Country music legend Dolly Parton dies

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0:30Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. Coming to you live from London, I'm Rajini Vaidhinavan. Coming up on the programme. I have here four ounces of onions that have been peeled and very finely sliced into thin, thin rings. You can cut them as thin as you can. That is, of course, the pioneering Indian chef Madhu Jeffrey, describing just one of the many uses of the humble onion. But current prices in India are bringing tears to the eyes of people in the country. We'll have more on that story in about 20 minutes from now. But first, in the past couple of hours, we've heard that the legendary American country singer Dolly Parton has died at the age of 80.

1:16She grew up in poverty in rural Tennessee and became one of the most successful singer-songwriters of the 20th century, known for hits like 9 to 5, I Will Always Love You, and Jolene. Her family released this video with her nephew Brian Seaver, who was also her head of security, sharing the news on social media. I first went on the road with Dolly as a kid, getting a taste of the road life in the early 1980s. Dolly opened doors not just for me, but for her entire family to reach the potential we didn't even know was possible. Dolly also opened doors for generations of singers, songwriters, musicians, and dreamers from every walk of life and across every continent.

1:59By her example, we believed that anything was possible. She never saw a door she couldn't open, and the door she opened made and changed history. My family and I have shared a lifetime of beautiful memories with Dolly, but so have you. She has always been on your television, your record player, your CD, and on your phone playlist, becoming an extended part of your family whether you liked it or not. Our family and the team she has entrusted with her legacy will work diligently to ensure her spirit will live with us forever. Dolly was a farmer, just like her daddy. He farmed the soil, she farmed songs and happiness.

2:37Dolly called me and said she wants to rest in a beautiful bed of plush cotton because after a life wearing heavy rhinestones, she finally deserves to be comfortable and have some rest. Rest in peace, Aunt Dolly, Aunt Granny, Gigi. May God bless Dolly Parton and may God bless you all. She will always love you. Dolly Parton's nephew, Brian Seaver, announcing the news there. Well, Dolly Parton had fans around the globe. She sold more than 100 million records worldwide and wrote more than 3 ,000 songs in a career spanning more than six decades. So let's find out more about the impact she had in the world of music and beyond.

3:16Ashley Killow is a Dolly Parton superfan and a journalist based in Texas. Sid Griffin's a musician and author. Let's start with Ashley. What are her thoughts today? Gosh, it's hard to even explain how big of a deal this is to so many people. But I grew up, my mom is from Tennessee. So I grew up knowing about Dolly, knowing about her legacy in Tennessee and her music. And as I grew older, she seemed to kind of find a new way into my life, either through her music having a certain meaning to whatever I was going through in a particular time in life. She has one song called Light of a Clear Blue Morning that kind of starts out slow and then it just builds up.

4:03And by the end of it, you're just wanting to run down the street, like skipping and singing. It's just so happy. And that song pulled me through so many moments in my life. And just the most recent experience I've had with her music is I have a baby now. In the first few months of his life, we spent it listening to her children's album, which isn't as well known, but it came out almost 10 years ago. And just very special album, lots of great children's songs that she has on there. So it's been it's been just special throughout my whole life. And Sid, I mean, as Ashley was saying there, Dolly Parton was an artist who almost transcended the ages.

4:46there's no question if you say dolly all around the world people know who you're talking about you can say elvis they know who you're talking about you can say pele they know you're talking about you say dylan they know you're talking about just say dolly i like dolly or i like this record by dolly everybody knows who that is and that that says something right then and there indeed um and ashley it wasn't just her music that drew people in she was a real role model on many levels, wasn't she? Oh yeah, so many levels. She started this huge charitable organization, Imagination Library, that has given millions and millions of books to underprivileged children.

5:27It's hard to really capture how big of an impact she's had on children's literacy, and she's donated heavily in so many different areas. She became really well known for donating a lot of money to the COVID vaccine too, which was a huge deal at the time. And in the last 10 years or so, she's especially ventured out as a business woman. She's had so many different brands from clothing labels to cooking products. She has a musical coming out on Broadway later this year. She just touches about every aspect of society. And Sid, you saw Dolly play a number of times, didn't you? I certainly have. And she was entertaining on many different levels every time you saw her.

6:18There was a professional show business slickness that someone who didn't know her music and entered the hall for whatever reason would have really enjoyed the show. There was a down to earthness in her persona in both the lyrics of the songs and the way that she sang them. And the tales that she told between songs were really touching. So there was kind of something for everybody. Plus, her show wasn't exclusively country and Western. There was a bluegrass segment in the middle, and she had to do pop hits like nine to five that she had to number one with in America. And then, of course, going on to her movies and everything else, and an autobiography that was on the New York Times bestselling list.

6:55This is someone who could really do it all. So when I saw her live, I mean, you were just taken on a journey. And after like 90 minutes, I was like, wow, was that? That was like 25 minutes. It was unbelievable. Every time I saw her, she was incredibly enjoyable. And I'm sure some of her performances, she must have been exhausted. But every time I saw her, she was smiling. She was happy. You would never have known that everything in the world, everything in Dolly's world, wasn't perfect. The mark of a true professional. The musician Sid Griffin there, joined also by Ashley Killow, a Dolly Parton superfan.

7:29Well, tributes have been pouring in for Dolly Parton. President Trump saying American flags across the US will be lowered for a week in honour of Dolly Parton. Posting on True Social, the president said Dolly Parton's death was a true loss for millions of people. There's never been anyone like her and never will. Rest in peace, Dolly. The world loves you, he added. Well, Dolly Parton last shared a post on social media 10 days ago, a video of her famous duet with Kenny Rogers, Islands in the Stream. In May, she pulled out of a highly anticipated Las Vegas residency, which was due to begin next month.

8:07And she'd already postponed a six-date run in the city last year due to what she described as health challenges. She said she still had some healing to do, but she said, I'm on my way. Coming up on NewsHour, how online gambling and gaming's ruining lives in Brazil. I used to travel a lot to the US and on a weekend I entered there and I spent$75 ,000. And I spent a lot of money off my wife. I destroyed her credit cards. So I was completely out of control. A reminder of our main headlines this hour as we've been reporting. The country music legend Dolly Parton has died at the age of 80. Canada's hit back in its trade war with the United States announcing steep tariffs on billions of dollars worth of goods.

8:57We'll have more on that shortly. And the United Nations has condemned an Israeli army raid on a UN vocational training centre in East Jerusalem. You can get more headlines on the BBC News website.

9:20This is Regine Videnarthen with NewsHour, coming to you live from the BBC in London. Canada has announced$20 billion in retaliatory tariffs on American goods. It's as the trade war between the two North American neighbours continues to escalate, while the Finance Minister of Canada, François-Philippe Champagne, explained his country's move. The terms proposed by the US administration were uneconomic, unfair and ultimately unacceptable. They asked too much of Canada and offered too little in return. Let's get more on that announcement by hearing from the BBC's North America correspondent Gary O'Donoghue.

10:03This sort of spiralled out of control last year as well and they seem to be heading down the same route. They were talking until the weekend and there were some pretty some fairly positive noises coming out of that. But it all seemed to fall apart. And Donald Trump's slapped a whole bunch of new tariffs on. They've now responded, the Canadians, that is dollar for dollar, as they put it, and have said that they are prepared to go further if the Americans escalate. So people are openly calling this tit for tat. And for these two countries that do an awful lot of business with with one another, this is becoming not just a sort of question of trade and business but for Republicans here in the US there's these midterm elections coming up and that could spell some really bad news for them in some of those states that border Canada that depend on that trade.

10:52Indeed. And what are these tariffs on, these latest round from Canada? Well, these ones are mirroring the ones that they say that Donald Trump imposed. It's farm equipment, it's electronics, it's dairy, some of the paper products as well. But bear in mind that Canada has a whole bunch of other bigger levers it could pull. A lot of natural gas and electricity comes from Canada directly into the northern part of the United States. Some oil too, although the oil producers in Canada are not very keen on any kind of trade war. So those are big things that could make a huge difference. And then there are things like pretty niche things, but things like potash.

11:31Canada is the biggest world producer of potash, which is crucial in fertilizer. And if they were to start putting surcharges as opposed to tariffs on things that they export, you know, if it's going to America, we're going to charge you a load more for it. That could be a huge problem. And they've done, you know, done some of this already, followed through on some of this already by targeting some of their tariffs in the past on specific Republican states. So, you know, Kentucky bourbon or orange juice from Florida, things like that. So they are prepared to be brutal in a way of sort of exploiting the political issues that Donald Trump could face with another trade war, particularly with these midterms, because cost of living is the big issue, of course.

12:13It is indeed. And gas prices are number one concern, aren't they, Gary? I mean, I guess the question is, how might the president respond next? He hasn't yet posted on True Social, I believe. Well, he did a few posts this morning around the time the Canadians announced theirs, calling them entitled, calling them unreasonable, threatening, of course, to rename Lake Ontario, which borders Canada and New York State, rename that Lake America. We've been seeing that song before. And just in the last few minutes, the White House has sort of sent out a list of what it calls facts, which are effectively suggesting why and how the Canadians are behaving badly.

12:48And there's also a threat at the end of it. It says, you know, the US economy is 13 times larger than Canada. We have eight times as many people. We have all the leverage. Though an absence in this statement of any kind of escalation in terms of further tariffs. That's the BBC's Gary O'Donoghue in Washington.

13:11Onions are a huge fixture in any Indian kitchen, served in bhajis, curries, eaten raw and even in relish. With an Indian meal, it's a good idea to serve some nice crunchy relishes. We always do that. So I'm going to show you how to make two very quick relishes. The first one is an onion relish. And I have here four ounces of onions that have been peeled. That's the legendary Indian chef Madhu Jeffrey with the recipe for onion relish. The onion is a staple in India and it's in high demand. In recent weeks, its price has gone up in the country, prompting the government there to turn to an Onion Express, a train delivering reserve stocks around the country to help keep prices down.

13:57Ramella Dasgupta often presents the BBC radio programme, The Food Chain. She's been explaining more. Yeah, Rajini, basically what's happened is that it does come around every year around this time when the price of onions does tend to go up. It's typically after the monsoons or during the monsoons and ahead of the festive period. So in India, it's coming up to the weekend of Raksha Bandhan, which is a big festival for the Hindus, where the sister ties a bracelet or a string onto their brother's wrist, which is a circle of protection, a very important event in the Hindu calendar. More importantly, what's happened is the price of onion has almost doubled in some parts of the country.

14:37And so what the government has done is it's laid on this train that they're calling Kanda Express, which is the Marathi word for onion, actually, which is going to travel from Western India, from the state of Maharashtra to, they've identified five centres around the country. So Delhi, Chennai, Anaculum, Madurai and Gohati. So Chennai in the south, Delhi in the north, Madurai and Anaculum in the south and Gohati in the east. I've seen images of these bags being loaded onto this train, huge sacks of red onions. A really key staple in Indian food, aren't they? Absolutely. Well over a billion people consume this staple.

15:18It's an affordable daily item, which is used in curries and gravies and street food and salads. It's something that even the poorest and poor can afford, but obviously not at these prices. So what the government is now looking at is to subsidise the onions, to sell it at something around 35 rupees a kilo, which is about 35 American cents. So the government stockpiles onions for these occasions? It does indeed. It does. every year what tends to happen is that the government does keep a large stockpile of onions in case there is weather disruption, unseasonable rains, hailstones, that sort of thing that does damage a lot of the crop.

16:02And they do tend to keep the supplies to buffer stocks, basically, to create whenever there is an extra demand and the prices do go up, they make it affordable for the rest of the people to actually be able to buy. And just how intrinsic is the humble onion in Indian life and Indian cuisine? I can't imagine it's not being used by most households. The exceptions, of course, are that many Jains, Buddhists and certain Orthodox Hindu sects avoid onions because it's considered part of the pungent spices that stimulate some certain unwanted senses, of course. So beyond those communities, pretty much most of the country consumes it in their daily lives.

16:44There's also been sugar shortages as well, Romella, haven't they? Yes, yes, they have. And again, this is going to really affect the festive period. India, for the first time, is importing sugar from other parts of the world, which is almost unheard of. This is something that is going to really affect the local population. Indians will be looking at this time of the year to getting their sugar supplies up to start making those festive sweets that you and I, Rajini, like so much. The gulab jamans, the mitais and all of that. It is something that the Indian government will be really concerned about in terms of providing sugar to its population.

17:20That's the BBC's Ramella Dasgupta there. Well, a reminder of our main story this hour and the legendary country music singer Dolly Parton has died at the age of 80. More tributes are coming into us from the world of music. Sir Elton John's been posting on social media saying he is shocked and devastated to hear of Dolly's passing. He remembers Dolly Parton as a giant of an artist, unique and irreplaceable with the kindest heart. Also posting on social media, Dionne Warwick said, I will certainly miss her laughter, jokes and her being. Rest well and in total peace, my friend. My heart is heavy.

18:02There's more tributes on the BBC News website. we have a live page which has more clips of Dolly Parton's interviews with the BBC as well. I'm Rajini Vaidyanathan and this is NewsHour.

18:34Also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon Music subscription.

18:44Welcome back to NewsHour. Online sports and casino betting have soared in popularity in Brazil. The country is now one of the largest gambling markets in the world. The self-help group Gamblers Anonymous says it's receiving thousands of calls each month and millions of Brazilians are estimated to be suffering financial, emotional or relationship problems due to betting. Bob Howard has this report from Sao Paulo. My name is John. I'm a compulsive gambler. And when I discovered poker, I think I discovered the best thing of my life that will fix all my problems. John works in IT and is in his early 40s.

19:26He comes from Rio de Janeiro, but now lives in Brazil's biggest city, Sao Paulo. Like millions of other people in this country, he has a gambling habit that at times has come close to ruining his life. I have a corporate car and I used to travel a lot to the US. And in a weekend I entered there and I spent$75 ,000 off the corporate car. And I spend a lot of money off my wife, I destroy her credit cards, so I was completely out of control. John was taking part in a gambler's anonymous meeting in a Sunday school classroom attached to a church in Sao Paulo's financial district. He didn't want us to use his real name because he doesn't want to be recognised.

20:12There are about a dozen people attending so far, mostly men. Urbano Tavares is a psychiatrist and also an associate professor at the Federal University of Sao Paulo where he runs a clinic which helps around 300 patients a year who have been diagnosed as being clinically addicted to gambling. And we're talking about 2.1 million people needing treatment today. And those are just people with a clinical diagnosis. If you look at the people with moderate or severe problems, those who have financial, emotional or relationship problems from gambling, the number of people impacted reaches seven and a half million.

20:52Do you think there will be enough psychologists and psychiatrists in the world to treat that? I don't think so. Although most of the people Professor Tavares treats are men, there are increasing numbers of women suffering from addiction as well. Rosangela, a businesswoman in her early 50s, told me about her addiction issues related to the popular online game called Chigrin, or Little Tiger.

21:18After the new year, I started losing. I took loans from three different banks and was still hiding from my family. Sometimes they would say something and I would laugh and reply, are you crazy? I am not gambling. Her life effectively fell apart. Then I came to a point where I was already becoming very apathetic. I couldn't work. My business was suffering. A new law means gamblers can register their ID cards with betting companies to block themselves from sites if they're becoming addicted. Rosangela has asked to be blocked. She's made good progress, but she doesn't feel yet in control of her addiction.

22:00That's Bob Howard reporting there from Sao Paulo.

22:14You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. I'm Rajini Vaidyanathan. Nine years ago today, one of the world's largest refugee crises unfolded after a mass exodus of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar following a brutal crackdown by the army there. Forces were accused of systematically murdering, raping and torturing the minority population. More than 700 ,000 Rohingya fled across the border into Bangladesh, living in makeshift homes near Cox's Bazaar, in what became one of the world's largest refugee camps. Today, that camp is now home to more than 1.6 million refugees who continue to live in dire conditions, with poor sanitation and limited food rations.

22:59Earlier today, thousands of those refugees protested on the anniversary of the exodus, demanding that things are improved in the camps. Yasin Mohamed's a refugee and journalist who I met when I visited the camps in 2023. He says cuts in USAID, which came in after President Trump's re-election, have seen his ration allowance reduced even further. Yeah, you know, it has been almost two years that the USAID and other kind of funds have been cut. So this impacts very badly on Rohingya refugees. Like, you know, in the past, I used to get around, you know, 12 USD per month for my ration, for my rice, for my lentil, for my shillies, for everything.

23:41For the whole month, I used to get 12 USD. Right now, I am getting just 7 USD for the whole month. You know, almost half has been reduced. So it's very difficult to rely on such assistance, you know. I can't get anything except the rice and the oil, nothing else I get with that amount. So it's impacting badly, not only to me, it's very, you know, badly impacting to other refugees, like children, elderly people, adolescents. Everyone has been affected badly, you know, with the reduction of ration in the can. And Yasin, you now have a young family. so how much more of a challenge is it to make that limited amount of money actually last?

24:26Actually it's very difficult to manage all the you know needs. They need extra food you know because they are kids so but they can't get whatever they want because you know my kids are getting seven USD so already half has been reduced so with that seven USD the kit has to manage for rice and nutrition, lentil, oil and other kind of essential items. So just imagine how a man, how a child, how a, you know, elderly person can survive with such a small amount. So your entire family is having to survive on$35 a month. And you're saying that only really covers rice and oil and basic foods. Yeah. And just tell us about the living conditions as well.

25:12I remember very clearly just how cramped the makeshift tents that everyone lived in were when I visited the camps and how bad the sanitation was. Have things improved on that front at all? Actually, the sanitation is very bad during the monsoon. You know, when it rains, you know, all of the camps get drowned. So the water is contaminated with different things. and then it brings different kinds of disease, especially during the monsoon, because children and elderly people, everyone has to use those contaminated water. This spread so many kinds of diseases in the camp. Right now, so many children have been suffering from high fever, common cold and missiles and other kinds of disease that sometimes they can't get enough treatment from the hospital because of the funding, the hospital's facilities have been reduced as well.