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Hello, this is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news, seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising.

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I'm Nick Miles. And in the early hours of Wednesday, the 24th of February, these are our main stories. Officials in charge of defending the US capital during last month's attempted insurrection have blamed intelligence failures by security agencies. The family of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia has welcomed the imprisonment of one of the three men accused of her murder.

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Also in this broadcast, Sir David Attenborough.

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We are a single, truly global species whose security must ultimately come from acting together in the interests of us all warning of the security implications of climate change.

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And later I looked homeward and saw no angel. I got caught stealing pencils from the five and 10 cents or the same month I made Eagle Scout Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the man who helped launch the beat movement.

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Guys, at 101, we look back at his life.

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But first to Washington, we owe it to the American people to figure out how the United States Capitol, their preeminent symbol of democracy around the world, could be overtaken by an angry, violent mob.

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That was US Senator Amy Klobuchar setting out the terms of the Senate's own inquiry into the storming of Congress on January the 6th, an apparent attempt by supporters of the then president Donald Trump to prevent Congress certifying Joe Biden's victory. Gary O'Donahue is our Washington correspondent.

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The idea behind these joint committees is to try and get to some sort of understanding of what happened, obviously, but it is against the background of all sorts of investigations going on, not least criminal ones by the FBI, which they've arrested more than 200 people. And also talk of a sort of 9/11 style commission to be set up, a much broader bipartisan commission. So these are the initial steps towards some understanding. But clearly, intelligence is central to what happened on that day.

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And certainly those people there today believe that the intelligence simply wasn't good enough.

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And I suppose the idea of this is to not necessarily apportion blame, but to learn lessons for the future because it was extraordinarily embarrassing globally, wasn't it?

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There were obviously five people who lost their lives as a result of what happened on that day. But there was something rather sort of slapdash about the police response. There were individual heroic acts. Of course there were. We've seen many of those, but they were really overrun. There were only around fourteen hundred Capitol Police officers around the Capitol. You think about the US Capitol, 4500 policemen around, and there were something in the region of 30000 protesters that initial rally.

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Not all of them went to the Capitol, but a lot did and they were overrun. And also, while they were trying to sort of coordinate a response between the head of the police department and the sergeant at arms in the Senate, in the House, these people are also on the floor of those chambers trying to organize things. So they didn't really have a sort of robust structure in place to decide what to do next. In particular, they're disagreeing today about, you know, when they had a discussion about calling in the National Guard, for example, they can't remember the time scale.

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So it's it is embarrassing. But there are lots, lots more questions to answer.

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Gary O'Donahue, three years ago, the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia died in a car bomb attack. She'd been probing high level corruption, exposing cronyism and sleaze within Malta's political and business elite. On Tuesday, one of the three men accused of murdering her changed his plea to guilty, and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Our Europe correspondent Nick Beke has been following what happened in court.

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Well, Nick, I think it's taken some people by surprise because until this point, this defendant, Vincent Muskat, had not really given any indication that he was prepared to say that he was involved in a plot. His lawyers had indicated that he'd been pleading not guilty, that there were some signs in the past week or so that that may change. And sure enough, today, he said he wanted to enter a guilty plea. And some of the proceedings in Malta have been taking place behind closed doors.

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But it's understood that there's been some sort of plea bargain here. So he's received a shorter sentence. So 15 years. But because of cooperation in one way or another with the authorities, he's got a shorter sentence.

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I imagine a lot of people are thinking, well, is there some kind of plea bargain which could lead to the people who actually ordered this killing coming to justice?

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Well, I think that's reflected in the statement and the sentiment from the family of Daphne Caruana Galizia, who today said they welcomed this guilty plea, but also they thought this was one step on the way to what they described as being full justice. So certainly they've always believed that they were very powerful figures at play here who were responsible for her death. And so it doesn't end with this guilty plea today. I think a lot of people, Nic, are looking still to the role of one particular man who's in the dock.

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He's not one of the three people accused of the murder itself, but he's accused of being an accomplice to murder. He is Jorgen Fennec, a very, very wealthy man. He was detained on his luxury yacht. He is still in the dock and he still maintains his innocence. But I think people will be looking very keenly at his fate in the coming weeks and months as the court case progresses.

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And remind us, Nic, briefly, if you would, that the level of corruption, the Duthie Catalana, glitzier, uncovered, she worked for 30 years pursuing corruption wherever that led her.

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And of course, many people believe that that's why she was killed. She got the nickname a one woman, Wicken. Such was the determination to to shine a light on the shadowy finances of people in Malta and beyond, no matter how rich and powerful they were. And so there is a feeling three years on after her death, although she was killed in the most brutal fashion, that she remains a symbol really for freedom of the press and for people who are determined not to be cowed in the face of intimidation and threats to their life.

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Next week, the French actor Gerard Depardieu is under formal investigation for the alleged rape and sexual assault of a young actress. That is according to the Paris prosecutor's office. The charges date back to 2018. Mr. Depardieu has denied the accusations. Our Paris correspondent Lucy Williamson has more.

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Gerard Depardieu, one of French cinema's biggest global stars, is facing accusations that he twice raped a young actress at his home in Paris in the summer of 2018. His lawyer told AFP that Mr. Depardieu totally disputed the account and that information about the investigation should not have been made public. According to French media reports, the unnamed actress first filed a complaint at the end of August 2018. But the case was dismissed by the Paris prosecutor the following year before being reopened last summer by an investigating judge.

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Mr. Depardieu has been under formal investigation since December on charges of rape and sexual assault.

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Lucy Williamson, in a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday, the French president, Emmanuel Mack, called for the appointment of a special envoy for climate security.

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The chair of the meeting, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, had earlier told his counterparts that dwindling resources and extreme weather posed a serious threat to peace and that it was in everyone's interest to help the most vulnerable nations adapt.

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And the renowned naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough told the council that climate change can only be addressed through international cooperation.

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Having seen how quickly and radically societies and global activities were affected by covid, it just now suddenly easier to imagine some of the consequences of climate change. Perhaps the most significant lesson brought by these last 12 months has been that we are no longer separate nations, each best served by looking after its own needs and security. We are a single, truly global species whose greatest threats are shared and whose security must ultimately come from acting together in the interests of us all.

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Well, you can see the impact of changing climate has on security in many parts of the world. Africa, though, is particularly hard hit.

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Are Africa editor Mary Harper told us more.

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You have different communities competing with farmers over resources or different ethnic groups competing over resources. And if you think about Darfur, which many people will remember, horrific years of violence in Darfur, that was very much over resources that were being curtailed because of the effects of climate change. And you have that in many other parts of the continent as well. And in fact, the United Nations has been talking about another area in western Ethiopia called Shango Goombahs, where the UN describes it is rapidly escalating communal violence over land and resources that have caused 7000 people to flee into neighboring Sudan.

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Boris Johnson today saying that wealthy nations, it's in their own interest to help countries adapt because farmer who can't farm anymore is more likely to become radicalized. So there's this sort of vicious circle, isn't it? Absolutely.

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I mean, if you look at the Sahel region of Africa, which has been badly affected by climate change and the encroaching Sahara Desert, and you see these hundreds of thousands of people trying to cross that desert, make their way to Europe. And even though many of them might be saying they're fleeing violence or the threat of violence, often it is actually economic problems brought about by these environmental degradation of their land. And then you do also have increased radicalization in the Sahel, in Somalia, in Nigeria.

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And that is also because people who might have previously found some kind of employment, working the land or tending their camels and cattle have run out of resources to do that. And they have very little option. And in fact, quite often these groups such as al-Shabaab in Somalia pays them about 200 dollars a month, which they see as far more lucrative than trying to struggle.

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Working on degraded land, I imagine, of quite a lot of African leaders might say, look, it's all very well the West America, France, Britain helping stop these insurgencies. But actually, hard cash would have been great 20 years ago to help these situations exacerbating in the first place.

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Yes. And I mean, in many places, it's almost too late. I mean, there have been efforts to try to stop things like the creep of the Sahara Desert by planting lots of trees in countries like Senegal, but they're pretty minimal in terms of their impact. It's almost like the effects of climate change have affected Africa so badly, it's difficult to know how people are going to roll it back.

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Mary Harper, the last poet from the American Beat Movement, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, has died at the age of 101. Ferlinghetti also founded one of America's Best-Known bookshops. Vincent Doud looks back at his life.

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti didn't always read his verse to jazz, but they were the performances his fans loved.

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I had an unhappy childhood. I saw Lindbergh and I looked homeward and saw no angel. I got caught stealing pencils from the five and ten cent store the same month I made Eagle Scout.

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Ferlinghetti had been born in New York after service in the Navy. He moved to Paris and then San Francisco. In 1953, he co-founded a magazine called City Lights to fund it. He and Peter Martin opened the City Lights bookstore. It's now an official landmark. Ferlinghetti insisted he wasn't really a beat poet, but he published Betaworks, including in 1956, Allen Ginsberg's Howl. The police arrested Ferlinghetti on charges of printing lewd and indecent material, but the courts decided it wasn't obscene.

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A big moment in US counterculture. As a poet, he became a grand old man of American literature.

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Love and hate are viruses that can make a civilization bloom and he can kill a civilization.

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote novels and plays, and he painted. He'll be remembered for his verse.

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Let's cut out. Let's go into the real interior of the country where Hot Shots reign and for defending.

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Freedom of expression in the 1950s, an emblem of the beat culture which helped change America, I must arise and go now to the Isle of Man is free way up behind the broken words and words of Arkadi.

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That look back at the life of Lawrence Ferlinghetti was by Vincent Dout, coming up, I feature a disc on the Abuzaid phone label from Bahrain from the early 50s, got a real edge to it.

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We hear from the song Savers as we are recording this podcast. The American golfer Tiger Woods is undergoing surgery on his leg after being involved in a car accident near Los Angeles. Sophi Long has more details.

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Tiger Woods had been travelling alone in his car when it crashed and flipped in a residential area south of Los Angeles just after 7:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning. He had to be extricated from the badly damaged vehicle by firefighters and paramedics and was taken from the scene to hospital by ambulance. According to his agent, Mark Steinberg, the golfer suffered multiple leg injuries. In a statement, he said Woods is currently in surgery and we thank you for your privacy and support.

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No other vehicle was involved in the crash. The cause is now being investigated.

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Sophie, look, there have been angry protests in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, after the arrest of the opposition leader, Nick Jamelia. It comes against a background of questions about last October's general election.

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The governing Georgian Dream Party was declared the winner, but the opposition says the election was rigged.

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Gigaba Carea from the European Georgia Party urged Georgians to protest peacefully and resolutely against the arrest.

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Today, we witnessed an arrest of the biggest opposition party leader in its own premises under the most cynical pretext, using the most shameful instruments. And obviously this is a challenge for the future of liberty in this country.

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And I think it's our duty as citizens, as society to resist that through peaceful protest in the streets, but very intense protests in the streets and out they came, as I've been hearing from our correspondent in Tbilisi, Rayhan Demitry, Georgians woke up to this dramatic images covered by most television channels, live pictures of the raid of Georgia's main opposition party headquarters.

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The parties called the United National Movement, and hundreds of police surrounded the building. They were there to arrest the party leader. His name is Nick Amelia. He's the leading opposition politician in Georgia.

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Nico Malea had been seeking shelter inside his party headquarters for the past seven days because this whole issue over his arrest was kind of the main topic in the country. So last week, the parliament stripped new cameleer of his immunity and then there was an arrest warrant issued by a court.

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So tensions were really high.

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And then suddenly and unexpectedly, the country's prime minister resigned during a holiday.

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He resigned last Thursday because, as he said, the arrest of this opposition would exacerbate the already very kind of difficult political situation inside Georgia.

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And that polarization does seem to be growing by the day. What do you see as the way out of this? How is this going to be resolved?

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It's a very good question, but the political polarization is something that defines Georgia. Unfortunately, there is an absolute kind of lack of dialogue between the governing party and the opposition. The governing party refers to the opposition as enemy enemies of the state. And we've heard that very kind of aggressive rhetoric from Irakli Garibashvili, who was voted in as the next prime minister. Only on Monday. He delivered this speech in parliament and he referred to the opposition as radical opposition enemies and so forth.

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So unfortunately, the step that was taken by the ex prime minister who resigned to defuse tensions in the country didn't really work. It only made things worse.

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Rayhan Demitri. South Africa's finance minister, Tito Mboweni, will on Wednesday deliver a budget speech in the middle of the toughest economic environment in over a century. Unemployment is at 30 percent, the economy is in recession and with a junk status credit rating. Adding to his concerns are public servants who are demanding wage increases. The BBC's Bouman McKenzie reports.

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When I made it out, I meant 45 year old prison warden Freddy Luke has been working at the Hosemann Puru maximum security prison in the capital, Pretoria, for nearly two decades. While Fredi enjoys his job, he's one of scores of government employees angered by the state's failure to give them pay rises like any other worker in the private sector.

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We have expenses, we have responsibilities that we have to look after and that we have to service Dempsey, we have to service. So we are quite disgruntled at this stage, to say the least.

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Government had initially agreed to a three year wage deal in 2018, which was due to come into effect in April last year. But as the covid-19 pandemic crippled the economy, it reneged on the deal, freezing wages.

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Instead, the government does not have money. They cannot sustain the defense cuts for many reasons that are not made by public servants.

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Rubin Málaga from the Public Servants Association says they've taken the state to court in an effort to force the implementation of the wage deal, even if the government says it's unaffordable.

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If you still want government to pay an essentially bankrupt the country, look, government is doing this to honor the resolution.

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Look whether you can say the country is bankrupt or not. The fact of the matter is that this country is bankrupt all the time. And we know what was the cause of the the state of the fiscus of the state. And it's unfortunate because nobody wants to go directly of what was the cause of where the fiscus are.

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The public sector wage bill amounts to a third of all government spending. And if implemented, this deal will cost the state an additional two billion dollars. And ratings agencies have called on government to rein in spending if they have any hope of moving from junk status. Madame Speaker.

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Finance Minister Deyton Dumbo in his speech will be watched closely by ratings agencies. And for economist Lulu Krugel, the agencies will be looking for a clear economic strategy and a reduction in government spending.

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We would prefer government rather say let's freeze salaries at a certain level. So I think it would send the wrong message to to the private sector. Secondly, it would send the wrong message to the credit rating agencies. They've been watching that and that expenditure has been a bit out of line with what we see our competitors doing.

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The good news for the South African economy is that it's past the worst and it's expected to grow by around three per cent this year, but it'll still take a little while longer to recover to prepare endemic levels.

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Womersley McKenzie reporting. The fallout is continuing from Facebook's decision to stop carrying news in Australia, a decision it reversed after outrage inside and outside the country.

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The prime ministers of Australia and Canada have said that they'll work together to make big tech pay for the news it carries.

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And now an important regulator here in Britain has told the BBC he thinks the UK should follow Australia's example. Here's our media editor, Amul Roger.

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The Western Web that, you know, inUS is based on free and open access. The price of that access is that our personal data trails are sold to advertisers and mostly by just two advertising companies, Google and Facebook. In his first major broadcast interview, Dr Andrea Kashani was clear that these companies, though brilliant, are now so big they are harming competition. There's a seven point three billion pounds search advertising market in the UK. Google has around 90 per cent of that.

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Is that too much? Yeah, it's a problem. There's a 5.5 billion pound display advertising market in the UK. Facebook has more than 50 percent of that. Is that too much?

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Yes.

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Last night, Facebook resolved its dispute with Australia's government, which wanted a new system of regulation whereby more money from tech platforms went to newspaper businesses under its New Deal. Facebook retains the right to choose which publishers it will support. Dr. Caselli wants the UK to consider replicating the Australian model.

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I think the Australian approach is a sensible one where essentially you're trying to convince the companies to have commercial negotiations, but with a proper backstop where an arbitrator essentially appointed by government or parliament would be able to decide who is right if in the end, there is no agreement between publishers and the platforms.

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The tech giants argue that publishers choose to be on their platforms because they derive value from it. Alas, for them, Australia has set a noisy precedent that other countries are now certain to study and are even likely to follow.

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Amol Rajan. Now, what are you going to have for dinner? If you're in Dubai, you could stop by a restaurant called the Bombay Borough and have a Biriyani. Just a warning though it will cost you 275 dollars.

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Peter Griffin tells us why it's called the Royal Gold, a serving of access described by its creators as the most expensive biriyani in the world. Three kilograms of rice, three types of chicken, lamb kebab, boiled eggs, vegetables and spices all blanketed in gold leaf.

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But how does it taste? Johann Dominy. They reviewed the meal for the YouTube Travel Channel, Curly Tails, stunning shogan, the. He really didn't know anything so far, this one about how far down in terms of it is exquisite.

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Dubai has made itself the preeminent playground for the rich. Its hotels and restaurants have stayed open throughout much of the covid-19 pandemic, and they've attracted celebrities and holiday makers of means. And after polishing off their 270 million biriyani, they can head to the Scooby Cafe for dessert, a single scoop of vanilla ice cream with saffron and truffles worth over 800 dollars. But say you're stuck in a less opulent town. New York, for instance, you can settle for pizza at the industry kitchen topped with caviar, truffles, foie gras and plenty of gold leaf.

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It costs 2000 dollars.

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Of course, you'll need a decent wine to wash it all down and you can pick up a bottle of 1990 Domaine Tullahoma neocortical include for about 20000 dollars. Or why not spring for the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold a 1945 Romanee Conti that went for over half a million dollars at Sotheby's in 2018.

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Then again, a nice can of logger's. Not bad either.

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A yes and a fraction of the price paid off in their dust to digital is a record label based in the United States, and it has a particular selling point. It revives lost music.

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The label's latest release is called Excavated Shelach An Alternate History of the World's Music, and it's a remarkable group of recordings from all over the world made between the start of the 20th century and the 1950s, lovingly tended by the record collector, Jonathan Ward.

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My name is Jonathan Ward. I'm a record collector living in Los Angeles, and I make occasional compilations with the dust to digital label based in Atlanta as a 78 rpm collector. My focus is global recordings and especially lesser known ones.

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Perseverance and big. So this new collection excavated shellac, an alternate history of the world's music is a distillation of and an expansion of my Web site, Excavated Shellac, which I started in 2007. And on that site, I featured sometimes lengthy articles on global recording and discussion of music from around the world exclusively on the 78 rpm disc and and how that industry worked.

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So there's no blues. There's no jazz, there's no country, no RMV, no classical, no popular.

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This is the rest of the world's music, which is gigantic, featuring tracks that were never before reissued or discussed.

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Really. Oh.

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I mean, that is one part of the world where people may not expect that there was a thriving recording industry was in the Persian Gulf in the early 1950s.

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The music was highly localized and really beautiful, mostly a type of music called soaked. I feature a disc on the Abuzaid phone label from Bahrain from the early 50s, got a real edge to it. It's wonderfully sung and it's beautifully recorded.

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Another example that I particularly like is a song from Zimbabwe. It was many incredible guitar players from Southern and Eastern Africa active in the 50s, the acoustic guitar really became an instrument of choice for so many local troubadours. Is. Michael. There's a song by a man named Paulist Iquito who I know nothing about, could find nothing about him, and was recorded in 1954 and the lyrics are very simple. My back hurts from working the field, mother. The children are beggars repeated again and again.

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And it's just a wonderful guitar piece. The vocals are gorgeous. And this is just an example of a song I just felt was so powerful.

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It really needs to be heard by everybody. Extraordinary music curated by Jonathan Ward. And that is all from us for now.

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But there will be an updated version of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics we've covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is Global Podcast at BBC Dutko Doch UK. I'm Nick Miles. This edition was produced by Ed Horten, mixed by Barry Byrne and the editor of the Global News podcast is Karen Martin. Until next time. Goodbye.

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Brought to you by the Capital One venture card with Venture, you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase every day, and you can use those miles toward travel expenses like flights, hotels, rental cars and more. Just book and pay for your travel using your venture card and redeem your miles toward the cost. Capital One. What's in your wallet? Credit approval required Capital One Bank USA and a cap one quicksilver.