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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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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritson, and at 14 hours GMT on Friday, the 18th of December, these are our main stories, dazed, barefooted but free. Nigerian officials think all of the kidnapped school boys, a total of 344, have been released. At least 15 people, many, if not all children, have been reported killed in a bombing in Afghanistan.

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And we international community should not be watching such situations.

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I think a warning from the UN about the crisis in northern Mozambique as refugees flee a brutal insurgency.

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Also in this podcast, Ethiopia's government offers huge rewards for the leaders of the military campaign and the northern region of Tigray. And might the star of Bethlehem make a return appearance this Christmas?

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Let's begin in northern Nigeria, where there's huge relief after hundreds of schoolboys who were abducted by gunmen a week ago have arrived back in their home state of Katsina. The state government says all 344 of those who were kidnapped were freed in neighboring Zamfara state on Thursday. The youngsters were forced to make a three day trek to freedom. One of the boys has been talking about his ordeal.

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They hit us all in the same place when they took us at first. But when they saw a jet fighter, they changed the location and hit us in a different place. They gave us food, but it was very little.

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A spokesman for the Katsina state governor said the youngsters had been held by local bandits rather than Boko Haram Islamist militants that had been originally claimed.

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Boko Haram is just a claim. It is not Boko Haram. It wasn't Boko Haram. The local bandits we know about all along. We are responsible for the they are people we know very well mean some of their leaders were, you know, them very well.

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For more, I spoke to our reporter in Abuja, Isha.

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Khaleed, the latest we have is that the boys, 344, have been taken to the state government house. That is the governor's office in the city of Sanaa, where they were briefed by the governor. He tried to pacify them, to reassure them. Also, they look so exhausted, they look so confused and bewildered. So many of them were barefooted after they were rescued there. So even though there are conflicting figures as to exactly how many children were kidnapped, these 344 have been rescued.

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And the governor of the state where the incident happened and also the governor of neighboring Zamfara state where they were rescued, said that no child, no boy was left behind. So all of them have been rescued. But there are still, of course, questions as to whether some have been, you know, left behind or not, or some of these students escaped to rural areas where there are no communication lines so that their escape could be communicated to.

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So we are still waiting to find out exactly if the boys have been rescued, all of them, or they are still behind with the captors.

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Yeah, because so local officials saying that they've all been released. But this actually conflicts with a video that was released yesterday. Exactly.

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Yesterday, Boko Haram issued a video showing the boys and claiming that it was holding them. That really raised a lot of fears. But the good news came just hours after that video. So there is some sense of confusion here. Many people say that Boko Haram was indeed involved in some way, but the release of these boys actually raised some doubt about that opinion. So the officials here are saying that Boko Haram was not behind the kidnapping, but some observers are saying perhaps the criminal gangs who kidnapped these boys normally operate in that area.

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Kidnapping for ransom might have fought some sort of alliance with Boko Haram. If that's the case, then Boko Haram may be disappointed. But the good news is that these boys have been rescued. They have been freed. They are no longer with the captors. Their parents are happy and the entire country is happy. But there are still unanswered questions as to how they were kidnapped, how they were rescued and what is now the aftermath of their rescue.

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Isha Khalid speaking to me from Abuja. A bomb blast in Afghanistan's central Ghazni province has left at least 15 people dead and many others injured.

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Shortly before we recorded this podcast, our correspondent in the region, Secunda Cumani, told me what we knew so far.

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Well, I've just been looking at some really grim photographs that have been shared with us by local officials are showing a long line of very young children killed in this blast. Some of them seem to only be around five years old. As you say, at least 15 people have been killed and 20 injured. All of the victims are children who we're told, and the death toll could rise further. Now, according to officials, explosives were hidden in the back of a kind of large rickshaw that was nearby to a home where a Koran recital was taking place and that was being attended by these children.

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But it's not clear if that was the target. It's hard to imagine why anyone would carry out a deliberate attack on a place like that, even by the kind of brutal standards of the war in Afghanistan. The Taliban in the last few minutes have just released a statement saying that the blast was caused by unexploded ordinance. So perhaps an unexploded rocket. We're really waiting for more details because this happened in a rural, more remote area generally, though. Levels of violence in Afghanistan had been high in the past few months, even even as we've been seeing these slow moving peace negotiations between Afghan and Taliban officials, those they are really yet to progress beyond preliminary issues and have been put on pause until January.

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And all this time, at the same time, in one of President Trump's last actions, he's further reducing the number of US troops in the country. Some feared the level of violence will only get worse.

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Our correspondent Secunda Kermani, the US vice president, Mike Pence, has become the first senior figure in the Trump administration to receive a coronavirus vaccine, speaking shortly afterwards at a news conference at the White House. He said America was still seeing heartbreaking losses from the pandemic, but it now had a vaccine that was safe and effective.

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We gather here today at the end of a historic week to affirm to the American people that hope is on the way. And Karen and I were more than happy to step forward before this week was out to take this safe and effective coronavirus vaccine that we have secured and produced for the American people. It's truly inspiring day.

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Mike Pence, the US vice president. The United Nations has warned that the number of people fleeing violence in northern Mozambique has risen fourfold this year to 420000 and that the humanitarian crisis is likely to get worse. An Islamist insurgency which began three years ago with militants carrying out massacres in villages across Karbo Delgado province, has spread and intensified. Our Africa correspondent Andrew Harding reports from Johannesburg.

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A makeshift flotilla approaches the shore in northern Mozambique on board. Dozens of families fleeing from a surging conflict in Gaza.

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They burned everything, said this fisherman. I only have my boat left.

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He and his family have come ashore at the port city of Pember, safe for now. But the war here is spreading fast.

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I remember the fisherman's wife, Aziza Thalamic, gave birth to a daughter during their escape. She's named her suffering because spending Aleynikov.

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But I'm still afraid, she says. I don't know if the enemy will follow us here.

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That enemy is an Islamist insurgent group seeking to introduce Sharia law.

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It's been blamed for a series of massacres and atrocities across the northern province of Karbo Delgado.

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The 64 year old man Naza Amulya describes how the insurgents attacked them in a field, beheading one man, killing another and abducting her own granddaughters.

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The result, well over 400000 civilians have now fled their homes, many living in makeshift camps.

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The situation is really dire. These people are lacking all the basic amenities.

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On a visit to Pember Ujjal, the Congress tanga from the UN's refugee agency warned that the situation was likely to deteriorate further.

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The figures are going up as they go by, and therefore we, the international community, really need to quickly ramp up our capacity before it gets out of hand.

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Granters, Steve, to restart the government, Mozambique's government has blamed foreign extremists, President Felipe Nusi saying that Mozambique was taking actions to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity. But many people now say the roots of the conflicts like closer to home in corruption and inequality.

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A promotional video for a giant new gas refinery in the province has seen billions of dollars of foreign investment in mines and offshore projects, but many locals complain they've been pushed off their land and see no benefits.

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The UN's Congressa tanker again, if I went off to a place like this one, which is end up with a lot of what and I see that that wealth is being used. Right, that is being used. And I don't see the ships of that. Well, I would also be disgruntled. I would not be happy if they got no jobs. They have more they have more dreams that we international community should not be watching such situations.

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I think not. As more families arrive in Pember, there is talk of foreign military intervention and not just by private security firms, Mozambique's neighbors fear a conflict that increasingly resembles the crisis in northern Nigeria is poised to spread.

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Andrew Harding, our Africa correspondent and staying in East Africa.

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Scientists have discovered a rare ocean sanctuary for coral reefs off the coast of Tanzania and Kenya. The area has been described as a jewel of biodiversity, teeming with rare species, and apparently it's a refuge from the effects of climate change.

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The study's author is Dr Tim McClanahan, the chief coral scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society.

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It was a slow discovery. It took a long time for me to put the pieces together to see that it was a sanctuary. When the pieces came together, it made me realise how the complexity of nature comes together and creates these conditions for a sanctuary. The channel itself has been well known for having many species of Spiner and endangered humpback dolphins, whales, dugongs, turtles and even at depth. There's a unique species of ancient fish, a type of seal account that's found only there.

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So the conditions are good for a whole number of species. But it was the corals that caught my attention because corals are experiencing stress globally due to warm water. Because of climate change, warm water is becoming more frequent and stronger and often devastating temperature sensitive species. In many places, the most sensitive issues have already disappeared. So what I found interesting was that when I was traveling there and diving, that the sensitive species were still there growing around the channel.

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So corals are like this canary in a coal mine. Once you find them, these sensitive species, you know that corals are safe there.

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Dr Tim McClanahan of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

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And here now is my colleague Jackie Leonard to tell you about an upcoming edition of Global News that I'm sure you'll enjoy.

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It's that magical time of the year. The excited little faces in the NEWSROOM, the air of anticipation at the editorial meeting and the promise of a whole podcast dedicated to people and stories inspire delight and amines. The happy Bone 2020 is out December the 25th right here. We found this one happy, Jacki.

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And still to come in this edition, Nick Drummond and his partner Patrick left their lives in the city in search of a corner of rural America to call their own.

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But they discovered something very surprising, hidden in the walls of their dream home, as we'll find out.

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A quarter of a million dollars is a lot of money, and that's the sum the authorities in Ethiopia are promising. Anyone who offers information leading to the arrests of Tigran leaders, there's even a hotline in place fighting in the province of TIKRAI has been going on since last month.

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I asked our Africa regional editor, Mary Harper, how many leaders we're talking about and who are they?

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We're talking about 63 senior members of the TPF, the group that is basically at war with the federal government of Ethiopia. And then there's also a whole load of other Tigray and military people who have had arrest warrants put out for them as well. And so far, the Ethiopian federal authorities have only managed to get their hands on two of the senior TPF leaders. So basically, it's a sign that even though they declared the federal authorities declare that the conflict is now over, the fact that they haven't managed to track down any of these senior figures suggests that the situation has not reached any stage of normality yet.

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So why this money off now? What do we read into this? I think it shows that, you know, even though this conflict was started in early November and was declared over by the government of Prime Minister Abu Ahmed, that is absolutely not the case. It seems like the leadership of the TPF have gone into the mountains. They were broadcasting for a while on their local media. That's all stopped. The leadership who were in touch with some foreign media have also gone silent.

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But continued fighting is reported in various parts of the Tigray region. So I think it's just a sign that this conflict is far from over.

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Is this reward likely to lead to the Ethiopian government's desired outcome?

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Probably not. I think a lot of people in Tigray who will be aware, at least some of them will be aware of what's happened to the leadership who've melted away. I think their sympathies probably still lie with the TPF rather than with the federal government. So I think it's going to be difficult for the federal government to track these people down.

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Mary Harper, our Africa regional editor, in a poignant series of tweets, Niaz Azzam, the daughter of the Iranian journalist Ruhollah Zam, who was executed last week, has detailed her last conversation with him. He was convicted in Iran of inciting violence during a wave of protests three years ago. I asked our Middle East analyst, Sebastian Usher, what was said in those tweets. It is very poignant.

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I think part of a poignancy is when the phone call took place, royalism was executed last week, early on Saturday morning, and this phone call was just two or three hours before that execution took place. His daughter Niaz says that she had a call on WhatsApp, which came from a number that she didn't know. She didn't answer the first time it rang. The second time she answered and found that it was her father. So they had a brief conversation about five minutes in which he asked her about her school.

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I mean, she's she's living in France, which is where he was in exile. So he was calling her there. He asked her about her education. She's just finished high school as you want to become a lawyer, isn't that right? And she said that you should do business. That's a good thing to do. She says she wants to study international law. And then he he tells her, whatever happens, don't let it affect your studies and take care of your mother and sister forever, that he may never see her again.

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But if he doesn't, they'll see each other again in the afterlife. There's also I've just seen posted on a on on another site. The grandfather, the father of Islam, has posted a call that he got from Niaz after she'd had this call from her father in which he talks about it tearfully. One other moment in actually which which is particularly moving is he asked him why he's calling her at such an early time in the morning and asks him when is the morning prayer call?

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And he says in about half an hour now in Iran, Dawn, which is when that Procol is happening, is usually when people are going to be executed. The sentence is carried out.

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Sebastian Usher, our Middle East analyst, now the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, bills itself as the collective voice of the Muslim world, working to safeguard and protect the interests of Muslims across the globe. So why is it silent on the plight of China's weaker minority? That's the criticism made by a coalition of US Muslim groups that is calling on the OIC to do more. UN experts and human rights groups say China is holding more than a million workers and members of other ethnic minorities in vast detention camps.

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Rahul Tandon has been speaking to Robert Mcor of the Council on American. Islamic relations. Sadly, they are talking about the situation in China, just not in the right way. Last March, the Organization for Islamic Cooperation Council for Foreign Ministers adopted a resolution that commended China's efforts in providing care for its Muslim citizens. And again, that's shocking to Americans and Muslim rights groups. And we are activists because these aren't reeducation camps. They're not job training centers, their concentration camps, places of untold suffering, torture, abuse, rape and death.

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For one point six to three million detained are Muslims and other Turkic minorities.

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The Chinese government have denied that these camps exist, though many human rights groups have say that that's clearly not the case at all.

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When we have Muslim countries not speaking out on this, do you think that that can reinforce the view among some that the Chinese may be telling the truth?

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I do not for a moment believe that the average citizen in Saudi Arabia, where the OIC is based or in Egypt actually believes that we are Muslims are being treated well in China. This is just what the OIC and country heads in these countries are saying. It's very well documented in my organization believes that China's anti-Muslim policies, acts of cultural erasure, destruction of 16000 mosque, forced sterilization, abortion, child separation and systema concentration camps meet the hallmark definition of genocide.

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I don't think that the OIC turning a blind eye for economic reasons, is bullying anyone.

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Let's be honest here that you've made these calls in the world that we live in with the pandemic, more and more countries are going to be even more reliant on China. We could actually hear or not hear more silence rather than countries actually speaking out.

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I believe the pandemic has been a distraction for this issue for sure. But the OIC continuing to applaud China under these circumstances is akin to eating Germany during the 1930s as the Nazi regime began to round up Jewish citizens prior to the start of the Holocaust, the Elias's actions have placed it on the wrong side of the history. And as this plays out, it will be more evident. I do believe that this international campaign to hold accountability on the OIC, on other Western nations is ramping up.

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And when you look at the United States, we have already started prohibiting certain products made by weaker slave labor from entering the United States. We're passing legislation. And so I think there is a way forward.

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Robbert Makau of the Council of American Islamic Relations.

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Exactly 100 years ago, the United States government imposed a nationwide ban on the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcohol.

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What was termed prohibition in the U.S. would last for more than a decade. But the secrets of those who tried to profit from the alcohol ban are still being uncovered today. Nick Johnson reports.

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Oh, my God, this is unbelievable that they're perfectly wrapped in an unassuming house in a tiny village in the New York countryside, a very unusual discovery.

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The whole house is surrounded with liquor bottles.

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This is Nick Drummond and his partner Patrick left their lives in the city in search of a corner of rural America to call their own.

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The house is what's known as an American Four-Square. It was built around 1915. It's sort of this big boxy rectangle with a hipped roof and a big wraparound porch.

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So you bought this house, but it needed a lick of paint or tea.

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It had a lot of issues. But we also knew that with some work and with sort of some creative restructuring of the floor plan, we could make it livable and sort of restore it to its original appearance and a lot of ways.

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So did the House seem unusual to you in any way? Did you have any misgivings about calling it your home?

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We'd heard it was built by a bootlegger, built by a baron, built by a count, built by that everyone who had lived in the house was always childless, that there was a bunch of cash stashed in the house somewhere else. It came with all these tales.

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So we are pulling off part of our mudroom and we have discovered some hidden bottles from the Prohibition era. We were always told that our house was built by a bootlegger and now we actually had some proof.

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My name is Dr. Kristen Burton and I specialize in the history of alcohol production and consumption.

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So from 1920 to 1933, the United States passed and ratified a constitutional amendment that prohibited the manufacture, sale and transportation of all alcoholic beverages. Alcohol was. Moved underground, the black market exploded. People still found ways to gain access to alcohol throughout that time.

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That's kind of interesting how the attacks not only were the wall cavities stuffed with bottles, but Nick and Patrick uncovered a hatch in the floor leading to another whiskey stash in the cellar, sort of for that way and two that way.

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All in all, the pair found more than five dozen bottles and have been told they could be worth around a thousand dollars each.

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Some of the some of the bottles are in fairly poor shape. Some are actually in amazingly good condition. There are these sort of little green bottles with that little wrapped gold tops that I guess cover the cork or sealing mechanism. And so each of the bottles were then wrapped in this tissue paper stamped from, I'm assuming, the old smuggler factory. And then those were then wrapped in hay tied with string. And they would put six of those bottles together and wrap it in brown paper tied in a strange shove it in the wall.

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While Nick and Patrick want to take most of their bottles to auction, they do have plans for a permanent fixture to commemorate their homes. Bootlegging past.

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Nice thing to find just before Christmas. Nick Johnson with that report. We may be able to see our own star of wonder in the next few days as Jupiter and Saturn come into close alignment.

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The Vatican believes the 2000 years ago it was that sort of conjunction that created the unusually bright light in the sky, reported as the star of Bethlehem, Michelle Hassane, found out. More from Dr. Carolyn Crawford of the Institute of Astrology at Cambridge University.

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What we're seeing here is when two planets appear to just line up very close together in the sky and it's unusual for Jupiter and Saturn to be coming so close to each other. They're getting closer and closer together each night and they make their closest approach in the 21st of December. And it's very easy to see, you know, any time in the next week you just need to look to the southwest horizon, fairly low down. So ideally, you want the clear view to the horizon.

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And for about an hour after sunset, it's very easy to see Jupiter because it just looks like a very bright star. Relatively low down at Saturn is just a short way after about 11 o'clock from Jupiter. I mean, they're not going to line up. Exactly. They'll still be separated. But if you look at them through binoculars and that's a very good way to check that you're actually looking at the right thing, you'll be able to see perhaps the rings around Saturn and some of the four big moons of Jupiter, which will look like little stars to either side, to Jupiter along the line of direction, joining Jupiter and Saturn.

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But how often has this happened in the past? And do we have any idea whether it did happen 2000 years ago? Because you can imagine that with the naked eye, it might well look like a single bright light in the sky.

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It's not impossible that the star of Bethlehem was in a planetary alignment like this. So these kind of alignments happen fairly often. I mean, it's not that unusual, is comparatively rare for them, Jupiter and Saturn to come this close and this particular sort of closeness happening at a time when we could actually see it so clearly 800 years ago and it won't happen again to 2080. So, you know, you might consider it to sort of once in a lifetime occurrence, if you're lucky.

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Dr Carolyn Crawford of Cambridge University speaking to Michelle Hassane.

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Finally, it's time for news from elsewhere. Our weekly look at some of the less reported stories from across the globe. And with me now on the line is Martin Morgan from our monitoring team, which follows news media in many languages. And firstly, Martin, illegal logging and hunting a devastating forests in Indonesia, including the habitat of the endangered Sumatran tiger. But it seems one group of women have decided to do something about it. Yes, that's right.

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Thirty women have started to patrol their local forest on foot, reporting, tree felling or poaching that they see. This hasn't gone down well with many of their neighbors and even their relatives who resort to logging and hunting to make ends meet. And they still think a woman's place is in the home of the local authorities in Aceh province also tend to turn a blind eye to the logging as a cleared space for profitable coffee plantations. But the persistence of the women of Dunbar Village is beginning to pay off.

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They've even won over some of the local poachers who have turned gamekeeper and joined them on patrols. And they recently won official recognition, too, with a prize to help them in the continuing fight against deforestation.

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Now they say the Greeks have a word for everything, but it seems the Dutch are not far behind them. Well, they're certainly trying the Fundao that the. Chenery runs an online poll for Word of the Year in the Netherlands, and you won't be surprised to hear that this year's entries are dominated by the covid-19 pandemic. The popular choice is under, however, Meeta Sharma leaving one word, which means one and a half metre society. And this refers to the official social distance you have to keep in the country.

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In second place is fabulous. Just stroke or nonsense trap. A invented by the comedian are in Looper to describe the sort of alternative world that various conspiracy theorists inhabit. And the runner up is fuda therapy, which means like a virus drunk and refers to people who play down the pandemic. To give you a comparison. Last year's winner was the rather less inventive boomer, fearless rapper.

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Okay, that's going to be my word of the day. Thank you very much indeed.

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Martin Morgan from BBC Monitoring, bringing us this week's news from elsewhere.

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And that's all from us for now. But there'll be an updated version of the Global News podcast later.

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If you want to comment on this edition or the topics we've covered. Send us an email. The address is global podcast at BBC dot com dot UK. I'm Alex Roots in the studio manager was Holly Palmer. The producer was Rahu Sonic and the editor Karen Martin. And until next time, goodbye.

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It's now 50 years since the body of an unidentified woman was discovered in East Harlem or Death Valley in Norway. She died in horrific circumstances. Police tried but failed to find out who she was. She'd been using different names. There were suitcases containing wigs. The labels had been cut off some of her clothes and items. My name is Margaret. Take it off. And I've done my best to investigate what happened to her and who was she. Listen to my podcast.

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I've been helping to unravel the mystery half a century on. Why not see what you think about her death in Eiseley from the BBC World Service and Norway's NRK search for death in a smelly wherever you get your podcasts.