Global News Podcast - First victims in New Orleans attack named

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

Details have emerged about some of the 15 people killed in New Orleans on New Year's Day. Also: Syria's new Islamist-led administration outlines changes to education, and huge footprints reveal how dinosaurs got around

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This is the BBC World Service meeting Palermo's neighbourhood dogs. These dogs are known by everyone in their districts, but owned by no one. But then with tourism, I have to say that in some areas, dogs can no longer be found. If we lose these dogs, Georgia says that we're losing a thread connecting us to the natural world. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts, The Dogs of Palermo.

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles and at 14 Hours GMT on Thursday, the 2ndnd of January these are our main stories. The first victims of the New Year's Day attack in New Orleans are named. Syria's new Islamist-led administration has updated the school curriculum, prompting concerns in some communities. Forty years on from the deadly gas leak at an Indian factory, toxic waste is finally removed from the site. Also in this podcast, El Salvador's government records a record low homicide rate, but all

is not as it seems and... I was basically clearing the clay and I was hitting a hump and I thought it's just an abnormality in the ground but then it got to another about three meters long it was hump again. What a set of huge footprints tells us about how dinosaurs got around. Details are emerging of some of the 15 people killed in New Orleans as they celebrated the new year. A truck was driven at high speed into crowds before the driver was shot dead by police. The FBI has identified the attacker as Shamshud Din Jabbar, a US citizen and army veteran from

Texas. The families of some victims have released their names before the authorities complete post-mortem examinations. Just before we recorded this podcast I got an update from our correspondent in New Orleans, Tom Bateman. I asked him what's behind speculation that Shamsher Din-Jabbar wasn't the only suspect involved. It was a theme that was emerging throughout New Year's Day from the FBI really suggesting that he could have had accomplices. I think one of the elements to this was that they had seen some security camera footage which at first officials believed may have been people planting improvised explosive

devices. Now our understanding is that they have stood down that belief over that particular bit of footage. They think that was actually innocent but we have still had the continuing line from the authorities that they believe others are involved. The Louisiana Attorney General last night saying that she was certain that there were likely other individuals, multiple individuals she said involved and one of the parts of the inquiry they're focusing on there is an Airbnb property a few miles from where we are here in the heart of the city where a fire broke out early New Year's Day morning before

the attack took place and the Attorney General saying that their line of inquiry there is that may have been used to purpose improvised explosive devices you know potentially by Jabbar and other accomplices. Meanwhile, Tom, we're beginning to hear more details about the people who died, aren't we? Yeah, and the first thing that strikes you, I mean, the police haven't confirmed officially any of the names yet, but they're being widely reported by local media, is just the ages

of those involved. You know, this was three o'clock in the morning on New Year's Day. Virtually all of the victims' names so far are in their 20s or late teens. These were young people and some of them well known Martin Beck who was a well known American college football player. His brother posting tributes to him on social media. Love you always brother he has said. Another an 18 year old aspiring nurse Nikaaira Dedu, who had her mother said snuck out with a friend and another 18 year old cousin to come to the New Year's Day party here where we are. Her relatives describing how they

had seen the truck, fled out of its path only to realize that she had succumbed and been hit by the truck itself. I want to imagine that the atmosphere is still pretty dour there and a lot of security around. Absolutely, I mean we're standing at a spot at the moment where parallel with Bourbon Street, that very famous thoroughfare and a big police closure continues around this area. I'm looking at a Louisiana State Trooper van and state troopers opposite us here Barriers still in place as they continue to search for evidence on the street itself I mean one thing I would say about New Orleans and particularly around here is just the sense of resilience you get

This is a place that is absolutely filled with music every street corner you pass Every music venue a bar you walk past continues to blare out music. People are still coming here because of why people come to New Orleans but people are concerned and continuing to come back to the scene to pay tribute. Tom Bateman in New Orleans. Despite the Islamist nature of the new authorities in charge of Syria they've made a point of saying that they will govern for all Syrians and protect the rights of minorities. But there are growing concerns that will not be the case in practice. Now the Education Ministry has posted the new school curriculum on

Facebook and it has done nothing to allay those fears. I heard more from our Middle East regional editor, Sebastian Us Usher who's in Damascus. This has been published ahead of the new school term which begins in a couple of days and it's for all ages. I mean the things that kind of stand out that people have picked out here are for example in science teaching that evolution will not be taught anymore, the Big Bang Theory won't be taught anymore, the Big Bang Theory won't be taught. In religious studies, some people feel that there's been a move more towards kind of strict Sunni Islamic way of

thinking. There has been the removal also in religious studies of any reference to pre-Islamic gods and goddesses and pictures of their statues, which make up very much the history, obviously, of the country are gone. Queen Zenobia, one of the great herons of Syrian history back in the Roman era, seems to have been somewhat diminished in terms of the coverage that she will get. As you would expect, everything to do with the Assad era also is gone. That includes poems praising the Assads, but also in history, in French, all the examples that are given of that, they've been excised. I mean, I think that was done just bang to get rid of it without any kind of sense of changing it or what they'll do with it. So it's a work in progress and clearly something that the officials felt had to be done before the reopening of schools.

And, Sebastian, which of the changes you've mentioned do you think will most worry minority groups then? Well, it's partly minority groups. I mean, what I've felt in the way that it's been reacted to is it's really this sense of civil society which of course with the fall of the Assad regime has had a resurgence and many people who were exiled or in exile have returned even if it's only for a short time and a meeting and trying to think up you know ways that they can push Syria forward in this new era and they feel that this is something that they need to nip in the bud now and what they're particularly grieved by is not just these examples I've given but the fact that the authorities

are in place now have made decisions without input from the whole of society which is what they've been saying. There's a national dialogue conference that's due to take place possibly this month, which is meant to bring all these communities together to discuss the way forward, and they feel that this has preempted that. And because it's education, it's the way that young minds are shaped that seems particularly important. So protests have been called for Friday and any time really until Sunday in an attempt to forestall this. So I think that's really where the alarm has gone off and civil society activists feeling we have to make a stand now, we have to make our

message clear now. Sebastian Asha. In southern Gaza the sandy strip of land along the coast, Almawasi, has been designated by Israel as a safe humanitarian zone. Despite this, Israel has previously attacked the site, accusing Hamas operatives of hiding among displaced people there. Hamas now says the latest Israeli airstrike in the area has killed 11 people, including its police chief and a number of Palestinians sheltering in those makeshift tents. Our Middle East correspondent Yuland Nel is in Jerusalem. We're now hearing of two strikes that have taken place in this Khan Yunus area of what's

called the humanitarian zone. The first of them happened in the early hours of the morning and you can see on social media pictures of tents ablaze and at least 11 people killed there. We heard from a Hamas interior ministry statement the director general of Gaza police and his assistant were among those killed and then we had a separate statement from the Israeli military a short time ago which just addresses one other individual they said was targeted the head of internal security for Hamas in Gaza. And they accuse Hamas of hiding among civilians

in this area and also say that they took steps to avoid harming civilians. But the BBC has also spoken to the father of three boys who were killed in that strike, ages 7 and 11 and 13, their funeral took place a short time ago. And in this latest strike, well the Israeli military says that it's been targeting Hamas fighters using a municipality building in the humanitarian zone, but local people are telling us that it was civilians who were sheltering in this area. That was Y land now. One of the largest discoveries of dinosaur footprints in the world has been revealed in a quarry

in the south of England. The tracks were made 166 million years ago in the Jurassic period. Excavations by Oxford and Birmingham universities found some of the trackways reach 150 metres long. Our science editor Rebecca Morell went to take a look. Dewar's Farm quarry in Oxfordshire is a hive of activity, with trucks, diggers and tippers excavating the limestone from the ground.

But it's also the site of a remarkable discovery. I was basically clearing the clay and I was hitting a hump and I thought it's just an abnormality in the ground but then it got to another about three metres long it was hump again and then it went another three metres hump again. Gary Johnson is a worker at the quarry and the bumps and dips he uncovered were in fact huge dinosaur footprints. It was so surreal, it really was a bit of a tingling moment really.

This summer, scientists, students and volunteers came to excavate the quarry and they unearthed the largest dinosaur trackways ever found in the UK. This site really is extraordinary, it takes a moment to notice the footprints but when you do you suddenly realise there are hundreds of them running off in various different directions. Now I'm standing next to a trackway made by a sauropod, a huge long-necked dinosaur, its footprints are about a metre long and you can see them evenly paced running across the floor of the quarry. We're trying to extract the earth with a series of trowels in order to reach the bottom of the track. Professor Kirsty Edgar is a micro-paleontologist from the University of Birmingham.

Well this is one of the most impressive track sites I've ever seen. I've been to all of the track sites in the UK now and in terms of scale, in terms of the different types of tracks that we see, the size of the tracks, you step back in Tyre and you can sort of get an idea of what it might have been like these massive creatures just roaming around about their own business. The trackways that crisscross the quarry were made by two different types of dinosaurs. Large four-legged sauropods and a smaller carnivorous dinosaur called Megalosaurus that walked on two legs. Compared to the sauropod prints, which are those large sort of sub-circular prints, this

is smaller. Dr Emma Nicholls is a vertebrate paleontologist from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. It's almost like a caricature of a dinosaur footprint. So it's what we call a tridactyl print. It's got these three toes that are very, very clear in the print. And it's not just one print here. They kind of go off into the distance. Yeah, we've not uncovered the start or the end of this trackway. So in both directions it goes under material in the quarry. These footprints were made 166 million years ago as the animals ambled across the mud in what was once a shallow tropical lagoon.

Something must have happened to preserve these in the fossil record. Professor Richard Butler is a paleobiologist from the University of Birmingham. It might be that there was a storm event, something like that, that came in deposited a load of sediments on top of the footprints and meant that they were preserved rather than just being washed away. He says a footprint can reveal a lot. You can learn things about how that animal moved, you can learn how fast it was moving, you can learn exactly what the environment that it was living in was like. So tracks give us a whole different set of information that you can't get from the bone fossil record.

The future of the footprints isn't yet known, but the scientists are working with the quarries operators and Natural England on options for preserving the site. They believe there could be more footprints, these echoes of our prehistoric past, just waiting to be discovered. That report was by Rebecca Morel. Still to come in the Global News podcast. Football in Paris is a bit all over the place, which means that if you want a big second club, you've got to focus on the long term. I've invested a lot to make a club that is gradually contesting the leadership of PSG." Is the only top-flight football club in Paris about to gain a new rival?

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. When a country announces a record low number of murders, it should be seen as an achievement. But it's also a time for questions. Firstly, is it credible? And secondly, how has it been achieved? Both questions are particularly valid for El Salvador, which only a decade ago had by far the highest homicide rate in Latin America. The government says 114 murders were reported last year.

More evidence President Naib Bukele would say that his campaign against organised and violent crime is working. Our online Latin America editor Vanessa Buschlutte told me what we should make of those claims. I think they have to be taken with a large pinch of salt. If you look at a report which was published this year by the renowned news magazine Foreign Policy, they looked at how these figures were collated. And they found that from 2021, the government of Nayib-Ulkele left out some of the murders which happened in the country. First, for example, they stopped counting those bodies that were found in mass graves or clandestine graves. Then they stopped counting the people who were killed by the police or the military.

And finally, they also stopped counting those who were killed inside prisons and the foreign policy report estimates that the under count amounts to 47 percent. Nevertheless there most people would agree there has been some kind of reduction over the last few years but the way that has been achieved is incredibly controversial. Tell us why. That's right. President Nayib Bukele started declaring a state of emergency some years back and that allowed him to arrest many people and hold them in pretrial detention without any kind of deadline. So 1.6% of the population are actually now in jail. That's one of the

highest incarceration rates in the world. And as a result, the rate of violence in the country has gone down and his measures are incredibly popular. These measures have got a support rate of 92% in the country. But of course human rights and constitutional rights are being trampled on. And also the US Justice Department has accused his government of actually negotiating with some of the gang leaders. So talking to the leaders, the top echelons of these gangs and getting them to kill fewer people or hiding the bodies. So that's something that's happening across Central America where gangs are no longer leaving the bodies lying in the streets or stringing them up at lampposts but just hiding them in clandestine graves and therefore those figures are then massaged.

Vanessa Buschlita. Now in December 1984 one of the world's deadliest gas leaks occurred in a chemical factory in Bhopal, India. Several thousand people died immediately and many more in the years to come from the effects of the gas. Here's how it was reported by BBC correspondent Mark Tully at the time. Hospitals in Bhopal have had to set up tents to treat the victims of gas poisoning. Most of them are suffering from respiratory and eye problems. Some patients say they were afflicted with temporary blindness. Most of them come from the slum areas near the insecticide plant of the multinational union

carbide. Well now 40 years on the Indian authorities have at last moved hundreds of tons of hazardous waste from the site. I heard more from our correspondent in Delhi, Arundhoy Mukherjee. Nearly a dozen trucks were used to transport the waste in tightly packed containers under very stringent security measures. In fact, one official who was overseeing this entire operation was quoted as saying India had not witnessed the movement of hazardous waste at this scale in the past. So what's happened now is that the waste has been moved over 200 kilometres away to a dedicated site where it will now be incinerated.

Officials say that this is going to be done between a period of three and nine months, and a small batch will be burnt first at high temperatures to first examine the impact on the environment. And based on those results, the pace of the incineration for the remaining waste will be decided because many locals and activists in the area have raised red flags saying that when you incinerate this it could pollute the water bodies in the area but the government has denied all of these worries saying all safety measures will be taken into account while going through this process. So for 40 years this waste has been sitting there

at the site of this terrible disaster. Only now is something being done about it. Why has it taken so long? And that is really the big shocker. In fact, court on the 3rd of December last year, just last month incidentally, had given a four week deadline finally to authorities for disposal of the toxic waste. In fact, they even pulled up authorities questioning

why there has been such a long delay in doing this. In fact, they blamed it on inertia by officials. That was the word used and also asked whether authorities were simply waiting for another tragedy to happen. Aaron Dye mentioned there the opposition from some people living near the disposal site. Rajna Dhingra is part of a campaign group seeking justice for the survivors of the Bhopal disaster. It is a big greenwash and a big media frenzy that the government has made this out to be. The waste that has been transported to a substandard facility where it will harm more people there. So this is absolutely no relief to people of Bhopal and actually people and survivors of Bhopal

are very concerned of a slow motion Bhopal that is going to happen in a place 300 kilometers from here in a place called Pithampur where they planned on incinerating this waste and tripling the amount of waste and then burying it in a landfill, which is already leaching and possibly will contaminate the only water source of this another big city called Indore.

That was Roshna Dingra from the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal. For the last 80 years the details of hundreds of thousands of people in the Netherlands accused of collaborating with the Nazis have been tucked away in an archive in The Hague, open only to researchers and direct descendants. From today though anyone will be able to access those files and as you can imagine that's making some of the families of those named rather uncomfortable. Three-quarters of the Dutch Jewish population, more than 100,000 people, were murdered whilst the country was under Nazi occupation during the Second World War. Martin Eichhoff is the director of the NIOID Institute for War, Holocaust

and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. He told the BBC's James Menendez more about the archive. It has more than 300,000 files of individuals who were suspected of collaboration in Dutch society after the German occupation which ended in 1945. And in the end about 20% of them was convicted by a special court. And while the files are part of this central archive, which will now become a public archive due to the Dutch Archive Act. And what we also did in the Netherlands was to make this archive digitally available, so it would become publicly online.

But that was withdrawal, a little bit due to privacy concerns. But it is digitised though, so although people can't access it through the internet, if they go to the archive they will be able to search it in a digital way, is that right? Yeah, exactly. So in the past you could only search on the name of the perpetrators or the suspected perpetrators and now you can also search on the basis of the names of victims. And that's a huge progress of course for historical research, but also it has societal impact for families. Well, let's talk a little bit about that. Are you worried about the possible consequences

of opening this up? I mean, one can imagine that the descendants of people named as collaborators might be nervous. That's true. Well, there are many stakeholders in the first place, of course. There are families. And then I speak of the first, second, third and even the fourth generations of families that have a history of collaboration. But there's also families who were persecuted, being Jewish or having been part of the resistance. I think it's important not to generalize here. There are many organizations in Dutch society who represent these groups, and in general they are in favor of making this information available

online. But there's also the fear of a kind of renewed public condemnation of the families of collaborators involved. And that is, of course, something we should take very serious as well. And why are some of those groups in favour of opening this up? I mean, is there a belief that generally it's better to have all this out there and in public? Again, opinions are different. But I know from talks to these people, I've talked to them that some expect a kind of closure because new information becomes available. And there's also an expectation that it will lead to renewed discussions on the history

of collaboration in Dutch society, which can well be an incentive for a kind of reconciliation on this topic. But you have to be careful because it's a very complex archive, it was a very complex time. Dutch society wanted to restore the rule of law and prevent people from taking personal revenge based on collective hatred. And for us, it's very important that we explain to people that you should not take the information at face value. But the context is important. You should do some source criticism. But I expect and I also see this happening already, that the Second World War and the complexities of living under occupation are discussed again in Dutch society, which is of course a good thing because every generation has new questions. That was Martin Eikhoff. Now if you're a football fan in Paris, there is really only one team

to follow Paris Saint-Germain, PSG as it's known. Unlike other big European capitals, there really is no other top flight Parisian team. Now though that may be about to change, a little known second division club called Paris FC has just been sold to France's richest man Bernard Arnaud in an alliance with the drinks company Red Bull. And as Hugh Schofield reports, their sights are set high. They make a lot of noise, the Paris FC ultras, but let's face it up till now they haven't had that much to chant about. The club's been stuck in Division Two for years,

always nibbling at promotion, never quite making it. Suddenly, though, things are shifting. Big money has come. And with it, the prospect of a place at French football's top table. Yes, it would be great to have a local derby, Paris FC against Paris Saint-Germain, against PSG, that would be great. That's Darren Tullet, presenter on Bein Sports Television, who relishes the idea of, at last, a true Paris football rivalry. They had to create, back in the 90s, a rivalry between PSG and Marseille.

And it really was something which was set up by TV companies and the presidents or owners of the clubs at the time. But if you've got a local rival, that's something which is a little bit more real, isn't it? If you've just got a neighbour from just down the road when he says, knock you off your perch, I think that's kind of exciting. It's an ambitious project, but without being unrealistic. Antoine Arnaud, son of the LVMH luxury goods magnate Berna, is the man in charge of the investment. Teaming up with Red Bull, which has its own expertise in managing football, he's bought Although son of the LVMH luxury goods magnate Bernat is the man in charge of the investment

teaming up with Red Bull, which has its own expertise in managing football, he's bought a majority stake in the club from its owner, French businessman Pierre Ferracchi. When I met Pierre Ferracchi at his headquarters, he told me the plan was to move slowly, nothing too flashy. The main task to get Paris FC up into Division 1 this season, then stay there. Next to PSG, football in Paris is a bit all over the place, which means that if you want a big second club, you've got to focus on the long term. I've invested a lot to make a club that is gradually contesting the leadership of PSG,

but there's a long way to go. And now with the Arnaud and Red Bull, we have the means. Among the fans at Paris FC there are mixed feelings. They pride themselves here at not being PSG. Indeed, many Paris FC fans are ex-PSG fans who left when the Qataris started putting in the mega-money. Members of the Old Clan fan club who meet in a bar near their Charletti Stadium see themselves as the original Paris football fans, unpretentious, authentic working class. working class. The money is both good and bad, says one. Good that will get the spotlight on us, but bad if it attracts the wrong kind of person.

What we don't want is to become a brand like PSG, says another. We don't want to be an image to bring in the stars and sell shirts. Stars are fine, but we just want to be an image to bring in the stars and sell shirts. Stars are fine, but we just want to be a football club. Next stop for Paris FC, a new stadium. Their current one is unsuitable. In the immediate term, they get a share with the rugby club Stade Francais, but later there's the intriguing possibility that they might replace PSG, who are looking to move, at the historic Parc des Princes, which would then ring to a new set of chants.

Hugh Schofield reporting from Paris. 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 Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Sydney Dundon and the producer was Chantal Hartle.

The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles. And until next time, goodbye. The BBC's Global Investigations podcast, breaking major news stories around the world. A BBC investigation finds that Mohammed Al Fayed, former owner of Harrods, was accused of raping five members of staff. Mohammed Al Fayed, former owner of Harrods, was accused of raping five members of staff. Mohammed Al Fayed was like an apex predator. From the top of British society to the heart of global fashion brands. The former boss of clothing brand Abercrombie and Fitch

is accused of exploiting young men for sex. That world has eaten up and spit out a lot of young and attractive guys. Gripping investigations, available to listen to now, with more coming soon. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts, and click, follow, or subscribe so you never miss an episode.