Welcome to the global news podcast your sourcefor the latest and most comprehensive coverage of global events breaking news and in-depthanalysis we are here to guide you through the top stories from around the worldwhether it's politics economics culture or science I'm Nick Miles and in the earlyhours of Friday the 15th of March these are our main Stories the US leader of theSenate Chuck Schumer has urged Israel to hold an election describing BenjaminNetanyahu as an obstacle to peace the US ambassador to Hungary has accused thePrime Minister Victor Orban of unhinged anti-American messaging and has warned himabout his close relationship with Vladimir Putin Spain's lower house of parliament hasvoted to give amnesty to Catalan separatists.
Who defi the government in Madrid to hold anindependence referendum in 2017 also in this podcast another SpaceX test flightand another step closer to NASA's dreams of returning astronauts to the moon and Beyond the US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumerhas called for an election in Israel saying the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu no longer meetsthe needs of his country Mr Schumer is a Democrat and America's highest ranking Jewish politicianhe accused Mr Netanyahu of pursuing dangerous and inflammatory policies prime minister Netanyahu haslost his way by allowing his political survival to take the precedence over the best interestsof Israel he has put himself in Coalition with Farr far-right extremists like ministers smotriand Ben gavier and as a result he has been too.
Willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gazawhich is pushing support for Israel worldwide to Historic lows Mr netanyahu's leud party hasresponded to Senator Schumer saying Israel is not a Banana Republic but a proud democracythat elected its prime minister the statement said a senator should respect Israel's electedgovernment and not undermine it even more so in Wartime here's our North America correspondent Tombitman well it's no secret that Chuck Schumer is a Critic and an outspoken one of the current IsraeliCoalition but this was a far more significant intervention than we have heard from him thusfar and given his position as the leader of the majority of the Democrats in the United StatesSenate describing himself as the highest ranking Jewish elected official in American history hethen went on to really excoriate the Israeli Prime.
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now during this verylong speech it was about 45 minutes he started by saying that people should understand as far as hewas concerned that Hamas bore the responsibility for unleashing the current War but he then spokeabout the impact of what he called the Israeli War Machine in terms of the scale of Civiliansuffering in Gaza but then moved on really to the longer term Outlook and he made it very clearthat the only way through all this in his view was a two-state solution uh Israel side by side withan independent but he said demit ized Palestinian State and he then listed what he said were thefour obstacles to this outcome he listed Hamas he listed um extremist members of the Israeligovernment he listed the Palestinian Authority leadership and he also listed the Israeli PrimeMinister Benjamin Netanyahu and repeatedly said.
These were the four obstacles to peace andhe said that if the current Israeli Coalition continued along its current course which he saidwas effectively an Outlook to take all of the land that Israel would have control over all of theland where Israelis and Palestinians live um he said that that would lead to International supportfor Israel declining further and he said it would become a pariah state so this was extremelyoutspoken called for elections in Israel that is something that will RI and has already riledas we've heard from that statement from lud the current Israeli government and he said that thatis the way to have a sort of moment as the war wound down he said of debate and discussion aboutabout the way through he said that he thought that Israeli government had lost its way in termsof its current course and called for elections.
And is effectively calling for the replacement ofBenjamin Netanyahu as prime minister Tom baitman meanwhile the United States has imposed sanctionson three Israeli settlers and two settler farming outposts in the occupied West Bank all areaccused of undermining stability there it's the second time this year that Washington hasimposed sanctions in response to to Rising settler violence against Palestinians in theWest Bank since the Hamas attack on Southern Israel in October the move freezes any us assetsof the sanctioned individuals and entities and prohibits Americans from dealing with them cancerpatients in Gaza say they're being denied exit for life-saving treatment through the Rafa Crossing toEgypt despite their names appearing on authorized evacuation lists in parallel fees chargedby an Egyptian company arranging evacuations.
From Gaza have rocketed during the war becomingunaffordable for most the BBC's Lara El gabali reports I'm on my way to the border crossinghopefully I will find my name there and be able to travel God willing this is Sahm's thirdtime trying to leave Gaza she was being treated for leukemia when the conflict began leavingher and almost 10,000 other cancer patients in Gaza without treatment I read that my namewas published on the RAF coordination groups my name was published on the departurelist twice I have been to the crossing point twice for no reason I was turned awaydespite her name being on an evacuation list for turkey on November 19th sahem was turnedaway by Palestinian border agents who said the Turkish Envoy wasn't there to receiveher but we found that that wasn't the case.
We spoke to MAA Ali who has breast cancer andwas on the same evacuation list as to him she was allowed to leave for turkey that day andwas even able to bring her two daughters with her after I got through the crossing onto theEgyptian side I saw the Turkish Consul waiting for us and I knew I was going to Turkey we'vespoken to two other cancer patients who have been turned away at the border desite theirnames being on the official evacuation lists officials in Turkey told the BBC they havethe capacity to treat many hundreds more cancer patients but only 600 cancer patients fromGaza have managed to leave since October 7th Israel vets who is allowed to leave Gaza theIsraeli Ministry of Defense told us that they have no restrictions on the number of patients allowedto leave for medical treatment Palestinian border.
Authorities declin to comment on Sahm's casebut it seems there are other ways to leave Gaza a lucrative Monopoly has emerged fromthe war with one Egyptian travel agency Hela charging Palestinians $5,000 per person to exitGaza within 1 to 2 weeks this is more than four times the annual average salary in Gaza thisman says he had to pay an employee an extra $300 to get his family on the evacuation list hedidn't want to be identified so we've changed his voice they weren't letting anyone in if youwanted to go in you had to pay to be lay so then you could pay the $5,000 the fee was$5,000 for an adult and $25,000 for a child for Palestinian passport holders he is oneof 10 people who told us they made extra payments of up to $4,000 to Hela employees toget their families evacuated but it seems the.
Best connected in Gaza can leave without payingat all we found the names of Palestinians on an evacuation list meant for Egyptians one ofthem told us they were helped to leave Gaza by someone with political connections neither Helanor the Egyptian foreign Ministry responded to our questions in Gaza time is runningout for sahim whose cancer is spreading we are suffering now my medicineis finished I'm so tired I can hardly see in front of me no blood tests or anything mychemotherapy ran out a long time ago without the money or connections many patients liketoim have been left behind that report was by Lara El gabali the pioneering Starship rocketdeveloped by Elon Musk company SpaceX has made its longest and most ambitious test flight so farcontact with Starship was broken as it began its.
Re-entry into Earth's atmosphere SpaceX confirmedthat the craft was lost but it completed nearly an entire test flight on its third attemptthe rocket ship blasted off from Texas and had been due to splashed down in the IndianOcean SpaceX hopes Starship will eventually fly astronaut to the moon and Beyond here'sour science correspondent Jonathan Amos 2 1 with a mighty Rumble the giant rocket liftedclear of its Texan launch complex all 33 engines firing at full power the entrepreneurElon Musk was looking for significant progress from his SpaceX team and he got it and passingsupersonic so we're now moving faster than the speed of sound the ascent looked Flawlessseparation of the bottom half the booster from the top half the ship occurred right on Qwith with the ship then piring onwards out over.
The Atlantic video cameras sent back spectacularviews of earth then came the task of re-entry for a splash down in the Indian Ocean Kate we gota Starship on its way to space and a booster on the way back to the gulf video imagery againcaptured incredible scenes as hot gases enveloped the vehicle just before radio contact wentdown controllers reported shortly after that the ship had been lost presumably because it hadbroken up that would have disappointed Engineers but they'll know now that the development of theworld's most powerful rocket is firmly on track the aim is for Starship to be totally reusable tofly again and again like an aerplane if that can be achieved it would dramatically lower thecost of space activity Jonathan Amos the US ambassador to Hungary has launched a stingingattack on the Hungarian prime minister Victor.
Orban deepening around between the two countriesspeaking in Budapest David prman warned that Mr orban's close and expanding relationshipwith Russia and President Vladimir Putin was a security concern that could not be ignoredNick Thorp reports David prman made the remarks in a speech to Mark the 25th anniversary ofHungary joining NATO us concerns about the close relationship between Budapest and Moscoware shared by 31 NATO allies Mr prman said if this is hunger's policy Choice he added we willhave to decide how best to protect our security interests this was the starkest warning from theBiden Administration to Hungarian prime minister Victor Orban so far Nick Thorp next to Germanyand a group of protesters who are camping high in the trees outside Elon musk's Tesla Factoryin the country could face eviction from Friday.
Plans to expand the plant which employs 12,000people have been facing fresh environmental protests Tesla says its team is helping to improvelocal biodiversity and it's focused on creating sustainable factories our Berlin correspondentJessica Parker reports from the state of Brandenburg in a Pine Forest about 30 km outsideBerlin I climb a ladder this is quite High actually I've never loved Heights but this feelspretty sturdy so we've come up about 20 ft into the trees we're on a wooden deck some orangetarpulin covering what is basically actually a a workshop where they're storing nails andwood and rope and helmets it's all part of the work of the camp this is one of several treehouses making up the camp near Europe's only Tesla Factory the electric car company headed upby the charismatic but controversial Elon Musk.
These activists want to frustrate plans for theFactory's expansion into the forest but as I find out from one of the campaigners magpie okay Ithink up with trees down with capitalism yeah that's like the motto their protest is about muchmore we don't want to cut this Forest on we want to save or to protect the water here but also it'slike a more International fight because of course electric cars uh also use minerals or thingslike lium which also cause a lot of problems in for for example Chile or Bolivia there's beensome suggestion some of you guys are basically professional campaigners turning up at lots ofprotests wherever they may be I mean I think that's not true of course some people are here whodoing this like often or sometime but uh a also a lot of people here who live here next to the orlive in the village gida are like coming here and.
Helping us yeah I also have to work of of courseI'm not like doing this my whole time my whole life he rope climbs up to his treehouse there's no ladder here the idea of course is to make Al loomingeviction particularly hard for the authorities at a railway nearby we bump intocommuters a majority of residents in the local Town voted against the plans but views are splitthe expansion proposals include a kindergarten for employ employes warehouses and a freight trainstation actually this is a problem for us I live here and moved to gr hi 20 years ago because wewanted to be close to the nature and so on and we didn't expect that we will have this kind of HFactory here close to to the houses I think most of the people don't agree with the people that arecamping most of the Tesla employees are happy that.
Tesla is providing work places I personally don'treally understand the motivations of the people camping here and and attacking our power systemthat attack on the power system was a suspected arson attack on an electricity pylon that ledto factory production being suspended for a week but campaigners at the camp say that was notthem in fact far-left militant activists called the volcano group have claimed responsibilitypolice are investigating Unstoppable force a Tesla video released this week sentthe message that the factory was booming back to life Elon Musk even visited the planthaving described the pylon sabot as dumb ECOT terrorists meanwhile Tesla says itwants to create sustainable factories and support local communities butAmerican Powerhouse capitalism is.
Meeting radical German Eco activism it'slikely that battle isn't over yet that report was by Jessica Parker in Germany still to come we hear about a hugephilippines-based love scam the profiles we make up are always very handsome the pigbutchering scam is all about exploiting emotion this is how to win their trust hi I'm Sophia Smith gayer and I'm s call and we're the hosts of a brand newpodcast from the BBC World Service where to be a woman so what's the podcast about Saiit's all about where in the world women are living their best lives what female Wellnesslooks like globally and what the rest of us may be able to learn from it and where canpeople find it just search for where to be.
A woman wherever you get your BBC podcastsand follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode at Airbus we bring the world togetherour aircraft connects communities facilitating cross-cultural communication our satellitetechnology enables communication across the world and allows us to explore spaceexpanding human knowledge to create a better future on Earth at Airbus we'repioneer ering sustainable Aerospace for a safe and United World learn more at airbus.comafter oppenheimer's success at the Oscars why not delve into the history of the atomicbomb and key characters from that period of history with a podcast the bomb from theBBC World Service explores the race to beat the Nazis and developing the atomic bomb andthe scientists and spies who changed history.
Listen to the full series Now by searchingfor the bomb wherever you get your BBC podcasts welcome back to the global newspodcast the motive behind the Abduction of nearly 300 school children in Northern Nigeria lastweek appears to be simple greed Ransom demands have been made by the kidnappers but many of thefamilies are very poor and the money demanded more than half a million is Way Beyond what they canafford I spoke to our Africa Regional editor will Ross well we've heard from a community leaderin Kura the area of kaduna state where the the children and some teachers were taken fromuh this man gibil guab told the BBC that uh he had um spoken with the group including uh thekidnappers as well but also heard from the head teacher who was taken with them and heard thatthe the children aged between seven and 12 are.
In a a pretty sorry State mainly because of thethe very long Trek they were forced to to go on through the bush to get to the kind of Lair wherethese kidnapping gangs are based in in forests he said that some of them couldn't stand up they wereso weak and also talked about how little food and water is available for them you know they'resleeping out under the trees it's pretty rough conditions and frankly he he fears that some ofthem won't survive and well I was saying that a lot of these parents are very simple people notparticularly wealthy How likely is any payment of a ransom well gibel guab was pretty bluntwhen he said there's absolutely no chance of a ransom being paid because people have so littlemany of the fathers of these children I can tell you I swear to God they are not in possession ofeven 5,000 na even if you ask any parent of this.
Children to to give say 20 20,000 I swear many ofthem do not have this money well to put that into context 5,000 era is about $3 isn't it theycan't even afford that what do you think will happen without payment well it's always hardto know what goes on behind the scenes with previous kidnappings clearly huge amounts of moneyhave been paid sometimes involving officials but the government and all the the state government orthe the federal government never admit that Ransom payments are made in fact they've even made thepaying of ransoms illegal but we think it still goes on there is of course also a military optionbut high risk but there are some reports that more than 4,000 people have been kidnapped sincepresident tinubu came into Power last May and that the fact of the matter is there haven't reallybeen prosecutions of the gang leaders and for many.
People it looks as though it still is a reasonablyeasy way to make quick money will Ross back in 2017 the streets of Barcelona and other cities innortheastern Spain were alive with people waving red and yellow Catalan Flags they were partof a concerted bid for Independence in October of that year Catalan nationalists carried out areferendum on breaking away from Madrid and that had been declared illegal by the ConstitutionalCourt after that a number of the organizers were imprisoned but now the Spanish Congress hasapproved a controversial amnesty law for people still facing legal action for separatist activityI asked our correspondent in Madrid guy hedo who would benefit from the amnesty around 300 or soCatalan nationalists are expected to benefit from the amnesty many of those people have links to thefail bid for Independence in 2017 so for example.
Civil servants or head teachers for examplewho allowed their schools to be used for that referendum that was deemed illegal many peoplelike that have been facing legal action ever since but there are are other much more high-profilefigures who have also been facing legal action most notably kalis pu Deon who was the CatalanRegional president back then and he was seen as the figurehead of the independence movement atthe time he has been exiled in Belgium ever since to avoid the reach of the Spanish courts therealso I should mention police officers who were accused of attacking Catalan voters on the dayof the referendum who could also benefit from the amnesty as well it sounds as so both sides of theargument if you like will potentially benefit from this and yet it's been very divisive it was onlynarrowly passed wasn't it why yes because I mean.
The focus has really been on the nationalists whowill benefit from this in particular people like caros Pam on the former Catalan president andcritics of this amnesty say first of all that the amnesty is unconstitutional they also say thatprime minister Pedro Sanchez is only pushing this amnesty through because he needs the support inParliament of Catalan nationalist parties so he's just doing this for his own political survivaland that obviously jars with prime minister Pedro Sanchez's own claims that the amnesty will try andreduce political and social tensions in Catalonia that were generated by that fail bid for secessionguy hedg go in Madrid there a royal Air Force plane reportedly carrying the British defensesecretary Grant shaps has had its satellite signal jammed while flying near the Russian territory ofkaliningrad Mr shaps was traveling back to the UK.
After watching NATO military exercises here'sour diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams the defense secretary's plane was briefly jammedon both legs of a trip to Poland a security source told the BBC the safety of the plane wasnever threatened and that it's not unusual for aircraft to experience GPS jamming close tothe strategically important Russian exclave of kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea Another Westernofficial pointed out that kaliningrad which sits between two NATO members Poland and Lithuaniahas significant electronic warfare capabilities and that it wouldn't be surprising to see themused against commercial aircraft Grant shaps was flying on an RAF corporate jet according tothe Washington based Institute for the study of War Russia's use of GPS interference acrossPoland and the Baltic has proliferated in recent.
Months possibly to disrupt NATO exercises butit's also interfering with commercial shipping and aircraft ships and planes have other means ofnavigation but such jamming could have dangerous consequences Russia's use of electronic warfare isalso helping Moscow to turn the tide of the war in Ukraine Paul Adams in London a high court judgewho has overseen a long running Le battle about who invented the cryptocurrency Bitcoin has ruledthat it is not the Australian computer scientist Dr Craig Wright for years Dr Wright has claimedto be Satoshi Nakamoto the pseudonym used by the person or team who launched Bitcoin in 2008 andhe's challenged in court those who questioned his story our cyber correspondent Joe tidy watchedthe court proceedings Mr Justice Miller took just a few seconds to rule that was not the inventor ofBitcoin it had been expected that the judge would.
Take months to decide on this technically complexand at times tety five-week trial but he said the evidence was overwhelming during the trial DrWright was accused of carrying out a massive campaign of dishonesty and forgery in the yearssince he claimed to be bitcoin's inventor it was in 2016 that the Australian computer scientistouted himself as The elusive Satoshi Nakamoto the online user who created and launched Bitcoinon the internet in 2008 Dr Wright invited the BBC to a demonstration to prove it but it wasn't longbefore his claims were questioned and since then doubt has spread that he is Satoshi he's beenin and out of court multiple times filing legal challenges against anyone who questions hisstory this high court case brought by copper a group of bitcoin-based businesses appearsto have put his case to bed but the mystery.
Of who invented Bitcoin which has surged in valueduring the trial continues Joe tidy police in the Philippines say that they've rescued around 700people from a center 100 kilometers north of the capital Manila they say the people were workingagainst their will in an online love scan Rachel Wright has more the police raided the center onThursday after a tip off from a Vietnamese man who managed to flee last month the 30-year-oldsaid he had arrived in January after being offered what he was told would be a chef's jobbut he soon realized that he had fallen prey to human traffickers running love and cryptocurrencyscams he told police that he'd been forced to send online messages he described as sweet nothings tohis victims many of whom were Chinese the police said he showed signs of torture including scarsand marks from electrocution southeast Asia has.
Become a hub for scam centers where the scammersthemselves are often entrapped and forced into criminal activity those running the scam centerstrap good-looking men and women to lure victims by posing as their online lovers they then persuadethe victims into parting with their money the BBC spoke to one man who didn't want to reveal hisidentity for fear that his former colleagues would kill him about how he ran what he calledPig butchering scams named after the farming practice of fattening pigs before slaughteringthem the profiles we make up are always very handsome very rich responsible and caring thepig butchering scam is all about found exploor
