Information scarcity after Nepal flash floods

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30Hello, welcome to the programme. This is NewsHour from the BBC World Service. I'm Paul Henley. We're coming to you live from London. Coming up a bit later, the Bosnian Serb former military leader Ratko Miladic has died in prison. At the age of 84, he was serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity. We'll hear from a journalist who covered Miladic's trial and from a survivor of the Srebrenica massacre for which Miladic was convicted. Plus, a bit later on, I get a lesson in French cheese. What am I cutting into? You are cutting into the Beaufort Chalet Del Parche, and it's August 2024. Oh, gosh.

1:08I broke the knife, but it's only a wooden knife. Don't worry. A changing climate is causing controversy in the world of French food classification in about 20 minutes' time. First on the programme, at least 389 people have died and around 1 ,000 are missing after flash floods swept through Nepal. Neighbouring Tibet is also badly affected, though facts about what happened there are harder to come by. In Nepal, emergency workers and hundreds of soldiers are searching through mud and debris for survivors. The authorities used helicopters to search for them and to drop emergency supplies to thousands of people cut off in towns and in valleys in the wake of the disaster, which swept down a route widely used by trekkers and pilgrims linking Kathmandu with Lhasa in Tibet.

1:57Drone footage from one district of Nepal showed huge levels of destruction after ice, mud and rock collapsed into a mountain river triggering a catastrophic flash flood. The BBC's Azadeh Moshiri sent this report from Trishuli in central Nepal.

2:17Villagers pick through what is left of their homes their livelihoods.

2:25Yesterday's chaos, caught by construction workers trying to escape the onslaught, sweeping away everything in its path. There are families of those who are missing, who are gathering, who've been waiting for any information they can find. We just spoke to one woman who spoke to her husband at 8.30 in the morning yesterday and hasn't heard from him since. She's desperate to find information. Casualty figures continue to rise. Deepak and Madhu Ahuja were returning to Texas from a pilgrimage, their daughters waiting for any news. We all immediately started calling our parents, no answer. And then we both received an email from the Isha Foundation saying that the floods had hit and that our parents were in a group at the immigration office on the China border with Nepal that had been impacted by the flood.

3:23It's only been one day, but it has felt like much longer. I think we're just leaning on each other and our family. Hundreds caught in the disaster were pilgrims and trekkers who had travelled to the region for the upcoming full moon festival. Helicopters make journeys back and forth from the capital, racing to save lives Dropping supplies to others who were able to climb up, away from the flooding While there are warnings, still there is hope As a frantic search for survivors enters another day Azadeh Moshiri reporting from central Nepal Pramod Pudel lives in Uckfield in the south-east of England He is on his way to Nepal to search for his wife, his parents, his brother and his uncle, none of whom he's heard from since this disaster struck the area where they live.

4:36family used to live, like my mum, my dad, my wife and everyone used to live. There's nothing there. I try and get a mobile number, obviously, mobile is not working. And I try to talk to the family and stuff. It's not working at all. So yeah, I was married like two months ago. So I'm flying there about eight o 'clock today. I think it's going to be extremely difficult. I think there is about 10 kilometres of no road, so we're going to have to walk through the forest and stuff. That's going to be difficult, but my dad is on his own, so I'm going to have to go and see him. Pramod Poudel, who is on his way to Nepal to search for his family.

5:23Whereas journalists in Nepal are free to gather eyewitness accounts and up-to-date information about the disaster, things are very different across the border in Tibet because there China is in control. Videos taken by Tibetans of a mudslide engulfing a border crossing in Girong County were quickly censored on Chinese social media and the authorities have provided no details about where exactly has been affected. Coverage has focused instead on the official rescue effort. Ryan Fioresi in Washington DC is executive director of the International Campaign for Tibet. I asked him for the latest he'd heard from there.

6:00On the Tibet side of the border and of this unfolding disaster, the information has been very limited and tightly controlled. We've been in contact with sources on the ground, and what they tell us is that the picture is far worse than what is being officially reported in official Chinese media. So Chinese state media has so far confirmed only three casualties. Our sources say the actual death toll is much higher. According to one of our sources stationed right at the Kirong border there in Kirong County, a major flood completely destroyed Tibetan shops, restaurants and tea houses near the Kirong border crossing, causing numerous casualties.

6:43However, Chinese authorities have relocated the local residents. They barred people from entering the flooded disaster area and completely withheld on the ground news from being released. So this points to a broader issue with reporting on the Tibet side of the border. State media coverage has focused almost entirely on leadership directives from President Xi and official rescue deployments, with virtually nothing about what Tibetan families and villages in Kirong County, which is home to roughly 5 ,000 to 6 ,000 people, are actually going through. A representative of the Chinese government is due to visit the area.

7:16Presumably that visit will be for political capital, will it, first and foremost? Correct. It will be to, I think, solidify and further advance official narratives around the disaster relief efforts, which, as I mentioned, have been very tightly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party propaganda apparatus. I believe President Xi is sending his premier, Li Qiang, to tour the area in disaster relief efforts. But I think, to your point, this is emblematic of Chinese government responses, where all information is funneled through official channels, and there's no opportunities for independent journalists, for local communities, or international relief organizations to get access and to report about the true story that's unfolding on the ground.

8:07Is it the case that local people are afraid to share information, even if they can? And if so, why? Yes, certainly there is a pervasive culture of fear and ultimately self-censorship. You know, broadly speaking, Tibetans face interrogation, detention or imprisonment simply for sending photos, videos or information abroad or speaking with foreign media. On top of that, in this instance, we have direct evidence from sources that Chinese authorities are already deleting firsthand footage and accounts as soon as they're uploaded to Chinese social media of the devastation in Kieran County. How could strict censorship of information in Tibet hamper any rescue operation?

8:51Chinese state media is reporting a large, highly visible official rescue operation. And we have to acknowledge that China has indeed grown their disaster relief capacity over the years in terms of mobilizing rescue workers, military units and equipment at scale. The problem, to your question, is we cannot verify the efficacy of these disaster relief efforts. There's no independent access to assess whether all affected communities are being reached and no transparent casualty accounting. We also know, looking at a prior example of the Dingri earthquake in Tibet in January 2025, that authorities restricted Tibetans' own grassroots relief efforts through checkpoints, vehicle permits, harassment of local communities, and blocked international rescue teams and assistance entirely.

9:44Our concern is that the same pattern is unfolding now in Kirong County on the Tibet side of the border. That was Ryan Fioresse in Washington, D.C. He's head of the international campaign for Tibet.

10:01Europe's football governing body, UEFA, is preparing to take legal action in the US against its worldwide equivalent, FIFA, and its president, Gianni Infantino, over his plan to sell off stakes in the World Cup. The plan's now been abandoned, and UEFA's threat to boycott international competitions has also been dropped, but a deep-seated resentment remains. I asked the BBC's Football Issues correspondent, Dale Johnson, what was behind the latest UEFA challenge. Well, this is basically a follow-up move from the legal threat from a few weeks ago, which said that FIFA should not destroy any type of documentation about this FIFA forward enterprise plan.

10:42Now, UEFA have done some more investigations of their own, and they believe there is now a case to answer about the way this was put together. and they're trying to create as much pressure as possible to get this into the open, to have an independent review and not allow FIFA's management board just to look into this themselves and try and create a whitewash where they say, we're going to change the way we do things, but not actually open themselves up to find out what went wrong, how and why. But the plan isn't going ahead. On the face of it, UEFA got what they wanted. It's beginning to seem like a personal case against Infantino, is it?

11:19I think it certainly is to an extent, because even though this proposal, as you say, is no longer going to go ahead, the bottom line is that UEFA and other confederations as well, they do not want Gianni Infantino to continue in the job. So they are trying to find ways to get him to be removed because they realise that if it gets the FIFA presidential election next March, there is the chance that he is going to win. and then football continues in what is essentially a state of paralysis where it's one side fighting against the other. What does it mean exactly, a state of paralysis? Where does this leave world football now?

11:56Well, the issue is if you look at the FIFA Council, you've basically got that split virtually down the middle in terms of 18 in favour of Infantino and 18 against. So how can you get anything done effectively when that is the position? And even when you look at world football, again, it seems to be almost down the middle. So even if Infantino does win that election next year, say he gets 111 votes and it's 100 to the opponent, then how is that a mandate to go forward and take football with unity and create the finances to give the global game, which is what the FIFA president is supposed to do?

12:32And really what we're facing right now is a situation whereby nobody wants Infantino on one side and the other side have been given so many riches by Infantino through the investment plans that FIFA do, but they don't want to see anybody else come in and they don't see any other option than Infantino who has given him all these basic gifts of money to fund their football projects. It sounds like this could go on for quite a long time, this legal dispute, could it? Well, it could, yes. And like I say, the end game at the moment seems to be next March for that FIFA presidential election because they're just trying to find a way to get him out before then and this legal campaign seems to be the next step in that.

13:15Dale Johnson reporting. This is the BBC World Service and NewsHour.

13:26Coming up, why the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party wants to cut public funding for art it sees as anti-German.

13:38The Second World War has nothing to do with us anymore. That's gone. We have to look out for ourselves, for our times, finally becoming the German people we once were, the land of poets and thinkers. The news headlines rescuers are looking for survivors after a massive flash flood on the Nepal-Tibet border that killed at least 350 people. And the Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Miladic, who oversaw the worst atrocities in Europe since the Second World War, is dead. More on him later.

14:27I'm Paul Henley with NewsHour, live from the BBC. A crime epidemic is affecting large parts of the northwest of Nigeria, with armed gangs on motorbikes raiding towns and carrying out mass abductions. Analysis by the BBC of attacks recorded by a monitoring group shows the problem is getting worse. Incidents between January and June this year were up 78 % on the same time last year. The World Service's Yemisi Adegoke sent this report from Zamfara, one of the area's worst hit.

15:05Shots ring out as gunmen on motorbikes ride into a village in northwest Nigeria. This is the sound of Nigeria's bandit crisis. It's seen hundreds of thousands flee their homes, people kidnapped and murdered, and parents too scared to send their children to school. The military is still struggling to contain the crisis, which is now threatening to spread from the country's north-west to other areas.

15:38Zamfara is one of the states worst affected by the bandit crisis. With no airport, the only way to get in is by road. Being escorted by the military because there have been some attacks in the surrounding villages. A lot of security personnel have been killed in this area. It's a sense that you just kind of want to make it past this zone.

16:06In the state capital, Gasal, we meet some of the 800 ,000 people across the northwest who fled their homes. Many of them are escaping bandit violence. Fatima breaks down as she recalls how her village was attacked. Her husband was killed along with six of his brothers. They opened fire without a care in the world They started shooting indiscriminately If you run into a room, they set the room on fire If you come out and start running, they shoot you What's left of Fatima's family now lives in a makeshift camp on the edge of the city While they now have some protection She says they find it difficult to even pay for food

16:57Sat on a motorbike by the side of the street with an assault rifle in his lap, we meet one of the men authorities are turning to to help combat the bandit problem. With the security forces struggling to cope, fighters are being hired from local communities to help support the army and police. Let them understand that when they attack a place, they can kill, but they can also be killed. When we get told that the bandits are out, we try to get to where they are going before they arrive. We try our best, and with God's help, we are successful in chasing them away. But there are concerns that arming more people could lead to a spiral of violence that authorities can't contain.

17:42This is Malik Samuel from Good Governance Africa. How do you control them at the end of the crisis? How are you able to disarm them? But if you look at the issues in the northwest, many of these communities don't have protection from the state. So what are they supposed to do?

18:01Authorities say they're taking the fight to the bandits. 28 ,000 new soldiers are being recruited. And President Bolatinibu announced a record$4 billion for defence and security in the latest budget. To bandits, kidnappers and sponsors of terror, surrender or face the full force of the Nigerian state. But in the North West, the number of bandit attacks is continuing to rise. The return to normality that Fatima and her family in Zanfara desperately crave seems a distant possibility.

18:43We had peace. We had money. Now everything has changed. We have become beggars. That report from Yamisi Adegoke in the northwest of Nigeria.

18:59France is notoriously strict in its protection of locally produced food and wine, but recent heat waves have forced the authorities there to relax some of the rules on the production of certain famous types of cheese. It's time to taste the comté. Comté, comté. Prize products such as Beaufort, made in the Alps, and Comté, from the neighbouring Jura mountains, and featured in that advert, currently face exacting controls on what the cows that supply the milk for the cheese can eat. The problem is some of their traditional food hasn't existed this year because it's been too hot, even in the high mountains.

19:38Patricia Michelson is very well versed in those French rules. She is founder of a small chain of high-end cheese shops here in London called La Fromagerie. And one of the products affected is the signature cheese of her business, from when she set it up 35 years ago, Beaufort Chalet d 'Alpage. She came into the NewsHour studio armed with some cheese, and I asked her why this particular one was so prized. They're all prized in their own way because they are very specific styles of cheese and very specific breeds of hers. But the Beaufort Chalet d 'Alpage is from the Morienne mountain area, which is very small.

20:19If you go skiing, it's Courchevel and Meribel and places like that. And in the summer, it's called transhumance. The herds travel from the valleys up to the higher pastures, the alpine pastures, which are wild. They're untouched. And if those cows are in the southern region of those mountains on the French-Swiss border, then their cheese was particularly affected because that was the driest area. Yes, that was particularly, well, over the last couple of years we found it. Last year we had the same thing as well. We had calls from the cheesemakers saying that there was depleted cheese this year because they take a year to mature, remember.

20:57So it's the wild high alpine pastures that make a particular flavour. Tell me if I take a knife and a fork to this cheese here, which is a big triangle, That looks like Comte. No. What am I cutting into? You are cutting into the Beaufort Chalet d 'Alpage. And it's August 2024. Oh, gosh. I broke the knife, but it's only a wooden knife. Don't worry. It's August 2024. Right. And I'm going to cut you a piece as well. And we can both taste it at the same time. You'll be better at describing what it tastes like while I take a bite. First, give it a little sniff, like a fine wine, because it will have this wonderful sense of cheese but fruit.

21:40Strong smell. Strong, fruity smell to it. What's so lovely about it? It's got this sweet fruitiness to it. It's got layers of flavour. People describe it as nutty, is that right? It's nutty, yes, as well. But it's fruity. And you can taste sort of the pasture in it, the greenness of it. So say the French government relaxes the rules and brings in, I don't know, hay from Normandy to feed the hungry cows. No, that's not going to happen. What will happen is that they will start producing extra feed for them on the farm. The relaxed rule is that they are going to give them this extra feed of hay because the pasture isn't there.

22:26And will you be carefully watching for a change in next year's delivery of cheeses? Absolutely. It sounds like it's a very slight relaxation of this appellation d 'origine protégée, which it's not going to threaten the authenticity of the product. Well, it is in a way because the recipe is going to be changed. It's not going to be solely on an alpine pasture that's untouched. Would you say that climate change was becoming a threat to French cheese as we know it? It's becoming a threat to everything that has a tradition and a season and a way of being made. Yes, of course it is. That was Patricia Michelson from Agier Extraordinaire.

23:07This is the BBC World Service and NewsHour.

23:27Get more with BBC Podcasts wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favourite shows like Evil Genius, Good Bad Billionaire and You're Dead to Me with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon Music subscription.

23:49Welcome back to NewsHour. the Japanese avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama has died at the age of 97. If the name doesn't immediately ring a bell, then Kusama herself and her work might. With her bright red wig and spotted outfits, she was pretty recognisable, and those dots figured prominently in her work. She was sometimes called the Polka Dot Queen. Extravagantly mirrored rooms and decorated pumpkin sculptures also brought her global fame and huge commercial success. Yayoi Kasama spoke to the BBC in 2012 when the Tate Modern here in London put on a big retrospective of her work. She was asked about the dots and what they meant to her.