Global News Podcast - Amsterdam mayor condemns 'hit and run' attacks on Israeli football supporters

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

Clashes erupt after football match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Dozens arrested. UN warns that Myanmar's Rakhine state faces famine. The US state of Nevada is projected as another Trump win in the US, and new DNA evidence rewrites the stories of Pompeii victims.

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This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard and at 14Hours GMT on Friday the 8th of November, the Mayor of Amsterdam has condemned what she called an explosion of anti-Semitism involving violent attacks on Israeli citizens after a football match in the city. And a senior official at the UN climate change conference in Azerbaijan has been secretly filmed offering to facilitate potential fossil fuel deals. Also in this podcast, two million people at risk of starvation in Myanmar's Rakhine State. This used to be the rice bowl and now we're down to about 20 percent of rice production. This is heading to a famine situation.

And we begin with what the mayor of Amsterdam called a black night and dark day, the violent attacks on Israeli football fans in the city. The trouble erupted after the Europa League match between Maccabee, Tel Aviv and Ajax Amsterdam. Alarming video footage was posted on social media and the Israeli authorities talked about sending planes to rescue their citizens and bring them home. It's now understood that extra civilian flights are being put on. These Maccabee fans spoke to the Dutch broadcaster NOS at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. Seems like it was organized. There was a lot of people. They saw everyone in yellow. They jumped on us. They beat them. They do horrible things, really. We hide in the hotels until it was safe to go outside.

We decided to take the taxi, which was a very good decision. And when we arrived to the hotel, we started to see all the text and videos from outside. Terrible night. Dutch police arrested more than 60 people during the night following the violence in the city centre as we record this podcast 10 Remain in custody. At a news conference the mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsemer, condemned the attacks and said extra security measures have been put in place across the city. From this afternoon we have an emergency measure in place for the entire city. It is now a risk area and there will also be a ban on demonstration and there will be

extra police available. Finally, supporters, Jewish people living in Amsterdam were shocked and very sad. And what happened is a shame to the city of Amsterdam. This is not good for the city internationally. And we need to repair what has happened last night. Our correspondent Anna Holligan was listening to that news conference and spoke to us from Amsterdam. So, there were reports earlier today of unverified reports of hostage taking which police here

in Amsterdam said they were investigating. During the press conference we heard that the people who were to have been missing have now made contact with their families. At 62 people were arrested overnight, five people were taken to hospital following the violence. Those five people have been discharged and 10 people remain in custody including two minors. And what did we learn about how all this trouble unfolded? So initially there were reports that the Maccabi supporters had been ambushed as they left the stadium. But what we heard from the mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsma, during this press conference was that these were hit and run attacks, she called them, by young men in many cases on scooters. There have been also videos shared, circulated on social media, showing sporadic instances

of violence. So in one video, a man who is on the ground cowering as he's being beaten up. Another one appears to show someone being run over. But what the authorities are doing now is trying to ascertain who was behind these attacks, because of course in many cases the people involved were wearing dark clothes and in some cases balaclavas. We've had in the last couple of hours a statement from the Dutch king. He talked about the history of Amsterdam. He says this, history has taught us how intimidation goes from bad to worse and that Jews must feel safe in the

Netherlands. We heard from the Dutch Prime Minister, Dijk Schroef, earlier he condemned what he described as anti-Semitic attacks. And the mayor of Femke-Hausma just said that the city had witnessed a black night and a dark day and that anti-Semitic criminals had attacked Jewish visitors. She talked about this Amsterdam being an international city. She acknowledged that this city often has international tensions, but she said Amsterdam prides itself on tolerance and peace and we are ashamed because last night peace and tolerance were not there. And on Wednesday there had been some footage, hadn't there, of a taxi being attacked and

a Palestinian flag being burned. Did that come up at all in the news conference? Yes, it was quite a heated conference at times. We had response from police, Peter Holler. He told reporters that a taxi was attacked, indeed, on Wednesday, and a group of Maccabi supporters he said set a Palestinian flag on fire. The trouble continued into the early hours and he went on to say that after the match on Thursday Maccabi supporters were walking through the city centre and rioters carried out hit-and-run attacks targeting the Israeli supporters. Many of those supporters were escorted to their hotels by police but we've also been hearing about acts of kindness by local residents, local cafe and bar owners who took some of the Maccabi supporters in, offered them shelter, offered

them transport to take them back to their hotels. So Amsterdam will be hoping to highlight more of that while the city deals with what has turned into now an international incident. Anna Hooligan in Amsterdam. Donald Trump's return to the White House is already confirmed, although the full count isn't quite over. Already his transition team is vetting candidates to serve in his administration, his first announcement naming his campaign co-manager Susan Wild as his chief of staff. As the counting continues the president-elect has been projected to win Nevada, a swing state that he failed to secure in 2016 and 2020. So how did he do it in 2024? Our reporter Rowan Bridge is

in Washington. If you look at the makeup of Nevada as a state, it has a large Latino population and the fact that he's won there is indicative of the way that he has made inroads into that Latino vote in this election, which has traditionally much more favored the Democrats, but especially Latino men have particularly gone for Donald Trump in this election. He has managed to appeal to them. Also, I think crucially for Nevada, about 20% of its economy is around service industries and Donald Trump made a big play of the fact that he was going to make sure that tips weren't taxed and that I think played well in a state like Nevada.

I mean, Kamala Harris adopted the same policy but Donald Trump was the first one out of the blocks with it and really made the running. Arizona is yet to be called, but if he gets Arizona as well, I mean, I think the key thing will be he will have taken all the seven key swing states which were seen as decisive in this election and that is going to be quite a triumph for Donald Trump, especially having been defeated in 2020. And just briefly Rowan, when will we know about control of Congress? Yeah, I mean that may take some time. So it's worth understanding the way the US political system has broken up. Power is kind of divided between various sections. So there is the presidency, Donald Trump's got that. Then there is Congress, which is the legislature that has two chambers,

the Senate and the House. The Senate, we already know the Republicans will have a majority in it. We don't know exactly how big that majority will be because there's still one or two seats still to be decided. The House is the other bit that is still being counted. The Democrats still have a chance of controlling the House. If they do, then that means they may well be able to put a wedge in some of Donald Trump's plans and kind of slow things down and perhaps block some of his legislation going through. But we're not going to know finally who controls that for days, if not a week or two's time, because there are still several seats still outstanding.

Rowanbridge in Washington. In Pakistan record high air pollution has led to the closure of schools in the second largest city Lahore. Across Punjab province air pollution continues to reach hazardous levels. People have been told to wear masks and work from home. Hundreds of people have been taken to hospital. Our correspondent in Pakistan, Caroline Davis, gave us this update. I'm here in Islamabad. The current air quality level is at 234. And you can already see the smog in the air. You can see it from the moment you wake up in the morning. You can barely

see the sun through the thick pollution. But 234 is nothing by comparison to the levels that we're seeing in places like Lahore, which has several times in the course of this week surpassed a thousand on the air quality index. We were looking as well at other cities that are in Punjab. We saw that Multan was at 1,300 this morning. Just to give you an idea of how high that level is as well, anything above 300 is considered to be hazardous. So, the fact Maltan is sitting at a thousand above that, according to WHO, World Health Organization levels, that is 145 times higher than the level that they recommend. So really incredibly high levels of pollution. Now,

it's not unusual to see pollution in Lahore, in M Multan. People tend to refer to smog season as it comes on. What has been unusual has been quite how high these levels have been reaching, but also the fact that it's been happening earlier on in the season than people thought. Quite often this happens in sort of more December, January, February time, but obviously this has been starting from October onwards. So that has also made people quite shocked that this level of pollution has already started so early on. And what are the authorities doing about it? Well, they have been implementing a green lockdown, trying to get people to not be using

their vehicles. They have closed schools in several districts across Punjab and sell told people that they need to be trying to work from home rather than going out. Wearing masks is also mandatory as well. So what is the cause of this problem and what moves are there afoot to try and stop it from being this ongoing regular smog season issue? Transportation and the pollution that comes from that and those fumes is obviously a major issue. But another one, particularly at this time of year, is what's referred to as stubble burning. This is when farmers burn the stubble, the leftover crop in their fields in order to clear the fields at the end of harvest. If you look at satellite imagery, both for

Pakistan and for neighboring India, you can see that there are lots of these fires that are still going on despite the restrictions that are in place. So, there are attempts to try to stop that and try to dissuade farmers to do something else. But we've also heard as well from the Punjab authorities talking about smog diplomacy and trying to have more conversations with their neighbor India about how to try to limit pollution, because historically both countries are quite often blamed the other saying that the pollution is drifting across from the other side. Now of course trying to deal with these issues does need to be something that's not just dealt with by an individual city or by an individual region but needs to be dealt with across all of these countries because of course this pollution, this smog doesn't know any boundaries.

Caroline Davies in Islamabad. And let's stay with the environment because the BBC has seen evidence that the team running the latest United Nations Global Climate Conference has used its UN role to arrange a meeting to discuss potential fossil fuel deals. COP29 will open in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, on Monday. The Azerbaijani COP29 team has not responded to the BBC's claims. These climate summits aim to raise global ambition to tackle climate change. Yet this is the second year in a row that the BBC has revealed alleged wrongdoing by the host government. Here's our climate editor, Justin Rolat. COP29 is definitely the most important event of this year.

It is the world's biggest climate conference. This is the time when everyone needs to come together. But it seems the chief executive of the COP29 team has other things on his mind. We have a lot of pipeline infrastructure. We have a lot of gas fields that are to be developed. Mr. Soltanov thinks he's talking to a potential sponsor. In fact, the man is from the human rights organisation Global Witness and is posing as the head of a Hong Kong company which wants to make fossil fuel investments.

Mr. Soltanoff, who is also the Deputy Energy Minister of Azerbaijan, does talk about tackling climate change. So the purpose is solving climate crisis. So as long as anybody, including oil and gas companies, could come with solutions, our doors are open. But he wasn't just open to with solutions, our doors are open. But he wasn't just open to climate solutions, he was open to discussions about oil and gas deals too. Mr. Soltanoff is also on the board of SOCAR, the Azeri state oil and gas

company. There are a lot of joint ventures that could be established, potential joint ventures. Our SOCAR trading is trading oil and gas all over the world, including in Asia. He is eager to get discussions going. This is something that you need to be talking to Socar and I would be happy to create a contact between yourself and them, your team and their team, so that they can start discussions. A couple of weeks later, the Hong Kong investment company received an email. One of Soka's most senior executives wants to meet in Baku and says Mr. Sultanov said to get in touch. Now

attempting to do business deals as part of the COP process appears to be a serious breach of the standards of conduct expected of a COP official. It's a small hammer, but I think it can do a lot. The Costa Rican diplomat Cristiana Figueres was in charge of the UN climate process during the landmark COP conference in Paris in 2015. It's completely unacceptable. The expectation that anyone would go to the COP to cut new deals on fossil fuels is not only contrary and egregious to what a conference of the parties on climate change is, it is frankly a betrayal of that very process.

These UN climate conferences are supposed to be about reducing the world's use of oil and gas, not selling more of the stuff. The UN's code of conduct says officials should remain impartial and avoid any conflicts of interest. Neither the Azeri COP29 team or SOCA offered any response to our request for comment. The UN did not comment directly but stressed its requirement for impartiality from all officials. Hating no objection, it is so decided. Last year the BBC obtained leaked documents which revealed plans by the UAE to use its role as host of COP28 to strike oil and gas deals. Yet for the first time the world agreed at that conference the need to transition away from fossil fuels. It shows progress

could still be made at COP29. Just in Rolat. China's central government has said it will provide local authorities with more than $800 billion to clear some of their debts. The money will be used to pay off what are known as hidden debts, liabilities that exist but haven't been disclosed. From Beijing, Laura Bicker reports. This plan aims to bail out local governments which have piled up unsustainable levels of debt. For decades local governments have helped drive growth throughout the country by borrowing massive sums of money, much of

which paid for infrastructure projects. But a downturn in the property industry has left some cities unable to pay their bills. This refinancing strategy is part of a series of measures being rolled out to try to jump start growth. The world's second largest economy has stuttered in recent months and there are renewed concerns about its long term outlook. Laura Bicca. Still to come... Our scientific results makes us rethink who these people actually were and how they behaved in these last moments of their life.

New DNA evidence rewrites the stories of Pompeii victims. Since Israel's offensive began in the Gaza Strip a little more than a year ago, the UN says more than 24,000 people have suffered life-changing injuries. That includes those with severe burns, head and spine injuries and amputated limbs. While few can access rehabilitation services as the war rages on, Jordanian doctors have been able to enter Gaza and have begun fitting war victims with new prosthetic limbs, made using cutting-edge British technology. From Jerusalem, our Middle East correspondent Yoland Nel reports. reports. Two sisters so small that they fit in one wheelchair. Hanan and Misq lost their mother and their legs in an Israeli airstrike on their home in

central Gaza two months ago. 80 months old Misq tries standing by the bed with her one good foot. But three-year-old Hannaan has much more severe injuries. And her aunt, Shifa Adubri, worries for her. We try to distract her, but she always returns to asking about her mother. And then she asks, where are my legs? I don't know what to tell her. With Israeli drones overhead, Diya Adini, aged 15, surveys the destruction around his home in Deir Ebalach. Around his neck he always wears his prized possession, a camera, but he can no longer use it. He has no arms.

In August, Diya was playing a computer game in a coffee shop when Israel bombed it. The speed of the rocket made it hard for me to react. After it hit, I lost consciousness for a few seconds. When I came to, everything was wild. It felt like I was watching a movie. I tried to get up, but I couldn't move at all. I didn't have any hands to help me. Diya still dreams of being a famous photographer.

For now he relies on his sister Aya to take his photos and tries to stay positive. I try to get close to her so she can help me with the photos. If she is not there, I sit and think about the picture I would like to take and I just save it in my mind. The human cost of this destructive, year-long war is measured not just in lives lost, but in lives changed forever. The World Health Organization has counted more than 3,300 amputations. Its local head, Dr Rick Pieperkorn, says one in every 100 garzons has suffered major injuries.

It's shocking. If you look at the number of people injured, 94,000 plus. And based on this analysis, one quarter of these injured, 24,000 people, they have lifelong injuries. They will need lifelong assistance, assistive therapies, rehabilitation. Right now, Gaza's shattered health system can only give limited help. And very few can leave for treatment outside. But a mobile clinic sent with specialists from Jordan is helping to fit prosthetic limbs using state-of-the-art technology developed in the U.K. that's easy to assemble. Jordanian Army doctor, Lieutenant Abdullah Hamada.

This is a new type of prosthesis. Last meet, the patient will be done in one to two hours. Rizek Tafesh was wounded by Israeli tanks in Rafah in June as he left Friday prayers. He lost one leg and was unable to work. He's happy to be standing on his own two feet once again. I could go back to my job or get a different one, now I have my new limb. Just getting back my leg is also giving me back my smile that I want to share with everyone." And as he heads back to the displaced people's camp that he now calls home, there are tears as well as smiles from

his mother and his wife. Rizek is just one among many learning to cope with a new serious disability but he's taken a step towards getting his life back. That report by Yoland Nel. Now let's turn to Myanmar and the continuing civil war there. Now as many as 2 million people in Rakhine State face the prospect of famine, amid a broader economic collapse and worsening humanitarian crisis triggered by the military's 2021 overthrow of the democratically elected government. The UN is warning that without urgent intervention, this escalating crisis could result in widespread

famine within months. Rakhine state is home to the Rohingya minority and engulfed in conflict between government forces and a powerful ethnic group. Catherine Bjarrehanga spoke to Kani Wigneraja, the regional director of the UN development programme. of the UN Development Programme. We've never seen this level of escalation to a full-scale conflict in Rakhine before with a near full blockade of the state, both with the domestic borders being very difficult

to pass through and the same with its international borders. So I think you're seeing with a cessation of internal and external trade and basically farming really coming to such a halt given the displacement due to conflict that farmlands are being left untilled. This used to be the the bowl, not just of Myanmar, but of that part of the region. And now we're down to about 20% of rice production. So we're seeing this with the escalating poverty that this is heading to a famine situation in the first quarter of 2025.

Just tell us what is life like for people there in Rakhine state as they try to make a living and access food? Well, you know, UNDP has been working in Rakhine for decades and so with the local contacts and the surveys we've done recently, we're seeing that people are living on about 60 cents a day, which really isn't even enough to buy rice for a family. That means they're down to one meal a day. Even more worrying is some of the households telling us that because they can't afford to buy rice, that meal is rice bran. And to survive on rice bran, you are really at risk of very extreme malnutrition and then of starvation. People are selling off whatever assets they've

got. It's very difficult to even get loans. There's very little cash or legal cash flowing through. And of course, what happens in situations like this, it gets taken over by illegal activities. So you're seeing a spike certainly in drug trafficking, in human trafficking, in Rakhine most particularly, but also across Myanmar. The military government in Myanmar is blaming the Arakhan army, which is the main military group that's challenging them there in Rakhine state, saying that it's responsible for destroying the socioeconomic life of residents, education, as well as the health sectors. How easy is it for aid agencies to get access to these areas, not only in terms of the restrictions by the military, but also by the military groups that are fighting there as well?

The access for the UN agencies, for the international NGOs, even for private traders, is getting increasingly difficult in and around certainly Northern Rakhine. And that is something that we've been saying, you've got to allow for development and humanitarian aid workers, NGOs and community organizations to continue doing their work and at least bringing in and distributing the basic supplies in order to avert this. And you're also very right that the limited access is caused by all parties to the conflict. Kani Wignaraja of the UN Development Programme. In Botswana's capital, Khabaruni, an inauguration ceremony has been taking place for the newly elected president Duma Boko at the country's national stadium. He certainly got his work cut out after the surprise election of his party last week, ending the governing party's rule of almost 60 years, Mr Boko now has to deliver on the promises he made during the election campaign.

He says his government will create half a million jobs in five years in response to a high unemployment rate. There's a need to stabilize an economy that's heavily reliant on diamonds. And there's the emotive issue of tensions over immigrant workers from Zimbabwe. And Po La Kajje of the Africa Daily podcast asked the new president about that. The citizens of this country have always been very accommodating. They've always been very neighbourly and they don't have any problem with the ordinary Zimbabwean who comes in here. The only challenge that has manifested itself is that

because they come in and are undocumented, then their access to amenities is limited if it is available at all. And what they then do is they live outside the law, and they commit crimes, and this breeds resentment. So what we need to do is to formalize, have a proper arrangement. We can give, and we should, give temporary work and residence permits. A lot of these workers from Zimbabwe perform tasks that the citizen finds unattractive. Involvement in farming, involvement in the household, landscaping.

They do jobs that would otherwise not get done. And so there's no conflict there. You are facing serious challenges, Mr. President. Your country's jobless rate now stands at 27 percent. Most of those who are jobless are young people, the same people who rejected from a president, Mokwezi Masisi. How are you looking to tackle this problem? We are an economy that is facing huge problems at the moment with the diamonds which are the main source of revenue for the country not doing well. So we need to deal with that and dealing with that means we have to engage with Anglo, our partner

in De Beers, and address the issues that are outstanding in relation to concluding the agreement we have with them. The second aspect of that is also to raise investor confidence so that we attract investors to come in and assist in injecting funding into the economy and doing good business. And that will enable us then to have an environment that conduces to the creation of jobs. And there are many projects that we will look at that are intended to generate the numbers of jobs that are needed, especially for young people. But also young people need to be capacitated to begin to engage in business, to become entrepreneurs, employ themselves and employ others.

And what they need from government sometimes is access to affordable finance and access to markets. And government should facilitate these. And if it does and does successfully, then we will be able to chip away at the rate of unemployment, especially of young people, and reduce it considerably. Botswana's new president's Duma Boko. When a volcanic eruption buried the ancient city of Pompeii nearly 2,000 years ago, the last desperate moments of its citizens were preserved in ash that hardened to stone. Plasticasts made of their bodies have fascinated visitors to the famous

archaeological site. But now new DNA evidence is leading to some surprising discoveries. Ariane Kotchi explains. For more than two days Vesuvius spewed a cloud of superheated gas, ash and molten rock to a height of over 30 kilometres. It destroyed nearby cities including Pompeii, covering them in a 20 metre deep lay of ash and pumice. The exact number of people who died in the tragedy is not known, but is believed that some 20,000 lived in the area at the time. The deadly blanket of volcanic ash that smothered all life in Pompeii also preserved it like a time capsule.

Over the years, archaeologists have used plaster to fill the voids left by the bodies of those who died under the ash. Now new DNA analysis of some bone fragments taken from the casts of four individuals found hiding under staircase has revealed some unexpected results. Alisa Mitnick from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, is one of the researchers. In one case the child was in the lap of the adult and the adult was also carrying a very valuable golden bracelet and this was always interpreted as being a mother with her child and then the other adult nearby was interpreted as the father and the second child as another child.

So this would be a nuclear family, for example. And what we found is that in fact all four of these individuals were male and on top of that they were in fact not biologically related to each other. The researchers also have been able to trace the ancestry of the victims. As a large number of Pompeii's population were slaves, scientists were expecting a significant ethnic and racial diversity. They've been able to identify that the bracelet-wearing individual was a male and that he had black hair and dark skin, suggesting that he may have been an enslaved person from Africa.

Alisa Mitnick again. Our scientific results on the basis of DNA makes us rethink who these people actually were, how they related to each other, and how they behaved in these last moments of their life. The people of Pompeii may have considered themselves Roman, but they were not from the city of Rome, but from across the Mediterranean. Even today, they are revealing some of their secrets

and making us question long-held assumptions about their gender, family ties and ethnic origins. That was Ariane Cochie. 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 podcast or the topics covered in it, do please send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Chris Lovelock. The producer was Ed Horton. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jackie Leonard and until next time, goodbye.

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