Global News Podcast - Spain floods: death toll rises to over 200

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

More than 200 people are now confirmed dead in the flash flooding in Spain. Also: Thailand recognises hundreds of thousands of stateless people living there as Thai citizens.

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I'm Janet Jaleel and at 14 Hours GMT on Friday the 1st of November, these are our main stories. More than 200 people are now confirmed dead in the flash flooding in Spain. Hundreds more troops are drafted in to help with the cleanup operation. A political earthquake in diamond-rich Botswana, its governing party in power for nearly six decades, is roundly defeated in elections. Also in this podcast, in an unusual move, Thailand recognizes hundreds of thousands

of stateless people living there as Thai citizens. And the rats fighting crime. Lots of rats all over the world detecting landmines and from there it just sort of expanded and looked into what else can they do. Thanks to their sense of smell. We begin in Spain, where an extra 500 military personnel have joined the search and clean-up operation on top of the thousand or so soldiers already deployed. The number of dead from Tuesday's flash floods has now risen to more than 200, nearly all of them from the region of

Valencia. Dozens of people are still missing. Streets and homes are covered in brown mud. And as we record this podcast, fresh warnings are in place for more heavy rains with people in the affected areas told to stay at home. Torrential rain has been falling in the southern Andalusian region of Velva. Meanwhile, anger is growing that the warnings on Tuesday came too late for people to act. Lucy Begley is a teacher at a school in Valencia. On Tuesday night around eight o'clock, everyone got an alarm on their phone saying stay inside, it's very dangerous. However by this point already many people were trapped, many people were flooded. The government responded far too late to what was

going to happen when it had been predicted a long time before and that's why a lot of people of Valencia are just devastated but also quite angry about the whole situation. José María Toro is responsible for care homes in the Valencia region. He described what it was like inside one of them. It's terrifying because we saw the water level reach 1.80m and the water came up to my shoulders. The ground floor is now covered in mud, the kitchen too, so we have to find alternative ways to feed people.

And there's a problem with the water pipes. We get little water and what we get is full of mud." Our reporter on the ground is Nicky Schiller. I am in the city of Valencia and right in front of me at the moment I can see dozens and dozens of people armed with brooms, spades, buckets and even homemade things to try and sweep away the mud. They are from the city which is about seven kilometers from here which when you're there you wouldn't know there has been a flood. They are heading into the area of the city La Tor Torre, that has been badly

hit. And they're volunteers, people who saw what has happened. I spoke to one lady who said that she just felt she had to help and she went to a hardware store and they had completely sold out of brooms. So she got a piece of foam and connected it to a piece of piping and they're all heading to this area to try and help move this mud, which I am standing in. We are just helping our neighbours. This is devastating, seeing everyone that lost their houses and everything. And it's the least we can do.

Just do stuff. Anything is helping. In addition, the local community has come together to try and provide some essentials. So there's a church very nearby that last night people were bringing food, clothing, items for babies, toiletries and so many bottles of water that they had a human chain that was bringing in the bottles of water into the church. And you have to remember, they've not had power for days and this mud has completely inundated their homes. And three days on from these floods, emergency crews are still struggling to reach some areas and the fear is that the already high number of dead could rise even further.

Absolutely. So in the areas outside the city, they are, some of them, still cut off, because you've probably seen the pictures, the bridges were washed away, and the authorities have brought the army in to try and help start to rebuild some of that infrastructure, to be able to get the emergency services in on the ground to see what's happened.

We've seen lots of aerial rescues. There was a dramatic one yesterday with a baby being winched to safety. But the fear of the authorities is when they get into these areas that are cut off, that the death toll is going to rise. And even as the ground remains saturated, caked in mud, there are forecasts of more rain to come. Yes, this will be a concern for the authorities. So last night here in the city there was rain which means that where I am there is a lot more mud on the roads and there will be a

fear that if there is more heavy downpours that there will be a concern that will just add to the flooding that has already happened in large parts of this region. The majority of the deaths have been in the Valencia area. And meanwhile, the criticism of the authorities and the lateness of their warning of these floods continues. Yeah, absolutely. So everyone that I spoke to yesterday in this area was talking about how they felt they weren't warned in time that this flood was going to happen. Most

people say that they got an alert and within 10 minutes the water was starting to rise. Within about half an hour to an hour it was a meter and a half deep and I think this is going to be one of the things that the authorities are going to have to look at going forward about how they issue the alerts because one, the nationwide one was issued around eight o'clock in the evening on Tuesday already there has been hours of rain and flooding that have happened so questions being asked about how the authorities warn people that they could be flooding.

Nikki Schiller in Valencia. In a political earthquake in one of Africa's richest and most stable countries the party that has governed diamond-rich Botswana since independence nearly 60 years ago has lost power. But unlike some African counterparts, President Mokhoitswitsi Masisi admitted defeat before the final tally from Wednesday's elections had even come in. His party looks set to be replaced by the umbrella for democratic change and smaller opposition parties. An MP from one of them, Gugobo Rigo Nkawarana of the Botswana Congress Party, told the BBC why he thinks the government lost. Many issues, corruption, poverty. We are a very small population with a huge land. We have diamonds, we have the tourism industry

based on wildlife. And that has for many has been giving revenue to the government. And one would expect for a 2.1 million people, everybody would be working. But the unemployment rate is very, very high. And people are leaving literally on handouts from government because there's no jobs. So it's really bad. It's really, really bad. I asked a correspondent in Southern Africa, Nomsa Maseko, what she thought had led to the government's defeat. Well, it was indeed a seismic moment, you know, for the Southern African country when President Mokhoedzima Sisi phoned the leader of the opposition coalition, Umbrella

for Democratic Change, to concede defeat. However, the downfall of the ruling Democratic Party of Botswana was brought on by mounting socioeconomic issues amongst the youth, particularly unemployment, which is currently at 27%. And you would recall that the opposition parties were saying that when they campaigned they wanted to raise the minimum wage and increase social grants which was not a campaigning card for the current governing party. And the fact that the president has conceded defeat so quickly, it's a good example on a continent which has been often being plagued by coups or autocratic governments.

Absolutely. I mean, Botswana has been hailed as one of the most stable democracies in the continent. So this is definitely another good example of good governance and ensuring that there is a smooth transition from one political party to the next. So it is hoped that this example that has been laid out by Botswana will be followed up even with the upcoming election in Namibia later this month, where the ruling party which has been in power since 1990 is actually facing a tough challenge from the opposition. Nomsa Maseko. It's the contest that could see Kamala Harris become the first female president of the United States or the return of Donald Trump. Gender is playing a big role in the US presidential election with polls showing more men backing Donald Trump and

more women backing Kamala Harris. Historically, American women have tended to vote in larger numbers than men. So with the race neck and neck, could this determine the outcome? Samira Hussain reports from Washington. Please welcome Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris. The first woman of colour and only the second woman to be a nominee for president. Kamala Harris has already shattered glass ceilings. While the Harris team has not made her gender a centerpiece of her pitch to America, Hi.

How are you? Good, how are you? Good. Gender is very much on the minds of voters. Why did you come here today? Why? This is a very special event. Hopefully, you'll be the first woman president of the United States.

Do you think this country is ready to elect a woman? Definitely, I do think it's so and I really hope so. I know all the women here are definitely feeling that's the case and I'm hoping that more and more men feel that way as well. This is the first time in this country that we have a woman of color multiple ethnicities running for the highest office in this country that we have a woman of color, multiple ethnicities running for the highest office in this United States. Do you think this country is ready to elect a woman? I don't think they are, but they're about to be.

They don't have a choice. Ladies and gentlemen. For all his political swagger, former President Donald Trump knows he lags with women voters. President Donald J. Trump. But even in the most closely thought states, like Wisconsin, he just seemed to have changed the way he speaks about women. And my people told me about four weeks ago, I would say, no, I want to protect the people. I want to protect the women of our country.

I want to protect the women. Sir, please don't say that. Why? They said, we think it's, we think it's very inappropriate for you to say. I said, why? I'm president. I want to protect the women of our country. They said, sure, I just think it's inappropriate for you to say. I pay these guys a lot of money. Can you believe it? I said, well, I'm going to do it whether the women like it or not.

I'm going to protect them from migrants coming in. I'm going to protect them from foreign countries that want to hit us with missiles and lots of other things. Even women from his own political party have warned Mr. Trump against his embrace of so-called locker room talk. This is not a time for them to get overly masculine with this bromance thing that they've got going. Speaking on the American network Fox News, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina,

who ran against the former president for the Republican Party nomination, said his language could alienate women. This bromance and this masculinity stuff, I mean, it borders on edgy to the point that it's going to make women uncomfortable. That is not the way to win women. It's true. He may make some women uncomfortable. But there are women who are more uncomfortable by the thought of a woman in the White House. I'm still not ready for a woman president. I know some of my friends when they were on the cycle, you didn't want to be around them.

The right woman at the right time is not Kamala Harris. I can't think of a woman. I can't think of anyone that I would want to be the president. Yeah. And right now I don't really have a preference man or woman, just the best person for the job. Crowds! To a crowd of 75,000 people in Washington, D.C., Kamala Harris delivered her final pitch in this campaign. I thank you all. God bless you and may God bless the United States of America. Thank you.

She did so in front of the White House. But is the electorate willing to put her in it? That report by Samira Hussain. Stateless people are not recognized as citizens by any country. Denied the right to a nationality, it can make it difficult to go to school, see a doctor, get a job or get married. But Thailand is doing something about it. Our Asia-Pacific regional editor, Mickey Bristo, told me more. Thailand has agreed to fast-forward the processes whereby stateless people inside the country, and there are about 600,000 of these people,

can get on a pathway to citizenship. So they have to jump through a few hoops, pass a few tests, show their loyalty, not have a criminal record. But over in five years they should be held to gain citizenship. This is a really big deal because Thailand has perhaps the world's largest or one of the largest populations of stateless people and these are people who are stateless for whole kinds of reasons. Some have come to Thailand from neighboring countries like Cambodia and Laos, some have been there decades fleeing war, a lot of hill tribes and ethnic minorities in Thailand who have never properly been brought into the mainstream Thai society and also children of these immigrants who were

born in Thailand, lived in Thailand all their lives but just are stateless. Thailand's decided it's about time something's done about this. And it's kind of counter to the trend that we're seeing around the world. The people involved must be delighted. What's been the broader reaction to the plan? Yeah the people involved, I mean that's who it concerns. I've just been watching some videos of one young schoolgirl who was born in Thailand but was stateless. She had difficulty even travelling between provinces because she didn't have an ID card. So it means a great deal for all those tens of thousands,

hundreds of thousands of people, nearly half a million in total. And this has been recognised by the wider community as well. The UN refugee agency has said, actually this is perhaps one of the biggest reductions in stateless people that the world has ever seen. So real praise in this movement by the Thai government and real applaud for doing it. So why is Thailand doing this? Yeah, it's a good question because there are all these hundreds of thousands of people and as you kind of mentioned earlier, across the world people are trying to get rid of immigrants,

not welcoming them. In Thailand they're saying, no, you can be citizens. I think there are a number of reasons they're doing this. Firstly, they think it's the right thing to do. They've really signed up to the UN refugee agency's requirements to do this kind of thing. It will also help the economy. These people will be able to access health services and education but they'll also be able to find jobs and so it will help the Thai economy and over the longer period there were fewer and fewer Thai people, the birth rate there is falling, so it will help the population and stimulate the economy in that way as well. So I think that's the

reason Thailand's doing it. Vicky Bristow. Israel has bombed the southern suburbs of Lebanon's capital Beirut again, a day after US envoys made a fresh attempt to end the fighting with the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah. The caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati accused Israel of rejecting the efforts to broker a ceasefire. Meanwhile Meanwhile the World Health Organization says it's deeply concerned about the number of health care workers being killed in Israeli attacks in Lebanon. It says more than 100 medical staff have died in more than 50 Israeli strikes. Israel has accused Hezbollah of using ambulances to transport fighters and of using hospitals to hide weapons. Our correspondent in Beirut, Emen Nader, told

us more about the latest Israeli strikes on the city. Well, it had been nearly a week without Israeli air strikes here on the capital, Beirut. Israel's focus of their air strike campaign has been outside of the capital, more in the east and in the south of the country where obviously they have their ground operation ongoing as well. Last night at about 1.30 a.m. they issued a series of warnings ahead of a series of airstrikes that hit the southern neighborhood here of Dahia. That's a very residential packed neighborhood which has been the focus of Israel's airstrikes on what it says a Hezbollah

targets in in that area because of weeks of strikes on the area it's a mostly it's been emptied of its residents people have sought shelter elsewhere but we're not yet sure if the Lull in a strikes might have encouraged some people to to to go home and obviously those warnings came in the middle of the night. We've not heard of any casualties yet so far from the air strikes last night but the videos that have emerged seem like the damage has been very heavy. Buildings collapsed, those that haven't been collapsed have suffered widespread damage

to them, lots of rubble covering the streets, windows blown out. Elsewhere in the country we have seen kind of an ongoing escalation of the airstrikes in the east and as I mentioned in the south which has brought the current death toll here in Lebanon since the fighting escalated towards the end of September to over 1800 people according to Lebanese government figures. Emine Adda. Still to come on the Global News Podcast... The space probe that's been back in touch with home here on planet Earth. My talent as an athlete is swimming long halls over the curvature of the earth.

Life's Less Ordinary is the podcast with astonishing personal stories from across the globe. My past is very bad and I survived. You have to tell the story. Expect the unexpected. All of a sudden, the car exploded. Lives less ordinary from the BBC World Service. Here's a thing that happened to me. Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

You're listening to the Global News podcast. The world's key nature summit, COP16, which focuses on the Earth's biodiversity, is drawing to a close later today in the Colombian city of Cali. For the past two weeks, signatories to a UN convention to stop the destruction of the Earth's ecosystems have been trying to put into practice ambitious targets that were agreed two years ago. Activists say that we humans are on the edge of shattering Earth's natural limits and want to protect other species as well as the water and the air we breathe. Astrid Schomacher is the UN's Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity and spoke to my colleague Victoria Uwankunda. We have seen some progress but not as much progress as we hoped. I think the biggest

step forward that was taken was that after eight years of negotiation we have been able to agree on enhanced marine protection. So that's an important step forward. We have also yesterday adopted a new work program for indigenous peoples. So that's important under our convention that we should enable indigenous peoples and local communities and their traditional knowledge to come to the fore in discussions

about biodiversity protection. And with this new work program, we've taken an important step forward. But we have still to agree on whether or not we would institutionalize this, so if we would have a new subsidiary body that would give Indigenous peoples a stronger voice in our formal processes. One of the goals for the COP16 in Cali, Colombia, has been for the countries to come together to pledge protection of 30% of lands, sea and oceans by 2030.

Looking where we are, we're at the end of 2024. Someone said the clock is ticking and time is running out to reach that goal by 2030. Do you think that the political pace is matching or doesn't match the scientific urgency to reach that goal? Yeah, we would say that we definitely have to accelerate. I think science tells us very clearly that we're coming dangerously close to tipping points. And we have heard that here from heads of state and governments, very strong messages and very strong political commitment. So the decision has been taken in two years ago that the 30 by 30 target needs to be reached by 2030. And we have been discussing here how that can be done and how we can accelerate this process

and in particular how countries can receive the capacity building they need. Astrid Schomacher, you've probably heard or used the phrase smelling a rat. Well, scientists have flipped this well-known saying. They've managed to get rodents to sniff out crime. A team of researchers is using giant African rats to tackle the illegal wildlife trade by training them to pick up the scent of pangolin scales, elephant ivory, rhino horn and African blackwood. Dr. Isabelle Zott is one of the researchers involved in the study at the Okeanos Foundation in Germany.

We train the rats using positive reinforcement training. So some dog owners might know it from using a clicker. So it's really a basic principle of if your animal does something correct you give them some food and that brings a whole lot of enthusiasm from your animal to do that whole thing again and get more food. Like all rodents, they've got an excellent sense of smell, which is obviously very important if you're talking about scent detection. But they're also very long-lived, which means that they've got an average lifespan of around eight, nine years in the wild. So we can train them and then deploy them for several years which is also very important. So they're endemic to East Africa. Apoopo's main training research headquarters is based in Morogoro in

Tanzania and they occur there naturally. In the 90s we're looking for a solution to the landmine problem and to detecting landmine and unexploded ordinances in formal conflict zones. And one of the owners always had rats so he knew about you know their sense of smell, their trainability, and they then you know looked into the specific species and started off there. So Popo's starting point was landmine detection and still is, there's still lots of rats all over the world detecting landmines and from still is, there's still lots of rats all over the world detecting landmines and from there it just sort of expanded and looked into what else

can they do, they're so good at this, how else can we use these skills to help the people. So we've trained them on different methods to go and search and it's been working really well. Dr. Isabel Sot. And now to space. These are some of the sounds and the music alien life forms will hear if they ever stumble across the Voyager 1 spacecraft. Its mission, since launching nearly 50 years ago, is to go as far from Earth as possible, sending back messages about what it's finding. But

from time to time, the American space agency NASA loses touch with the probe as it gets further and further from Earth. This week though NASA scientists were celebrating when after days of radio silence the spacecraft called home again using a bit of kit that had been sleeping for decades. Professor Gary Hunt is from the original Voyager team and spoke to Nick Robinson about what happened. Well, it's really been a wake. It's just a question of finding it. The thing was, it's out in distant space. It's pretty cold out there, as you can imagine. We are 24 billion kilometres away. But I think the key thing was they sent out a command, please put on

the heaters, we've got to warm up a little bit. And this was sent out on the 16th of October, nothing came back by the 18th. It takes 23 hours to get the message out and 23 hours back. And then everyone said, good to see you, God, what on earth has happened? And the engineers, these are the clever people. Scientists, we get all the credit, but they are the clever people, the engineers. They looked around and they thought, well, something must be causing this problem. And what had happened was the command sent up had triggered what we call the Fort Protection System. Voyager is an example of how to do

spacecraft engineering, which I hope the modern commercial people would take into account. And what in fact it done, it checks to make sure everything is working correctly. Actually the triggering of setup, it moved around and it triggered twice and changed the signal from coming up on one channel, the main channel, which is what we call X-band, to another channel. And unfortunately, the other channel it moved to is a very weak one and one they weren't expecting. But the bitter kit that rescued it hadn't been used for decades and sort of sprung into life. Well indeed this is the whole secret Voyager had every backup you can

imagine was prepared for anything. Yes and and it switches. If it cannot record on one channel, it flips to another one. We do the same with our radios and various other techniques. The trouble was that was something we weren't expecting. The engineers quite correctly said, gosh, this is such a weak signal. We don't really track that one. Yes, they found it still alive, still working and now they're trying to get the spacecraft back to communicating correctly on the channel they always expect. Professor Gary Hunt. Geek, photobomb, binge watch, lockdown. These have all been the Collins dictionary word of the year.

And now the winner for 2024 has been announced, bratat. But I should say that Brat no longer has its old definition, meaning a spoiled misbehaving child. It is a different use of Brat that's helped it to achieve Word of the Year status, as our culture reporter Annabel Rackham reports. The singer Charli XCX is widely seen as the inspiration behind Brat's cultural takeoff. She used the word as the name of her chart-topping sixth studio album, which came out in June, inspiring a movement on social media. It was redefined as someone who is confident, independent and has a hedonistic attitude. It's use marked a departure from the preceding clean girl trend. The promoted things such as yoga and early nights on platforms such as TikTok.

Brat was something even the US presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, got behind. After the pop star posted on X that Kamala is brat, the Democrat hopeful rebranded her online campaign to mirror the album artwork. Other words that made it onto Colin's list this year included ERA, inspired by another pop star, Taylor Swift and her sellout ERA's tour, and De Lulu, meaning utterly mistaken or unrealistic in one's ideas or expectations. Annabel Rackham and some other runners up were brain rot, looks maxing, romanticy and yapping meaning talking too much. So enough yapping.

And that's all from us for now but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast, send us an email. The address is globalpodcastatbbc.co.uk. This edition was produced by Harry Bly. It was mixed by Callan Maclean. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jeanette Julio. Until next time, goodbye. It was an opportunity to gain a lot of experience. My path to my dream was beginning. But for the sailors selected, this dream job quickly turned into a nightmare. Rodrigo, the police are here. There's something on this boat. Whoa. But 10 of cocaine.

And a key suspect was miles away. Fox called the shots. He was in charge. But we've found him. Brazilian police say that you are an international drug trafficker. Well, I'm not. From the BBC World Service. World of Secrets, season five, Finding Mr. Fox. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.