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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.
I'm Jackie Leonard and at 13 hours GMT on Friday the 12th of July, these are our main stories. President Joe Biden's latest gaffes continue to raise questions over his age and ability to serve another term. We'll hear from a Republican anti-Trumper and get the view from Moscow. The head of Japan's Navy resigns over a series of scandals, including the mishandling of classified documents by staff.
And Colombia's president says legalising the cocaine trade would end the country's armed conflict.
Also in this podcast, the bullet vending machines in the US and why the company behind them says they're a more secure way to dispense ammunition. And scientists return to the wreck of the Titanic for the first time since the Titan submersible disaster. But this time it will be robots making the dive. Bow, stern, debris field. We're going to image and collect the most advanced data set on Titanic to date.
Worries about Joe Biden's age and mental acuity are continuing to swirl after he made two high-profile gaffes on Thursday. The first happened at the NATO conference when he accidentally introduced Ukraine's President Zelensky as President Putin, and later at a news conference when he called his deputy Kamala Harris Vice President Trump.
Mr Biden insists he is fit to run for a second term and that he's the best person to beat Donald Trump, even though the polls suggest otherwise. Mike Murphy is a Republican political consultant who was behind the campaigns of Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McCain. He's now campaigning against Donald Trump and has been talking to Democrats and others about what happens now. Justin Webb asked him what he made of President Biden's latest public appearance.
It was a wobbly performance. And the president is in a tough position where everything is under a microscope now. And he looks old, sounds old. It was not the disaster of the debate, but it was not the triumph I think he needed to put out the bonfire of panic inside the Democratic Party. The point that the White House is making and supporters of Joe Biden is that Donald Trump,
would have been just as bad, in fact, considerably worse when it came to a grasp of world affairs. Well, I think that's a legitimate argument. But the debate in the presidential race right now that Biden is losing badly is not about world affairs. It's about is Joe Biden too old to serve as president of the United States? And people had tremendous concerns about that before the debate.
Then they saw the debate, which in living color confirmed their worst suspicions. And, you know, the Biden guys need an almost unachievable superhuman performance. He has to turn into John F. Kennedy, which he's incapable of doing because he is 81.
So they're in a kind of vortex circling a drain that's very, very hard to get out of. And I don't think they got out of it tonight. I think there's a lot of behind the scenes Macklin nations and the Democratic Party about why do we have to have a suicide pact in this election when Trump would be very vulnerable to a more attractive candidate? The problem is Biden's got 98 percent of the delegates pledged to him, not bound, by the way, which is important, but pledged, which is quite a handshake. But
but it's not bound by handcuffs like the Republican system where delegates have absolutely no choice. So there's enough flex in the system that there's a lot of intrigue going on. And I don't think the,
Press conference performance did much to slow that down, might even speed it up. What if he just does carry on? I mean, what happens then, do you think, Mike? Is there a path now to victory? I suppose that's the question. Is there a way in which the White House can say, OK, we're getting everything together. This is what we're going to do. Joe Biden's staying. Here we go.
Well, that is a realistic scenario. They can just go to a bunker mentality, hold their delegates, fend off the fight, which is an open question if it's open warfare. But a decent chance, of course, he has a lot of advantages to do that. Controls the organizational stuff. And then it's most likely he loses to Donald Trump. Now, it's not impossible he could win.
Because Trump can always go perform his own act of political suicide. You know, you never know with Trump. So this whole thing is sort of a house of cards right now with great instability. Often many of us in the political world joke that somehow this year the Democrats chose the one candidate that even Donald Trump can beat. And the Republicans chose the one candidate that even Joe Biden can beat. So it's tough to forecast. But the polling is quite clear right now.
The country, by scary big numbers, if you're a Democrat, wants to fire Joe Biden. They want to do it on economic performance and on worries about his age. That was a problem before the debate. It's become a massive problem now. That was Mike Murphy. Well, a stumbling and gaffe-prone Joe Biden will obviously help Donald Trump's campaign. But as the war in Ukraine rages on, it could also be seen as a propaganda gift to the Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia had, like the whole world, noticed Joe Biden's mix-up over Putin and Zelensky. So what's the media in Moscow and elsewhere making of all this? Here's Vitaly Shevchenko, the Russia editor at BBC Monitoring. Russian media are all over it. That clip was on top of one of the main...
television bulletins this morning on the Russian state TV. They showed it and the tone was predictably sarcastic and they said that America's vassals, that's the word they used present at the meeting, they pretended they had not noticed anything. On another channel the presenter spoke of how close Joe Biden is to failure and how his gaffes are worthy of an Oscar. So that gives an idea of the
of the tone of Russian media coverage. And one popular newspaper, Moskovsky Komsomolets, ran an article comparing Joe Biden to elderly communist leaders of the USSR. So the point state media and Kremlin-controlled media in Russia are making, it's not just that Joe Biden is too old to govern, but
They are suggesting that America's democracy itself is in terminal decline and as this particular election has become a contest between the unspeakable and the incapable. And meanwhile, in Russia, there's a fully functioning orderly system presided over by Vladimir Putin. That's the message Russian audiences are getting.
That was Vitaly Shevchenko, and Vitaly also presents UkraineCast, and you can find that wherever you get your BBC podcasts. The head of Japan's navy, Admiral Ryosuke Sakai, has announced he will be stepping down at the end of next week. His resignation follows a series of scandals involving military security lapses and fraud. More than 200 defence personnel were said to be involved in the violations, but the admiral says he is taking responsibility.
As chief of the maritime staff, I'm responsible for the training of personnel and the organisational management of the force, and I'm rightly held accountable for failing to fulfil my duties as the manager of specified secrets.
Our Asia-Pacific regional editor, Mickey Bristow, told us more. There is a long list of violations involving 218 personnel, some in uniform, some civilians, and it contains a real range of offences
The more serious ones relate to lapses in security on board Japanese naval vessels, essentially allowing unvetted personnel access to the position of foreign vessels. This happened on dozens of cases on 38 vessels, the investigators found. So that's the most serious lapse.
Some of them were more trivial, though, and small scale. So, for example, some personnel were found to have claimed pay for tasks they didn't engage in, specifically things like going on diving trips. They didn't do it. They claimed back money for doing it. Other cases were quite trivial, such as claiming for meals on canteens on bases that they weren't entitled to. So a real range of
All cases here in the punishments reflect that. So some people have stepped down, have been punished that way. Others have just been reprimanded. And obviously this is being taken very seriously and it comes as Japan is trying to strengthen its defence forces against China.
Sure, that will be the most serious worry about these investigations, not the very trivial cases, but the ones about lapse of security. Japan, over the last couple of years, has increased defense spending. It's tried to bolster its military in the face of a number of threats. China, of course, also North Korea, also Russia in that part of the world as well. So Japan is trying to bolster its
Also to tighten up on security and introduce new laws to make sure sensitive information is treated more securely. So obviously these lapses will be of great consideration just to underscore just how much Japan is trying to
ball street's relationships with its allies as well the prime minister fumioka shida is in washington at the moment talking to nato members so he's already apologized for what are very embarrassing lapses that was mickey bristow
Colombia's President Gustavo Petro has said that the armed conflict in his country would end within a day if the UN declared cocaine legal across the world. Speaking at the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission in New York, Mr Petro said that profits from the illegal cocaine trade fuelled the violence. If tomorrow the United Nations Commission on Drugs would say that cocaine is legal, tomorrow the war in Colombia would be over. It is as simple as that.
But as this is not possible for political reasons, or will not be possible for a long time, the war in Colombia continues. President Petro's direct appeal to the United Nations marks a new direction in his efforts to find alternative solutions to tackling the drugs trade. But in fact, he's long argued that the current so-called war on drugs has been a failure, as Paul Moss heard from our Latin America analyst, Luis Fajardo.
He has been saying for some months now that he believes that the war against drugs waged by the West has failed. And I think many Colombians agree with that. I would say that after decades and decades of repressive policies, they have not been able to really control the flow of drugs.
to the West. Colombia is still the world's biggest cocaine producer, and it's producing a lot of cocaine. But, however, at a great, great cost internally in terms of the violence that drug money has continuously now for decades generated in this country. And President Petro has been saying that a new approach is needed, an opinion that I think resonates with many Colombians who have, of course, suffered greatly because of the violence caused
by this war against drugs and, of course, the action of drug trafficking gangs. You yourself come from Colombia, Luis. Can you give us an idea of how widespread these problems are? Is it just in certain areas that the gangs cause these kind of problems? As you say, I grew up in Colombia. I would say an experience of my generation was to have our country's life impacted
entirely molded by the pact of drug trafficking, a huge impact in almost every aspect of everyday life. The violence, the intimidation that for many decades these drug cartels generated, the huge environmental impact this has caused, the degradation of Colombia's natural environment and the sheer amount of victimization
Both people killed directly by the cartels or people who had to move to other parts of the country or even outside the country. So it is something that definitely has been in the background of our lives now for decades. And it is definitely something that Colombians feel very strongly about. President Pedro says he wants the United Nations to declare cocaine legal. But campaigners have long argued that soft drugs should be legalized and they haven't had any success at an international level. Is there any chance, do you think, that
the UN could say that cocaine should be legalized? My impression is that President Petro realizes the political impossibility of that happening in countries like the United States. I don't think he expects the United States supporting anytime soon a legalization of cocaine. However, the
discourse he has been using, saying that the Western approaches and the Western ideas for this war on drugs are not working, they have been useful to justify changes in priority in his own country's anti-drug policies. For many years, the priority in Colombia's anti-drug policies was to eradicate
Small fields of coca crop grown by hundreds of thousands of peasants. And Petro argues, and so many people in Colombia would agree with him, that many of these peasants didn't have many other alternatives. And to have the full force of the state directed against them, he doesn't see it as the most efficient or even the most fair way of combating drug trafficking. He has said it might be more useful to emphasize interdiction of big smuggling operations to go after the big guys.
And this has somehow allowed President Petro, while at the same time they have been reducing the acreage of coca crops being eradicated by government security forces, at the same time they have increased quite substantially the amount of cocaine, of actual cocaine being seized
in aerial and maritime interdiction operations. The Colombian state forces say that they have seized more than 300 tons of cocaine during the first semester of 2024, quite a substantial amount. And in that sense, they argue that this would be a more effective and also a more socially sustainable way of fighting drug trafficking. That was Luis Fajardo.
Still to come. Expect glitz, glamour, expect a star-studded event. It is going to be one of the most expensive weddings that Indians see or even the world would see. In the Indian city of Mumbai, the climax of wedding celebrations for the son of Asia's richest man. 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 work. You really, really want it all to work out while you're away. Monday.com gives you and the team that peace of mind. When all work is on one platform and everyone's in sync, things just flow. Wherever you are, tap the banner to go to Monday.com.
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The leader of a church group accused of causing the death of an eight-year-old diabetic girl by withholding her insulin has told an Australian court that the trial was religious persecution. Elizabeth Strews was found dead at her home in Toowoomba near Brisbane in January 2022 after she had allegedly gone without the medicine for several days. The religious sect had been praying for her health. 14 people, including her parents, are on trial. Simon Atkinson reports.
This was the first time the court here in Brisbane heard from any of the defendants since the trial began. Brendan Stevens, the leader of a small Christian group that called itself the Saints, said he wanted to give the judge their perspective on this case.
Stevens is charged with murdering Elizabeth Strews along with the girl's father by withdrawing her insulin. The prosecutors say they knew the child would die as a result. Elizabeth's mother, brother and 10 others are charged with manslaughter. All are members of the sect. Stevens said the group had no intention of fighting the case by using law, which is why they'd refused lawyers, hadn't applied for bail and refused to say whether they were guilty or not guilty.
We don't have any particular care amongst ourselves what the judgment is, he told the court. We don't come to fight the charge. Stevens said the group had chosen to walk with God and that the Bible was filled with stories of Jesus Christ's working miracles. We are within our rights to believe in the word of God completely as we do, Mr Stevens said. He added this isn't really a trial about the murder of a child...
as it is a religious persecution. A former police forensics officer also gave evidence on Friday about arriving at the house where Elizabeth died to find people singing and playing guitar. She talked the court through photos of the scene, which included handwritten posters, one saying, she's only sleeping, and another, God will heal Elizabeth no matter what.
It's alleged Elizabeth Strews had been dead for some time before emergency services were called. This trial, which is being held without a jury, is set to run for another 11 weeks. Simon Atkinson in Brisbane.
Gun ownership in America is often a contentious issue. Critics say weapons and ammunition are too easily available. So a new development introduced in Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas is raising eyebrows. Automatic vending machines selling bullets will appear in grocery stores, with a manufacturer saying that artificial intelligence software means this will be more secure than other sales methods.
Grant Majors is the CEO of American Rounds, the company behind these machines, and he's been telling James Cotnell how they work.
It will ask them to insert their ID. It'll scan the ID, and it's also going to determine if someone is 21. It'll do a facial recognition scan to make sure the person is who they say they are, and it's not someone who's trying to use someone else's ID or a stolen ID. And then only then, when the identification is verified that they're of legal age and they are who they are, can the transaction be complete.
What presumably it can't do is judge the mood of the person, tell if the person appears to be drunk or high on drugs or dangerously angry, for example.
So in the United States, ammunition is sold two primary ways. It's sold off the shelf in retail stores, or it's sold online. Online, anybody who's a miner can simply click a button that says they're of age. Nobody can tell what state of mind they're in, who they are, how they are, and they can have ammo shipped right to their house.
If they go to a retail store, ammo sits on the shelf, no different than bread in a grocery store. And they can walk right up to the front register, check out like anybody else. And people generally don't ask for their ID. They're supposed to, but they don't. I've never been asked for my ID ever in my entire life when purchasing ammo.
And not only that, it's a high degree of theft when it just sits on the shelf, right? It's a very shopliftable item. One store that I won't mention the name in the Northeast had 500,000 rounds of ammo stolen, one retail store.
So here in the United States, hands down, we are the safest, most secure method of ammo sales in the country. What about the argument that goes, if it's got a computer in it, it can be hacked, that there is a vulnerability there? People have bad intentions. What is the more likely scenario?
Are they more likely to go to a local pawn shop, which you can do here, and pay cash for ammunition and walk out, buy it online and have it shipped to your house, go shoplift it in a retail store because it sits on the shelf, or walk into a grocery store where our machines are located, security cameras monitoring it, hack the machine, you still have to use a credit card, use a driver's license, and have your facial recognition scanned?
See, when you look at the context of how ammunition is sold, it's still the safest and most secure method in the United States of selling ammunition. Do you think there's going to be a huge amount of demand for this sort of way of purchasing ammunition? We were actually approached by the grocery stores. They came to us and asked if we could do this for them. So the stores that we're in are in very rural communities.
So some of them, if they're hunters and they would have to drive some of them over an hour just to get to a retail shop. So the stores came to us and they said, hey, we kind of thought it'd be great to offer ammunition sales to our customers. And, you know, they approached us to do that because they wanted to bring value to their customers that come to their store. Grant Majors. What new to discover about the Titanic?
The ship, which became infamous when it sank after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage in 1912, has been the subject of books, films and many explorations to find its wreckage. The last one, in a submersible, ended in disaster.
But now a new expedition is setting off that will lower a robot thousands of metres below the surface of the North Atlantic to scan the site. Our science editor, Rebecca Murrell, has had exclusive access before the team leaves for the site.
I'm in Providence Port in Rhode Island and I'm standing on the deck of a 100-metre long ship that's getting ready to set sail. There's been a hive of activity here. There's been fuelling, supplies have been loaded onto the ship using a giant crane because there's going to be a 20-day expedition to the most famous shipwreck in the world, the Titanic. My name is Troy Linnaeus and I'm the co-expedition leader.
This expedition is all about the entire mapping of the entire site, bow, stern, debris field, to create 3D, 4D model situations. We're going to image and collect the most advanced data set on Titanic to date. We're standing next to one of the two remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, and
It's pretty big. It's probably about the size of a van. The ROV stands for remote, meaning remotely operated, no people on board. But it will be outfitted with some of the most advanced cameras and sensors that are out in technology right now. And just tell me a little bit about one of the instruments, because you're trying something out for the very first time, aren't you? There's a magnetometer. There is. This is a brand new. It's called a HyperMag.
which will give us an idea of what's below the mud line. So the debris and the artifacts that might be hidden, we're going to get a chance to not see them, but image that. We'll make some calculations and try to determine how far below the mud line the bow actually is and what the shape of it is. Is it intact? Is it opened up? So it's a very new and exciting tool for this site. Can I go into control band a minute? Sure.
So I'll walk you up to the UHD 326 control van. Inside here are all the pilots instrumentation to record all the video, collect all the sensor data, manipulate the arms. They have joysticks much like an F-16 for flying the ROV.
Everything comes from the ROV and it comes to here before it goes anywhere else. And there's typically two guys in here, a pilot and a co-pilot, and they are flying the ROV to collect all the data.
Expedition is also a chance for you to remember your friend and colleague, Paul-Henri Nagelay, or PH as he was known. He was a veteran underwater explorer and was one of the five people who died last year when the Titan submersible had a catastrophic failure on its way down to the
Yeah, PH and I had been planning this together for many months, and it's just a horrible, horrible tragedy. And, you know, PH was an inspiration to me, just an amazing, amazing individual. And we really want to do something special to honor him. So we've had a very special plaque made in his honor. We'll bring it down on the ROV, and we'll go place it
And we'll have a moment on the back deck and we'll say a few words. And the Titanic was his passion. And, you know, P.H., he was a legend and legends don't die. So we're going to honor him. Sorry. For you, which parts would you most like to spend some time looking at? I would really like to see into the Marconi room. I want to see what the expansion joint looks like since last we were there. I've heard it's opened up.
I'd like to take another look at the big boiler that sits proud out in the debris field. But every time you go here, you will see new and fascinating things. Now, RMS Titanic Inc. has the salvage rights to the wreck and has recovered thousands of items over the years.
What would you say to those who think the Titanic should be left as a gravesite? I have my own personal views, other people have theirs, but...
but I would like to make sure it's preserved for all eternity in whether it's salvaging it or imaging it. And the main focus of this mission is to get the data set so that we can plan and we can have those conversations and what is important to bring back for exhibit purposes. That report was by Rebecca Morrell.
Months of lavish wedding celebrations in India are reaching their final phase for the marriage of the youngest son of Asia's richest man. And it's been making headlines all over the country.
Special chefs have also flown down from Indore to ensure that a beautiful and especially curated menu is served to the guests.
attending the pre-wedding celebrations. Anant Ambani's father is the chairman of Reliance Industries, Mukesh Ambani. The bride is Radhika Merchant, the daughter of the pharmaceutical tycoons Veeran and Shaila Merchant.
The area around the 27-storey family mansion in Mumbai is decorated with flowers and lights, and Bollywood stars, business leaders, politicians and even Kim Kardashian are attending. It's estimated to have cost more than $250 million. Our reporter Archana Shukla is in Mumbai.
Expect glitz, glamour, expect a star-studded event. It is going to be one of the most expensive weddings that Indians see or even the world would see. We've already had, you know, the who's who of Bollywood, sports, politics.
Global business chiefs all would don't into Mumbai to attend this wedding. We've already seen former Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Sir Tony Blair, Kim Kardashian, like you pointed out, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, wrestler John Cena, all already arrived in Mumbai for the event.
Thank you very much.
would be the wedding through Hindu rituals and there would be the next two days of wedding receptions. And with what we've seen in the pre-wedding celebrations over the last four months, it is going to be a grand event. As you say, this has been coming for months. In the build-up, what have been the standout moments?
Well, some of the pre-wedding celebrations were too big and most people didn't anticipate the scale and size and the glamour of it. One of the big events was in March, which was held in Gujarat's Jamnagar, which is the hometown of the Ambani family. And it's also the location of their biggest oil refinery complex. Twelve hundred guests attended it, and that included Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft's Bill Gates, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. It had a performance by Rihanna. But
post which there was a massive and a glamorous extravaganza of a luxury cruise in Italy, which was attended by thousands of guests from Bollywood stars to other chiefs from around the world.
There has certainly been criticism of the cost of this event, hasn't there? Certainly, because this seems to be one of the most ostentatious weddings that Indians have seen. Mukesh Ambani's family is known to do the big fat Indian wedding, but this one has taken it a few notches higher. And certainly with the rising inequality becoming very apparent in India, especially post-COVID, this certainly is drawing a lot of criticism, the opulence and the display of wealth.
That was Arjuna Shukla in Mumbai.
And that's it from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you would like to comment on this edition or the topics covered in it, do please 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 produced by Judy Frankel and mixed by Sid Dundon. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jackie Leonard. And until next time, goodbye.
Did you know that it's 50 years this week since Richard Nixon became the first US president in history to resign from office? To
To mark this monumental moment, Witness History brings you five programs about influential events in U.S. presidential history. And with all the amazing twists and turns in the current race for the White House, what a time to bring you them. You'll hear about the closest U.S. election in history and from the man who was in the Situation Room during the raid on Osama bin Laden. That's Witness History from the BBC World Service. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
