Global News Podcast - Russia declares state of emergency in Kursk region

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

A state of emergency has been declared in the Kursk region of Russia, as a rare cross-border attack by Ukrainian troops has continued for a second day. Also: A series of concerts in Vienna by Taylor Swift has been cancelled because of a terror threat, and a parrot is recognised by Guinness World Records for its memory skills.

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. You're listening to the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. This edition is published in the early hours of Thursday 8th August.

Russia declares a state of emergency in the Kursk region after a cross-border incursion blamed on Ukraine. How Bangladesh is moving on after its prime minister was forced out of power. Bangladesh's future is now in the hands of students. It's our duty and responsibility to protect the sovereignty and freedom for our people. Thousands of people march against racism in England as police try to prevent more far-right unrest. Also in the podcast...

South Africa's electricity crisis continues to be front and centre of everyone's minds. Many people just want an end now to the rolling blackouts. How South Africa put an end to its power blackouts, for now at least. And a parrot is honoured by Guinness World Records for its memory. For much of this year, Ukraine has been on the back foot in its attempt to hold off the Russian invaders, losing small but significant bits of territory. It's been forced to rush troops to counter a new offensive near its second city, Kharkiv, while dealing with shortages of manpower and ammunition.

Now, though, Ukrainian forces are reported to have taken the fight into Russia itself, with an incursion over the border north of Kharkiv. President Putin said Ukraine was targeting the Russian region of Kursk. As you know, the Kiev regime has carried out another big provocation. Ukraine was targeting the Russian region of Kursk. As you know, the Kiev regime has carried out another big provocation, with indiscriminate shelling of civilian buildings, residential housing and medical facilities, with different kinds of weapons, including missiles. The latest reports suggest intense battles are still underway in the area, which is near a major gas transit hub. The authorities on both sides of the border, Kursk in Russia and Sumy in Ukraine,

have announced the evacuation of thousands of residents, while Russia has declared a state of emergency. I got the latest from our correspondent in Kiev, James Waterhouse. It is something that we haven't really seen before. It is true that Ukraine has't really seen before. It is true that Ukraine has struck inside Russian territory before, but usually in the form of pro-Ukrainian Russian militants who've been sort of incorporated into Ukraine's military, where they've made incursions before in the Belgorod region of Russia further south. Ukraine has also mounted several drone attacks on Russian territory to the nervousness of some Western allies. But this is the first time we have seen

regular forces deployed in this way and on this scale, it would seem. It's still a little bit murky, but something is going on. When you look at the reports of several settlements being taken by the Ukrainians close to the border, Russian bridgeheads on the narrow network of rivers have been destroyed. And clearly, you know, when you look at the rocket strikes that are taking place and the armoured vehicles that accompany these soldiers, this is something sizeable and something Ukraine is looking to sustain in the short term. And all of the chatter on this, but you've seen local officials in Russia confirm evacuations

and you've seen the defence ministry confirming the redeployment of troops and you have Vladimir Putin himself being briefed by his security chiefs and accusing Ukraine of a provocation. It shows that whilst Russia is making its size count just about everywhere else, it just may have blindsided it on this occasion. Yeah, so what do you think the strategy is here from Ukraine? I thought they were struggling with a shortage of manpower, particularly in areas like the Donbass, where they're trying to defend territory.

Well, in the words of one Ukrainian colonel, this seems to be a preventative measure, because some will remember Russia launched a major cross-border offensive in May in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, where it overstretched already thin Ukrainian personnel, it extended the front line, and it brought the city of Kharkiv into very real danger. The fear here is that Russia's continually been building tens of thousands of troops along its border with Ukraine in this northern area,

and it seems, on face value, that the Ukrainians have tried to get ahead of that around the Sumy region and the city of Sumy. And you can see, you know, if you follow that logic, it makes sense because of how Russia has been forced to redeploy in such a way. But I think, a lot of military analysts inside Ukraine were a little bit shocked this morning by the admission of the head of the armed forces. Its biggest issue at the moment is manpower. It is grappling to mobilize enough men for its war effort. So sending hundreds of Ukrainians into Russia itself was counterintuitive at best in the eyes of some. But clearly, if it means stopping Russia from causing Ukraine problems, what would be a new part of the front line in the north, then it just might be worth it. The

question is now for how long it can keep hold of this territory and at what cost, and that would have to be a cost that's acceptable politically for President Zelensky. James Waterhouse in Kiev. The new interim leader of Bangladesh, Mohamed Younis, has urged people to avoid violence and remain calm. More than 400 people were killed during the protest that forced the long-term Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina out of power. But Mohamed Younis, an economist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, insisted that exciting possibilities lay ahead for Bangladesh.

Samira Hussain reports from the capital Dhaka. I'm at one of the busiest junctions in Dhaka. Cars, motorbikes, rickshaws coming in all different directions. There is not a single police officer in sight. Instead, traffic is being directed by students and volunteers, people like 22-year-old Julkarn Naim Rahat, who have taken it upon themselves to maintain law and order on the streets. Bangladesh's future is now in the hands of students. It's our duty and responsibility

to protect the sovereignty and freedom for our people. I don't know what will happen to Bangladesh's future, but inshallah, slowly or steadily, we're going to change the future of Bangladesh and the youth generation. He was one of the thousands who participated in anti-government protests that led to the surprise resignation of the country's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Further down the road, a young woman wearing a black face mask stands in the middle of the busy street, directing traffic with a stick in her left hand. she said, we gained our freedom. So far, students have been able to maintain some semblance of normality, filling a void left by the police. As the new caretaker administration prepares to take charge,

the question here is, how long will that sense of order last? Samira Hussain in Dhaka. The mass protests which broke out across Iran nearly two years ago were triggered by the death in police custody of Masa Amini. She had been accused of wearing her headscarf improperly. Now an investigation has begun after a video went viral showing morality police beating and arresting a teenage girl for allegedly violating the hijab code. The newly elected Iranian president, Massoud Pazeshkian, has vowed to stop such confrontations.

Siavash Adelan of the BBC Persian service told me more about the footage. We are seeing that there are two girls standing in the streets not wearing their hijab and then a morality police van passes by. A number of people, including men and women,

get off the van. They go to these girls and they women, get off the van. They go to these girls, and they violently drag them into the van. They're obviously resisting arrest, but they're eventually thrown into the van, and then the van takes off. That's what we see in the video itself. Now, you have to remember, you made reference to Mahsa Amini. This comes at a time when the collective psyche of Iranians is very much impacted with that particular incident two years ago, where Mahsa Amini died in police custody. So people are very sensitive to the issue of mandatory hijab now and why the police would want to do this in order to

enforce this law still. Yeah, I was going to say, how strictly are the hijab rules applied, particularly to teenagers? It's not very strictly applied. And that's one of the accomplishments of that movement that was triggered after Mahsa Amini's death. A lot of women are now not observing the rules and are not wearing hijab. A very large proportion of women are not even taking their scarves with them

when they leave the house. But every now and then, the government, the police, in order maybe to assure their social base that they're doing something about it, that they're not being complacent, every now and then they make an example of a few women, girls, or celebrities for not wearing hijab, while the rest of society are not observing it. If you go to restaurants or cafes or out in the street, a lot of women aren't wearing hijab. But when this happens to one particular person, it's reminiscent of those terrible events

after that Women Live Freedom movement. Interesting timing, though. It comes not long after the inauguration of the new president, a relative reformer, and he has been promising to kind of relax these rules. It's a huge test now for Massoud Peseshkian, the new Iranian president who had called morality police immoral. But let's not forget, there's one very important fact here. And that is, at first, when this video went viral, a lot of Peseshkian supporters thought that they actually,

this might be a ploy by hardliners to show that Pesachian is a weak president, that he's really toying the line of the hardliners. Whereas the incident took place before Masoud Pesachian's inauguration, about six weeks ago. And the reason why the mother of that girl in question publicized this video was because she said she had launched a complaint against the police and the complaint didn't go anywhere. Hence, she thought that it's best to publicize it. And the police has very proactively reacted to this, both the police and the judiciary, saying,

yes, there has been a violation of the rules. The way the girl was treated was not according to the rules and regulations and an investigation is being launched. So they have acknowledged that a mistake was being made, but they said that the girl really wasn't hurt that much. Whereas the mother is saying when she went to pick up the girl at the police station, she looked battered and bruised. Siavash Adlan of the BBC Persian service. For years, South Africa has suffered crippling power cuts, plunging the nation into darkness for hours on end. And last year was the worst yet.

But for the past few months, the deliberate power cuts known as load shedding by the state energy company Escom have disappeared. While the government has admitted it acted too late, possibly costing the ANC the election, it is a remarkable turnaround. So what happened? And could the power cuts return? The BBC's Ed Habershon sent this report from Johannesburg. South Africa's electricity crisis continues to be front and centre of everyone's minds. Many people just want an end now to the rolling blackouts. It's hard to overstate just how bad the crisis was.

Issues of vandalism and sabotage continue... The main issue, Eskom, the national power company, wracked with mismanagement and corruption. The rot was much worse than I anticipated when I took the job. This is former CEO Andre de Reiter speaking to local media outlet ENCA after his resignation last year. My rough estimate of the amount of money that gets stolen in Eskom every month is in the region of a billion rand. I've come to Alexandra, one of the biggest townships in Johannesburg, to find Sazaka Rashimosi. We met her here last year. She told us she thought she was going to have to close down because of load shedding. Now her restaurant is bustling.

There's meat frying on the grill. There's dozens of bottles of beer being delivered to the bottle store. Zizeka. How are you? We came here last year. Yeah, I remember. You had really bad load shedding. Yeah, I remember. So how's bad load shedding. Yeah, I remember.

So how's the load shedding now? It's better now. There's electric, but it's better. Are you going to stay open? Yes, I'm going to stay open. No plans to close? No, no, not anymore. So what changed?

Fellow South Africans, tonight I'd like to address you about the energy crisis... The recovery really started with this speech from President Cyril Ramaphosa two years ago. We have therefore developed a set of actions to respond to this crisis. What followed was a $14 billion government bailout. Then Ramaphosa created the role of Minister of Electricity. And ESCOM launched a two-year plan to revamp its power stations and, crucially, a complete overhaul of its management.

Daphne McWhenner is ESCOM's spokesperson. This leadership was also transforming culture. It's also to hold people accountable in terms of those that do not perform are held accountable but also reward performance. There has also been a big increase in renewable energy, particularly solar, both in industry and in homes. This has all led to fewer unplanned outages in Eskom's power stations, which has allowed more maintenance. And in July, Eskom managed its highest output in six years. This is Josienso Ramajopa, the Minister of Electricity, giving one of his regular briefings,

a government effort in transparency while fixing load shedding. Load shedding started in 2007. Why do you think it's taken so long for the government to solve what turned out to be a huge crisis? So the truth must be told. I think we could have managed the situation better. While he's been instrumental, he does admit it may have cost his party, the ANC, the May election,

losing its majority for the first time ever. Do you think it was too little too late? You look at the election result for the ANC, it's dipping below 50%. Do you think if you tackled the problem earlier, that might have been a bit of a boost? Absolutely correct. I mean, it has taken a significant percentage point from the ANC.

Because our core base is not convinced that the administration is capable and willing to resolve the problem. We have paid the penalty. We are here. I'm confident that we'll get it right. So is load shedding now a thing of the past? We're not out of the woods yet. Probability of us going back to load shedding, very slim. A bold statement after a crisis that held the country to ransom for so long. A country that is now daring to believe that the lights are back on for good. Ed Habershon reporting. And still to come on the Global News Podcast. I really hope that it's a call to arms to everyone and to our leaders to address climate change. It's not just for the

future of the reef, it cascades into all of our lives. Scientists warn that the seas around the Great Barrier Reef are the warmest for at least four centuries. And before we move on, just time to let you know that our fellow BBC World Service podcast, The Global Story, has taken an in-depth look at Kamala Harris's running mate, the Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz. 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. membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. After days of unrest across England, fomented by the far-right, thousands of anti-racism

protesters took to the streets on Wednesday in a show of opposition. Police were out in force ahead of dozens of planned far-right rallies, amid fears of further racist attacks against Muslims and immigration centres. Violence erupted early last week after three young girls were killed in a knife attack in Southport, near Liverpool, with false online rumours blaming an Islamist migrant. For the latest on Wednesday night's events, we heard from two of our correspondents. First, Ed Thomas in Liverpool. This is St Anne's Church. It's now a refugee and asylum seeker support centre. And hundreds of people gathered here today to perform a human

chain to protect this place. Now, the windows, the doors, they're all boarded up here because they believe that they were under threat from a far-right protest. Now, that protest didn't materialise. Many people here said it was important to come out and show community. This is what Toby told us earlier. We come here today to show our support for the city and for Asylum Link, that's why we're here. And I'm very, very sure if it takes us ten hours to be here, we will be here to protect our city, because we love our city. There was a real diverse group of people here. They wanted to show symbols of togetherness. But there's also been confusion and misinformation here.

All of this was sparked by a list of places like this on unverified accounts shared on social media and that is why people have turned up. And there were moments here tonight where people thought, oh, there was a mosque under attack, but again, that was all misinformation and it wasn't true. There was a hope that the violence and the riots that we've seen over the past few days will belong to the past. Ed Thomas in the northwest of England and

our correspondent in Newcastle in the northeast, Lucy Manning, told us about an anti-racism demonstration there. More than a thousand people here on the pavement outside the Beacon Centre. It houses an immigration services office and was on the list outside the Beacon Centre. It houses an immigration services office and was on the list where the far right said they would come out here this evening, but there was no sign of them, and frankly I'm not sure where they would have gone because there were so many people out here.

The counter-demonstrators chanted, they were shouting, Geordie is united, we will never be defeated, and refugees are welcome here. And the largely Muslim crowd also chanted, Allahu Akbar, God is the greatest. But no trouble here. The police stayed largely on the sidelines. I think the key question tonight is

whether this is now a turning point, whether these counter-demonstrators have reclaimed the streets in a peaceful way, whether the arrests and the heavy sentencing have deterred people, or on the other hand, whether this is just a midweek, people have worked tomorrow and there isn't as much drinking. But speaking to the local imam here, he said that they were scared to come out to protest, but they were really reassured by the amount of people that came out here and they hope this is a turning point for unity and for there to be calm. Lucy Manning in the English city of

Newcastle. Three Taylor Swift concerts in the Austrian capital Vienna have been cancelled because of a terror threat. Two men were detained on suspicion of planning an Islamist attack in the area. Bethany Bell has the details. The police here in Vienna gave a press conference a little bit earlier this evening saying that they had arrested two people today. One of them was a 19-year-old Austrian citizen in a town just south of Vienna called Turnitz and another person was arrested here in Vienna. The police say these people were radicalized via the internet, and the 19-year-old,

recently, the police say, took an oath of allegiance to Islamic State. Now, they did a big search on his house today, and a number of houses in the town had to be evacuated. And after this news came, the organizers of the Taylor Swift concert said that they had to cancel the shows for the sake of everybody's safety. And they have said that people's money will be returned in the next 10 days. And I can tell you there are a lot of very, very disappointed Taylor Swift fans in Vienna tonight. Bethany Bell in Austria. Without rapid action to tackle climate change,

our generation will likely witness the demise of one of Earth's natural wonders, the Great Barrier Reef. That warning comes from scientists who've analysed 400 years of data on sea temperatures and found the past decade has seen the hottest waters on record. Modelling showed human activity was to blame for the warming, which has led to repeated mass coral bleaching events. I asked our science correspondent Victoria Gill how the researchers were able to work out sea temperatures from the past four centuries. Essentially the key signal comes from inside the coral itself. So over many,

many years lots of scientists have taken core samples, these kind of long cores that they can drill out of corals. Without damaging the coral they can take a sample that shows chemical signal that it's laid down in its body, in its skeleton as it's grown. Some of the oldest of these samples go back several centuries. So that's what they have is kind of a temperature record that the coral has built up within its own body. And they've gone through those exhaustively, thousands of those records, and critically they've cross-referenced them with temperature records. Yeah, they've looked at 400

years of sea temperatures based on this coral and found it's just getting hotter. There's lots of you know fluctuations for various reasons over the decades but it's this very very rapid change in the last 10 years so there have been these major bleaching events these coral bleaching events where essentially the corals adapted to live within certain parameters of temperature, to live within a temperature range. And when it gets too hot, the coral gets very stressed and it expels the plant, the symbiotic plant that lives inside it. It's kind of, it's the engine of the coral and it also gives it this bright, beautiful colour. So we call it coral bleaching because that's exactly what it looks like. The coral turns white. Now that's not the coral dying,

it can recover from that and it can build a symbiotic algae again and get back to business but if the heat doesn't relent it remains very very stressed and it can't recover. And so what do they say needs to happen? It's kind of a simple and very complicated message that we hear over and over again, and that's that we need to act on climate change. I spoke to Professor Helen McGregor from the University of Wollongong in Australia, who was involved in the research, and this is what she told me. I really hope that it's a call to arms to everyone and to our leaders to address climate change.

There's a lot of targets that have been set and targets that are not being met and they really, really need to be. And it's not just for the future of the reef, you know, it cascades into all of our lives. Even with the temperature rises that are already baked in with the greenhouse gases that are in the atmosphere already and with the current rates of emissions,

we face losing a lot of our coral reefs and the Great Barrier Reef will not look the same. It's not the same coral throughout the reef it's lots of different reefs and they respond differently the different species respond differently some are tough and hardy and some less so but it will change it will not look the same in the future as it does now. But what the scientists are saying is that we still have a chance, even though it will change and some of it won't survive, we still have a chance to save parts of it and give it the chance to recover if we can limit global temperature rise really strictly now. Our science correspondent, Victoria Gill. Day 12 of the Paris Olympics has drawn to a close after another night

of high drama in the athletics as I heard from Paul Sarras. Quincy Hall of the USA took gold in the men's 400 metres passing the favourite Matthew Hudson-Smith in the closing stages to deny Great Britain their first gold in the event in a century. Hall and Hudson-Smith clocked the fourth and fifth fastest times ever in the event. Muzala Samukonga of Zambia took the bronze, the first Olympic medal for the country since Samuel Matete took silver in the men's 400 hurdles in Atlanta back in 1996. Elsewhere on the track, Sufjan El Bakali took the gold for Morocco in the steeplechase ahead of Ken Rooks of

the USA and Abraham Kibawat of Kenya. Let's see there, Tobogo of Botswana posted a time of 19.96 seconds to reach the final of the men's 200 metres. In the process, he beat the newly crowned men's 100 metre champion Noah Lyles. Tobogo

was one of four African sprinters to reach that final with the Zimbabwean pair of Makana Kaise Charamba and Tapiwanase Makarau and Liberia's Joseph Van Bule also set for Thursday's medal race. Elsewhere, Grant Holloway of the USA missed out on the Olympic record by just seven hundredths of a second, qualifying fastest for the men's 110-metre hurdles.

The defending champion Hansel Parchment of Jamaica is also through. And Team GB's George Mills has been reinstated into the final of the men's 5,000 metres. That was after a collision with France's Hugo Aie left Mills and three others on the ground on the final straight of their heat. Those two, Hugogo Ai and Mills, were involved in a heated exchange at the end of the race. Ultimately, officials agreed that Mills had been hindered. And what else happened on day 12 that caught the eye?

Yeah, the skateboarder Keegan Palmer, the Australian, retained his Olympic title from Tokyo three years ago. He took gold in the men's park event ahead of the USA's Tom Shah and Brazil's Augusto Accio. The Indian wrestler Vinesh Pogat was disqualified from the women's 50kg freestyle tournament. That was after failing to make the weight ahead of her gold medal bout against the American Sarah Hildebrand.

The athlete Pogat beat in the semi-final. Yusnelis Guzman of Cuba fought in her place, but the American won. So Guzman had to make do with silver. And a strange sight, really, at the Summer Games. The reallocated team figure skating medals from the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics were finally handed out in Paris at the end of a lengthy doping saga. Skaters from the US and Japan were given their medals after Russia were dropped from gold down to bronze following Camilla Valieva's four-year

ban for doping. Paul Serra's there. Finally, a parrot has been honoured by Guinness World Records for a feat of memory, correctly naming a series of items within three minutes. The bird's owners say they hope to highlight the natural intelligence of animals. This report from Charlotte Simpson. You've earned a plaque. You're now a world record bird. Four-year-old Apollo, an African grey parrot from Florida, secured the record after successfully identifying 12 items, including... What's this called?

Oak. What's this called? Plant. What's this called? Rock. Apollo achieved the feat back in 2023, but only received his plaque recently, which his proud owners shared with his 2.8 million followers on TikTok. Dalton and Victoria said they trained Apollo together

by giving him examples of correct and incorrect responses, helped along by promises of his favourite snack, pistachios. Charlotte Simpson. And that is all from us for now, but the Global News Podcast will be back very soon. This edition was produced by Alice Adderley and mixed by Caroline Driscoll. Our editors, Karen Martin.

I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye. Current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast 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.