Global News Podcast - Jordanian helicopters begin flying in aid to Gaza

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

Jordanian helicopters begin flying in aid to Gaza. Also: UN says hospitals in Goma in eastern Congo are struggling to cope after advance by M23 rebels, and 40 years on the computer game Tetris is still going strong.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. control. We dive into the history of the waterway and ask whether Washington has any leverage. That's 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 Tuesday 28th January these are our main stories. We hear from our correspondent who's been on a rare aid trip with the Jordanian military inside Gaza. Hospitals overwhelmed, dead bodies on the streets. What can stop the battle for Goma raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo?

And the dramatic rise of the new chatbot DeepSeek and the concerns from some that it's a vehicle for Chinese spy. Also in this podcast. You would take the cells from this particular individual and effectively reprobe them back into their original state and then develop sperm or eggs from there. It could be a reality within the next 10 years we examine the ethical issues. As hundreds of thousands of Gazans continue to walk back to find what's left of their homes in northern Gaza, Jordanian helicopters have begun deliveries of aid to the territory,

the first since the ceasefire was declared. The BBC joined the mission, the first since the ceasefire was declared. The BBC joined the mission, the first international media organisation to fly into Israeli-held territory in southern Gaza since this ceasefire. Our correspondent, Fergal Keane, was on board. He's now back at the Al-Zakah airbase in Jordan and he told me what he saw. We took off from here at about 10 o'clock in the morning and travelled for about an hour and then crossed over into Israeli territory and then down towards Gaza. And I suppose the first most

noticeable thing was just a scene of desolation in front of us as we approached the Gaza Strip. We went to an area in the south and it is very close to Canunas. When we landed they kept the rotor blades running, we jumped off the helicopter to get out of the way really of the Jordanian forces who were delivering the aid. Now what was taken in this morning, and you can probably hear choppers behind me at the moment, still ongoing this operation,

but they brought in medicine in particular and also baby formula. Why is that important? Well, if you put those things, for example, on a long road journey and there have been lots of road convoys from Jordan, there is a danger that if they get delayed, then they will spoil. And the need for medicine is acute. The health system in Gaza has been absolutely battered by months and months, 15 months of this war. And so that's why this

air bridge, as the Jordanians are calling it, and which they've been joined in by the Italians, by the United Kingdom, is absolutely essential in terms of getting medical help to people who need it most. Fergal, that aid, as you said, went into the south. What do we know about aid getting in for the hundreds of thousands of Gazans returning to Gaza City, further north, where the need is going to be huge, isn't it? I think most of that is going to be going in at the moment via road. Now, we have had a significant increase in the number of trucks being allowed to cross the border and bring aid in.

But, you know, you set it against the scale of the need and the months and months and months of backed up need where you have around two million people displaced. I mean, you think about that figure, most of them with no proper home to go back to and roughly the same number of people dependent on international aid. This is a huge need and it's going to be an ongoing one.

It's not going to be a crisis that fades from the headlines. We've been speaking to one of the people who stayed in Jalabiya in northern Gaza throughout the conflict. His name is Saeb Al-Zar and we asked him what it was like now being reunited with some of his relatives who've returned home. Wow, it was yesterday, it was just another historical moment. The first one was when the ceasefire applied. This was the second historical moment that we could not believe.

It was just a dream to meet our people again, to see them again for a minute. We felt that we will never see them again. So it was somehow like, you know, uniting the bodies with the souls of your beloved people. It was just a minute that I cannot describe to you the feelings. Can you build a life for your family there? Is it safe? Is it possible to carry on living in the north of Gaza?

We believe that we are the land owner. So no matter what, we will build it again. We will rebuild it again. So it doesn't matter as much as they destroy the houses the trees The roads we will do it again. We will rebuild it again We do believe in the future and then we have a hope and we will live or lose hope You know losing a hope means losing your life. So we have a hope that yes tomorrow is coming It doesn't matter even if you just have a land you will start your life again and you will rebuild your home again. Saeb Al-Zar speaking to Nick Robinson.

Conditions in Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo seem to be getting worse. There's intense fighting going on between the Rwandan backed M23 rebels, the Congolese government and UN troops. Four more South African peacekeepers have been killed, bringing it to a total of 13 over the past few days. Up to two million people are in the city, including hundreds of thousands displaced by conflict. Jens Larké is a spokesman for the United Nations Humanitarian Office. This morning our colleagues in the Democratic Republic of the Congo report heavy small arms fire and mortar fire across the city and the presence of many dead bodies in the streets.

We have reports of rapes committed by fighters, looting of property, including of a humanitarian warehouse and humanitarian and health facilities being hit. Hospitals in Goma are reportedly overwhelmed, struggling to manage the influx of wounded people. Our reporter Emery Makumeno is in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa. He told me about the latest fighting in Goma. Things became tense again with the intensive gunshots and heavy artillery being shot in some parts of the city. People have been indoors since last Friday. They can't go out, they have no water, they have no electricity, food is

running short and people don't even know. They can only see what they are able to see from their windows. So they don't know who is controlling the city of Goma and conflicting reports claim that the government had pushed away the rebels and they've taken like 80% of the city but the on the side of the empty entity they are saying that they are still gaining ground so it is very difficult to confirm let alone that the internet is jammed there in Goma, so people are not even to show people what they are able to see. And Emery, I'm hearing that the World Food Programme is saying that they've stopped

food deliveries and that is devastating for many people in Goma because a lot of people are living in refugee camps, aren't they? Goma itself has relatively two million residents and this has been added by 800,000 internally displaced people. Most of them were living at the outskirts of the city, north of Goma or the west of Goma. Because of the fighting, many who could find foster family have somehow left the IDP camps and flocked into the city, either in churches or in schools, wherever possible. They can hide themselves from the front line, which is now currently with them in Goma. So the situation is that people are now in need of food and they don't know how long they are going to stay indoors before they have access to anything to eat.

And Emory, what are we hearing about the hopes of a ceasefire? Currently there is nothing concretely on the table so people have been fighting, gaining ground. The M23 has massively taken more territories until they have captured Goma and at the moment the government is adamant that there won't be any negotiation, any direct negotiation with M23 that they label as a terrorist organization. So this is like the kind of standoff we are experiencing now. Emory McImeno in Kinshasa.

The return of Donald Trump to the White House has raised expectations of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 remains the largest war in Europe since the Second World War. Moscow now has control of one-fifth of its neighbors' territory. The UN says at least 12,300 civilians have been killed in Ukraine. Our senior international correspondent Ola Gheran reports now from the southern city of Zaporizhzhia on how one bereaved family feels about the prospect of negotiations. I'm making my way across the rubble at the side of a building. It's a four story apartment block and one whole section has been torn off, strewn around here on the ground, you can still see some belongings from those who lived here. I can see a child's shoe and there's a woman's handbag over there, and a small blue soft toy.

Among those who were killed here were several generations of one family. One is very sick. It's hell on Earth. 27 and her grandson Adam who was just 17 months old. When this tragedy happened the three of them had just come back from a walk. Just at that moment a bomb fell. It flew into the house and exploded right there. So in one moment we lost almost the whole family. Adam's grandfather, Serhii, tells me Russia's bomb destroyed many lives and the dead must be avenged. He says Ukraine must fight on, not talk peace.

My view in negotiations is negative. So many of our people have already died. That is no longer possible. If the enemy is on our territory, the only contact we can have with them is combat. In a cold, windswept cemetery at the edge of the city, we saw the results of combat. All around in the distance there are graves of Ukrainians killed in the war. Lots of soldiers are buried here. Blue and yellow flags flutter above their graves. But many of those buried here are civilians. I was in this graveyard about a year and a half ago,

and it's gotten much bigger since then. Julia weeps at a grave surrounded by teddy bears where her grandson and her daughter lie buried together. My beautiful daughter, sorry I could not save you. Yulia knows that life goes on elsewhere, but she asks the world to remember that there is still a war in Ukraine and that Russia is still killing civilians. Oleg Erin reporting from the southern Ukrainian city of Zaphzhia. More than 200 years ago the author Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, her novel about a young scientist who creates a creature in a scientific experiment. For some people our next story may have echoes of that and ethical issues to grapple with too. Scientists are making such rapid

progress that the board of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority here in the UK has been told that lab-grown human eggs and sperm might be a reality within the next 10 years. Justin Webb spoke to Sarah Franklin, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge about the ethics of this. But first, Professor Robin Lovell-Badge from the Francis Crick Institute told him how all this would work using skin cells or some other kind of tissue as the starting point. The idea is that they're reprogrammed back to an early embryonic state to give so-called induced pluripotent stem cells. These correspond

in many ways to cells in the very early embryo and we know that they can give rise to any cell type in the human body, including germ cells. Give us a kind of case study as it were of who it was who would be potentially helped by that ability. One of the main drivers is to deal with, for example, children who've had cancers and therefore they've had radiotherapy or chemotherapy which has left them infertile and it's very difficult with a child to take ovarian or testicular tissue and then preserve their fertility

that way in a freezer if you like. If you could take a skin biopsy or blood cells or whatever and reprogram those into these induced periobotan stem cells, then we know in the mouse at least you can coax these cells to specialize to give you the germ cells, which are the cell type that will ultimately give rise to sperm or eggs. The techniques aren't quite there yet, but it's going to happen. You would be not limited by age. Someone could have left cells behind and died. As long as you have a tissue sample, you could make, in theory, you could make sperm or eggs from those cells.

And that, Professor Franklin, is a much more difficult area society-wide. Yeah, I mean I think age and even mortality aren't actually now necessarily limits to reproduction given to given so many other interventions in biology that have become possible, but they are definitely the subject of much more social discussion in terms of what people feel feel what you might say comfortable with or uncomfortable with. And in general, I think that discussion should be welcomed. You know, that's the way society will decide what the limits should be. That's the way society will decide what, you know, should be encouraged

and what should be supported financially and so forth. And that is exactly what has happened with IVF. Are there areas, Professor Lovell-Badge, that will simply be possible but clearly right from the beginning just will be banned legally and areas that we can think of quite easily? One is, I think it was referred to as solo parenting, I don't really like that phrase because of the other ways of solo parenting, but where you take cells and reprogram them back and then get, in theory, you could get sperm and eggs from a man. That's basically done in mice. And so you would have one individual having their own child.

It's not possible to do it from a woman because you cannot make sperm without having cells which originally had a Y chromosome. So that would be very technically challenging. And then there are other issues which are contentious but maybe slightly less dangerous. So that one is really dangerous, is where you have multiple parents or you can have multiple generations occurring in the lab before you then find out what an embryo would look like. Yeah, and that whole business then, Professor Franklin, of what a biological parent is,

because in theory you could then have a parent who was the embryo, and the people who donated the skin would be your grandparents, and that feels like something very different from what we are used to, to put it mildly. I think if we did have those sorts of possibilities, what would happen? There would be discussion about how to regulate those. And as Robin said, there are already very clear limits on, you know, clear red lines on what is impermissible. Historically, those in the case of IVF and other technologies like this have been upheld on the whole. So there is reason to assume that the same process will happen again. And although the biological possibilities are new, that in itself has become something

that has happened over and over that a biological limit, say for example that women can use these because of the Y chromosome will probably most likely also be overcome at some point in the future. So, the idea that biology itself will provide the limits hasn't really been the case for quite a while. Sarah Franklin, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Cambridge and professor Robin Lovell-Badge from the Francis Crick Institute. Still to come we hear about Bishop Marion Byrd's sermon that upset Donald Trump.

It was based upon very faith driven values, that is my prerogative from which to speak. I'm Jonny Diamond from the Global Story Podcast, where we're asking why Donald Trump has set his sights on the Panama Canal. The extraordinary trade route was built by the United States, but it's long been under Panamanian control. We dive into the history of the waterway and ask whether Washington has any leverage. That's the Global Story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. A few days ago, not many people had heard of DeepSeek.

Now the Chinese chatbot seems to have blown the global AI race wide open. It's shocked to the top of the US app store on Monday, overtaking its American rival, ChatGPT. And its creators say it cost a mere $6 million, compared to the billions poured into AI by the likes of Microsoft and Google. As well as sending a wave of panic through the Western tech world, it's also raised questions of security. It's only a week since the short-lived ban of TikTok, based on concerns that the Chinese-owned social media app is harvesting US data. Will DeepSeek raise similar alarm bells? Joe Tidy is our cyber correspondent.

Well, interestingly, that didn't come out of the press conference yesterday from President Trump. So the idea that DeepSeek could be a threat to the US public who are downloading in their droves Doesn't seem to be an issue at the moment What we are seeing are some of security experts Tearing down the kind of privacy policy of this app saying oh look at all these things it collects for example keystroke data So it will measure the rhythm in which you type out your messages to DeepSeek to kind of identify you And it will store everything that you ask

it, everything it answers, all your personal details that you put in when you sign up, all the kind of stuff to be honest that every social network and major app uses including the AI giants like OpenAI. The difference here of course is where that data is going. There aren't many calls at the moment saying that you know we should watch out for this, this is a potential danger to the West but that might grow. Now there are inherent biases with all chatbots of this type we've seen them in the past in favor of white males if you like in the Western world. The algorithm for deep-seek seems to be slightly different there seems to be an in-built China friendly censorship bias.

Yeah it's really interesting so when you type in something like what happened in Tiananmen Square it'll start giving you a response, it'll write out a couple of paragraphs and then it will suddenly delete it and say sorry we can't give you that answer and that goes the same when you type in for example why is Winnie the Pooh a controversial character in China and it starts writing what it's to do with uprisings against President Xi then it again deletes it so you kind of you start reading it and you get the answer and then suddenly it goes away. So what it's doing here is it's using the same kind of data that all these

models are trained on, i.e. the open internet, and then it's thinking again about giving the answers. So if that is happening, you've got to think that in the future, that's going to annoy customers, consumers of this, isn't it? So that might put the brakes on it being a world leader. Potentially, but then again you've got to think about how people are using these AI models. They're using them to do maths problems or coding issues or write emails or help them

decipher certain university grade level PhD manuscripts or whatever research papers. So I don't think this kind of stuff will come up that much. And yes, you're right when you said that there is a bias in all of these models because they're only trained on the internet. Most of the internet is in English and it's mostly leaning towards sort of Western ideals of values and our kind of versions of history. So yes, I think it could potentially be embarrassing for DeepSeek if it tries to become the leading worldwide AI companion, but how much of that stuff is kind of grinding up against daily

life? How much of those kind of fact-checking historical records are a problem for people? I don't know. Joe Tidy, our cyber correspondent. Nigeria has a very high number of children who don't go to school but abductions by armed gangs and growing insecurity especially in the north are making things worse. There have been hundreds of mass abductions since 2019 forcing many schools to close. Some parents have told the BBC they won't let their children return to class because they fear for their safety. As the world marks the International Day of Education, the BBC's Azizat Ololua and her team gained access to Kiruga

in northwestern Kaduna state, where a mass school abduction took place last year. That was the mood in Kiruga in March 2024, after at least 280 students were abducted from the community primary and secondary schools. 14-year-old Mariam Alhassam was one of them. Mariam and the other children were held for 17 days before gaining freedom. A week after the attack, Idris, Mariam's father, who had also been kidnapped before, decided to move his family from Kuriga.

He only went back to pick up Mariam after the students were freed. I relocated my family because of insecurity. Bandits attacked us constantly in Kuriga. They migrated to Riga Sa, a train station community on the outskirts of Kaduna State capital. Here, they joined some other families who also fled their villages due to insecurity. But life in Riga Sa is hard. Idris, who was a farmer back home, is now jobless, just like the other men and women

here. Their economic challenges have forced the children to drop out of school. Life in Rigaça is very tough. No work, no food, no education for our children, let alone access to health care. There is no school nearby, and we are afraid to send our children far away because we are still traumatized.

While older kids go out scavenging, the younger ones like Mariam stay home to get Islamic education. The journey to Kuriga is a very high-risk one. Many villages along this route have been deserted due to constant attacks by criminal gangs. There is no communication network on the road and in Kuriga. This heightened the risk our team faced getting rare access to the community. I am standing inside the compound of the primary and secondary schools where the 280 students were abducted from in March 2024.

Although the government renovated the structures after the attack, the schools were closed for eight months, leaving the children in the village without access to education. Awal Adamu was one of the kidnapped students. Although most children in Kuriga are happy the schools have been reopened, Awal says he's not going back. AWAL, Former Uyghur Refugee I don't want to go back to school because I am still afraid and traumatised. I am afraid that the government could return and kidnap us again. I am the only one that knows the challenges I faced. I prefer to be a farmer than go back to school.

According to UNICEF, 18.3 million children are out of school in Nigeria. Most of them are in the north, with insecurity and poverty as contributing factors. According to UNICEF, 18.3 million children are out of school in Nigeria. Most of them are in the north, with insecurity and poverty as contributing factors. Christian Mundoate, UNICEF's representative in Nigeria, wants to see more action in solving the out-of-school problem. There should be an investment in safety of school, an investment in the recruitment of more teachers, mainly teachers that are from these same communities or nearby communities. Kaduna State Governor Ubassani says he is addressing the issue. For Mariam and the other

children in Riga Sa, they hope it will be safe to return home soon in order to re-enroll in school. I feel very sad spending too much time out of school, but I hope to continue my education one day. That report was by the BBC's Azizat Olalua. The bishop, who was criticised by Donald Trump after she asked him to have mercy on immigrants, has told the BBC that some of the new president's policies are not in the best interests of our survival as a species.

Marian Edgar Budd, the spiritual leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, said in a sermon last week at a prayer service attended by Mr Trump that his inauguration had provoked fear among LGBT and immigrant communities. Mr Trump responded by calling her a radical left hardline Trump hater. The bishop has been speaking to James Kumrasami. He asked her what her thoughts had been when she'd written the sermon. I had been working with the themes of unity for some time, thinking quite a lot about what is unity in a country like ours and is it even possible.

What some have called the culture of contempt, the outrage that we are so accustomed to now as normative speech and the ways we characterize each other. So I was trying to address, okay, if we're going to be a country praying and working for unity, we have to have some foundations, foundations of dignity, honoring the dignity of every human being

and speaking with humility because we all are imperfect. And then I realized as I was listening to my heart and then also listening to the inauguration ceremonies that there really was a fourth and that we were lacking in our public discourse right now, mercy, compassion, a recognition of the people in our land who are in places of great vulnerability now. And I made the decision to appeal to the president after acknowledging his power and acknowledging that he had been elected and that he felt spared by God to do this work, that this God was a God of mercy. Toby So given that you say you wanted to speak for those who did not feel included by the president. Does

that mean you were speaking for people he would consider as political opponents? Was there a political element to this? The political element is simply that it was a prayer surface for the nation and whenever we are gathered as human beings, we are in fact gathered in the polis, in the people. So yes, it's always political. It wasn't partisan and it was based upon very faith-driven values, that is my prerogative from which to speak. I did want to counter what I thought was a gross mischaracterization of immigrants, for example, of being dangerous criminals. Because while there are some criminals in the immigrant population, as there are in all populations, it's a very, very small

group of people relative to the whole. The vast majority are not criminals at all. Mason. As well as talking about immigrants, you talked about people being scared. I mean, are you scared now? Dr. Soto I'm worried. I have been for some time. I respect the office of the presidency and I respect the results of the election, but I do feel that many of the policies that are now either being reversed or promoted are not in the best interest of our people, of our survival as a species. So yeah, I would say there's good reason for worry. Personally though, after the speech and the reaction you got from the President and I

think from some of his supporters as well, does that worry you? It's no fun being on the receiving end of some of the statements that have been made, but no, I'm very well supported and even protected. There are far more people who are in greater danger than I. Bishop Marian Edgar Budd. Now do you recognize this? It is the sound that accompanies Tetris, that addictive and rather stressful computer game where different shape blocks rain down from the top of the screen piling up if you don't get them in the right places in time. Well it is now 40 years old and

still going strong. Hank Rogers is co-founder of the Tetris company. He told the BBC how he first came across the game. It started at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 1988. It was made originally by a Soviet developer. Nobody thought it was going to be a big deal, least of all the company that actually published it. I went and talked to them and said, look, I want this game for the Japanese market. I would stand in line and wait for my turn to play, you know, every game that was at the show, or try to anyway, and I get a few minutes to play every game. And so I need to sample every as many games as possible. In the case of Tetris, I found myself

standing in the line four times, which meant that I was hooked to the game. I mean, right then and there. I had to go back, I had to go back, I had to go back. That means we had at least one customer, me. And I was completely hooked on the game. And the simplicity of the game did not bother me because I play a Japanese board game called Go.

And if you look at it, it's the deepest, most interesting game of board games, but it's just black and white stones at the end of the day. When finally the negotiations started happening, I was negotiating against the biggest software company in Japan at the time. And they finally passed on it because in 1988, they said that the game was too retro. Can you imagine that? So by the way Tetris is still around and they're gone. I think it's going to be around just like football is going to be around forever. It's not going to go away anytime soon. Heng Rogers, co-founder of the Tetris Company. And that's all from us for now but there will be a new edition of the Tetris company. pod. This edition was mixed by Sid Dundon and the producer was Tracy Gordon. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles and until next time, goodbye.

I'm Jonny Diamond from the Global Story Podcast where we're asking why Donald Trump has set his sights on the Panama Canal. The extraordinary trade route was built by the United States, but it's long been under Panamanian control. We dive into the history of the waterway and ask whether Washington has any leverage. That's the Global Story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.