This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles. And in the early hours of Friday, the 18th of September, these are our main stories. The number of coronavirus cases around the world tops 30 million, as the World Health Organization issued an urgent warning about the situation in Europe.

We do have a very serious situation unfolding before US Weekly cases have now exceeded those reported.

When the pandemic first peaked in Europe in March, the fires devastated the world's largest wetlands in South America.

Also in this podcast, the stolen statues, which are finally going back to their rightful home in India.

It's much more important that collectors and dealers recognize that these secret bonds have been dropped from living temples and why the street artist Banksy has gone to war with a greetings card company.

Another coronavirus, Mark, has been breached, there have now been 30 million confirmed cases worldwide.

The pandemic is particularly resurgent across Europe. The agency's regional director for the continent, Dr. Hans Clogger, has warned of a serious situation unfolding.

Weekly cases have now exceeded those reported when the pandemic first peaked in Europe in March. More than half of European countries have reported a greater than 10 percent increase in cases in the past two weeks. Where the pandemic goes from here is in overhangs. We have fought it back before and we can fight it back again.

One of the places still struggling to tackle the pandemic is France, where the Health Minister, Olivier Véran, says there are now 83 cases per 100000 people, compared to 10 in early July.

Two of the country's biggest cities, Lille and Nice, have been given until Saturday to come up with new measures to tackle the virus while in Marseilles, which has already seen preventative measures imposed earlier this week, more could be on the way.

Our correspondent Lucy Williamson has gained access to the intensive care unit of a hospital in Marseilles.

Now we are here for you. You can see that and 10 other beds on the other side. Marseilles main hospital has become the epicentre of France's covid crisis. Its intensive care unit, now dominated by covid patients, has only two beds left with more admissions each day. The head of the unit, Nicola Pudder, says that unlike during lockdown, they're dealing with this fresh wave of infections alongside the unit's normal medical demands.

Now, it's becoming very disturbing because we are split between the desire to treat the patient, of course, the best as possible, and also to treat patients in the appropriate way, that is to ICU beds, to have surgery, to match trauma patients and so on.

So it's very difficult to manage of each visit inside an isolation room means full body suits for medical staff and for the riskiest operations, wearable ventilators to purify the air inside the masks.

And that is to have a special helmet to helmet with a smaller engine on the back. It looks like something an astronaut would wear. Yes, it is.

On our visit, they were putting a camera down the throat of a 65 year old man on life support, checking for any blockages before trying to oxygenate his blood by machine. A last resort, his wife Tels once or twice a day for news. She's not allowed in to see him.

Is director of public hospitals, says the system is nearing saturation, with only a handful of intensive care beds available in the city and 100 extra staff recruited in the past week, rates of infection here are now twice that of Paris. Over 10 percent of those tested are positive. But getting a test isn't always easy as those queuing under the hot sun at the government testing center today knew well.

This woman told us she'd had symptoms since Monday.

It's a panic, a real panic.

It's stressful. There are no appointments available. And the government testing website and the doctor's website tells me there's nothing until the end of September.

The health minister, Olivier Veral, admitted there were bottlenecks in testing as we've put in place a system to prioritise those with a prescription symptoms, those who are care workers or in contact with cases.

The rules in Marseilles are seen as a city of languid rebellion are becoming stricter by the week, mask wearing is compulsory and public festivals and school trips have been canceled and groups larger than 10 are now banned from beaches and parks. The price of a post lockdown's summer when thousands mingled here together, a summer that swapped isolation for infection now sending its waves out across France. That was Lucy Williamson reporting.

It's the world's largest tropical wetland, home to thousands of rare species, including the giant otter and the Jaguar. But the Pantanal that straddles Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay is burning at a frightening speed.

Environmental groups have placed most of the blame on Brazilian farmers and cattle ranchers who burned land to clear it for pasture.

Wildfires are also out of control in Brazil's Amazon region. Our South America correspondent Katy Watson, who's in Sao Paulo, tell me more about why people are so concerned.

Well, if you look at the numbers for the whole of the year, there've been 15000 fires in the pants. Now, compare that with the same period in 2009. That's three times the number. And I mean, certainly the pictures coming out. This is a really important part of Brazil in terms of endangered species, in terms of biodiversity. If you go to the plants now, you can see Jaguars, Caiman, Cafi, Baras, and that's just, you know, just the start of it.

It's a really important part of nature for Brazil and for the world. So there's been outrage. Not only that is that it's in addition to what's happening in the Amazon. And it was this time last year that there was global outrage because the fires in the Amazon raging now this year, not only are the fires in the Amazon looking like they'll be as bad this year, if not worse. But then we've also got the Ponsoldt, the wetlands. You know, this is the largest wetlands in the world, a place that's meant to be wet.

And we're seeing a huge drought, but also fires that actually the federal police are now looking into to see whether they were actually started illegally and the damage that's been caused.

I was going to come onto that. Why is this happening now? Is it climate change? Is it drought? Is it manmade combination of all of them?

Well, certainly ranchers and farmers who set fire to land is a cheap and easy way to clear the lands of pasture have been accused. But of course, you can then couple that with increasingly dry conditions. So it's got far worse because of the drought. It's a drought that's the worst drought for nearly half a century. So those climatic conditions certainly don't help the picture. But the big concern is the human involvement, certainly in an area like the Panhandle.

And of course, that is that's a well-known fact in in the Amazon, in the rainforest, where these fires do have to be started by people. And that's one of the big concerns, isn't just simple wildfires in Brazil. It's a much more complicated picture. And how has President Bush been reacting to all this table's?

No likes to maintain that there's not really a problem. They are reacting. They're saying they're wanting to help. But if you look, for example, in the Amazon where they've put a ban on fires for four months during the dry season and they've also deployed the army, you speak to people on the ground. In fact, I've just come back from the Amazon and they say very little has changed. So it looks good. It might deflect criticism, but the numbers aren't changing.

And that's the big concern, that the situation is just getting worse. You've got a president who says that the criticism from outside, you know, people are unnecessarily harsh on Brazil and that dialogue, that wanting to change and make things better, that will it doesn't seem to be the case.

He wants a bottle of water in a hotel that was laced with Novacek. That's how the supporters of the Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, say he was poisoned.

And they've released a video of themselves collecting items from his hotel room.

Until now, his aides have thought the nerve agent was in a cup of tea at the airport in the Siberian city of Tomsk. Mr Navalny remains seriously ill in a Berlin hospital. The Kremlin denies any involvement in the poisoning. Our correspondent Damon McGuinness in Berlin has the latest.

The video shows Alexei Navalny, his aide, searching his hotel room and carefully placing empty water bottles in plastic bags.

They say they had rushed to the room to find evidence as soon as they heard that Mr Navalny had fallen ill on a flight shortly after leaving the hotel, according to the video. German scientists later found traces of a Novacek nerve agent on one of these bottles after being in a coma for weeks on Tuesday. Mr. Navalny communicated directly with the public for the first time since the poisoning with a message on social media saying he was doing much better. His team says he intends to return to Russia.

Germany has called on the Russian authorities to investigate fully, but the Kremlin denies involvement. And the case has created a diplomatic rift between Moscow and Berlin.

Damien McGuinness after eight days of sleeping rough on the streets. Thousands of migrants and refugees are being moved into a new camp on the island of Lesbos.

They were left homeless after a fire destroyed where they'd been previously housed at Moria.

Nearly half of the 12000 displaced have been moved on by local police. More than 100 tested positive for coronavirus and are being kept apart from the rest.

And many migrants were reluctant to enter the camp, hoping to gain asylum elsewhere in Europe. One of the people the BBC has been in touch with this week is a refugee from Afghanistan who's also part of an organisation set up by refugees on Lesbos. He sent us this update earlier.

Hey, this is Ormet from Lesbos, as you ask about the situation here. So from to the police trying to take people from the streets and trying to get them to the new camp. And yesterday and the day before yesterday, it was not looking good. But fortunately, today it's working good people of really interesting to go to the new camp, but there is some restrictions and rules. They have to wait and to the lines because everyone has to be tested because of the covid.

So from today, it's going on because they are getting to the new camp. And as I'm in contact with some of my team members inside the new camp that they already get in today, they said that we have been just tested and we are waiting for the results of the test after the results of the test they are going to replace in the new tents. And also there are some facilities inside the camp, inside the new camp. There is a lot of modern food system for them.

And also they're going to be a shelter for them. But the shelters are, I don't think, to be enough for all the families and all peoples. They are shared as well for the people. And it's going to be organized there by the. So everyone hopes to everything get cold and everything get good. We are really happy that the situation is good then two or three days ago. So it's still people out in the street still. There are some people that they don't like to go to the new camp, but usually several of people, most of these refugees have been already to get to the camp.

And hopefully all these people will go to the new camp.

A little later on. We'll hear about the incredible life of the female secret agent who said to have inspired the creator of James Bond.

She was a very passionate woman. She loved adventure and adrenaline. One of the ministers in the British diplomatic service that she worked with said she had a pathological love of danger.

Last year, a 14 year old Bangladeshi girl, Uma Kusum, travelled to Saudi Arabia to be a maid. Her aim was to send back money home to her family.

Instead, she was brutally tortured and killed. Last week, her body was flown back home. And now two people have been arrested in Bangladesh in connection with the murder of our South Asia editor, Jill McGiver. Tell me more about the case.

Coulson comes from a small village in central eastern Bangladesh. Not a rich family, but the family managed to get together enough money to be able to go to a middleman, a recruiting agent, and try to send some overseas. It seems from her passport that although she was apparently 14, according to her educational records, the passport says that she is twenty five, which is the minimum age to be allowed to be sent to Saudi Arabia to work as a domestic maid.

She was sent overseas in April last year, and then it seems that she was sold on from her original employer to somebody else. And it was this somebody else, another employer who allegedly tortured her, abused her. And this ended in her death. The little we know about exactly what happened. And it's hard to piece together, particularly from the Bangladesh end of things. But the suggestion is that her parents got a distressed video call from her at some point in this year that she was in Saudi Arabia saying, I'm in danger of my life, I need help.

But there was very little they could do to reach her. They say they went to the recruiting agent to say, can you help? Can you intervene? And they got no support. We haven't heard the recruiting agent side of this, but we understand these are the people that have been arrested and may now face charges in connection with the case.

And what kind of charges do they face? It seems likely they may face anti trafficking charges that would possibly lead if they were convicted to tough penalties. The suggestion is that although they didn't traffic her themselves, the. Is that they colluded in allowing the employer to sell her on to somebody else, they knew that was going to happen and didn't take action to stop it.

I suppose if we look at the wider issue, there does appear to be some kind of check and balance in place. People under 25 cannot go out and be sent to these places, but it doesn't seem to be working. How widespread is that?

Well, that's right. And this is an issue that's come up again and again. And every time it comes up, every time there is a case, there are calls for tougher legislation, tougher regulation and better oversight of what happens. Tens of thousands of Bangladeshi women every year go to Saudi Arabia as the number one destination for young, unskilled women. Clearly, when they're there, they are very vulnerable. If you are in a situation that is abusive, it's very hard for these young women to do anything about it.

There really isn't anyone they can go to, especially if they're away from access, for example, to the embassy. And the employers usually tend to take their passport from them. Then they need their employer to sign off permission slip to be able to get an exit visa to flee the country. So there really are often trapped.

Gilma, giving plenty of priceless relics from India, have been smuggled out of the country over the years and ended up in private collections or rather shamefully in national museums, not least here in London.

But now three bronze sculptures of Indian deities are set to make their return journey spotted as they were about to go on sale in the U.K. They're originally from a Hindu temple in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Are India correspondent Yogi Tolima has the details.

The bronze sculptures are of Indian gods and are thought to have been made in the 15th century. They were stolen from a temple in Tamil Nadu state in 1978. The thieves were locals who were caught and convicted ten years later by an Indian court. But it's unclear how the idle's ended up in the UK. Then, four years ago, a member of a group of art enthusiasts which has been trying to trace antiques stolen from India, spotted a photograph of one of the sculptures on the website of a British trader last year.

The group handed evidence to the Metropolitan Police showing that the sculptures belong to the temple in Tamil Nadu. The trader was contacted and he voluntarily returned the items. He said he'd bought them in good faith and is not being prosecuted, as Vijayakumar of India Pride Project played a key role in discovering the sculptures.

It's much more important that collectors and dealers recognise that these sacred bonds have been dropped from living temples, which still continue to exist. And it's only incidental that we are now seeing them as objects of art.

What it means for the original custodians to see their gardens being reduced to showpiece corridors and put a price tag on all the items would affect millions of pounds had they been sold there currently with the Indian embassy in London, but will eventually be returned to the temple, they were stolen from Yohji to live my life.

The artist Banksy has lost a two year trademark battle with a British greetings card company over one of his most famous works.

EU officials ruled that for the flower thrower to be valid as a trademark, the anonymous artist would have had to have sold goods using the image, our arts editor Will Gompertz reports.

There is a good reason Banksy has kept his identity hidden. The placement of some of his street art could be viewed as illegal, an act of criminal damage, perhaps, or anti-social behaviour. Best to keep a low profile then, but it has also become part of his persona. Banksy is a celebrity partly because of his anonymity. Now it is being used against him after the European Union trademark office throughout his right to trademark an image he created in 2005 by a man wearing a face mask throwing a bunch of flowers, copies of which a greeting card company in Yorkshire wanted to sell.

Hence the challenge to banks. His trademark, which to be valid, the holder must sell goods using the image. But the authority said he had filed his trademark in order to avoid using copyright laws, which are separate would have required the famously elusive artist to reveal his true identity. And that is something he is very unlikely to do.

Well, Gompertz there. Britain's first female special agent said to have been Winston Churchill's favourite spy has been honoured with a commemorative plaque in London.

Christine Granville's accomplishments included smuggling microfilm across Europe, rescuing French Resistance agents and escaping from the Gestapo in Hungary. She was friends with Ian Fleming and is said to have been his inspiration for a character in the early James Bond novels. Our correspondent Duncan Kennedy tells her remarkable story.

She was a ballet loving Polish countess who developed a penchant for wearing a knife strapped to her thigh. Christine Grandville was born Christina Skarbek in Warsaw and fled to London after the German invasion in 1939, the same year she was recruited as Britain's first female special agent. One daring mission for her smuggle out a microfilm proving Hitler's plans to attack the Soviet Union and exploit the prompted Churchill to call her his favorite spy on another occasion. She persuaded the Germans to release three men who were due to be shot by claiming to be the niece of Field Marshal Montgomery.

A biographer, Claire Muhly says she was an extraordinary woman.

She was a very passionate woman. She loved adventure and adrenaline. One of the ministers in the British diplomatic service that she worked with said she had a pathological love of danger. She loved men. She had two husbands and many lovers. And she saved the lives of quite a few of them. But most of all, she loved freedom and independence.

Late in the war, Christine Grandville convinced an entire Alpine German battalion to defect. Even said Ian Fleming based the character Vesper Lynd on her four Casino Royale. But after the war, she ended up working on cruise ships, meeting the man who in 1952 would murder her after she told him she'd burned his love letters. The new blue plaque is on the building where she died, dedicated to a woman who fought to preserve life and maintain freedom. Duncan Kennedy.

And that is all from us for now. But there will be an updated version of the Global News podcast later on if you want to comment on this podcast or any of the topics we've covered in it. You can send us an email. The address is Global Podcast at BBC Dot UK. I'm Nick Miles. And until next time, goodbye.