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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Andrew Peach and at 13 Hours GMT on Wednesday the 17th of July, these are our main stories. The mayor of Paris goes for a swim in the river to prove it's safe for the Olympics. It's amazing, you know, it was a dream for us. We work hard.
Police in Thailand say six Vietnamese tourists found dead in a luxury hotel were poisoned with cyanide. And student protests in Bangladesh over a lack of jobs turn violent.
Also in this podcast... Everyone's watching people in this sector of the world. All eyes on Hezbollah as fears grow on a new front in the Gaza war.
We'll start this podcast with a swim in the Seine, the river that runs through Paris. Residents have been using social media to criticise the government over plans to use the river during the Olympic Games, saying it's far too dirty. Now, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has taken decisive action, donning a swimsuit and taking the plunge, quite literally, in front of cheering spectators. Woo!
Afterwards, she said her hard work and an estimated $1.5 billion cleaning up the river had paid off. It's amazing, you know, it was a dream for us. We work a lot and very hard for that. And it is not just for be here today and swim together. It's a very lucky and happy day. It's also for...
For the planet, you know, and for the river and for the ocean, we did it, we did it. And the mayor wasn't the only one taking a dip. Our Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield did too. I did indeed, and it was great. Every adjective she used to praise the experience was well merited. It was a lovely occasion. The water was warm, it felt clean, and it was great. I mean, in fact, it was a really liberating, wonderful moment.
Is it something that people commonly do, swimming the river in Paris, for people listening elsewhere around the world? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I mean, it's been banned for a century. It was banned in 1923. There have been, in the last year, occasional experiments, people getting in a couple of competitions last year to test the waters, literally, ahead of the Olympics. But basically, a ban is still in place. So no, no one swims in the river because of pollution.
pollution, but also the risk of current. It's not necessarily very safe. But the fact is that it has been cleaned up. That's a process that goes back many, many years, not just for the Olympics. And now with the Olympics approaching, they've pushed that cleanup process to its conclusion, which is to create the fact now that it is
in general, safe to get in. There were problems and worries because levels of bacteria were very high up to the last minute because of very heavy rainfall, which is part of the problem where it causes, you know, human effluent to come in greater quantities. But now, with impeccable timing, it's come good. And obviously, it's going to be a kind of showpiece moment to have some of the Olympic events in the river in the centre of the city. This is why it's a huge relief because...
Part of the great pitch for Paris was we will be using this reclaimed river as a centrepiece for some of the swimming events, the marathon and the triathlon and so on, the swimming marathon. And that was...
That was at risk, and there was an awful fear one of the great kind of showcases of the Olympics would be just cancelled because the river would not be safe enough to get into. It looks like now things are going to be fine. So Annie Dagger's euphoria is well understandable because it's not just that the river has been reclaimed for the city, it's also that the Olympic Games can go ahead as planned. Hugh Schofield drying off in Paris. Next to Australia.
And these are sounds from a ceremony in Canberra marking the 10th anniversary of the moment a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet was shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. 38 of them were Australian. The aircraft was struck by a Russian-made missile over separatist-held pro-Russian territory. The Australian Prime Minister, Antony Albanese, promised that his government would continue to pursue justice for those who died.
On this anniversary where Mark Drapers, our Attorney-General, is in the hay as we speak, again advancing Australia's national interest, expressing our concern at the need to hold Russia to account who've been found to be responsible for this tragedy.
Flight MH17 was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was destroyed in mid-air and the Netherlands bore the brunt of the disaster. 196 Dutch people were among those killed. So the anniversary is also being marked there. Our correspondent in Amsterdam, Anna Holligan, has been telling me how.
Let me tell you about where I am. It may be a bit breezy. We're a few kilometres away from Schiphol Airport at the MH17 National Monument site. And I'm walking past rows and rows of trees, 298 trees planted, one to represent every passenger, every crew member who was on board flight MH17.
There are flags flying at half mast and I'm just on the edge of a vast sunflower field. Sunflowers planted here to represent the fields in eastern Ukraine where Flight MH17 is.
Thank you.
of a stage inside an amphitheatre. The stage is shaped like an eye looking up to the sky and every now and then you hear a plane going past to and from Schiphol Airport. That's where flight MH17 set off from.
Ten years ago today, people are gathering, they're laying sunflowers by each of the trees and many of these trees, well, all of them have plaques attached with a name and an age of the person that tree was planted for. And it's just a reminder walking around this vast site of trees.
Those people who were on board, but also so many of them were so young. 80 children were on board Flight MH17. And for the families who come here to mark this moment, I just spoke to Hans de Borst, whose 17-year-old daughter...
El-Sameek was on board. He said this is a moment to remember, but also to remember that we are still waiting for truth and accountability. It's such a huge number of people, 196. It's a real scar on the history of the Netherlands. Just update us on the legal case and where that's got to in 10 years.
There are a few different legal proceedings ongoing. The criminal trial was conducted by the Netherlands in a Dutch court. It lasted for more than two years.
The Dutch were convicted to Russians and pro-Russian Ukrainian in absentia of murder for their roles in transporting the surface-to-air missile from Russia into the separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine. They were given life prison sentences, but they, of course, remain at large because Russia refused to cooperate, refused to surrender them to face trial. One other Russian was acquitted, and Russia has...
always denied any responsibility. There is other legal action underway, though, at the European Court of Human Rights, the International Civil Aviation Organization Council, which the Netherlands hopes will hold Russia to account under international law for the attack.
And if those organisations do rule that Moscow was responsible for all of these relatives, it would be a moment to celebrate. But today is a moment to remember. Anna Holligan with me from Amsterdam.
In Thailand, more details have been emerging about the mysterious deaths of six people found at an exclusive hotel in Bangkok. It had been suspected they died from poisoning. Nopasin Punsuwa, the deputy police chief of Bangkok, has been speaking at a news conference. Nopasin Punsuwa, the deputy police chief of Bangkok, has been speaking at a news conference.
He told reporters one of the six caused this by using cyanide, and this case is a personal matter among those six individuals, not anything to do with a gang or organised crime in Thailand. I've been finding out more from our correspondent Nick Marsh in Singapore. I'll just take you to the beginning. This is the Grand Hyatt, five-star hotel in the centre of Bangkok. It's a five-star hotel in the centre of Bangkok.
On Monday, this group of six people, all Vietnamese, they all knew each other. They ordered food and tea to one of the suites.
Then the next day, housekeeping found them all dead. How have the authorities worked out this was a poisoning? So initially, local media said there'd been a shooting. That seemed to be the case for a while. We don't really know where this shooting rumour, I suppose, came from. But eventually they did some toxicology tests because they had found no signs of struggle or fighting there.
They found cyanide or a cyanide-like substance in the victim's blood and on the teacups from which they had drunk and also possibly a water container. The food was completely untouched, by the way, so that's what the police are now saying. All six were poisoned, but they think one of them was actually the perpetrator.
And the police have developed a theory that it was some kind of debt problem that lay behind all this. Exactly. And the way they got to this theory was by interviewing relatives of the victims in Vietnam. But what the police in Thailand are saying now is that two of the six were a couple who owned a road construction business. They gave money to another part of the group of six, Shireen Chong.
They gave her this money to invest in a hospital building project in Japan and the police are talking about tens of millions of baht, which when you consider 10 million baht is around 200,000, quarter of a million US dollars. That is a lot of money that we're talking about and it appears that this...
This investment went wrong. Shireen Chong owed a huge amount of money and therefore she is the suspect now that the police are talking about. And is this being widely reported in Bangkok with a lot of different theories about what might have happened?
It absolutely is, yeah. I mean, to give you an idea of how big this story is in Thailand, the prime minister was actually on the scene within hours last night. He actually went to the hotel, spoke to the media, which is slightly unusual. You don't normally see leaders of countries going straight to a crime scene, especially when there's still an active investigation going on. One of the six, by the way, is a very well-known celebrity makeup artist. He's got a really big fanbase.
following online, not just in Vietnam, but across Asia. There was a real big outpouring of condolence for him. And then, like I said, as these details begin to emerge, you can see why there is a lot of interest, not just in Thailand, but we're talking about it internationally, aren't we? Nick Marsh with me from Singapore.
Students protesting in Bangladesh over a controversial quota system for government jobs have vowed to continue their demonstrations until they receive an apology for comments made by the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. She used a derogatory term that implies they are collaborators, like those who helped or supported Pakistan's army during Bangladesh's independence war in 1971. Demonstrations have been going on for a fortnight, as Akbar Hussain reports from Dhaka.
The protest, it has now intensified because the government has instructed all schools and universities to shut down for indefinite period. And this has created further anger. The students say that in some universities, they say that, you know, they will not go out of their dormitories because they are demanding to bring an amendment in the quota system, which is very discriminatory. But on the other hand, government is not listening to their voices.
This has created huge anger and frustration. And the protest was basically peaceful, we have seen in the last two weeks. But it actually triggered protest and more violence because when the prime minister made, as you said earlier, made a comment that the protesters are the grandchildren of Razakars. And Razakar is a very derogatory word. And Razakar was a
paramilitary force in 1971 who actually collaborated with Pakistan army during Bangladesh's war of independence. So this war is very, very sensitive and that's why they have been protesting. And yesterday what we saw on the streets that six people were killed by police bullet. Now the question is why the protest has become so powerful?
Because we haven't seen such a powerful protest in the last six, seven years in Bangladesh. And many analysts believe that this is an accumulated frustration of the young generation. Because many believe that, you know, Bangladesh is now a one-party state. The country has had three faulty elections. Many people believe that they don't have freedom of expression. That's why the students are protesting and it is getting intensified.
Now, with no end in sight for the war in Gaza, many eyes have been on the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and how their involvement could exacerbate the conflict. Hezbollah is aligned with Iran and has far more military might than Hamas. It's been trading fire with Israel for the past nine months and says it's supporting Palestinians in Gaza. So far, 466 people have been killed in Lebanon. In Israel, the death toll is 33, mainly soldiers.
The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said if Hezbollah opened a war front with Israel, it would lead to counter-strikes of unimaginable magnitude. Our senior international correspondent Ola Gerin reports from southern Lebanon. UN peacekeepers on patrol and on alert in the heartland of Hezbollah.
We join them, heading for the Blue Line, Lebanon's unofficial border with Israel, already a battleground. We're driving through a village called Yaron. We've just passed a corner where you can see there's been an airstrike or what looks like an airstrike. Several buildings brought down, reduced to rubble. And the fear is, the worry is that...
the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel could escalate. So where are we, Tom? So, Orla, you're here in the outskirts of a village called Yerloon. Lieutenant Colonel Tom Fox leads the Irish peacekeeping forces here.
Overall, it has been tense and unpredictable for the period of time we have been here. The farmers in the field are no longer. Crops have been destroyed as a result of bushfires resulting from the exchanges of fire. How far are we now from the blue line? From where you're currently standing, you're approximately 400 to 500 metres from the blue line. And I presume the Israelis are watching us now.
Everyone's watching people in this sector of the world. The international community is watching, as some in south Lebanon are grieving, like Hussein Sakaiki. His only daughter, Sally, was killed last month on her own doorstep in an Israeli airstrike.
She was 25 and a volunteer paramedic. Sally, she was everything for me. I always called her my life. Every time, I didn't call her Sally. My life only. Always called her like this. Do you feel like the war is coming closer? It's getting worse? Yeah, yes. After he said yes, we were interrupted by a boom. Every day. Many times, every day.
This time, no airstrike, just an Israeli warplane breaking the sound barrier, a weapon of fear. And Hezbollah has been deploying its weapons, firing rockets and missiles into northern Israel. The Iranian-backed group has more arms than many countries.
and a growing list of war heroes. This was the funeral in Beirut for a senior Hezbollah commander killed by Israel. Among the mourners, we met Hussein, a 35-year-old nurse. We are not afraid. In fact, we are longing for an all-out war. Young or old, we will take part in this war if it's forced upon us.
This is a show of grief and of anger, but it's also a show of strength. For months now, Hezbollah has been burying fighters, but it has many more to take their place. And if there is an all-out war with Israel, Hezbollah will be a far more formidable enemy than Hamas.
Hezbollah says if there's a ceasefire in Gaza, it will cease fire. But an all-out war here could draw in Iranian-backed militant groups in Iraq and Yemen and set the region alight. Our senior international correspondent Ola Geren reporting.
Still to come in this podcast... And I use a lot of my ancestors' sample, their real voices. What Afrofuturism means for Africans around the world.
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That's BlueNile.com. 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.
Now, once upon a time, the tech billionaire Elon Musk said he'd prefer to stay out of politics. But just days after endorsing Donald Trump for president, he's announced he's moving two of his most high-profile companies out of California because of LGBTQ legislation. The new law, signed on Monday, bans schools from requiring staff to disclose information about a child's gender identity, including to their parents. Our reporter Ella Bicknell spoke to Bernadette Keogh.
California is often deemed one of America's more liberal states. And this law was put forward by the Democrat-dominated state legislature. And it was signed on Monday by the Democrat state governor, Gavin Newsom. This law states that from January 2025, if an LGBTQ student reveals their sexual orientation or their gender identity to a teacher, that teacher cannot be forced to tell that student's parents. A school can only share that information if the student gives their consent.
The state governor office says this bill keeps children safe from preventing politicians and school staff from inappropriately intervening in family matters. But others, including Elon Musk, for example, argue that it stops parents from knowing what's happening with their children, which they say is their parental right.
So what's all this got to do with him leaving California for Texas? Well, it was on X that he called this bill a final straw and that in his view, it will cause massive destruction of parental rights and put children at risk of permanent damage. And because of that, SpaceX, which is his rocket manufacturing company, they'll move their headquarters from California to Starbase in Texas.
And also his social media platform X will be moved from San Francisco to the city of Austin, also in Texas. Now when it comes to LGBTQ issues, Elon Musk's daughter is transgender and he says he supports trans issues but he has been criticised by LGBTQ groups in the past for mocking pronouns. In one tweet he called them an aesthetic nightmare. If this California exodus really does go ahead, it will certainly be the strongest stance we've ever seen him take on this topic.
SpaceX employs 5,000 people across the state. And to pull a major tech company like X out of the powerhouse, which is Silicon Valley, it's no small feat. However, Bernadette, Musk has had a long love-hate relationship with California. For years now, he's been at loggerheads with the state government over numerous issues, largely regulation. COVID-19 restrictions were part of his reason why he moved Tesla's headquarters to Austin in 2021.
And also, Elon Musk mainly resides in Texas, which, unlike California, has no income tax. Ella Bicknell reporting. Now, eating a late evening meal is part of Spanish culture for sure, but is the habit of eating at 10pm under threat? Recently, the second deputy minister of Spain called it madness, saying eating late and working late isn't good for work-life balance. Hannah Mullane reports.
So let's get in to the bar. I'm watching a video from Mikel Vinespre. He's the co-founder of the Cigardi Group and he has a number of Spanish restaurants across Spain as well as other parts of the world. So you can see the whole variety.
His kitchens are open late into the evening like most other Spanish restaurants. But recently, there's been talk of that changing. Yolanda Diaz, the second deputy minister in Spain, has been making her views known. She says it's unreasonable that people convene meetings in Spain at 8pm and it's unreasonable for restaurants to be open at 1 o'clock in the morning.
She clearly wants restaurants to close earlier, but for Mikel, he's opening at the time that his customers want. In my opinion, there are two important points. In Spain, the days are longer and the people associate getting dinner with getting dark. And second is the weather conditions, because temperatures here are higher than in much of Europe. People tend to avoid going outside during the hottest part of the day. Maria Ramirez is deputy managing editor of LDRio.es, an online news outlet in Spain. It's kind of difficult.
because everything sort of pushes you to work late. Most of the meetings that you have tend to just push the whole working day till late. Spain has one of the longest working days in Europe, but working longer hasn't led to being more productive.
According to the Bank of Spain, productivity per hour worked is 10-15% lower than the rest of the Eurozone and has been that way since 2008. Would Yolanda Diaz be able to convince Spanish people, even the younger generation, that restaurants should close earlier?
journalist Maria Ramirez. What I think is that it's interesting that the debate is open again and some companies, some businesses are already making those changes. So probably it could be more impactful if some of the just larger companies in Spain or even just Spain
smaller businesses do the changes themselves and see there is a positive impact for the workers and also for the customers. Hannah Mullane reporting. Rugby is popular in many countries but recently in the UK the toll it takes on players has been examined more closely than ever. Now new research from Durham University has been looking at players who suffered multiple concussions. Paul
Paul Chazzo is a pharmacologist from the Department of Biosciences at Durham and co-author of the study. He told us what they found in the blood of players who'd been concussed several times. What we're looking at is proteins that are not normally there, if you like. They should be at relatively low levels normally. And what we found is that there's elevated levels of certain proteins within bloods that indicate some problems within the brain. And similarly, a change in another
Another protein that's reduced indicates that there's a misfunction, and this could potentially in time lead to further problems like neurodegenerative diseases.
Alex Popham is a former Welsh international rugby player and co-founder of the charity Head for Change. He's been talking to Martha Carney about the new research. I think it's very positive that research is being done, but it has been done over the decades. And more recently, a study with Damien Bailey in Cardiff University showed current players
having damage after one season of playing. The Drake Foundation on current players again show 23% of them had brain abnormalities after a season. So, yeah, but the changes need to happen. We've got to not stop doing research, but action needs to be taken and changes to the game and training. When there is a traumatic brain injury, a player isn't rushed back.
So what kind of changes would you like to see? Well, the majority of the things I think that would make a difference are Monday to Friday. So the mandatory amounts of contact in training at the moment, there's only guidelines. The NFL brought in 14 years ago that they're allowed 14 padded contact sessions. That can happen in six weeks in rugby. When there is a traumatic brain injury, a player with the loopholes can be playing again in seven days.
The same injury in boxing, the boxer wouldn't be allowed to fight for three months. So that's pretty crazy. And then we would like for professional players to have an annual medical and included in that medical would be a DTI, Diffusion Tensor Imaging Scan. And if you have those three things in place, rugby would be a lot safer tomorrow. But unfortunately,
Because of the legal case, they won't make the changes that need to happen. And it's difficult for us to get into the details of that lawsuit at the moment. But let me put to you what the rugby establishment has been saying, World Rugby have been saying, we never stand still when it comes to further cementing rugby as the most progressive sport on athlete welfare. Acting on the latest science, we constantly strive to safeguard and support all our players.
They've been saying that sentence for the last four years since I got diagnosed and the changes that have been made are all smoke and mirrors. There's no real change that is happening. Even the gum shields they brought out last year, Robbie Henshaw and Iris Centre recorded a hit over 75 G-force and he stayed on the pitch for another 25 minutes before he was assessed at halftime and then got taken off.
Anything could have happened in that 25 minutes. He could have had a second impact, which could have been very, very dangerous. And that was the former Welsh rugby international, Alex Popham, talking to Martha Carney.
Let's end this podcast with a question. What is Afrofuturism? Some describe it as an intersection of imagination, technology, the future and liberation. Others say it's a cultural aesthetic that combines science fiction, history and fantasy. Essentially, it's literature, art or music, and its purpose is to explore the African-American experience. Chad-born musician Caleb Rinto-Bey goes by the name of Afrotronics. My colleague Daniel Yawietzka caught up with him.
I'll call it an electro-Sahara blues or maybe globally I would say electro-tribal based on Afrofuturism philosophy.
Tell us about that. There are several groups that have used this as a concept, but what do you mean by Afrofuturism? The way I define Afrofuturism is looking for a future that looks like us, that fits our needs. So artistically, I'm doing all this work of going back to who we are really. And I use a lot of my ancestors' sample, their real voices. MUSIC PLAYS
You've lived in Montreal now for a while. Can you tell us more about your reasons for moving from Chad to Canada? Yeah, that's not a very happy reason. Already when I was young, I started engaging into some subjects that are forbidden to talk about it in Chad. And so that's why I take me to Canada. So I had a song that I'm not allowed to play and I did it once. So I wasn't allowed to come back.
But this president is dead now, now we have his son. But now I can. I'm almost six months a year in Chad. And that's where I feed even my spirituality, everything that comes in my music came from there. We have interviewed some Malian musicians when we've been here. Mali is noted for many musicians and Chad perhaps doesn't quite have the same global reputation yet for music. No, not yet.
But you seem to have single-handedly managed to find a voice for it, a space for it. What does that feel like for you and how do you think that impacts other Chadian musicians? I just have this pressure of the politicians because I'm the very first one to do it that big. I'm a sort of bono of Chad. And so we are trying to define what is the star system in Chad.
I just discovered in 2018 that I was that popular. When I get there, there was hundreds of people at the airport. I didn't know. I thought the president was coming, so I was waiting. They're like, but people are waiting for you. But I'm trying to define what is close to us, not just follow what's
The other examples, or Western model, trying to be far away from bling blings and all these codes that we already know. Now there is a couple of young singers, crazy, amazing, that are coming. But they have this deep concern about what to be popular, what it is. So what do you leave behind? So yeah, I'm happy that I got this impact. I'll take you to my village, I'll take you there.
The Chadbourne musician Caleb Rinto-Bey ending that report by Daniela Javetska.
And that's all from us for now. There'll be a new edition of Global News to download later. If you'd like to comment on this podcast, drop us a line, globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk or on X, we are at globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Darcy O'Brie. The producer was Stephanie Prentice. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Andrew Peach. Thanks for listening. And 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.
