Global News Podcast - Robert Kennedy Junior backs Trump for US President

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

RFK - Robert F Kennedy Junior - suspends his US presidential campaign and backs Donald Trump. Also: rescue efforts continue in flood-struck Bangladesh, and the jelly that plays computer games.

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Thank you. Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson, and in the early hours of Saturday, the 24th of August, these are our main stories.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspends his bid for the US presidency and backs Donald Trump. A trial is underway of a vaccine for lung cancer using the technology that produced leading COVID vaccines. Authorities in Bangladesh are continuing efforts to evacuate areas in the country's east affected by flash floods. Also in this podcast, not a glitch, but the sound of 1970s computer game Pong. Now scientists have taught a blob of jelly to play it. Here's a sign of the Kennedys, the most famous political family in the United States, who produced a Democratic president in John F. Kennedy and an attorney general in Robert F. Kennedy. Last year, his son, RFK Jr., broke away from the Democratic Party to announce he was

running as an independent candidate for the U.S. presidency. Now he's suspended his electoral campaign and thrown his support behind Donald Trump. Giving a speech in Arizona, Mr. Kennedy, who suffers from a disorder that affects his voice, explained his reasons. The chronic disease crisis was one of the primary reasons for my running for president, along with ending censorship in the Ukraine war, it's the reason I've made the heart-wrenching decision to suspend my campaign and to support President Trump. He also said the Democratic Party had departed dramatically from the core values he grew up with. The decision has appalled five of RFK Jr.'s siblings, who've issued a joint statement denouncing their brother's decision, describing it as a betrayal of the values of their family.

This was Donald Trump's response. He's really a terrific guy. I've had a long-term friendship with him. He's a very talented person. It's an honour. He just announced, and it's a great honour. It really is. I asked our correspondent in the US, David Willis, about RFK Jr.'s decision. Not long ago, it would have been deemed virtually inconceivable that a member of one of the most storied families in US democratic politics would join forces with Donald Trump in an effort to keep a Democrat out of the White House. Indeed, only last month, text messages emerged in which Mr. Kennedy referred to Mr. Trump as a terrible human being and probably a sociopath. And Mr. Trump called Mr. Kennedy a radical left lunatic. So having started his campaign as a Democrat competing against Joe

Biden, then leaving the party last autumn to run as an independent, Mr. Kennedy has now endorsed the Republican candidate, Donald Trump. And he made the announcement in Phoenix, Arizona, Donald Trump is due to hold a rally not far from there, Val, and speculation is rife that he could be joined at that rally by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Now, RFK Jr. is going to move his name from the ballot in some states and remain as a candidate in others. How could that help Donald Trump? Well, you're absolutely right. He said today that he was suspending his campaign, not ending it. And that means that his name will, as you say, remain on the ballot in states that are unlikely to sway the outcome. In other words, in the non-crucial so-called swing states,

although there are reports that it may be too late for him to take his name off the ballot in some of those key swing states. But discussions between the two campaigns have, by all accounts, been taking place for several months. And there are also reports of unrequited overtures between the Kennedy camp and that of Kamala Harris. Donald Trump has said that he would be open to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. playing a role in his administration if he's elected, although it's not clear at the moment what, if any, promises the Trump campaign has actually made. And David, how worried is the Democratic Party about this? Not greatly, I would imagine, Val. to be frank. Robert Kennedy Jr.'s campaign was thought to be making more inroads into Donald Trump's support than that of Kamala Harris.

And his endorsement of Mr. Trump is likely to lead to a slight bump for the former president, but not one that is expected to have a significant effect. His campaign has struggled, of course, for support as well as donations, particularly since Kamala Harris entered the presidential race. And from an average of around 15% in the summer, RFK's poll numbers have fallen to around 4% since then. That said, Val, a tiny bump could have something of an impact in a race as close as this. We will have to wait and see. David Willis in the United States. Across the world, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths.

It kills around 2 million people a year. Survival rates of those with advanced forms of the disease are particularly poor. But now a new vaccine, which uses the same technology as the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines, has given some hope to those with the disease. A trial is underway with 130 people taking part from seven countries, including the US, the UK and Turkey. Professor Xiaoming Li from University College Hospital in London is leading the trial in the UK and he's excited about this new vaccine. The patient we treated, he had stage 3 lung cancer so he just completed a course of radiation and chemotherapy. So we're adding in this mRNA cancer vaccine. I hope it's a

big change. Just don't forget we used our first COVID vaccine less than four years ago. We hope this mRNA cancer technology can be transferred to our cancer population. Our health editor, Michelle Roberts, told me more about the vaccine. It's experimental at the moment. So these are early trials to see that it's safe. But what the hope is, is it will be effective too. So this is kind of a new way that scientists are looking at tackling the disease because we know a lot of people do get cancer, sadly. And although we have things like chemotherapy, which can help, they do have side effects and doesn't most common type of lung cancer, so non-small cell lung cancer. And it gives some instructions to the body's own immune system to seek out those cells and destroy them. So who could this help? At the moment, they are recruiting people to take part who've already been diagnosed with lung cancer and who've

tried various treatments and sadly the cancer is still there. In the future it's possible either it would be an additional treatment so one of the researchers who's been testing it says it would be an additional immune boost but whether it would be ever at the point where it could just be given and nothing else, that's a big question mark. Lung cancer is still the world's leading cause of deaths from cancer, isn't it? Even though we know the risks from, say, smoking. Why is it still so prevalent? It has been shown that smoking can cause lung cancer. That's well known now. It's not the only cause, but it's the major one. So if you are a smoker and you're thinking about giving up, I mean, what researchers now know is that if you quit after about 15 years, your risk of lung cancer

is about the same as a non-smoker. How excited are scientists about it, about this new vaccine? About the vaccine? Yeah, they are excited. I mean, it fits into this whole new therapy area that we're seeing for various cancers. And it could be a really neat way of tackling the disease. And when, why we see it being used? Because this is a trial at the moment, isn't it? So this is what you call a phase one trial. It's the very first step of testing it in people. After that, you need bigger trials again, and then it needs to go through all the regulators and the checks and measures. So as always, we talk about years, not weeks or months, but people are getting it through these trials now.

Michelle Roberts. The authorities in Bangladesh are desperately trying to evacuate areas in the east of the country which have been inundated by flash floods. More than four and a half million people have been affected, with their homes left underwater. At the time of recording this podcast, Bangladeshi officials say 15 people have died and many more are injured. Over the border, in the Indian state of Tripura, the number of dead is at least 23. The region of Feni in southeastern Bangladesh is one of the worst hit areas. That's the sound of families wading through the floodwater, carrying children and the elderly on improvised rafts.

Rakib lives in Feni and told the BBC the situation there is desperate. Nearly 15 to 20 metres of the locality is already submerged under the water. People are taking shelter over the roof, over various infrastructure. Many of them, they're even taking shelter at the top of the tree. People, those who have already took shelter in different parts of the areas, they are not getting enough food. Already many of the flood-affected people, they are facing many water-related disease. Our correspondent Akbar Hussain gave us this update from the capital Dhaka.

I have visited several flood affected villages yesterday and I have talked to many people and they were very shocked to see the severity of the flood and the destruction caused by the floods. And people are saying that they haven't seen this level of destruction caused by flood in the last 40 years. And according to the government statistics, around 5 million people are being affected in 12 districts. And Bangladesh government has deployed army and navy to evacuate people and to reach them for distributing reliefs. But situation is still very volatile there. And because there is no communications, mobile and internet remains disabled for the last

several days. The people who have relatives in that area, they cannot talk to the people. So the line is communications completely destructed in that area. Many people in Bangladesh, they are blaming India because of the flood, because they say that the flood caused because of India suddenly opened a hydraulic dam in Tripura province. So Bangladesh's chief advisor, who is running the government, Professor Mohamed Yunus, he held a meeting, he studied with the Indian High Commission in Dhaka, and he said that Bangladesh and India should find a mechanism for a high-level cooperation so that they can tackle flooding in coming days. Akbar Hussain. Flooding in the region is common during monsoon season. Bangladesh

is crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers. But scientists say climate change is making extreme weather events more deadly. Estav Deneus from BBC Weather explains. It's very vulnerable also to its low-lying and flat topography. This combined with sediment erosion also higher up in the Himalayas which runs down the river basins, clogs up river systems, means that flooding is more common around rivers. They can break their banks more easily. And also this combined with very high population, high density and socioeconomic environment

make Bangladesh very susceptible to particularly flooding. With climate change increasing temperatures across the globe, the climate can hold more moisture and this will give rise to more extreme rainfall in certain prone areas. Staff, Dineas. The new deadly strain of mpox is rapidly spreading across parts of Africa, leading to a surge in infections. The highly contagious disease has killed at least 450 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the World Health Organization has called for global action to combat the outbreak. Our correspondent, Mercy Juma, has been to Burundi, a small country which borders the DRC and which has already confirmed more than 170 cases of MPOCs. She sent us this report from Burundi's largest city, Pujampura.

In one of Burundi's largest MPOCs, isolation centres, 59 of the available 61 beds are occupied by infected patients. A third are under the age of 15. Hospital staff are working tirelessly to offer treatment as well as create more space in anticipation of new arrivals. Ejid Irambona, who's 40, tested positive and has been at the treatment centre for nine days. I had swollen lymph nodes. It was so painful I couldn't sleep. Then the pain subsided up here and it moved to my legs. But I am better now. Medical officials in Burundi

are not only concerned about a lack of awareness of the dangers of the disease, but also the limited resources available to fight it. There is only one testing laboratory in the whole country, insufficient testing kits and no vaccines. The national director of the Centre for Public Health Emergency Operations, Dr Lilian Kengurutze, says they need more than 10 million pounds to improve their testing capabilities. The fact that diagnosis is only done in one place, this delays detecting new cases. Health centres are calling the laboratories saying they have suspected cases, but it takes time for teams from are calling the laboratories saying they have suspected cases, but it takes time for teams from the lab to deploy to where the suspected cases are to take samples.

And it takes even more time to release the test results. One of the poorest countries in the world, Burundi borders the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the current Mpok's outbreak began. Despite no recorded deaths here yet, at least 170 people are infected and that number is expected to rise. Mercy Juma. Still to come in this podcast. What?

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A BBC investigation has discovered that a Chinese syndicate has been running a multi-million dollar scam from the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea. It convinced unsuspecting victims to put money into investment platforms it controlled. Six members of the group who returned to China have been convicted by a Chinese court. Ankur Shah is the editor of the BBC's Global China Unit and he told Tim Franks about the racket. This was a pig butchering scam. This term refers to building up trust with the victim. So the scammers strike a relationship, a friendship, it might even involve romance. In this case, though, it was all about trust. And what they did was they fattened up their victims, if you like,

before they striked. And striking, that meant convincing their target to put money into investment platforms. And these were platforms controlled by the scamming company. Who were they scamming? Was this British people? Was this Chinese people? This was Chinese people, people all in China. The court documents, which were a very key source for us, they identified six scammers who were also all Chinese. But the victims, there were at least a dozen of them, they were also Chinese. So it was Chinese scammers targeting Chinese victims. But out of the Isle of Man? Why? I mean, how did that work? We can only speculate

why they chose the Isle of Man. But just zooming out into this kind of pig butchering industry, it's typically been concentrated in Southeast Asia, countries like Myanmar, Laos, Philippines, Cambodia. This is, and this is the words of a UN expert, the first such case they've seen of one of these operations from a Western territory. In our research, we have actually seen these scam gangs that are run by Chinese criminals moving to Zambia, to the United Arab Emirates. So they are sort of popping up, if you like. The same UN expert actually described it as a kind of game of whack-a-mole. Once one of these kind of syndicates is clamped down on, they just pop up in another location, possibly one where, you know, regulation might be lighter.

Dozens of people were involved, from what I've read of your investigation, in this particular scam run out of the Isle of Man. Did they have a cover story for why they were all there? It's very difficult to establish. I mean, one of the insiders that we spoke to, he moved to the Isle of Man. He thought he was going to have a kind of stable administrative job, and he didn't realise the murky world he was getting into. So there was definitely a level of secrecy that we can see within this company. Is there a sort of sense that this is something that is happening outside China because the authorities in China are sort of reasonably adept at clamping down on this. Yeah, I mean, not just the authorities, but all the way across sort of state media. There's a lot

of messaging warning Chinese citizens that when they travel abroad, they need to be careful, they need to not take on kind of easy money jobs. A lot of the initial victims, going back a few years, were lured to companies like Myanmar, as I mentioned earlier. So there's definitely that level of messaging. That's why they perhaps initially spread to Southeast Asia. And once those groups in Southeast Asia have been targeted or clamped down on, as we've seen in the Philippines, actually, that's perhaps why they're starting to spread further afield. So it's being warned about in China. How openly is it being reported in China? I mean, you said that you had access to court documents, which is interesting, because six of these people

who are involved in this have been convicted. Is there a sense that there's sort of, you know, the Chinese authorities are being relatively open about this or that there is transnational, even police cooperation? I would say that they're definitely being very open about this. I mean, it's such a widespread concern for these citizens, the number of people that have been targeted by these gangs. It is an absolute concern, and we can't say for sure about that sort of transnational cooperation between police forces, but certainly from experts that we've spoken to,

they do believe this is the case. Anchor Shah, editor of the BBC's Global China Unit. Russians' special forces have stormed a jail and shot and killed inmates who'd armed themselves with knives and taken prison guards hostage. The prisoners at a maximum security penal colony in the southern Volgograd region had declared their affiliation with the Islamic State group. From Moscow, Steve Rosenberg reports. IK-19 is a maximum security penal colony and yet somehow four inmates were able to arm themselves with knives and go on the attack. They released gruesome mobile phone footage

showing prison officials lying in pools of blood. At least four prison staff were killed. The attackers identified themselves as Islamic State militants. They'd also taken hostages. Later, Russian special forces stormed the prison, shot dead the four armed convicts and freed the hostages. Just over two months ago, something similar happened at another Russian prison in Rostov-on-Don. Inmates accused of links to the Islamic State group took hostages. Special forces stormed the facility to end that siege too. The head of the Volgograd Region Health Committee, Anatoly Tsebelev, said local health providers and emergency services organisations were dealing with anyone injured in the attack.

Operations are being conducted at the district hospital. There's sufficient amount of medicines, bandages and blood components for the injured. Assistance to the injured is under control. The authorities in Volgograd said at least four prison staff were hospitalised. The Paris 2024 Paralympics get underway next Wednesday. The Games include an intellectual impairment class as well as athletes with physical impairments. But in past Games, fewer than one in four countries taking part have brought athletes with an intellectual impairment. Dan Pepper, himself a former Paraly brought athletes with an intellectual impairment. Dan Pepper, himself a former Paralympian in the intellectual impairment class,

has been trying to find out why. India is one of the countries that never sent an athlete with an intellectual impairment to the Games until now. I've come to India to meet their first ever Paralympian with an intellectual impairment and to hear her story. Deepti comes from a rural part in the south of India. When she was 12, a coach spotted her talent for running. They brought her here to Hyderabad to trade. When you found that you were good at running, how did that feel to find something that you were good at? I don't know, really. She says I felt good.

She says I won one, so it gave me confidence I can win one more. Once she was here, she started to struggle to understand some of her training. One of her coaches thought she might have an intellectual impairment. After Deepti was assessed, she qualified for the T20 class, which is for people with an intellectual impairment. At first, Deepti's mother reacted negatively to the news. She says... I felt very bad about it. When Ramesh sir, who is Deepti's coach now,

moved Deepti to para sports, I told him, why are you changing my daughter from main sports to para sports? Then Ramesh sir told me, she is not able to compete and get better every time. That is why we sent her to the medical team. Now she is good at running. This sports, even para sports is also very good.

That's how he convinced me. Since he started competing in power sport, Deepti has been winning medals left, right and centre. Earlier this year, she won gold at the World Power Athletics Championship, broke the world record and qualified for the Paralympics. India is a country with the world's biggest population, so why is it only now sending its first athlete with AI and intellectual impairment to the Paralympics? Many parents are not aware of the opportunities, that's one. And many of them are not aware that their son or daughter has this condition.

Aaron Benjamin from Cyrus India, the country's organisation for intellectual impairment support. We are working on creating awareness on what our athletes with AI can achieve. Even the coaches have not been able to identify the potential or the ability. So therefore what happens is they are not pushing their athletes to achieve beyond a certain level. Awareness and understanding of intellectual impairment as well as lack of

resources are big factors across the world. Another barrier for athletes with intellectual impairment is the sports that are available to them at the Paralympics. At the moment, it's just three, athletics, swimming and table tennis. Robin Smith is a member of the International Paralympic Committee Governing Board. We've had some really positive discussions about not only more events within athletics, swimming and table tennis, but also potential of some new sporting opportunities. There's a lot of positive work going on and I'm optimistic. Dan Pepper reporting.

And you can hear his documentary called The Next Paralympians on the documentary podcast from the BBC World Service, wherever you get your podcasts. Scientists here in the UK have taught a glob of jelly to play a simple 1970s computer game called Pong. Researchers at the University of Reading passed the electric current through the gel and managed to create a basic kind of memory. They say it will lead to cheaper ways of creating artificial intelligence.

Richard Hamilton's report starts with sounds which some listeners might find familiar. Pong was one of the early video games released in 1972 by the American company Atari. Simulating table tennis or ping pong, a vertical oblong moves up and down the screen to hit a ball. Inspired by their previous research that used brain cells in a dish to play pong, Dr Vincent Strong and his colleagues decided to try playing the game with an even simpler material. They took a gel containing water and laced it with ions to make it responsive to electrical stimuli. They used a standard computer to run a game of pong and passed an electric current into different points on the gel to represent the ball moving. When electricity passed through this material, the ions moved to the source of the current,

dragging water with them and causing the gel to swell. The team found that the jelly could not only play the game but also got better with practice, and the length of the rallies increased. Vincent Strong says the swelling of the gel creates a rudimentary sort of memory as signs of the swelling remain the gel creates a rudimentary sort of memory as signs of the swelling remain recorded in the material. How the arms move in relation to the stimulation

creates a sort of mapped memory of the ball's motion throughout the course of the game. You can think of like a muscle memory essentially as you would move your hand to grab a ball out of the air you do it multiple times and you get better because your muscles have a sort of memory to them and the connection between the two. And when you say that it got better at playing pong, do you think you could beat it if it was on the other side of the court? I think I played a lot of video games.

I like to think I could beat it. I'd say it wasn't like extremely good. But then again, I suppose Pong is a difficult game. The team plans to conduct further experiments like this to explore whether the jelly can handle more complex tasks. They believe their research shows that even very simple materials can exhibit complex adaptive behaviours typically associated with our living brain systems or sophisticated AI. And finally, Dr Strong says that as a lover of science fiction, he can imagine that one day in the future, robots could be built with this gel inside their brains.

Richard Hamilton. And from a soft jelly-like substance to one of the world's hardest materials. On Friday, the president of Botswana experienced holding a huge gem, a day after a Canadian company announced it had discovered the world's second largest diamond at the Karowi mine in the northeast of Botswana. It was so big that President Mogwiti Masisi had to use both hands to hold it. And here is his reaction. Both. Both. You have to have both. Both. What? So this is the 2,492 characters. God is good. And you can see that very moment on the BBC website.

And that's it 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, send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. And you can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Rob Fanner. The producer was Isabella Jewell. The editor, as ever, is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time, bye-bye. Thank you. and the Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free.

Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts.