¶ Intro / Opening
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¶ Global News Podcast Introduction
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles and in the early hours of Monday the 29th of June these are our main stories. The survivors who have lost everything in Venezuela's earthquakes criticize the government's response. Turkey lashes out at Israel's government for recognizing the massacre of Armenians more than a century ago as genocide. Eleven skydivers are killed in a crash, the deadliest private plane accident in France's history.
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Also in this podcast.
Oh amazing that was awesome what a shot we're gonna take down whoever's in front of us let's go Canada
Incredible. We're gonna win the next one too.
A World Cup host is first into the last sixteen, and we find out what Mexico's motorbike vigilante is doing with lots of adhesive tape.
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¶ Venezuela Earthquake Aftermath And Criticism
Rescue workers in Venezuela are still in the critical stage where people can be found alive after last week's earthquake. But as more international teams arrive in the worst hit areas to help, they know time is running out for the tens of thousands of people who are still unaccounted for. There have been rare moments of hope.
What you're hearing there are rescuers pulling a man and his teenage son alive from the rubble on Sunday. But there's also growing frustration amongst some Venezuelans about the way the authorities are handling the rescue operation.
Adicionalmente a esto, el gobierno toma las atribuciones.
On top of everything, the government decided to close the streets, making it harder to bring help. Yesterday we waited from six AM to four PM to get a permission to come here. We wasted hours.
Acá es la 6 de la mañana.
Escúcheme.
Thank you.
I don't like to make comments that I know might have consequences later. I survived and I am still here all by the will of God. But I am surprised that our governor hasn't shown his face around here.
Me extraña que el coronel suara.
Meanwhile, thousands of Venezuelans suddenly left homeless asleeping in tents, parks and other makeshift shelters. Entire neighborhoods have been flattened. Our correspondent Will Grant has been speaking to some residents who say they're too afraid to return to damaged buildings that could be unsafe.
The destruction along Venezuela's northern coastline has been so severe that tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of families have been left.
Homeless here in this small town of Katia Lamar. A lot of the families have come to the local baseball stadium. It is at least outdoors so they're protected from any aftershocks, but they're not protected from the elements. They've had to make shelters out of cheap nylon tents, out of structures made from blankets and sheets and pieces of wood and tarpaulin. They're dependent on donated food, donated clothing. It is a very, very bleak picture. I've been speaking to residents, some of whom were
living in social housing up on the hillside that has completely collapsed. Not only did it collapse, there were fires after uh gas explosions following the earthquake. The families here simply don't know how long they're going to be in these sorts of conditions. One man said to me he thinks it could be as many as three or four years. He's hopeful of course that the authorities will find some kind of temporary accommodation during that time before they can rebuild not just this city.
but the entire state. La Guayra, this state, is now completely militarised. There are some 14,000 troops here and you can see that the need is extreme. Some streets There are more buildings collapsed. than there are still standing. The complaint of some people is that the military who are here aren't pitching in sufficiently with the search and rescue teams, that they're more directing traffic than anything else. We've been past one business where the neighbors, the residents are doing
All of the work trying to reach the bodies that are still inside the building to pull them out and give them dignified funerals. It is an extremely tough and dire situation, not just here in Katya Lama, but all of All along this coastline.
Will grow.
¶ Israel Recognizes Armenian Genocide
The term genocide has a very specific and chilling definition in international criminal law. It implies a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Now Israel has joined more than thirty other nations that described the deaths of more than a million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks during the First World War as genocide. Turkish officials admit atrocities did take place, but deny it was genocide.
Israel's decision has been roundly condemned by Turkey, as I heard from our global affairs reporter, Ambra Sanitari.
Turkey has reacted angrily, as expected by Now they termed it as a political decision to cover up what they call as Israel's crimes. This is uh regarding what happened in Gaza in the past few years, but these allegations are strongly denied by Israel.
Now the Israeli decision uh also came as a surprise because even though the tensions have been building up between the two countries, uh, especially with regard to what's happening in the Palestinian territories, The Israeli cabinet approved this proposal to recognize the killings of Armenians in the First World War between nineteen fifteen and nineteen seventeen in Turkey
in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire as uh genocide. For a long time Israel was uh hesitating to recognize, even though more than thirty countries around the world, including US, France and Germany, have recognized it. you know, not to upset Ankara, uh, given the, you know, state of relations in the particular region.
But of late, in the past few years, the Turkish government was calling what's happening in Gaza as a genocide, an allegation denied by Israel. So that was angering. So this tension was building up and then you see that Israel today recognizing the killings as a genocide and then Turkish angry reaction came.
Regardless of the reason for this, this will be a significant day for Armenians because more than a hundred years after those killings, it is still uh extremely raw, isn't it?
So they have been campaigning, they have been trying to bring the attention of the world to these killings. What happened during the First World War in eastern Anatolia where many Christian Armenians lived. And after the, you know, war with the Russia ended in a disaster, the Ottoman Empire led by the Young Turk movement. So they blamed it on the Armenians and they were targeted because of
they thought they sided with the uh Russians around that time. And that is when the killing spree started and then many of them were deported, uh made to walk on in a desert and m sent to Syria at that time. So several estimates talk talk about more than a million Armenians were killed. However, Turkish officials at that time were saying the number was three hundred thousand, but many scholars they broadly agree that more than a million Armenians.
were killed because they were forced to leave their territory. So it is a big emotional issue because they wanted it to be recognized as a genocide by the world community. Even for a long time the US was hesitating because Turkey is one of the biggest member states of uh NATO military alliance and uh Turkey's role is seen as very vital when you want to counter Russia.
Just to clarify, recognition of a genocide doesn't necessarily imply any practical uh steps that will now be taken, does it?
It is more of symbolic in nature and it is also recognition of uh what the Armenians have been campaigning, talking about this happened.
¶ Gaza Reconstruction Challenges
Ambrasaneta Rajan. Ambras and mentioned Israel's war against Hamas, the US brokered ceasefire between the two sides. Talked of reconstructing Gaza, but eight months on, most of the territory is still just rubble. Despite facing extreme difficulties, Palestinians are trying to return to some kind of normality and make a living. Our reporter Rob Young sent this report.
Thank you.
Akram crouches over a makeshift stove, brewing tea in the tent. he now calls home. He's one of nearly one and a half million people still displaced by the war between Israel and Hamas. As Akram sips his tea, he and his grandchildren Stare at a photo of the house they lost, now just rubble.
هذا على العلم النزوح رقم ما يقارب من 21 21 نزوح
This was approximately my twenty-first displacement during the war. I spent fifty-eight years working, building it brick by brick, and getting the house ready so I could feel settled when I got old, owning a whole property. only to find out that the house was gone, reduced to rubble.
Others have been trying to reinvent their livelihoods. Ahmad used to travel the region as an esports commentator, but once the borders shut and internet access became very unreliable, he had to adapt fast.
Imagine I need to go to Saudi Arabia but there is no crossing. I obtained the visa but I couldn't go out, so I tried to go back to content writing and I thankfully I was able to work even from tent. I bring my laptop to charge it with the with solar powered systems. I needed to walk like seven kilometers a day. Then I come back and do the daily chores from making fire to making food to getting to the markets.
Blah blah blah.
Why do I have to live under those conditions? Like why can't I just live normally like the other eight billion around the world?
Well for many garzans that hardest of questions is whether to stay or go. Om I, a graphic designer, has been weighing that choice.
In Gaza, everything is destroyed. They need 10 years or 15 years to rebuild Gaza. So maybe I will return after that.
Thank you.
Across Gaza City, earthmovers grind through piles of waste. Loading it onto trucks bound for a new landfill in the south. In neighborhood after neighborhood, rubble stretches into the distance. Rebuilding will take years and cost billions. Into this devastation, amid a fragile ceasefire, come competing visions for Gaza's future, including one floated in January by Donald Trump's son in law Jared Kushner, imagining skyscrapers in a new Gaza.
Let's just plan for catastrophic success. We Hamas signed a deal demilitarized. That is what we're going to enforce. People ask us what our plan B is. We do not have a plan B. Uh we have a plan, we signed an agreement, we are all committed to making that agreement work.
No rebuilding work under President Trump's Board of Peace plan has been started since the ceasefire began eight months ago. Aid agencies say they're doing what they can. The United Nations estimates reconstruction will cost over seventy billion dollars. Israel says no reconstruction can take place until armed groups, including Hamas, disarm, and for now doesn't allow construction materials into the less than half of Gaza that it doesn't control.
Yeah.
Robia.
¶ Large Hadron Collider Upgrade
The world's most powerful particle accelerator, the large hadron collider, is shutting down for a four-year upgrade, with scientists hoping that this will help the hunt for dark matter, one of the greatest mysteries of space and time. It's invisible, does not emit, absorb, or reflect light, but is believed to make up about a quarter of the universe. Sasha Slichter report.
Inside the large Hadron Collider, a nearly thirty kilometer circular tunnel deep below the French Swiss border. Superconducting magnets and accelerating structures propel particles to extreme energies and then smash them together at phenomenal speeds. The LHC was most famously used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson, dubbed the God particle, but from today activity will stop.
as the extraordinary device undergoes upgrades to further increase the precision and intensity of particle collisions. This will provide a hundred times more data. He's thought the CERN lab upgrade will cost one and a half billion dollars. Once the upgrade is completed, CERN hopes to dramatically expand its understanding of how the got particle works, with a new accelerator expected to produce around three hundred and eighty million Higgs bosons over its lifetime.
The lab's main hope is to produce two Higgs bosons simultaneously and see them interact. Scientists hope this may provide clues about how our universe evolved shortly after the Big Bang.
Sasha Schlichter.
¶ Canada's Dramatic World Cup Win
There's been a big sigh of relief across Canada, as one of the three hosts of the Football World Cup. Canadians were holding their breath for much of their match with South Africa. At stake was a place in the last sixteen of the competition. And then two minutes into stoppage time, a win.
Oh amazing that was awesome, what a shot. We're gonna take down whoever's in front of us. Let's go Canada.
Incredible. We're gonna win the next one too. It's gonna be great.
I'm just so proud of Canada. I can't believe the result. Just incredibly joy-filled. I can't wait to see them in Houston. I just can't wait to see what happens.
For it to come to stoppage time and score the winning goal and make the first round of 16 ever for a country, we're super excited. Go Canada.
Go Canada.
Our sports reporter Gary Rose was watching the match in Los Angeles.
A ninety second minute winner from Stefan Oystokio. sort of delivered the moments of quality which prompted lots of wild scenes of celebration at the end. It came after a match that um I wouldn't say was the highest quality. South Africa sort of came with the intention quite clearly early on to slow things down.
Uh the goalkeeper held on to the ball quite a lot in possession and that prompted quite a few loud boos from all the Canadian fans that travelled in numbers to the game. Uh it looked like it was gonna be destined for extra time uh and probably penalties to be honest with the way it were going. There weren't many clear cut chances really, but yeah, that last minute goal and the celebrations it sparked were were certainly a memorable way to start the knockout stages.
Indeed. And Gary, we heard from one fan there saying that we are going to take down anyone in front of us. Uh do you think they're right to to feel that confident?
Yeah, I mean it's gr it's great confidence and and then I think I think Jesse Marsh, the the Canada manager, has been careful to sort of play not play up expectations too much'cause next up is it's gonna be either the Netherlands or Morocco, which is incredibly tough. They're two top ten teams.
Uh so it is gonna be tough. He's kind of called it a free hit. But what it what I think it does and what that fans opinion shows is that they have a real belief now and whatever sort of happens with the result wise I think this whole tournament's been a bit transformative for Canadian football. I'm not even referring to it, to be honest, as rather than soccer. When I was speaking to fans before the match, I was saying, yeah.
This is you know, we're football fans now. I don't think it's too too sort of much of an exaggeration to say that it'll really change the face of football in in Canada. You know, there's been a lot more fans that have been getting behind it. There's pictures of fan parks in Vancouver. with thousands there that have been really getting swept up in it. And and yeah, what Marsh does is really just brings this sense of belief among the players and it c clearly goes into the fans.
that yeah, why not us? We can go toe to toe with anyone and uh and I think belief and that level of support goes a long way. So so yeah, it will be tough in the next game. I think this will be seen as a success, whatever happens next. But you just never know. You know, no one no one probably expected to go outside of their own country here to and win and they've done just that. So it's who knows what could happen next.
Gary Rose. Still to come in this podcast.
Sometimes they were scamming people in real time. Chibuke, for example, he's a young scammer in Lagos, scamming an Irish woman. He gets 80,000 euros from her. She is losing everything.
The multi-billion dollar world of romance fraudsters.
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The biggest men's football world cup in history is here. 48 teams and a record 104 games being played across the United States, Canada.
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Yeah. Yeah.
stars and the fans who are shaping the tournament.
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World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcast.
How did a boycott Jimmy become a billionaire from posting videos?
On Good Bad Billionaire, we're gonna find out how the world's most popular YouTuber, Mr Beast, made his fortune.
He's buried himself in a coffin for days counterfeited. And even recreated Squid Games all in an attempt to go viral on the internet.
All started when he gave a homeless man ten thousand dollars. Is he a philanthropist reshaping capitalism or is it
Is he just the king of the attention economy?
Find out on Good Bad Billionaire.
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcast.
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¶ Uganda Media Group Closure
There's been an outcry in Uganda after its biggest independent media group was ordered to close. Armed soldiers are stationed outside some media offices, and Uganda's Broadcasters Association says it's a violation of the Constitution. Alex Ataheir, a former editor of the Daily Monitor and an executive member of the Uganda Editors Guild, gave us his reaction to what's happening.
is a direct attack on the freedom of expression and freedom of the media as guaranteed under the, first of all, the Ugandan constitution, article 29. Also, the African Charter on Human Rights guarantees freedom of the media. So this is unprecedented. The military has before not directly attacked any media.
So does this mean independent radio, T V and newspapers are not producing anything? My colleague Valerie Sanderson spoke to Richard Cagoy, who's following developments from Nairobi.
It's caused uh widespread disruptions uh because uh the T V stations, actually two T V stations are owned by the group. Went off air. The offices of uh the Daily Monitor, uh the newspaper division have been sort of like uh sealed off uh by armed uh soldiers uh around the premises. So staff are not able to enter or uh leave uh the compound. Yeah, so that's basically the situation there.
So if you try and get a programme on the radio or on television or to buy a paper, you won't be able to?
Not at all. They are off air. So basically what happens uh for newspaper, lots of people are now accessing information online. So they're basically posting them on the website and uh their social media pages.
Why has this happened?
Well it's difficult because uh there's no specific reason that uh the Army Chief uh General Kanero Gaba gave uh specifically for uh this uh shutdown. We've just had uh from the Uganda Communications uh commission that's uh the regulator saying They're investigating the circumstances that surrounding uh this uh shutdown and uh basically what they're doing is uh consulting uh relevant uh government agencies before they give us uh further updates.
And uh broadcasters presumably want clarification. Are they meeting the government?
Well uh the association of broadcasters saying that they're consulting uh the ministry of information, the regulator and also they're reaching out uh to the amateur chief just to get a clarificación about uh the reasons that really led uh to the shutdown. So what basically what they're saying is uh they want answers uh from the government about this because they're really concerned. They're saying the disruptions are really going to significantly impact the media industry in Uganda.
You said that it wasn't clear why there was this action anything beforehand in the history of the government or the tradition of the country. You know, is there a clue as to why this has happened now?
Well, based on previous incidents, it's what uh the government has said has been, you know, criticizing uh the coverage of a nation media group. saying that uh it's been covering, you know, the country negatively and uh we have seen uh instances in the past uh where the Daily Monitor has been shut down twice. And also N T V Uganda has also been shut down in two thousand and seven for the reason that uh the coverage has largely been seen to be critical and also negative about the country.
Richard Kegel.
¶ French Skydivers Plane Crash
A small plane carrying skydivers crashed in the town of Tomblain in eastern France on Sunday, killing all eleven people on board. They were the pilot, five instructors, and five first time jumpers. Officials say it's the deadliest private plane accident in France's history. Here's the Interior Minister, Laurent Nunet, speaking through a translation.
I would like to say that in addition to this drama, another drama took place which is that some of the families of the victims were present at the airport because it was a first sky truck dive. and they witnessed the falling of the aircraft which was created a shock and a psychological trauma for them.
Our reporter Nick Johnson has more.
Absolutely horrific, isn't it, that uh we've had the people who were families of those on board who wanted to watch their first skydive and they were at the airport doing so. The mayor of the nearby city of Nancy said
the victims died in full view of their loved ones who were preparing to film those tandem skydives. So just horrific for everyone who was there. And the mayor went on to say that that not only medical teams but psychological support teams were looking after the relatives of the victims as well as other witnesses who who saw what unfolded right in front of them.
We've heard from a local nursing council in the nearby area and they say that the five students on board who lost their lives were all nurses, they were all colleagues and that they'd organized this. skydiving trip as it appears to be a team building event. One official said to no doubt to unwind as as the country had been going through that heat wave over the last couple of days. Now according to a number of witnesses in the area, the plane came
straight down just after takeoff. It's a a German registered plane which had been used previously for for skydiving and this sort of event. Now the plane came down near a main road between the airfield and and a housing estate itself. So a number of people have said that it is actually a miracle that there weren't more casualties. on the ground in those houses. But uh an investigation is underway and uh w we understand that those investigators are in the area at the moment.
Nick Johnson.
¶ Exposing Online Romance Scams
Now, what would you do if your parent fell victim to a romance scam? That is what happened to Carlos Barragan when his divorced mother entered a relationship with a man who claimed to be a US soldier on mission in Syria. Well, Carlos, who's a New York Times reporter, traced the man's IP address to Lagos in Nigeria and then ended up moving there to expose the cybercrime network that is part of a multi-billion dollar industry that defrauds people around the world.
What he found was a much more complicated story about the social and economic forces that drive people to commit these crimes. Ross Atkins spoke to Carlos about his investigation.
At the beginning they were very suspicious of me. They they thought I might be a an FBI agent. But they kept seeing me show up in Lagos. There was no reason for me to ask them about their lives if I was a police officer, if I was an aviary agent. But I was very keen on understanding the lives behind the scams as well, the socioeconomic conditions that drove them.
ethical considerations you were having to go through as you went about your journalism, because you must have been tempted to tell the police about them, you must have been tempted to tell their victims about them. Did you do either?
Well, for sure not the police. As a reporter, my ethical uh guidelines are that I protect my sources. It was harder with the victims because sometimes they were scamming people in real time and I thought if I just told them, in the case of Chibuke, for example, he's a young scammer in Legos, scamming an Irish woman
and for four years he gets eighty thousand a Euros from her, she is losing everything. It's a hard choice, but if I told the victims why would the scammers share their stories with me.
Did you have any concerns as you wrote the book though, that in your efforts to humanize those carrying out these crimes that you were in some way giving the impression there was a justification for it?
Totally. I had to walk a very fine line. At the beginning I was scared that I was gonna fall into the stereotype of the so called Nigerian scammer as if there is something particularly Nigerian about this scam, when actually it's not and this scam also happens in other parts of the world. But after spending so much time with them, you create a really familiar bond with them. You I started laughing with them at their jokes and
uh when those things started happening I felt I had to connect with the victims. I need to step out because I wanted to humanize both sides, not just one side.
When you were laughing with them, were there sometimes you thought, No, I sh I shouldn't be doing this or
Well, these guys lie for a living and some of them were pretty manipulative and I realized how easy it was to get into their world of lies and fabrications. And i I guess that it was also a reflection on how these boys are able to convince people of what they are doing.
Did they try and get money out of you?
Of course. But uh we always told them the same thing that I would never pay for access or testimony because sometimes cameras had amazing stories but they would only share them with us if we paid.
And they might have amazing stories which actually are completely false given who they are. Was that there must have been a a cause for concern for you.
Many of the things that I heard didn't make it to the book because I couldn't fact check it. And the way I did it was not only by interviewing them for hours and for days and for years. but also talking to the friends, the family, people in the community. And of course, it was very important for me that they would give me access to the conversations with the victims because obviously I knew that sometimes they were lying to me and they were also lying to themselves as well.
Carlos Patagon, speaking to Rosatkin.
¶ Mexico's Vigilante 'Batman'
And we end the podcast in Mexico, where a rise in motorcycle thefts in the state of Jalisco has led an unidentified individual to take matters into their own hands in a rather unusual way. Carla Conti report.
There is a new superhero in Lagos de Moreno. Armed with heavy duty duct tape and a marker pen, a faceless vigilante has been roaming the streets of Mexico's Jalisco state, hunting down motorbike thieves in the dead of night. The mysterious figure has been dubbed the Mexican Batman, or El Batman delagos de Moreno on social media, after five alleged thieves were found tied to public lampposts with copious amounts of industrial tape around their bodies.
And the words Ratero and Rata, meaning thief in Spanish, scribbled across their foreheads. Photos circulating online show some of the restrained men with bruises on their faces and right next to them the motorcycles they were reportedly accused of stealing. According to the Mexican newspaper Vanguardia, so called Mexican Batman also drew whiskers on a couple of the alleged robbers, likely in a nod to the word rata, which literally translates to rat.
The authorities in Calisco say they are currently treating the duct taped men as victims and that an investigation has been launched to find the mystery suspect. But for Mexico, a Batman like figure patrolling the streets and fighting crime is nothing new. Vigilante groups, often called auto defensas, have proliferated in the past decade due to what many describe as the failure of local police to protect citizens from powerful drug cartels.
In the nearby Michoacan state, also known as the birthplace of Mexico's self defense movement, an all female group of vigilantes carry assault rifles and set up roadblocks to fend off members of the notorious Jalisco New Generation Cartel. And in the state of Morelos, an anonymous individual known as El Impiador or the Cleaner, gained notoriety for carrying out targeted executions against suspected sex offenders and those who harm women and children.
Many are now debating whether El Batman de Lagos is a lone individual or a group of angry vigilantes responding to a surge in motorcycle thefts in the area, but the question remains will Mexico's Batman strike again?
Carla Conte.
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And that's all from us for now. But if you want to get in touch, you can. Email us at globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag globalnewspod. And don't forget our sister podcast, The Global Story, which goes in depth and beyond the headlines. On one big story. This edition of the Global News Podcast was mixed by Zabihula Khorush and the producer was Stephanie Zakrison. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles and until next time.
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The biggest men's football world cup in history is history. Forty eight teams and a record.
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