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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. It's that time of the year. Your vacation is coming up. You can already hear the beach waves, feel the warm breeze, relax and think about...
I'm Katrina Perry from the Global Story podcast, where we're looking at the violence and anger sweeping across the UK. There's been a wave of anti-immigrant protests since the murder of three young girls over a week ago.
But how did that attack spark rioting throughout the country? The Global Story brings you unique perspectives from BBC journalists around the world. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jalak Jalil, and in the early hours of Friday, the 19th of July, these are our main stories. President Biden is facing renewed pressure from fellow Democrats to abandon his re-election bid, with Barack Obama reported to have joined those questioning whether he can beat Donald Trump. The internet has been shut down in Bangladesh as the authorities struggle to contain student protests over job quotas.
Health experts have called for urgent action to stop the spread of drug-resistant malaria in Africa. Also in this podcast, we hear about the latest threat to rare endangered birds. The increasingly lucrative trade in their eggs. The increasingly lucrative trade in their eggs.
The pressure is intensifying on President Biden, with even Barack Obama now reportedly questioning whether he has what it takes to beat Donald Trump, a concern echoed by other Democratic heavyweights, including Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. As we record this podcast, reports are coming in that Ms. Pelosi has told some Democrats in Congress that she believes Mr. Biden can be convinced fairly soon to exit the presidential race.
The 81-year-old president has already had to suspend campaigning after contracting COVID-19. His woes stand in stark contrast to the adulation being lavished on Donald Trump after his narrow escape from being assassinated. Our North America editor Sarah Smith reports from Milwaukee, where Mr Trump is due to address his jubilant supporters at the Republican Party's National Convention.
Speculation is mounting over whether Joe Biden might soon announce he's stepping aside as a Democratic presidential candidate.
He's isolating at home in Delaware after testing positive for Covid and is said to be open to considering changing his mind about running for re-election. He has been told by some of his closest friends inside the party that he is on course to lose to Donald Trump. While former President Barack Obama is said to have told allies he thinks Mr Biden needs to seriously consider the viability of his candidacy. Last week, the president called into the Morning Joe TV show on MSNBC to say he would not step down.
This morning, its host, Joe Scarborough, had a message for Mr Biden's closest advisers. It's really incumbent on people that are around Joe Biden to step up at this point and help the president and help the man they love and do the right thing. Top Democrats who already feared that Joe Biden would probably lose the White House are now worried that he'll drag down other candidates and lose them the House of Representatives and the Senate too.
Campaign donations are drying up and the president has had to suspend campaigning because he's unwell. Meanwhile, here at the Republican convention in Milwaukee, Donald Trump will give his speech tonight, greeted by a rapturous crowd who believe that they're now on course for a big victory.
Sarah Smith, who are also at that convention in Milwaukee, is our North America correspondent, Nomia Iqbal. What are we expecting from Donald Trump's speech? We understand that he will be focusing on the issue of unity. He spoke to the Washington Examiner newspaper on Sunday, a day after he survived that assassination attempt, and he said that he had decided to rewrite his speech. So he's
He plans to switch from attacks on President Joe Biden's policies to a message of unity. And he said that it was going to be a whole different speech, a lot different than it would have been two days ago. And he will give that speech later this evening. There are lots of people that will be in attendance beforehand.
You've got people like Hulk Hogan, the former wrestler. You've got the news anchor Tucker Carlson as well. We believe his wife Melania Trump. We don't know if she'll speak, but his wife is here as well as his daughter Ivanka Trump. And he'll get a rapturous reception. There's no doubt about that. But what do Republicans make of the Democratic disarray over whether Joe Biden should run again?
I think the Republicans are very much enjoying it because for so long their party has been seen as the one of chaos. Four years ago, three and a half years ago, after Donald Trump lost the White House, there was a sense that Republicans were moving away from Donald Trump, especially following the January 6th riots. But he has advanced this stunning political comeback. And being here at the convention, when I speak to Republicans, Republican delegates, they
They are so unified behind him. You know, they're almost sort of looking at the Democrats as the party that's falling apart as Donald Trump rises. Joe Biden, it seems, is falling and his supporters breaking away. I spoke to many Republican delegates on the floor about how they felt regarding President Biden's health and fragility. They think he should stand down. And some of them were saying we want him to run.
We want him to go against Donald Trump because they believe that Trump will beat him. They also think that any Democratic candidate that's put forward, Donald Trump will beat. They have that much confidence in the former president. But for the most part, yes, Republicans do view what's happening to the Democratic parties and as to their advantage. And that's that's the way politics works, I guess.
Nomia Iqbal. Well, in an exclusive interview with the BBC, Ukraine's President Zelensky says any pressure from the West to end the war with Russia quickly would be at the expense of his people. He was speaking after attending a gathering of dozens of European leaders at the historic Blenheim Palace here in England. Many of them fear that if Donald Trump is re-elected US President, he could withdraw American military support.
Our political editor, Chris Mason, asked President Zelensky what he thought about Mr Trump's frequent claims that he could end the war in 24 hours if he ends up back in the White House. Everybody will be happy if one person in the world, and this person Donald Trump, can stop the war during 2004. The question is, what the price and who will pay?
Do you think you would pay? I think his idea to push us to pay. But if he wants to do it during 24 hours, the simple way is to push us to pay. Because it's understandable how. It means just stop and give.
And forget, sanctions out, everything out, Putin will take the land, Putin will make a victory for his society. We will never go on this, never. And there is no any guy in the world who can push us to do it.
Donald Trump this week has picked the man he would like to be his vice president, J.D. Vance, who has said in the past that he doesn't really care what happens in Ukraine one way or another. What do you make of those remarks? Maybe he really doesn't understand what goes on in Ukraine. So for us, we have to work with the United States. And if new team will come,
We have to work with them. We need their support. Hard work. Could be hard work to persuade them. Yes, but we don't, I mean, we're not afraid of hard work. Did your heart sink last week when President Biden, standing right next to you, introduced you as President Putin, of all people? No, he just made a mistake. Honestly, for me, it means nothing. Next, let's go to Bangladesh. I'm from Bangladesh.
Where the protests against new rules and the hiring of civil servants have escalated even further. Students set fire to the offices of the Bangladeshi state broadcaster in Dhaka, forcing it off air. More than 20 people are reported to have been killed in the past few days of violence, and internet and phone services have now mostly been cut.
Just before that shutdown, our South Asia regional editor, Ambrasa Nesirajan, managed to get hold of a minister, Mohammad Ali Arafat. He denied reports that the military had used excessive levels of force against the protesters at the TV station. From the government side, there hasn't been any order given to open fire. That's why the government, all the law enforcement agencies showed restraint. Other than, you know, non-lethal weapon, no approval was given to open fire.
open fire or something, but they have planned it. These are not the students at all. They're all the group of extremist group put together and they planned it so that in a way so that they can capture the BTV and take control over it. There are some students, they also joined. That's why the government showed restraint. Our objective was to let the student fully go out of it and we'll go on hard line because now we are going hard line onto the
real terrorists, those who are not the students. So you are saying that if they don't leave the building, the police will storm the building? Yes, yes, absolutely. What would you do in your country? They will send a cautionary message and they'll go for action. It's not going to be unprovoked.
But many of the protesters say it's the security forces that are to blame for the escalation of violence. The demonstrators, many of them students, are calling for reform of the new rules that reserve a third of highly sought-after government jobs for the relatives of war heroes who fought for the country's independence from Pakistan in 1971. Zyber is an aspiring law student who's joined the calls for the quotas to be abolished. She's had to leave her university because of the clashes.
It has been a brutal experience. I have never faced something like this in my entire life. We were peacefully protesting.
But in our very own campus, we are attacked by Bangladesh Chhatra League, a wing of the current ruling party. They attacked on our heads and the administration was there. The police was there. No one helped us. And then more than 500 armed police confronted us with rubber bullets and tear gas. Even they raided our dormitories. They forced us all to leave our own campus. We got more from Ambarasan Esirachan.
Now, various internet monitoring groups say that internet activity across Bangladesh has come down by nearly 90%. In fact, I was talking with the same minister before the line went down to learn more about the number of people killed. In fact, the line got disconnected and I tried for a couple of hours. I couldn't get through. But
A few minutes ago, I spoke to one Bangladeshi journalist on the normal telephone line. So the telephone line seems to be working, even though it is very, very difficult to get through. What people are worried about is what will happen during this near information blackout, whether the government will go for a crackdown or will it...
reduce the intensity of the protest because most of the student protesters or the movement, they've been using internet, like using social media like Facebook and Twitter to organize themselves. Now that ability is gone. Whether this will weaken the protest, that's what we are going to see. But
but very difficult to find information at this point from Bangladesh itself. There have been pitched battles between security forces and student protesters, and there are conflicting reports about the number of people killed. But the numbers are likely to go up than what you mentioned earlier. So it is a really, really a testing time for many Bangladeshis.
And both sides are blaming each other for the violence with a number of deaths now reported to be rising quite rapidly. What do we know about who's to blame?
Now, the protests started weeks ago as a peaceful movement where they were asking the government to abolish this quota system for government jobs because 30% of the jobs were reserved for what they call war heroes, those who took part in the 1971 independence war with Pakistan. But now the unemployment is high, according to the student activists, especially youth unemployment.
But then in the last few days, things have changed toward the student movement. The leaders are blaming police as well as the student wing of the governing Awami League for initiating this violence. On the other hand, the minister whom I spoke to earlier, he was saying that the opposition activists, some of the Islamist groups, they've infiltrated this protest movement and they were responsible for the violence. But what we know is hundreds of people, hundreds of people have been injured.
And we see so many people have been killed. And doctors say some of them had rubber bullet injuries. So both sides are blaming each other. In the meantime, the casualty figure is going up.
I'm Brasson Etirajan. The authorities in Australia have seized a collection of more than 3,000 bird eggs from a house in Tasmania. Many are thought to be from rare and endangered birds. And as Rachel Wright reports, the trade in eggs is becoming as lucrative as it is destructive.
Swift parrots heard here in the wild in southeast Australia are one of the rarest species on earth. Some experts estimate there are only three to five hundred left. So breeding them is obviously crucial to their survival. But swift parrot eggs are among more than 3,000 from a range of bird species to be allegedly taken from birds nests in Australia.
Egg collecting has been a pastime since the 1800s, right up to the 1960s, but now it is illegal. Dr Sally Bryant is an ecologist who lives and works in Australia. She spoke to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. To collect eggs less than two centimetres in size from a nest high in a tree, you either have to chop the tree down or chop the nest out.
These are skilled operators, you know, to collect seabird eggs on offshore islands. You've got a boat there. You've got to get there during the breeding season. You're disturbing birds everywhere.
This is a really insidious and corrupt activity. The eggs were found in a home in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, the island off the southern tip of Australia. The haul is estimated to be worth over US$300,000 on the black market. A 62-year-old man is being investigated for allegedly collecting, harvesting and trading the eggs. The eggs in the collection were all blown or hollowed.
The Australian authorities were tipped off by a European operation that led to more than 56,000 eggs being seized. Environmental and wildlife crime has become one of the world's largest and most profitable crime sectors worth billions of dollars. And as it continues to grow, it pushes many species to the brink of extinction. Dr Eric Wohler is a bird ecologist.
As a species becomes critically endangered, so does the value of their eggs become more and more valued. And so there's an even greater incentive to go and collect these eggs before they become extinct. It just reinforces just how catastrophic this egg collection process is.
An international agreement has been signed between governments in 180 countries to protect endangered plants and animals. The possession of banned specimens, including eggs, can carry a penalty of five years' imprisonment, a fine of $330,000 or both. Rachel Wright.
A court in Milan has ordered a journalist to pay more than $5,000 in damages to Italy's Prime Minister, Giorgia Maloney, not for comparing her to Mussolini, Italy's World War II fascist dictator, although they did, but for mocking her height on social media. Paul Moss reports.
Would you rather be compared to a fascist or have your height underestimated? A court in Italy seems to have decided that shortness is the more serious allegation. The Italian journalist Giulia Cortese tweeted a mocked-up photograph of the country's prime minister. It showed Giorgia Maloney alongside the late dictator Benito Mussolini. Ms Maloney said she would sue, at which point the journalist tweeted...
Now, Ms Maloney is below average height, but not that small. And a court in Milan on Thursday ordered the journalist to pay more than $5,000 compensation to Ms Maloney for body-shaming her. However, the court ruled that the Mussolini photograph was not libelous.
There is precedent here. Ms Maloney is taking action against the singer of the rock band Placebo for calling her a racist, and she successfully sued a writer who used a mildly offensive term of abuse because of her immigration policies. Campaigners accused the Italian government of trying to gag critics. Ms Cortese said she was working in a climate of persecution.
Paul Moss. Still to come on this podcast... I had a kind of a strange theory of accountancy. I had always felt, you know, if you got within two or three bucks of it, but this never really caught on. The American comedy legend Bob Newhart, who starred in Elf and the Big Bang Theory, has died at the age of 94. ♪
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This is the story of a man who killed so many people, he lost count. But despite his shocking death toll, he only served 12 years in jail. It's astounding that anybody could get away with it. And the families of his victims...
That justice system ultimately ignored all of those bodies and all of the families. From the BBC World Service, World of Secrets, Season 3, The Apartheid Killer. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
You're listening to the Global News Podcast. Here in Britain, a public inquiry into the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has delivered a damning first report, highlighting numerous mistakes in the UK's emergency planning. The inquiry's chairwoman said the then government had failed its citizens and the pandemic had caused more deaths and economic damage than it should have.
More than 235,000 people in the UK died with the virus up until the end of last year. Here's our health correspondent, Sophie Hutchinson.
After many weeks of evidence from nearly 70 witnesses and more than 100,000 documents, the COVID inquiry's first report is unflinchingly critical. It said citizens were failed because the UK had been ill-prepared for dealing with catastrophic emergencies. The inquiry's chair, Baroness Heather Hallett, said there had been a belief that the UK was one of the most prepared nations in the world for a pandemic. This belief was dangerously mistaken.
The UK prepared for the wrong pandemic. The significant risk of an influenza pandemic had long been considered, written about and planned for. However, that preparedness was inadequate for a global pandemic of the kind that struck.
The inquiry's report highlighted what it said was a flawed approach to risk assessment for a UK-wide emergency, a failure to learn from past outbreaks of disease, a narrow range of scientific advice offered up to ministers and their failure to challenge that advice properly.
It also pointed to a damaging absence of focus on the measures and infrastructure needed to deal with a fast-spreading disease. And a major flaw, it said, was the lack of a system that could be scaled up to test, trace and isolate people.
Naomi Fullop, whose mother died during the pandemic, read a statement from the COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaign. She praised the report as hard-hitting and clear-sighted, but felt it could have gone further. While the inquiry has diagnosed much of what undermined our response, Lady Hallett hasn't gone far enough in setting out how we can challenge, address,
and improve inequalities and capacity of public services as opposed to just understanding the effects of these failures. The inquiry will begin hearing evidence again in September about the NHS. Its second report is expected to be published next year and will focus on the political decisions taken.
Sophie Hutchinson. Staying with the issue of health, scientists are warning that millions of lives are at risk unless urgent action is taken to stop drug-resistant malaria spreading in Africa. Dominic Hughes reports.
Writing in the journal Science, 28 leading malaria scientists from 10 countries make a series of recommendations targeting both the parasite and the mosquitoes that spread the disease, including adding a third drug to the artemisinin combination therapy to make it harder for the parasite to evolve resistance.
When the malaria parasite developed resistance to a previous drug, chloroquine, in East Africa in the 1970s, malaria deaths on the continent trebled to 1.6 million by 2004. Experts say that if the current therapy fails, then deaths will rise again. Dominic Hughes.
A revered figure in France, the Roman Catholic priest Abbé Pierre, remembered fondly as a champion of the homeless, has been accused of sexual assault 17 years after his death. He died in 2007 at the age of 94.
His own charity has made the accusations based on the testimonies of seven women who said they were sexually assaulted or harassed by the cleric in the later years of his life, even up until his 90s, between 1970 and 2005. So how big a deal are these revelations about Abbé Pierre for the French? A question for our Paris correspondent, Hugh Schofield.
A very, very big deal. And his name is still has resonance in the country. There are still a chain of charities around the country which do good works. It's where people take their old furniture, which is then sold on to raise money for housing, for reinsertion of prisoners and poor people and people with drug problems into society, into jobs and so on. It's an immense sort of
operation this charity which owes its name to him it's called the Abbey Pierre Foundation and he was its founder and
You know, his story goes back to the 50s, just after the war, when there were terrible problems of housing of a different nature. You know, he was a left-wing priest, basically, who used his devotion to God to further social action in a way which was very effective and captured the imagination of the country. And over and over again, he was, you know, pronounced the most popular Frenchman ever and...
You know, I think the fact that he was a cleric and on the left, you know, meant that everyone could identify with him. And undoubtedly, he did a lot of good, which, of course, is why, you know, this story now is so shocking for people. It sounds as if he had an almost saintly reputation. Well, yes, he did. He did. The revelations which have come out reveal a very, very traumatic experience for the women involved. We're not talking about...
rape. We're talking about touches and forced kisses in one case, but mainly touching and completely inappropriate behaviour. It was all the more traumatic for these women, it seems to me, because of the man who was behind them. And of course,
It made it all the harder also for them at the time to say anything about it. And now it has come out. I mean, obviously, the country is very shocked. On the other hand, one can't pretend this is kind of out of the blue. I mean, you know, there is context for all of this. And the charities are not in any way denying the women's claims.
Oh, absolutely not. Absolutely not. No, no, no. This is, you know, he died a good while ago, 17 years ago, but his name is still, you know, revered. In between then and now, of course, you know, a lot has changed in the world of attitudes towards sexual, inappropriate sexual behaviour from men towards women. I mean, what's interesting, for example, is the woman who first brought this to the attention of
or the church and the Abbey Pair Foundation. You know, she was back in the late 70s, early 80s. She was touched by him. He touched her breast. He tried to kiss her. She called her father in and the father gave him a trident
dressing down back then. But that was as far as it went, you know, and as far as the family was concerned, then that was that. And it was only now, you know, many years later, when the woman is, you know, advanced in years, she feels able to put this in the context of everything else that's happened in the world ever since. And the much more open approach there is now to this kind of inappropriate behavior. And so no one's trying to cover it up. Absolutely not. But I mean, but it is a shock for the staff of the foundation and for the
the people who work for the charity, who now have to come to terms with this saint who's not quite such a saint. Hugh Schofield speaking to Paul Henley. The American journalist Ivan Gershkovich has appeared in court in Russia as part of his trial on espionage charges. The Wall Street Journal reporter was arrested last year for spying, which he denies. Our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg was outside the courtroom.
We weren't allowed into the courtroom today to see Evan Gershkovich. Proceedings are behind closed doors.
But it feels like this case, what the Wall Street Journal has denounced as a sham trial, will soon be over. It's certainly speeding up. Today's hearing, the second, had been brought forward unexpectedly by three and a half weeks. And tomorrow's session begins with closing arguments. The American journalist, his employer, and the US government fiercely reject accusations that he's a spy.
Mr. Gershkovich is expected to be convicted, but Moscow has indicated it would be open to doing a deal to release him. The Russians barely hide the fact that they view a jailed American as currency, a bargaining chip, an opportunity to extract one of their own from a foreign jail. Steve Rosenberg.
The legendary American comedian and star Bob Newhart has died at the age of 94. The former accountant rose to fame in the 1960s with a then new style of comedy, conversational with a slight stammer and observational with a deadpan delivery. He became known to later generations for his roles in films like Elf and sitcoms like The Big Bang Theory. David Solito looks back at his life and career. Newhart.
February 1960, and a 30-year-old accountant who never performed in front of a live audience recorded a comedy show in Texas. All right, you want to start the car? Mrs Webb, you just turned on the lights. You want to start the car? One of Bob Newhart's routines was the driving instructor. All right, let's pull out into traffic. Now, what's the first thing we're going to do before we pull out into traffic? Well, I mean, besides praying, let's say. LAUGHTER
No, what I had in mind was checking the rearview mirror. You see, we always want to check the rear... Don't cry! Please don't cry, I'm sorry. But there was this bust. Not only did it become the first comedy record to go to number one, it stayed there for 14 weeks and won Grammy Record of the Year, beating Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. Actually, what physically happens with an audience...
They will applaud because they have supplied the unheard portion of the conversation. So they're kind of applauding themselves. Now let's practice some turns. In an era of slick comedians and rapid-fire jokes, Bob Newhart's slight stammer and polite bewilderment rather stood out. Now that was fine. One little thing...
This is a one-way street. He went on to have two successful sitcoms and starred in a number of movies. In Elf, he brought typical deadpan Newhart wit to his role of adopted father of an overly large elf. You're not like the rest of us. I was sure when you cracked six feet that it would come up. And even well into his 80s, he was a popular and recurring character in another primetime comedy hit, The Big Bang Theory.
Professor Proton, it's an honour to meet you. Is he dangerous? He was, he said, a terrible accountant. I had a kind of a strange theory of accountancy. I had always felt, you know, if you got within two or three bucks of it... ..but this never really caught on. Accountancy's loss was comedy's gain.
David Slitter. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Chris Hansen. The producer was Alison Davies. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jeanette Jalil. Until next time, goodbye.
This is the story of a man who killed so many people. He lost count. But despite his shocking death toll, he only served 12 years in jail. And the families of his victims...
That justice system ultimately ignored all of those bodies and all of the families. From the BBC World Service, World of Secrets, Season 3, The Apartheid Killer. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
