Global News Podcast - Queen: I was assaulted on train

Episode Date: December 31, 2025

Queen Camilla tells the BBC that as a teenager, she was the victim of an attempted indecent assault on a train journey. She says she fought off her attacker and felt furious about the experience for many years afterwards. The Queen has been a long-standing campaigner against sexual violence. Also: delivery workers go on strike in India; why it's been a bumper year for gold and silver; how to create a factory in space; the peril of the albatross in South Africa; and why American music fans can't get enough of Spanish-language tunes. The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail]

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Ankara Desai and at 1600 GMT on Wednesday the 31st of December. These are our main stories. In an interview with the BBC, Queen Camilla has shared publicly for the first time her own experience of an attempted indecent assault. Tens of thousands of app-based delivery workers in India are holding a day-long strike demanding better pay and conditions. And gold and silver are on track to record their biggest and...

annual gains in 46 years. Also in this podcast, we ask what the future might look like for those born into generation beta between 2025 and 2034. And a UK company says it's close to manufacturing materials in space by sending a microwave-sized factory into orbit. What we do in space is we effectively make the sourdough starter. We then bring that starter back to Earth, basically put it into semiconductor-grade ovens, more ingredients and we bake loaves and loaves of semiconductors.

Violence against women remains one of the world's most persistent and under-addressed human rights crises, with very little progress in two decades, according to the World Health Organization and the United Nations. Today, for the first time publicly, Queen Camilla has been speaking about her own experience of an attempted indecent assault as a teenager. She talked about the incident during a discussion on violence against women. A lot of people, myself included, do not know how bad it is out there. The majority of people actually don't want to know. It's been a taboo subject for so long.

People haven't talked about it. You mentioned everybody says, shh, let's change the subject. Do you feel that that was part of your role to try and help move that? Well, I wanted to. I thought, well, if I've got a tiny soapbox to stand on, I'd like to stand on it. That's not a lot I can do except talk to people and get people together. I remember something that had been lurking in the back of my brain for a very long time that when I was a teenager, I was attacked on a train.

And I'd sort of forgotten about it, but I remember at the time being so angry. It was anger. And I thought, why is this sort of boy? I thought it was an old man, was probably not a great deal. Old was a meme. Attacked in what way? On a train. You were on a train.

On a train. Somebody I didn't know. I was reading my book and, you know, this boy, man, attacked me and I did fight back and I remember getting off the train and my mother looking at me and saying, why's your hair standing on end and why's button met him from your coat? Oh, so? It was physical. But I remember anger and I was so furious about it. And it sort of lurked for many years. And I think, you know, when all the subject about domestic abuse came up, and something that I feel very strongly about. Queen Camilla was being interviewed there by Emma Barnett, who spoke later of the significance of her talking candidly about the attempted assault.

The Queen has been a long-time campaigner around this now, shining light on what is happening to women and girls in this country every day. How significant do you feel that moment was when the Queen revealed that? Issues around domestic violence, charities of domestic violence, they have not typically been those with royal patronages in the past. It's only starting to come out of the shadows now, these issues, and yet they are present all the way through our lives. It's just we can't see them easily, we can't hear about them easily.

And I think having the Queen talk about the fact that when she was on a train, she managed to fight off someone who was trying to indecently assault her, so much so her buttons came off on her coat. Her mother noticed how she was, and that she'd sort of still felt that anger now, it is something to bring it out much more into the public. And I think just hearing her talk about it does do an enormous amount. You know, a lot of women have a story.

And like the Queen, they may have not thought about it for years. But, you know, the fact you can now move through train carriages, the fact that you can, you know, go on social media now and see CCTV footage afterwards, things have moved and yet things are not moving still in the right direction when it comes to protecting women and girls. What else did she have to say? The conversation really took in some of the things that people might not know,

especially at the festive period, which can be a really high risk point for women. Emma Barnett speaking to Lucy Hawkins. A minimum salary and insurance, those are just some of the demands by delivery workers in India who've gone on strike today. They deliver goods and groceries for platforms such as Amazon, Uber and Zemato.

The day for the strike, New Year's Eve, was chosen to coincide with one of the busiest days of the year for delivery drivers. I've got more details from our Global Affairs reporter, Ambarasan Etirajan. You have to imagine the way these delivery workers have transformed the way people consume things, not only in India, but also across the globe

where at the press of a few clicks, you get a chicken curry or television set to your home, or grocery items. In fact, many people when I was in Delhi, they don't even go to the shops if you're living on a 25-story building an apartment block.

Just a few clicks, even for one packet of curry leaves. They can just do this without even having to step out of the house. That saves a lot of time. But on the other hand, imagine the condition of those we have to go up to deliver just one parcel.

So we're talking about tens of thousands of people taking part in the strike today. And this industry has grown phenomenally in India. More than 10 million people now. And also they're expecting the number to go up by at least a 20 in the next five to six years. They're what they call as a gig economy. Now, these workers, however, they say they are at the receiving end.

You know, you see them in the, you know, 45 degrees in Delhi, crisscrossing the heat and humidity with these two-wheeler bikes or even bicycles going to various places to deliver and also on time. So what they say, they want a minimum monthly salary. Number one. Number two, they want insurance as they're talking about some people who got injured. They never got any compensation. Other workers had to put in some money to help his family.

For protection, yeah. For protection. And also, they also introduced a new system like 10 minutes. So when I was there in somebody's house, they asked me, do you want something? I said, like, maybe it'll take time. No, he said, no, 10 minutes because now they introduce a new system because these apps are competing with each other to deliver faster. So they come to the neighborhood and have smaller warehouses.

So that puts these workers under further stress. You know, you have to go faster. That means not safe. And also, you have to go up and the lift come down. And they also say sometimes when people cancel orders, the fee was taken from their money, their salary, because they went late or something. So these are some of the issues,

even though the government says they are working out plans for the welfare, but they are going through difficult times. And we are hearing that orders may be delayed today, various apps saying. So only one union is striking, but still it is bringing attention to the plight. Ambarasan Etirajan, A start-up company based here in Britain is a step closer to its goal of manufacturing materials in space.

Taking advantage of the unique zero-gravity environment and the absence of atmospheric gases, SpaceForge hopes to produce next-generation semiconductors for cutting-edge electronics. But how on earth does it all work? The newsrooms David Lewis has been finding out. We live in a time of globalisation. When a company can produce goods cheaper elsewhere, they'll often move countries. but now one British company is moving out of this world. Space forge have sent a 1,000 degrees Celsius furnace into space.

Their plan is to manufacture material for semiconductors, which can be used back on Earth for things like 5G phone masks, communications infrastructure and computing. So why are they passing on our planet? Well, the company insists conditions up there are ideal. The atoms needed line up better in the weightless environment, plus the vacuum of space means contaminants can't snobes. in fact the company argues that semiconductors are 4,000 times purer in space than it currently

makes on earth. It also said they could more than half energy bills in future and in turn slash carbon emissions. Talking of the carbon footprint isn't there as a whopper. Not so, says Chief Executive and co-founder Josh Weston. He insists the highest greenhouse gas emissions is the engineer's transatlantic flight to put the microwave-sized factory onto a rocket for takeoff and then flying them back home again. It was launched on a SpaceX probe earlier this year. Since then, the team has been testing the systems from its mission control in Cardiff, Wales.

Mr Weston told the BBC, Space Forger's role is a bit like baking bread. What we do at Space Forges, we only do one keystone step in the production of semiconductors with respect to the part that we undertake in space. The best way I can describe it is what we do in space is we effectively make the sourdough starter. We then bring that starter back to Earth, where we then basically put it into semiconductor-grade ovens, more ingredients, and we bake loaves and lobes of semiconductors.

That's how we scale it. But this isn't their final frontier. The team is now looking at expanding the Space Factory. That could see them making semiconductor material for 10,000 chips. They're also bringing the old world into the new. Space Forger's engineers are now planning to use a heat shield named Pridwen, after the legendary shield of King Arthur. to protect the spacecraft from the intense temperatures it will experience as it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere.

David Lewis reporting. This year has been the first year of generation beta babies. That's anyone born between 2025 and 2034. So, after Gen Z and Gen Alpha, what do we predict for the future of this generation, particularly with reference to technology? Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist and the author of The Anxious Generation.

Chloe Comby is a writer and author of Generation Zine, their voices, their lives. They have been speaking to Sarah Montague, who asked about what the future look like for those born into Generation Beta, beginning with Chloe. What's very obviously emerging is that either the future is completely dominated by a kind of an online existence and AI and synthetic friends and jobs being done artificially. or I think as the parents of Gen Beter and Generation Alpha

who were kind of the products of growing up online themselves and I have a greater understanding of I think the negative impact of that and are veering much more towards wanting to pull that back a bit and give their children back a kind of a childhood that's lived in the real world but I think we really are at crossroads. Right, partly because Gen Z were so scarred by the online world, they'll be much stricter with their children. Absolutely. To some extent, I think generations are with kind of the unwitting participants in an experiment they didn't really give permission to.

So I think because of that, they're going to be much more conscious about what they let their children consume and look at. Jonathan, when you consider the world that Generation B are sort of coming into, how do you see it? Well, I'd like to step back a bit and ask why we have these different generations. What most of us thought in the 20th century was it's big events like World War II, that gives us the greatest generation, and that gives us the baby boomers are born. right afterwards. But I think what Gene Twenge has shown in her book, Generations, is that technology is at least as important, and nowadays I'd say much more important. And so it's very clear that Gen Z is different from the millennials. If you're born after 1995, it's amazingly sharp the increase in mental illness. So we have a pretty good beginning for Gen Z. That begins

1996 or 1997. Social meeting, the smartphone, I think, is what damaged Gen Z and reduced their their life chances and their mental health. But what's the next technology? Is it TikTok or is it AI? I think we can be confident. AI is going to be much bigger and more destructive and change brains much more than any previous technology. You have no doubt about that.

Oh, yes. AI is much more powerful. It's going to hook kids much more. It's going to make it impossible to know truth much more. So a lot of the things that Chloe just mentioned are going to get much more severe for gen beta for sure and for gen alpha. So I think what we're going to see, we're going to see, parents copying what we call in America the Amish model, which is to say, let's separate

ourselves and let's try raising our kids in a separate world. I don't know that that's the right thing to do, but I think that we're going to see more people trying. I just heard a podcast of how the Amish and the Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn and the Mormons are doing it. And I think those religious communities have a chance of raising their kids with a sense of meaning and purpose in life. I think secular families are going to have a much harder time. Are there not going to be some good things that flow from AI that will benefit this generation? I would say one of the really interesting things talking to Generation Alpha in particular is that they're already viewing AI lots of them quite negatively and they're

viewing AI is something that's benefiting a very, very small minority and already flowing down and having quite negative effects on the majority. And the biggest example I can think of at the moment is the job market. It's profoundly panicking younger Gen Zs and Gen A's. But I think the positive is they don't view AI quite as romantically as people viewed, I think, lots of online things 10 years ago. Okay. And Jonathan, isn't that? I mean, we're talking about Generation Beta, and so I know it's some distance in the future. Won't a lot of the challenges have worked their way through, just as there's been a pushback on social media? I don't think so. In the past, technological change brings all kinds of benefits, and then there are growing pains. And over time, we adapt, and it takes a few decades. But things are moving so fast now.

It takes us decades to understand what's happening to us, but the pace of change is now so fast. And I'd like to make another point. Technology helps us achieve our goals. Technology helps us do things more quickly and easily. So there are many uses of AI for adults. But children need to do hard things. They need to do them thousands and thousands of times. They need to do them every day.

And when we give kids as many servants as they could possibly generate, they don't have to do anything for themselves, just ask any college professor. The fact that our students don't read books. they can just get an AI summary, the fact that we can't have them write papers, they just have AI write it. So children need to do hard things. And in the age of AI, Jan Beta will not be asked to do anything hard, which means that by the time they're adults, they may not, in the extreme, they may not know how to do much of anything.

Jonathan Haidt and Chloe Combe speaking to Sarah Montague. Still to come on this podcast. Of all of the groups of birds in the world, the sea birds are one of the most endangered. And within that, there's only 22 species of Albertos. globally, 15 of those are threatened by fishing activity. Conservationists battling to save Albertros is being killed by fishing. This is the Global News podcast. It's been a blockbuster year for precious metals. Gold is up more than 60% in 2025. Silver hit an all-time high on Monday,

and both are on track to record their biggest annual game. gain since 1979. Arirchena Shurkla is our business reporter in Mumbai. She tell me what's been driving up the numbers. Well, it's kind of both fear and fundamentals to really go by. Gold and silver, these precious metals, are really seen as safe haven investments by investors, even central banks, especially in times of geopolitical tensions and uncertainty. And 2025 had everything full of it, right?

The tariff uncertainty, there were wars, etc. and that is where many central banks also bought a lot of gold as safe haven. When prices started going up, investors realized that they should also lap it up. And, you know, in many countries, especially like India, where culturally gold is seen as a safe haven investment, there also the demand for gold went up quite a lot. And that's one of the big reasons why gold actually sold almost 66% this year. It's a record high. It's the highest metal has seen in nearly four decades.

The same thing happened for silver, but on another front, U.S. designated silver as a critical mineral, which means the demand from industries went up. And nearly 50% of the demand for silver is industrial demand. And that is where supply was constrained and the demand was high. And the metal price actually shot up 168% this year. In fact, silver really is what turned its destiny around. It's given bigger returns than even gold for many investors this year. So can this be sustained, heading into 2026?

Most analysts say that the prices are going to be elevated at least in the next few months because the uncertainty around geopolitics continues and the central banks are still looking at gold as an investment option. But many analysts have also indicated that there are signs that there could also be a bubble. So prices have already gone up. So it's already at a premium, quite a high premium. So investors should also be very and should maybe spread out their investments instead of just buying in bulk. I know being of South Asian heritage myself, we gift each other a lot of gold, especially on occasions like weddings and birthdays. But now I'm seeing a lot of people investing just for savings purposes for themselves rather than just for gifting as well.

Well, in India, there has been a marginal change in this trend, and you're right. You know, India is the second biggest consumer of gold. And a lot of it is also by women here who buy gold jewelry. But this year, in fact, a lot of people have also bought paper gold or gold bonds, literally. seeing as investment option for gold going up. And actually this yellow metal has not disappointed investors, disappointed people. It's actually seen a big rally over the last few years and has given returns. In fact, just on a personal note, even I invested some bit and gold during this festive season two months ago.

And I'm seeing a fair bit of return, although it wasn't quite a lot of money that I put in there. Arjuna, now to South Africa, where a conservation group has achieved a 90% drop in the number of albatrosses unintentionally killed by the fishing industry. Globally, 100,000 of the seabirds are killed by fishing equipment every year, including 10,000 in South Africa. To tackle this issue, the charity BirdLife set up on Albatross Task Force. It's been attaching colourful streamers to fishing boats that scare birds away from baited hooks and fishing nets.

Our Africa correspondent, Miami Jones, travel to Cape Town to find out how the initiative works and speak to those involved in the project. We're on a Indian Yellow Nose that just flew past us. We're on a small boat in the Atlantic, about 27 nautical miles or 50 kilometres away from Cape Point. This tourboat takes bird watchers from a port in Cape Town to see endangered seabirds, including albatrosses that are hard to find on the mainland. Indian Yellow nose?

Brilliant. No, Atlantic, sorry. Atlantic. Sorry. Don't worry. We are very close to a fishing vessel that's attracted hundreds of birds, and that's because they've learned to associate these boats with food. They come here hoping that as fish gets processed by this fishing boat,

their head and guts, etc., will be discarded, and they also dive in, occasionally, into the net, going to catch smaller fish. But looking for food in this way can cost these seabirds their lives. My name's Tim Appleton. I'm from the UK. I've been in nature conservation all my life. And why is it that the Arbatross in particular is an important bird to preserve, you think? They're getting caught on what they call long lines. Some of these long lines that go out the back of fishing boats are 100 kilometres long. I mean, can you believe that? They have 4,000 hooks on them. Every 4,000 hooks. are baited with a little bit of squid or fish or something like that.

And, of course, the birds just see it. They got caught on the hooks, dragged under and drowned. Albatrosses spend almost half of their life on the high seas, making them particularly vulnerable to being injured or killed by fishing boats. One way to prevent this is the use of birds scaring lines. They're essentially nautical scarecrows, keeping the birds away from the nets and fishing lines. I'm in a workshop by the organisation BirdLife

and they're about six of their workers here putting together these birds scouring lines and in this workshop they've got yellow tubes made out of plastic they've got yellow ropes that they attach the tubes to and these hang above the fishing nets and above the fishing lines to stop birds from getting caught in them. This is a workshop that has been in action for at least 20 years. and they work with disabled members of the community who help build these scouring lines.

Birdlife says it wants to benefit the community as well as protecting albatrosses. Andrea Angel leads to organizations Albatross Task Force, which has been working to stop the seabirds from being killed by fishing trawlers. Of all of the groups of birds in the world, the seabirds are one of the most endangered. And within that, there's only 22 species of albatrosses globally. 15 of those are threatened by fishing activity. And albatrosses because they roam the seas and they live exclusively on either squid or fish

or things that they catch in the ocean. So most of their lives are spent at sea, which means that they encounter fishing vessels more than any other bird. She adds that albatrosses mating habits also make them more prone to extinction. Albatross is made for life and only lay one egg every two years.

The parents share responsibility for feeding their chick, so when one of them dies, there's a higher chance of the chick also passing away. What's in it for the fishermen in using these birds carrying lines? Fishermen would rather catch a big tuna than a bird. A tuna is worth around $10,000 and a bird is worth nothing. So the economic incentive for them is huge. Since the Albatross Task Force was set up in 2004, it's seen a 90% reduction in the number of the seabirds killed by Southern African fisheries.

The hope is to replicate its success in other parts of the world to ensure these majestic birds can keep reproducing for years to come. Or Africa correspondent Mione Jones reporting from Cape Town. Now when it comes to American pop music, Taylor Swift may get all the publicity and Beyonce reports suggest has just become a billionaire. The fastest growing sector in the US music industry is actually Spanish language songs. Stars like Rosalia from Spain itself and Bad Bunny from Puerto Rico have been driving a force behind this success. Fans have even started to learn Spanish to understand the lyrics of their favourite songs.

But while this music may be wowing modern-day listeners, some of it takes its lead from older, more traditional styles, as Cristobo Vasquez has been finding out. Music? Please. The musicians these days are very open to play different styles. This is Mario Orettea. He plays guitar music together with his brother Jose in their band Duende Cameroon. The brothers are originally from Bolivia.

Mario now lives in the U.S., just outside Washington, D.C. This is where many dreams come through. In a makeshift workshop in his garage, he builds guitars for top musicians around the world and has started to adapt them to changes in the industry. Many of our artists actually play several different styles with just one guitar they can jump into like having flamenco or having some Bossa Nova. This mixing in rhythms has sent stars like Rosalia from Spain to the top of the charts in 2025. Leila Kobo is from Billboard magazine and is surprised by the success Spanish language music has had this year. It's been an extraordinary year. Consumption is bigger than it has ever been.

The main reason is that streaming came along. This has allowed people in different places to access music that they couldn't access before. Last year, Spanish language music generated $1.4 billion U.S. dollars in revenue. 98% came from streaming platforms, sometimes making very regional, very local music styles, internationally popular. But Bonnie, the Puerto Rican singer, was Spotify. most stream artists surpassing even Taylor Swift. He became the first artist in Spotify's history to do so four times. But the big stars of 2025 are not the first ones to mix genres.

Rosalia, she did her thing a little more modern than us, actually. It's Catalan. She did a lot of pop. That was pretty advanced. Tonino Valliardo is one of the founders of the Gypsy Kings. They are a Catalan band from the south of France and sell-out arenas all over the world. They are blending salsa with flamenco and pop. The Gypsy Kings, Tonino Valliero!

And Mario's guitars are up on the big stage with him. Tonino Valliardo says he is excited about the change in the industry. I think the future is going to be good, because it goes back to salsa, it's Latin, it's gypsy, it's Spanish. So, yes, I think it's going to grow more and more. The new Spanish-speaking stars breaking one record after another. Rosalia's album impressed critics and listeners alike. And fans are even learning Spanish to understand Bud Bonnie's lyrics

when he will perform singing only in Spanish at next year's Super Bowl. Leila Kobo from Billboard says Spanish language music is just getting started. Things like the Bad Bunny album, for example, the Rosalia album. I think that those two albums have shown us that it's okay to wait and produce really high-quality recordings. And people will consume it voraciously. That report by Christabel Vasquez. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcasts later.

If you want to comment on this episode or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is Global Podcast at BBC.co.com. And you can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global NewsPod. This edition was mixed by Chris Lovelock and the producer was Paul Day. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Ankara. Until next time, happy new year and goodbye.

Thank you.