight deadline for Hamas to release the remaining hostages are far vaguer on the timetable for Israeli military withdrawal.

And the BBC understands that the head of of the organization's military wing in Gaza believes it's a trap and is likely to choose to keep fighting.

If you continue on your route and attempt to breach the naval blockade, we will stop your vessel and have to confiscate it through legal proceedings in court.

Separately, hundreds of activists detained after Israeli commandos intercepted their flotilla and stormed their boats have been brought to the Israeli port of Ashdod and are now being processed for deportation.

Among them, the Swedish campaigner Greta Tunberg.

John Sudworth.

The disgraced rapper Sean Diddy Combs is set to be sentenced later today.

He was found guilty on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, but cleared of the more serious charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.

Our correspondent Netta Torfik has been following the high-profile case.

Sean Diddy Combs intends to address the court before his sentence is handed down, one last attempt to sway the judge in his favor.

After the verdict was read out in July, he fell to his knees in prayer.

His lawyer said he had been given his life back, and he's hoping for more good news today.

There is a big gap, unsurprisingly, between what the defense and the prosecution are asking for.

Diddy's lawyers say he should get 14 months, essentially time served, which would see him walk free at the end of the year.

They also argue that the court should not consider evidence related to the charges he was acquitted of.

While prosecutors say he should get more than than 11 years in prison for what they say was the physical and mental abuse of his girlfriends and employees for years, they argue this isn't about punishing him for crimes he was acquitted of, but rather taking into account his admitted violence, drug use, and bribery.

And they say he's unrepentant.

Meanwhile, federal probation officers, which presented a detailed report to the court, recommended a sentence ranging between five to seven years in prison.

Now, the judge has a lot to weigh here, including many letters.

The RB singer and Diddy's former girlfriend Cassie Ventura Fine, who testified in court while eight months pregnant, said she feared swift retribution from Combs for speaking out.

She wrote to the judge that she hoped the sentence considered the many lives that he offended with his abuse and control.

Diddy's mother Janice Combs, his six eldest children, and former partners, including the rapper Young Miami, instead painting him as loving and supportive despite terrible mistakes he's he's made, they say.

Nedotolfik.

Luxembourg is preparing for a day of pomp and ceremony that will see its head of state, Grand Duke Henri, formally abdicate his throne.

The 70-year-old is the latest European royal to step aside for a new generation.

Tom Bailey has the details.

Grand Duke Henri has ruled the tiny European nation for a quarter of a century, but in a surprise announcement last Christmas, broke the news to his subjects that he would soon be leaving his role.

Replacing him as head of state will be his 43-year-old son, Prince Guillaume, who will be crowned at a ceremony in the country's parliament on Friday morning.

Whilst the role of Grand Duke may be largely symbolic, he takes the reins at a time when the country, the EU's richest per capita, is grappling with numerous challenges, including an ageing population, soaring housing costs, and traffic issues resulting from workers who commute in from neighbouring countries.

The abdication is Europe's second in recent years, after Denmark's Queen Margrethe stepped down at the start of last year.

Tom Bailey.

Is Formula One racing getting too hot to handle?

This weekend's Grand Prix in Singapore has been declared a heat hazard event.

The weather forecast shows high humidity and outside temperatures above 31 degrees Celsius, but they'll be far higher inside the cockpit.

One man who knows what that is like is George Palozzi, a racing driver and former Formula One design engineer.

It's the fact that not only is it really hot and humid outside, you know, you add 10 degrees Celsius to the inside of the cockpit.

You know, when you're out on holiday, that's quite nice.

But when you're trying to concentrate for 90, 100 minutes in a race, where drivers will have their heart rate, you know, on average, 175 to 180 beats per minute, it's very, very physically stressful.

The stat I always like to talk about is a driver, especially at kind of a race like Singapore, they can lose, you know, four or five kilos in body weights just in water from sweating.

Wow.

And if you don't have a sufficient way of replenishing that, it makes it super, super tough.

Right.

And I mean, would it be fair to say that many Grand Prix now or more Grand Prix are being raced in hotter countries than perhaps you know 30, 40 years ago?

100%, 100%.

And, you know, F1 is becoming more and more popular and everyone wants a piece of the pie.

What we're seeing at the minute is actually a lot of hot countries, especially lots of well-funded countries, are trying to host races, and it is becoming more and more of a problem.

So, I mean, the authorities are alert to this, and they're trying to flag up that there could be a heat hazard this weekend.

They're encouraging drivers to wear cooling vests.

What are some of the practices that drivers can use to try and keep temperatures down?

And what are some of the issues with those?

The main one that drivers, all drivers have access to currently is a drinks tube, a water drinks tube.

So, every driver can drink whenever they want throughout the race.

The big problem with this is that it's not actively cooled down.

So, you might have, you know, a nice cool sip of water for the first three or four laps of the race.

10 laps in, that's going to be tasting like tea.

It's so, so hot, and actually, you know, is really not that pleasant for the drivers themselves.

Lots of drivers actually just refuse to drink the water.

The vests are a really, really interesting idea.

The idea with this new vest is to add a bit of cooling fluid around the driver's body to lower that kind of body temperature.

In terms of the stats it works really really well.

Drivers can stay much more calm and much more composed and ultimately more focused but we've seen that it's not come without its issues.

A few drivers have already complained about it being a little bit uncomfortable, a little bit itchy.

The other thing you have to think about is that all of these drivers have slightly different cars which are built slightly differently so they might have to have their kind of access tubes to their vest in slightly different spots that could compromise things like the seat belt and actually make it more uncomfortable for the drivers too.

So it seems like at the minute it's very much a toss-up with what the driver wants.

George Palozzi speaking to Rebecca Kesby.

It's like a version of TikTok.

You load it up, scroll through the videos and like the ones that appeal to you.

You can even make your own.

Except the difference is nothing on it is real.

Sora, made by OpenAI has taken the app store by storm.

But for many, it's deepened concerns about copyright and deep fakes.

Will Chalk reports.

It's the most powerful imagination engine ever built.

Polo players, except they're riding unicorns.

A New Orleans-style jazz band, but there's an elephant and a peacock walking through the room.

And the big feature OpenAI thinks sets its new video generation app apart, you or your friends can appear in the videos.

He was riding on a dragon when he said that, by the way.

These are the examples OpenAI is using to show off its Sora 2 technology.

And its TikTok style app, launched in the US and Canada this week, is designed to encourage people to use this tech as a social network to have a laugh with their mates.

So how has it gone down?

I I think the general reaction has been that it's cool what you can do with it, but a lot of what produces what we call nowadays AI slop, that it's not that original or exciting.

That's Dr.

Gary Marcus from New York University, whose book, Taming Silicon Valley, explored how AI can be used to take advantage of consumers.

And despite his lukewarm assessment of Sora right now, he thinks we're on the cusp of short, generative videos being indistinguishable from reality.

It leaves us in a society that's going to have trust issues because I think people are going to learn that you can't really trust video anymore, but we don't really have a replacement.

We don't have a source of ground truth that people share, and I think that's going to be disruptive for society.

When it comes to deep fakes, OpenAI insists it has built-in technology to make sure users are in control of where their likeness is used.

It says you'll constantly have access to all videos you feature in, even if they've been made by someone else, and you can delete them at any time.

But policing this is likely to be a mammoth task, and that's not the only mammoth task OpenAI has got to contend with.

Private Pikachu, stay low!

Pika!

Pika!

People are already using the app to put Pikachu in the movie Saving Private Ryan, or Mario and Luigi in Star Wars.

And these videos, mashing up various bits of intellectual property, are a copyright nightmare.

Exactly what data Sora 2 is trained on, and exactly which companies have said their data can be used, isn't clear.

But given OpenAI is already itself facing several copyright lawsuits, and given that similar companies in China are being sued by the likes of Disney and Warner Bros., it seems unlikely this app is going to make some already incredibly murky waters any clearer.

We'll chalk.

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

If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.

Use the hashtag Global Newspod.

This edition was mixed by Chris Lovelock.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Nick Mars, and until next time, goodbye.