Global News Podcast - At least 30 dead in India festival crush

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

At least 30 people killed in a crush at the Kumbh Mela in India, the world's biggest religious gathering. Also: Congo shuns peace talks, Mexico braces for mass return of migrants, and the rise of "grief apps".

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Jonny Diamond from the Global Story podcast where we're looking at DeepSeek, the Chinese company shaking up artificial intelligence. It claims its AI model has been made without the most advanced chips and at a fraction of the cost, wiping billions off the value of US tech giants in the process. That's on the Global Story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles and at 14 Hours GMT on Wednesday 29th January these are our main stories. There has been a deadly crush at the world's largest religious festival, the Kummela in

northern India. State media in the Democratic Republic of Congo have confirmed that President Felix Chichikedi will not attend a crisis meeting with his Rwandan counterpart. Scientists have concluded that climate change was a major factor in the devastating LA wildfires. Also in this podcast, in Mexico, Men in work boots and baseball caps have set up a huge tarpaulin. It's the centrepiece of a tense city intended to house casual labourers, domestic workers, kitchen staff and farm hands. A nation braces itself for the expected influx of people deported under Donald Trump's crackdown

on undocumented migrants. It is the world's largest festival. The Kummela gathering in India brings together more than 100 million people to bathe at what's considered to be a sacred point on the River Ganges. Having that many people in one place at the same time has inherent dangers and has often led to tragedies. And it's happened again. At least 30 people have died in a crush when some tried to jump over police barricades to reach a point on the river. Pictures from the scene show blankets, shoes and backpacks strewn on the ground. This woman saw what happened. Seven of us from my family were together around midnight.

Three of them are asthmatic. When the crush happened, we all fell down. Others fell on top of us. I've lost my phone and all my money now I don't know where the rest of my family is Samira Hussein is our correspondent at the Kumbh Mela what we do know from what witnesses told us on the ground is that there were just hundreds and hundreds of people sleeping along the riverbanks and because today is an auspicious day, there were millions

of people that were expected to come and bathe in these holy waters. So there was a rush of people coming in and going out from inside the waters. And what ended up happening is that the people that were laying down on the ground will inevitably be in the crush of people. Someone fell, someone got pushed, and eventually people were trampled. The opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, has blamed the deaths on what he called official mismanagement.

What measures are in place to try to reduce the dangers? Organisers have been planning for this event for several months. In fact, they have installed 2,700 cameras across the entire city. And more than half of those cameras are actually on the grounds of the Mahakummela. We actually went into the control room where they were monitoring all of these feeds and they were using AI technology in addition to their cameras and people on the ground to try and be able to mitigate or disperse any crowds or any gridlock that happens. But I guess in this instance

something fell through the cracks clearly. Samira, do you get a sense that people are angry with the authorities or do they just accept that these kind of tragedies do happen when so many people are gathered in one place? We've certainly gotten from some people here a real sense of frustration that it was presented as you know everyone should come here but when people came there was just such a rush of humanity that some people were lucky enough to be able to sleep in one of the 160,000 tents that were provided, but many, many others were sleeping under the stars. In fact, if I just look out from where I am right now, I can see several dozens of people

that are basically laying on the ground on a concrete road. And this is where they have been staying for a day or week. Samira Hussain at the Kummela festival in India. International pressure is mounting to find a peaceful solution to the escalation of violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A Rwandan backed rebel group is now tightening its control over the city of Goma, where many people have been killed and hospitals are said to have been overwhelmed. But now the Democratic Republic of Congo's President, Felix Chisakeidi, says he will not be attending a crisis meeting with his Rwandan counterpart, Paul Kagame, which was organised by Kenya

to stop the fighting. Ann Soy is our senior Africa correspondent. The meeting may just go ahead because I've heard from the Rwandan side the government spokesman has confirmed to me that they will be taking part in that virtual meeting called by the Kenyan president. So that but we have also heard from the Congolese side that the president Shisekedi will not be taking part. We do not know whether he will send a representative yet. And without him being there or a senior representative, what good can these talks do? The talks have been ongoing and there have been two sets of talks, one led by Nairobi and the other by Luanda, Angola. The Congolese government appears to favour the Luanda process more. However, those talks faltered in December after the Luandan government said that the

Congolese authorities needed to engage with M23, that they met that condition. But then the Congolese authorities completely refused to engage with the rebel group. And so there was a stalemate and that is, it is at that point that the talks stalled. So this is really an effort to kickstart the process and try to find a solution. However, from what we are seeing and hearing on the ground, M23 sound even ever more confident having taken much of Goma and this speculation that they may be setting their sights now on the capital Kinshasa. That's extraordinary really I had no idea about that. They're that ambitious. In the past some of the leaders including of the groups affiliated to M23 the AFC have

categorically stated that their goal the ultimate goal is to go to Kinshasa and take over their government there. I have been speaking to some other people on the sidelines, and that is the feeling that after they have essentially defeated the Congolese army who have surrendered their arms, their grid to be disarmed in Goma, they think now that is a more practical, that is more feasible now, Kinshasa is more within their reach. Of course, this is a vast country the size of Western Europe and therefore logistically it's difficult to fathom that, so we'll wait to see what happens.

That was Anne Sawyer. In Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko has claimed yet another political triumph, awarded 87% of the vote in a presidential election. But it was an election in name only, with all genuine opposition either in prison or forced to flee abroad after mass protests in 2020 ended in police brutality and mass detentions.

Opposition figures now in exile warn that Lukashenko is a danger far beyond the borders of Belarus because he's such a close ally of Vladimir Putin. But the activist mood these days is more depressed than defiant, as our Eastern Europe correspondent Sarah Rainesford reports from Warsaw. In 2020, this was the sound of defiance in Belarus. The Free Choir sang on the streets as crowds flooded out, protesting against an election, rigged to keep Alexander Lukashenko in power. The choir are now in exile. But even here in Poland, they perform with red and white masks covering their faces.

Because the security forces back home have warned that anyone supporting the opposition, even abroad, can be prosecuted. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya doesn't hide her face. She had to flee Belarus too in 2020 after running for president against Lukashenko and claiming a win. Then came the protests, the police brutality and the mass arrests. This election was very different. No independent candidates, no observers, no free media, all real opponents either in prison or in exile.

So it's sham. Do you still feel now that there is a chance of democratic change? How confident do you feel that that moment will actually come? I truly believe it was huge shift in intelligence of Belarusians. How long it will take, I don't know, but it's very important that this shift that took place in 2020, it will not disappear. But it's hard to keep that conviction alive. That's what this entire event in Warsaw was about.

Because four years after they tried and failed to topple a dictator, the Belarusians I've been speaking to are struggling. I've never had a desire to live in Belarus. I like it there. Yana is a vet, just out of prison after serving three years for joining the peaceful protests. Were there many of you? For me, there was even one person. She calculates that one in ten of the inmates in her prison were there for their politics. It was only when I could sleep again

that I realized how emotionally and physically hard it had been, how I had suppressed my feelings. I barely cried in prison, but when I got out, I suddenly found I wanted to sob all the time. I thought I'd got through it okay, but I realised it had taken titanic force. Poland is now home to huge numbers of Belarusians, driven out not by war, but by fear of interrogation, intimidation and arrest. Some opposition supporters have stayed in Belarus, like Maria, although that's not her real name.

But she tells me all open activism in the country has stopped. It's just too dangerous. She used to attend court hearings for political detainees, but even that's too risky now. She could be prosecuted herself as an extremist. It is horribly frustrating, Maria says, to see the injustice and to feel so helpless. And as those forced into exile sang of a different future, back in Minsk, Alexander Lukashenko was claiming 87% support for another term as president. It's his seventh so far. Sarah Rainsford with that report. More and more people are turning to grief apps to cope

with the loss of family and friends. The apps focus on helping people's mental health but critics say they could be putting vulnerable people at risk. The technology journalist Lindsay Lee Wallace has researched the issue for the BBC. She's been telling me more about the apps and how they work. They're different depending on the specific service they're trying to offer. Some of them are more focused on helping you with the administrative fallout. So they have a vault where you can upload documents that you might need while you're navigating, closing people's accounts and transferring, cashing in a life insurance policy. Others are more focused on people's emotional wellbeing.

So they have forums or journaling features that help people connect or keep track of their moods. Some of them also use AI to provide feedback on what you might share and suggestions about breathing exercises or therapeutic pursuits you might engage in. You mentioned AI there and I think that's one of the concerns that people are raising. If you use AI, which I know these apps say they don't, but to respond to other people's posts that might increase the sense of isolation and non-human contact that people are craving for.

Definitely. Something that the mental health experts that I spoke with for this piece and also even some of the app founders talked about, as well as the people who had used the apps, was the idea that at a very vulnerable point, which is what grief is, you don't want to feel like you're interacting with something that isn't human when you're seeking human connection and support. So there's an issue with reaching out into the void and feeling like the hand that reaches back for you isn't real. It's also really difficult to completely de-identify any information that goes into an AI data set, which if you are talking about your morning experience, you're revealing a lot about yourself and then that information might just be out there. As you said, people are vulnerable, they're sharing very personal information. One imagines that the safeguards are there in place, are they, in terms of keeping this information where it should be?

It depends on where you are when you're using one of these apps. There are safeguards if you're talking to a therapist, for example, in the US, the UK or the EU, there are laws that protect your privacy. But because these apps aren't officially considered health care and they're not officially considered mental health care, there aren't the same clear lines around what information of yours can and can't be shared. And all of the app founders use best practices to try to de-identify any information that's gathered and prevent people from having their information leaked. And they all are clear that they don't sell that data. But there are a lot of companies where either because of a bankruptcy or because of changes in their privacy policy, they have ended up sharing or ceding customer information.

US tech expert Lindsay Lee Wallace, and you can read much more about Lindsay's investigation online at BBC Future. Still to come in this podcast, we find out how the US president is causing cartographic confusion in the Americas. It'll come down to often, I think think what that country thinks it should be. But in the case of the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, it's bounded by several countries. Each one would have its own version of its name. I'm Jonny Diamond from the Global Story podcast where we're looking at DeepSeek, the Chinese company shaking up artificial intelligence. It claims its AI model has been made without

the most advanced chips and at a fraction of the cost, wiping billions off the value of US tech giants in the process. That's on the Global Story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Let's turn now to the war in Sudan, where several parts of the country have been driven into famine by the fighting between the paramilitary forces and the Sudanese army. The conflict broke out in April 2023 and now seems to be intensifying. Throughout the war, neighbourhood groups known as the Emergency Response Rooms or ERRs have been keeping their fellow Sudanese alive, staffing food kitchens and providing health services. Dua Tariq is part of the

ERRs in eastern Khartoum. She spoke to James Coppenall about a food aid convoy which is on its way to her area. This aid convoy is the first to come to our area in Khartoum. It's been sealed since the beginning of the war and we haven't received any humanitarian aid since the beginning of the war. It has a very large population compared to other places in Khartoum right now. So this convoy is supposed to help over 15,000 families in Khartoum never received aid since the beginning of the war and they are completely relied on the communal kitchens. Obviously given the security challenges, are you confident that this convoy is going to get to you?

We were very optimistic at the beginning, but then we received the notice from the military saying they're going to have to postpone some of the permits due to the ongoing battles and conflict in Khartoum. You know, the the the military have been advancing since last week, very noticeably in Khartoum. But after we had, I mean, our partners, they had conversations with the military, they finally agreed to let the convoys pass, but they can't take responsibility of any security for the convoy itself. So you're waiting for this convoy, until it gets to you, how are people going to cope? How are they going to survive, I guess? People are receiving aid from the communal soup kitchens, but it's not enough because it's only one meal per day.

We have a very severe and noticeable number and amounts of malnutrition. It's very difficult on the ground how the people lost most of their weights. A lot of people lost children to malnutrition. When you say lost, do you mean children have died because of malnutrition? Yes, children have died. I mean, like, I personally, my neighbor lost two children to malnutrition in one month. As you mentioned, the military picture is changing very fast in Khartoum and the Sudanese army is retaking territory from the RSF.

You've been in the RSF area for a long time now, working as a volunteer, helping people. Are you worried about your own security situation if the area changes hands? This accusation of collaborating with the militia is very wide. How come you can't deal with the militia that's controlling your area for a year, nine months? It's a very long time. A lot of things that happen, you might use their cars to get to the hospitals you may use some of the permits they give you, even socializing with their families

that happened during this time. So, I mean, like this targeting of the people, and especially in a very brutal way, because if you saw like the slaughtering of the people, I mean like- When the army retook control of Guadmadinu, right? Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The mass killings that happened in Lejideira. So what is your own personal calculation? Are you thinking about leaving? Are you thinking about waiting until this food convoy arrives at least? We're working still and we're going to keep working until the last day, but I'm out of words. Dua Tariq. and we're going to keep working until the last day, but I'm out of words. Dua Tariq. International researchers have found that human-driven climate change contributed

to the devastating wildfires recently in Los Angeles. The World Weather Attribution Network said the hot, dry and windy conditions that drove the fires were about 35% more likely due to global warming, driven primarily by burning fossil fuels. The fires in Los Angeles, which erupted three weeks ago, killed at least 28 people and destroyed more than 10,000 homes. Dr. Frederic Otto, a co-leader of World Weather Attribution and a senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London, spoke to Emma Barnett about the study. What we do in an attribution study is we look at possible weather in today's climate and then compare that to possible weather in a world that would have been if it was still 1.3 degrees cooler, so as it was at the beginning

of the Industrial Revolution. And we can do that because we have observations from that time and we also know very well how many greenhouse gases have been put into the atmosphere since then. And so we can use the same models that are used for the weather forecast to run them, how would the weather look like without those extra greenhouse gases. But then how do you trace it that it would then be a cause for fires? Because cause of fires can be quite a complex mix, can't it? It is a very complex mix indeed. And it's probably our most complex study. So we looked at

and many different lines of evidence. So one is we looked at a so-called fire weather index that combines the weather conditions that are conducive to fire, so high temperatures, low humidity, high winds, and dryness. And in that index, we found that the likelihood of such strongly conducive fire conditions has increased by about 35% due to global warming. But we also looked at individual components of this index. So for example, the most striking is

that in the area around LA, you usually have a wet season, which is starting in around October and then October, November, December up till March you have rain and then it doesn't really rain the rest of the year. But this rainy season starts later and later and this year it basically hasn't started at all so it hasn't started to rain but at the same time in the winter, so in January, you have strong winds. And when you have the rainy season starting later and the vegetation being very dry, at the time when you have the strong winds, that's when you get these devastating fires. And

we found that the end of the dry season has moved into the winter by about 23 extra days because of global warming. Dr. Friederike Otto, the start of the biggest deportation in American history, in typically extravagant language, that's Donald Trump's take on raids of undocumented workers that have started in the US. Authorities say they focus so far on those who present a threat to public security, that is people with criminal convictions, but all undocumented migrants are at risk of deportation under the policy. Some have already been picked up. Mexicans are the biggest immigrant group in America. There are about five million of them living in the

US without the right paperwork. Mexico is getting ready for the expected influx of returnees, as our correspondent Will Grant reports. In Chicago, President Trump's border czar Tom Homan addressed officials from a range of government agencies before they set out on a night-time raid. Immigration agents said they were carrying out what they called enhanced targeted operations against public safety threats, undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes, including murder and sexual abuse. We've got all of government approach, we've got US Marshals, we've got FBI, we've got ATF, we've got DEA, we've got ICE. In all, around a thousand immigration arrests were made on Sunday alone,

with Mr Holman calling it just the beginning stages. Mexico, meanwhile, has also started to prepare. In the border city of Ciudad Juarez, beneath a huge crucifix and an altar erected for a mass delivered by Pope Francis in 2016, men in work boots and baseball caps have set up a huge tarpaulin. It's the centrepiece of a tent city intended to house men and women much like themselves. Casual labourers, domestic workers, kitchen staff and farm hands,

all likely to be among those sent south. Juarez is one of eight such reception centres being set up along the border. Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has stressed the returnees will receive food, medical care and assistance in obtaining Mexican identity documents, part of a deportee support program her administration calls Mexico Embraces You. In Tijuana, troops have converted an events centre called Flamingos, putting in 1,800 beds, kitchens, showers and a medical centre.

Monica Vega from the State Governor's Office is in charge of the operation. The idea is that our countrymen will be able to return to Mexico in a dignified way and to a warm embrace, she said. So this is a proclamation declaring a national emergency at the southern border of the United States? That's a big one. A lot of big ones, huh? Another one of President Trump's executive orders includes a rule called Remain in Mexico, by which anyone requesting asylum in the United States would have to stay in Mexico ahead of their asylum hearing.

To work, the plan needs Mexico to accept it. And for now at least, President Sheinbaum has refused to agree to it. On the day of the migrant in December, the Sheinbaum administration released a song celebrating the Mexican migrant. We may change our location but not our flag, the singers sang over a video of sweeping vistas of the Mexican countryside and we were born to a legacy of greatness. The BBC's Will Grant reporting. American technology stocks are recovering but they've had a torrid time this week. The volatility has been caused by the Chinese company DeepSeek's launch of a new

cheaper AI model. The last US administration tried to keep America ahead in the AI race by banning the world's leading chip makers from selling the most powerful technology to China. Now Donald Trump says the emergence of DeepSeek is a real wake-up call. So where does this leave the competition to be the world's AI superpower. Nina Schick was an advisor to President Biden. She spoke to Leila Nathu. Let's be real. It's widely known in tech circles that DeepSeek has access to 50,000 NVIDIA H100s. So it has access to the hardware, which would be illegal under the bans. But there's a bigger point here as well, which is that even if you ban the export of hardware, you can't stop innovation and

technical breakthroughs from proliferating. And of course, the big irony is that those advances, which has been kept so close by the US labs, you know, they haven't made the juice, the secret source open, has been released in a whammy open source by a Chinese lab backed by a Chinese hedge fund. That's why you see such a knee-jerk reaction in the markets. But also, it doesn't mean the end of US dominance or supremacy in the world of AI. It just means that the competition is heating up. The resources and the infrastructure and the models are not only becoming better, but they're becoming more efficient. That actually points to even more requirement for the hardware, the infrastructure, for

breakthroughs in the model design. Because ultimately, the prize is this, right? In a world where we are increasingly building AI systems that are smarter and smarter and smarter. And the goal of so-called AGI or super intelligence, which was science fiction only even a few years ago now, almost seems like it's becoming inevitable. There has been a bit of an AI bubble hasn't there in terms of US companies, huge valuations for those companies involved in developing AI. I mean, is it a good thing that it has been dented somewhat by this?

I think the market's got it completely wrong on DeepSeek. Of course, there's been so much fear around the rising valuation of US tech stocks. I think overall just unbelievable amounts of money being spent by not only the US tech giants, but by tiny tech giants as well. No wonder people are fearful that this is a bubble. It was almost like the markets were waiting for the moment to course correct. And this sudden realization that DeepSeek's R1 was at and that it performed so much better on cost and was trained on so much less than some of the leading AI models led to such a knee-jerk reaction where 1.2 trillion was wiped off the value of kind of US tech stocks.

And the majority of that hemorrhaging 600 billion from Nvidia, worst day in US stock market history, it's already bouncing back. Because fundamentally, this isn't a reason to be bearish on AI. It's actually a reason to be more bullish on AI. Nina Schick. Donald Trump's first days back in office have shaken up diplomacy, the financial world and map makers. That's because following an executive order from the president Google says it will now rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America on its maps in the United States. It will remain as the Gulf of Mexico in Mexico and both names will be used elsewhere. But is it really in President Trump's

power to insist on a name change? Mary Spence is one of the UK's foremost mapmakers and a former president of the British Cartographic Society. He can put it forward, but then there's a committee. We've got the Permanent Committee of Geographic Names in this country, which sorts out what we in Britain and the government should call international names. They work in close association with the US Board of Geographic Names. And those are the people that, as an international cartographer, I would go to to check out the version of a name that is approved. And when I say approved, I mean, there'll have been

committee meetings, discussions, arguments between countries, what the right name is, and it'll come down to often, I think, what that country thinks it should be. But in the case of the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of America, it's bounded by several countries. Each one would have its own version of its name. So America are trying to already change the names on everything that's to do with them. But that does not mean I have to change it to the Gulf of America on my map. But if I'm selling to America, I might be tempted to. I think you have to do what the customer wants. If I'm selling a map of Eastern Asia to America, I might be tempted to. I think you have to do what the customer wants. If I'm selling a map of Eastern Asia to Japan, I'll call it the Sea of Japan.

But if I'm selling that map to Korea, I will call it the East Sea because they don't like it being called the Sea of Japan. It's the same with international boundaries. You put on the version of the international boundary that your customer wants. And I'm sure Google have got umpteen different versions of international boundary that your customer wants. And I'm sure Google have got a few different versions of international boundaries that they roll out in different countries to keep the peace basically. Mary Spence. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast

later on. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on x at globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Callum Maclean and the producer was Stephanie Tillotson. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Myles and until next time, goodbye. I'm Johnny Diamond from the Global Story podcast where we're looking at DeepSeek, the Chinese company shaking up artificial intelligence. It claims its AI model has been made without the most advanced chips and at a fraction of the cost, wiping billions off the value of US tech giants in the process.

That's on the Global Story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.