Global News Podcast - First deaths as wildfires wreak havoc in LA

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

At least two people have died as wildfires rage uncontrolled in several parts of Los Angeles. President Biden has promised extra help. Also: Egypt hails possibly the greatest find since the discovery of Tutankhamun.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Hello, I'm Tanya Beckett and on the inquiry, we're looking at how new vaccines might help in the treatment of cancer. It's estimated that around 20 million people worldwide will be diagnosed with some form of the disease in 2025. The inquiry gets beyond the headlines to explore the trends, forces and ideas shaping the world. Search for The Inquiry wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritzen and in the early hours of Thursday, the 9th of January, these are our main stories.

President Biden promises extra help from the Department of Defence to tackle the wildfires threatening Los Angeles as 70,000 people flee their homes. European nations warn that borders must not be altered by force after Donald Trump refused to rule out military action to seize Greenland and a deadly Russian glide bomb attack on Ukraine kills at least 13 people in the south eastern city of Zaporizhzhia. Also in this podcast, Prime Minister Giorgia Maloney successfully negotiates the release

of an Italian journalist from jail in Iran. What could be the most important archaeological find from the days of ancient Egypt since the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun and... We hypothesised that people who are very disgusted by body order, that they would also have this kind of authoritarian disposition and that's what we've found. The link between your sense of smell and your political leanings. Los Angeles and the surrounding areas have often experienced wildfires but not ones that spread so quickly with so little warning at this time of year. The speed with which they took hold on Tuesday night stunned Californians.

As we record this podcast, at least two people are dead and a thousand buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of people are without power. To give you a sense of the terror spreading across this part of California over the past 24 hours, have a listen to these residents and reporters. All of these homes, just home after home after home after home, side by side, completely all burned to the ground. It's hard to tell from the outside just how much of this building is lost, but certainly it's whipping it. The conditions out here are just absolutely miserable for firefighters. I was getting more frantic as, you know, the lights were getting darker and the sky was getting more red. It was scary. At the bottom of the canyon, there was cars piled on top of each other. Um, there was boulders

and debris that fell off of the mount off the canyon that was on fire that was in the middle of the road where people have to abandon their cars. I know people that live in that gated community right there on Sunset and Palisades Circle. That was on fire. The hillside was on fire. And it's actually the hillside behind my house. I said I'm just going to jump in the pool. I can barely swim. But I'm just going to... That's our only way out because the canyon is literally on fire on both sides. You see so many embers. We see engines just shooting down this way and it's because of this.

More structures on fire. We are talking big buildings and a lot of them burned to the ground. The fires, fuelled by hurricane force winds, have turned the skies red and orange. They couldn't have happened at a worse time for California, which is being battered by the seasonal Santa Ana winds, winds which could yet develop into the worst windstorm in a decade. The largest fire is in the sought after Pacific Balasades neighbourhood, which is east of LA and home to Hollywood celebrities who have had to abandon their homes like so many others. President Biden has been in the area and has told the US military to assist firefighters

overstretched by the disaster. He's also approved a major disaster declaration for California to help survivors. Just before we came into the studio I spoke to our correspondent David Willis. I'm on the coast road in Pacific Palace, AIDS, Alex, and the ridge in front of me is completely burnt out and to my right, where a mobile home park once stood, there is now nothing really but charred brush and beyond that ridge are hundreds of multimillion dollar homes that have been completely destroyed. And the fire is still raging here. It expanded, I should say, overnight to an area of around 5,000 acres in total. And we're told that 37,000 people have been evacuated from their homes. Some chose not to leave and officials report that a high number of what they call significant injuries have been sustained amongst

those who decided not to evacuate. And David, you live in Hollywood, don't you? I do, Alex, and I've lived in the Hollywood area for about 25 years, and this was one of the most devastating nights in the history of the city of Los Angeles. I mean people woke up to the sound of ferocious winds buffeting all around them, the horizon covered in a thick black smoke and there was a thin patina of ash cloaking the cars in my neighborhood. And I'm 30 kilometers from the biggest fire, this one in the Pacific Palisades. There were some harrowing television pictures, Alex,

showing flames engulfing these oceanside mansions here. And one resident who escaped likened the situation to a scene from a disaster movie. The word apocalyptic is often misused, isn't it? But in my view, it is entirely applicable here. And part of the reason for that, David, is just the speed of the winds. It's incredible, isn't it? And it's blowing the fire to new places at an incredible rate. That's right. And the danger, Alex, is that these unusually high winds are expected to

continue for the rest of the week. One crumb, I suppose, of good news is that the winds here anyway now appear to be blowing towards the coast rather than inland but the fire is still burning ferociously and out of control and the air around me here is thick with acrid smoke. And briefly David the authorities really struggling to cope with this the fire they say they cannot contain it. That's right zero percent contained at the moment, Alex, and they are calling on additional resources from out of state, from neighbouring states, and they have also called on all off-duty firefighters to report for duty because the fire lines are so stretched.

David Willis, Southern California has been hit by devastating wildfires before, but how much of a part has climate change played in this latest bout of extreme weather? Here's our climate change correspondent, Matt McGrath. Los Angeles and Southern California over the last two decades has been essentially a drought that's lasted for that period of time and it has been influenced by climate change, drier, warmer weather, less rainfall. But then over the last two years they've had a lot of rain in two essentially wet seasons which has seen a lot of growth of the type of things that burn, shrubs, trees, that sort of

vegetation. But then since last summer it's been very dry, they had a hot summer and they've had a very dry autumn and winter. In fact they've had less than 0.16 of an inch of rain when they'd normally have more than four inches of rain. So they've had very dry conditions. Over a longer period of time, they've had dry and wet conditions that have caused this fuel to grow. And those fingerprints of climate change are in the background here. When you get these incredible winds, when you get incredible dry conditions, you get these type of conflagrations particularly in areas where there are lots of people unfortunately.

I was reading that 15 of California's 20 most destructive fires on record have come in the past 10 years so you know we are seeing a very clear deterioration in the climate there which is I suppose leading to these fires not only being easier to start but also lasting longer. Yeah absolutely, it's the fire season question and the quote from Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California saying it's a fire year now not a fire season. That very much reflects what's happening with the science where scientists talk about fire weather days. These are the days on which the conditions are likely to help fires. So low humidity, winds, dryness, that sort of thing is very, very powerful. So we've seen those increase. We've seen the fire seasons lengthen. And now we're talking about in California, perhaps the year-round fire season.

But it's not just California. These are reflected in many different parts of the world as well. Matt McGrath and he was speaking to Mark Lowen. And with not just the fires but so many extreme weather events around the world making the news more and more often, we're making a special edition of the Global News podcast in the coming days to try to find out where this trend is going and how quickly how big the risks are and what we should all be doing about it as societies and as individuals to try to reduce the risk. If you have a question please email us or better still send us a voice note the address globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. European politicians have warned Donald Trump against using military force to take control

of Greenland after he refused to rule out that scenario. The President-elect reiterated his desire to acquire the mineral-rich island on Tuesday, saying the autonomous Danish-controlled territory was critical for US national and economic security. Both France and Germany have said the EU will not let other nations attack its members' sovereign borders. Our diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams is following developments. Donald Trump's latest remarks on Greenland, along with threats to Panama and possibly

Canada too, have triggered ripples of alarm on this side of the Atlantic. If you're asking me if I think the United States will invade Greenland, the answer is no, said France's Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barreau. But have we entered an era that sees the return of the survival of the fittest? The answer is yes. Europe he said should do more to strengthen itself. That's something Mr. Trump may welcome. After all, he says NATO members should be spending 5% of their GDP on defence.

The US president-elect has long coveted the Danish territory, a reflection of its key strategic significance, sitting as it does between North America, Europe and Russia, as well as its unexploited mineral wealth. Yesterday, the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, said she could not imagine that Donald Trump's ambitions would lead to some kind of military intervention in Greenland. And in his first comments on the issue, the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said borders

should not be changed by force, as Russia had tried to do in Ukraine. The inviolability of borders is a fundamental principle of international law. In the final act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in 1975, in the midst of the Cold War, the states of Europe and the countries of the former Eastern Bloc, together with the United States and the Soviet Union, agreed on this central principle once again. Borders must not be moved by force. In Brussels, EU officials found themselves fielding awkward questions about Donald Trump's

comments. Olaf Gil, the commission's spokesman for economic security and trade, suggested everyone should calm down. Welcome then to the next four years of Trump-flavoured international diplomacy. Blunt threats, stunned silences, stifled expressions of outrage and attempts to muddle through. In case we didn't already know it, it's going to be a bumpy ride. Paul Adams. Mark Jakobsen is an Arctic security expert from the Royal Danish Defence College. He explained in more detail why Donald Trump wants control of Greenland.

First of all, it's important to emphasize that the US actually already have military control over Greenland. So what Trump wants in extension of that, that's a really good question. But to your question, what are the reasons the US has an immense interest in Greenland? There are two main reasons. One is Greenland's geostrategic location located in the middle of the Arctic, exactly in the middle between North America and Russia. So if Russia were to send missiles towards the North America, towards Washington, they would fly via the North Pole over Greenland and therefore the Thule Air Base, which is today named the Bitufik airspace in respect of the Greenlandic name of the place, is strategically important to the defense of US national security. The second reason is the immense natural resources which Greenland holds in its underground, especially rare earth elements which are important for all kinds of modern technologies from wind farms to

cell phones to weapons and so on and so forth, the chips you use in that. And on a global scale, China has a near monopoly on rare earth elements. So in the great power competition with China and in order to secure technological development in the US, rare earth elements are important to secure. Mark Jakobsen, associate professor from the Royal Danish Defence College. A deadly Russian glide bomb attack on Ukraine has killed at least 13 people in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia. President Zelenskyy has condemned the attack and urged Ukraine's western allies to put pressure on Russia to end the war. From Kyiv, here's our Eastern

Europe correspondent, Sarah Rainsford. This is clearly a devastating attack. It's one of the biggest attacks of its kind, one of the most devastating attacks of its kind for several weeks here in Ukraine. It was an attack on the city of Zaporizhzhia in the southeast of this country, one of the big cities here. We know that 13 people so far have lost their lives. We know that dozens of people, according to President Zelensky, have been injured, and

they include a teenage girl. According to the local head of the administration, Ivan Fyodorov, he's also said that several of those who are injured are seriously injured. Now, this was an attack that happened in the middle of the afternoon. I've seen dashcam footage from cars at the time of the strike, and those were very busy streets. The local regional head did talk about the initial area that was hit. He talked about industrial infrastructure being targeted but it's clear that there were also residential buildings there and much of the damage

is in the main streets. So where people were walking there's a tram with windows blown out. There's at least one if not two minibuses that I've seen in the footage from the scene of that missile strike, windows totally shattered and people just lying scattered in the street amongst the rubble, amongst the glass and amongst pools of blood. So an extremely serious strike on a very big city and one that as he said President Zelensky himself has condemned as Russian terror. He said that there is nothing more cruel than launching aerial bombs on a city when you know that civilians will suffer.

Sarah Rainsford. An Italian journalist detained in Iran last month has been freed. The news was given by the Office of Italy's Prime Minister, Giorgia Maloney, who is said to have personally taken charge of negotiating her release. Her relatively short time in custody is in sharp contrast to many other foreign nationals. There had been speculation that her arrest was prompted by the detention of an Iranian national in Milan. Our Europe editor Paul Kirby has been following the case. We know that she was arrested on the 19th of December.

She has since been freed Wednesday morning in Tehran and she is now back in Rome. And she looks in good condition because we have pictures of her arriving, being greeted by her boyfriend and later by Georgia Maloney, the Prime Minister, who took personal charge of her case. How was her release negotiated so quickly? Because it's quite a contrast with other cases of foreign nationals. Very much so. There are European prisoners who remain in detention in Iran.

What is interesting about the release of Cecilia Sala is that she is a well-known journalist, a podcaster in Italy. She's 29. She works for Coromedia. And because the case was taken up by Georgia Maloney so fast, this was treated with uproar by the Italian public when news emerged of her being arrested. Within days, Maloney was talking to the US administration and only just this last weekend she flew to the United States and talked to Donald Trump about it, we think. What about this link between her detention and that of Mohammed Abedini's? So the Iranians are not confirming that at all, but the US State Department has said it could be linked and some State

Department officials have been quoted in Italian media saying that cases are definitely linked and the timing is clearly interesting because she was arrested in Tehran three days after the arrest of an Iranian man at Milan's Malpensa airport. Now the reason why Abedini was arrested was, this explains the American link, is that it was on a US arrest warrant. He was wanted along with another man in connection with allegedly smuggling information about US drones to the Iranians' electronic equipment. And that electronic drone equipment is thought to have been involved in the killing of three Americans Air Force personnel in Jordan. Paul Kirby. Still to come, how a glass of milk a day might help stave off bowel cancer.

For just as long as Hollywood has been Tinseltown, there have been suspicions about what lurks behind the glitz and glamour. Concerns about radical propaganda in the motion pictures. And for a while, those suspicions grew into something much bigger and much darker. Are you a member of the Communist Party? Or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? I'm Una Chaplin, and this is Hollywood Exiles. It's about a battle for the political soul of America, and the battlefield was Hollywood. All episodes of Hollywood Exiles from the BBC World Service and CBC are available now.

Search for Hollywood Exiles wherever you get your podcasts. It's not every day that we run more than one story on a particular theme here on the GNP. We usually bring you a range of stories on a range of topics but today has coincidentally happened to see a glut of newsworthy stories about various aspects of health and it seemed churlish not to include them. So over the next few minutes we've got an intriguing insight into the politics of smell, a look at the latest research on Alzheimer's and how calcium could be a secret weapon in the battle against a particular type of cancer. But first, a blood test for various forms

of cancer has shown early promise as being a possible way to help detect tumours early. In a test on 91 blood samples, a mix of those in patients with or without cancer, it picked up 56 of the 59 samples with cancer. Anna Shue is a Professor of Molecular Diagnostics at the University of Oxford and lead researcher on the study. She's been telling Evan Davis what it involved. We're basically used to very novel way of preparing these samples. We are treating the DNA of the tumors that circulates in the plasma, together with them looking and examining the entire genome that helps us to identify lots of different features of tumor DNA.

Okay. So you're really looking at the DNA in the blood. And so if I have a tumor, for example, that will have some DNA and that will be everywhere. You can take a blood sample and that effectively you'll find a little bit of DNA from the tumor in my blood. That's correct. They're very small fragments of DNA that are shredded by tumors, even by early stage tumors. And it's those fragments of tumor DNA that you can identify from a simple blood draw. That's what we are examining,

simply because we think that that is where, you know, tumor originates from. It's ultimately a problem with changes in the DNA. And then importantly, we can detect imprinting of the DNA that happens very early on that is quite tissue specific. So when you have a pancreas cancer, for example, you can then go back and you can say, oh, this is really coming from the pancreas.

So that allows us to do a tissue of origin estimation. So this test doesn't just say we found evidence of some tumor somewhere, it gives you more detail on that. Yes, ultimately it will help us identify where the cancer is, which tissue it originates from, but really putting all those different attributes together and then training the algorithms to detect them. That is really where I think the innovation is. Is anyone thinking about the world in which, say, this blood test works?

You might expect people will start saying, you know, if it's just a blood test, I want one every two months. But what are you envisaging as the way we use it? Only where we have a suspicion or that there may be a cancer or? So it ultimately depends a lot on the cost of the test and how many tests you have to perform. So that's a health economic question and it depends on how much payers are willing to pay. When it comes to resource restricted environments or public health system, then one would say that it complements current existing screening programs. But these are invasive, they use radiology, you have to undergo endoscopy. The uptake of these screening programs

is only about 60% overall. So using this as a complement to people who would otherwise not undergo any screening, I think that would be already a success. Professor Anna Hsu. It's been known for some time that head injuries can increase the chances of developing neurodegenerative diseases like dementia. But now scientists have looked at whether one of the causes of this post-injury dementia could be the reactivation of dormant viruses in the brain – viruses that all of us carry around unwittingly for much of our lives. Dana Cairns from Tufts University in Boston is the lead author of the new study. She explained its findings

to Rebecca Kesby. We basically found that if you introduce a latent herpes infection and then you introduce even a mild blow it causes the latent virus to become reactivated or awakened and then to introduce some of these negative Alzheimer's proteins. We found that the concussion itself actually induces quite a bit of inflammation and that inflammation is what kickstarts the reactivation of the virus. Could direct mechanical damage still be the main cause of Alzheimer's? I mean in theory, yes, but we have evidence to believe that it's not just the physical trauma resulting in these Alzheimer's-like characteristics. Reason being when we took these brains that were uninfected compared to those that had this

latent herpes infection, the ones that had been uninfected really had minor damage. They had inflammation but on its own there were no Alzheimer's proteins really showing up. However, in contrast, the ones that had this latent HSV infection really showed proteins specifically associated with Alzheimer's disease. So it's likely that there is some component and I think more research will answer that more definitively in the future. Some of this does sound quite frightening that we're all walking around with these viruses in our brain that could be triggered and cause Alzheimer's. But I suppose there

is hope in all of this as well because it means we understand the origins of that disease better. And I mean, is there a chance that you could even treat any potential viruses, say after a head injury or something? That's exactly what we're thinking is that, for example, like if you were to have a mild blow to the head on the football pitch and the standard of care currently is really just kind of rest and painkillers as needed but outside of that there's nothing else. So to your point, we could also offer then perhaps a course of antivirals in addition to that just to stave off potential neurodegeneration in the future.

Dona Cairns of Tufts University in Boston. Next to a story that many listeners are showing an interest in online, how a glass of milk a day could reduce the risk of bowel cancer, according to a new study from Oxford University and Cancer Research UK. Our health reporter, Philippa Roxby, told us more. This was one of the largest studies to date looking at diet and the links with bowel cancer. And there was half a million women in the UK were analysed over 16 years along with their diet, what they ate. Now this was a big observational study rather than a trial. So what they had to do was try and work out which aspects of their diet might have influenced whether they got bowel cancer or not. So there's a

little bit of guesswork involved but when they number crunched it they came out with this interesting finding that it was the calcium in food that potentially was helping to lower the risk of of bowel cancer. We know that dairy products are a beneficial thing when it comes to cancer but what this study found that it was probably not necessarily the dairy products but it was the calcium in food. So not just in dairy but in non-dairy because you find calcium in all sorts of things that could be slightly reducing that risk. Calcium as it goes through the colon

and goes through the bowel binds with some of the acids from food and that stops them damaging the lining of the bowel. So that's the main theory at the moment. Philippa Roxby. Now Covid saw many people lose their sense of smell. For many of those who did it was disorientating to say the least but a new survey suggests that many people simply don't care about smell. A quarter of American college kids questioned said that they would give up their sense of smell in order to keep their smartphone. Six per cent of respondents said they'd happily give up their sense of smell to watch Netflix. Maybe people hadn't thought about it carefully

when they answered the questions. But a new book about smell suggests that we do undervalue it. Jonas Ollifsen is a Swedish psychologist at Stockholm University. The title of his book is The Forgotten Sense. He's been talking to Evan Davis. The sense of smell is among the senses that most people would lose if they had to lose one. And a lot of people would actually lose their sense of smell rather than losing their phones or their pinky toe, which I think is, would be really a mistake because the sense of smell is so important to us when we enjoy food,

for example. Most of that flavor comes from smells that are released in the mouth and travel through our throat and up to the nasal cavity. We think of it as a taste but it's really smell. So if you try to pinch your nose next time you have a meal you wouldn't want to do that ever again because the food experience would be quite terrible. And you see also that people who lose their sense of smells, they are more vulnerable to depression. And that tells you something about how the sense of smell kind of connects us with the world around us. So I think that's like a more existential side of the sense of smell that people don't really realize.

Now, I think one of the most interesting things you talk about in this book is the link between people's feelings about smell and their worldview, their political view to a very large extent. Just explain to us what's going on here, why there could be a link between my smell and my politics. Yeah, so there is the longstanding notion in social psychology that kind of authoritarianism is essentially a way to avoid disease, to avoid being infected. So you want to keep your distance, you want society to be very rigid and different groups of people

don't interact with each other so much. You have like a close knitted circle, you prioritize family and your close friends and you don't want a lot of foreigners coming to your country, et cetera. So like there's a cluster of values that can be and has been linked to this notion of contagion. And the sense of smell is a way for us to avoid that. to this notion of contagion.

And the sense of smell is a way for us to avoid things that can make us sick. And that's why the sense of smell is linked to disgust so much that when we smell something that we don't like, we are disgusted by it and we avoid it very strongly. So we hypothesize that people who are very disgusted by body order, that they would also have this kind of authoritarian disposition. And that's what we've found now in a number of different studies. And this correlation is found all over the world actually. So we've done a global study on this effect and found that it is true basically everywhere

you go. What's your favorite smell, Jonas? I love the smells of my family members. Those are hard to beat, obviously, but I love coffee smell, coffee and pastries. Cinnamon is popular in Sweden and the cardamom. Jonas Ollofsson, a Swedish psychologist. Finally, after all that health news, let's go back in time to end this edition. Back to the days of the pharaohs, to be precise, and some of the most remarkable finds made in Egypt for more than a century.

Archaeologists there have unveiled what they're saying is one of the greatest discoveries since the tomb of Tutankhamun. The site near Luxor includes previously undiscovered burial sites along with a temple to a ruler widely regarded as one of the greatest female pharaohs. Carla Conti has this report. This is the stunned reaction of Egyptian archaeologist Zai Hawass as he takes in his remarkable discovery. He and his team are on the Nile's West Bank in Luxor, Egypt, and all around him lay more than 1,000 intricately decorated stone blocks and other fragments dating back 3,600 years. They showcase the reign of Queen Hatshepsut, one of only a few female pharaohs to rule during the ancient Egyptian dynasty.

1,500 decorated blocks, the most beautiful scene I've ever seen in my life with the color. And this is the first time that we do have a final program of the decoration of a temple dated to the Thinth Dynasty." Among the treasures unearthed by Awos's team are bronze coins bearing the image of Alexander the Great, children's toys made of clay and beautifully crafted scarabs. Each item tells a story of life, death and the belief systems of the pharaohs and their people. Zai Hawass described the discovery as the most significant royal find on Luxor's West

Bank since Tutankhamun's tomb was unearthed in the 1920s. The mission turns to preserving these archaeological wonders for future generations. The artefacts are being carefully analysed and restored, with plans to showcase them to the public, ensuring Egypt's historical record continues to fascinate the world. Karl-Akonté. And that's all from us for now. But there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. 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 Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Chris Kuzaris and the producer was Mark Duff. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritz and until next time, goodbye. For just as long as Hollywood has been Tinseltown, there have been suspicions about what lurks behind the glitz and glamour. Concerns about radical propaganda in the motion pictures. And for a while, those suspicions grew into something much bigger and much darker. Are you a member of the Communist Party?

Or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? I'm Una Chaplin, and this is Hollywood Exiles. It's about a battle for the political soul of America and the battlefield was Hollywood. All episodes of Hollywood Exiles from the BBC World Service and CBC are available now. Search for Hollywood Exiles wherever you get your podcasts.