Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: India Tunnel Rescue Success

Episode Date: December 2, 2023

Our weekly collection of the happiest stories in the world. This week, how hope and perseverance prevailed in the rescue of 41 workers trapped in a tunnel in India. Also: a set of earbuds that could revolutionise wheelchair mobility. And celebrating 100 years of Scottish dancing.

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 week, the rescue mission to save 41 workers trapped in a collapsed tunnel in India. We speak to our correspondent who was at the scene. The joy was really lovely to see because we'd spent so many days involved in the story. Hello, I'm Harry Bly and this is The Happy Pot, a weekly roundup of uplifting news from around

the world. In Indonesia, a baby rhinoceros has been born on the island of Sumatra, boosting hopes the critically endangered species can be saved. They live in deep forest in Sumatra and they're usually isolated. So when they want to meet up with another rhino to breed, they actually sing through the forest, which is absolutely fantastic. The former mayor of Vancouver, Sam Sullivan, tells us about testing a set of revolutionary earbuds that allow him to control his wheelchair.

I said, look, mom, no hands. So I was just doing wheelies around my lobby, just exploring, you know, sort of like experiencing all of these new feelings. And the grandfather from Britain, who, after recovering from COVID-19, took up arm wrestling and became a European champion. All that and more to come.

Hello, this is John from Save the Rhino International, and you're listening to The Happy Pot. Hello, my name is Martina Petrenkova, and you are listening to The Happy Pot. Hello, my name is Lea Bouquet, and you're listening to Happy Pot. Hello, this is William Williamson in Scotland, and you're listening to The Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. On the 12th of November, part of a tunnel that was being drilled into the Himalayas collapsed, trapping 41 workers inside. What followed was a marathon effort to rescue the trapped men, with food, water and oxygen pumped in through a small pipe, heavy machinery airlifted to the site in the state of Utter Akund,

and a group of so-called rat hole miners who were sent in towards the end using handheld drills to break through the rock, eventually reaching the men. Sixteen days later, on Tuesday 28th, all 41 workers emerged from the men. 16 days later, on Tuesday the 28th, all 41 workers emerged from the tunnel. It's a story which at first looks like a disaster, but instead is one of hope and perseverance. Our South Asia correspondent Samira Hussain covered this story from the start, reporting from the entrance of the collapsed tunnel for eight days straight. I spoke to her from Delhi. It was an incredible moment because we had been there for so long and we had gotten close a few times. It wasn't sort of the first time like there were moments where everyone thought okay the rescue is going to happen it's imminent and

then there were just so many technological setbacks so many setbacks with regards to the machinery that finally when you caught word that they broke through and that one of the construction workers was coming out, there was cheering, there was hollering, there was chanting, clapping. There was someone like giving out sweets and they were giving out garlands. It was a real party-type atmosphere. What was it like to experience the change of atmosphere from that fear and disappointment at some stages to joy? The joy was really lovely to see

because we had spent so many days involved in the story. It was an incredible moment. And I think also speaking to the family members who were just waiting to be able to see their loved ones. One interview really stuck out for me, which was with this gentleman who goes by one name, Chaudhry. And he's 50 years old and his son is 22 and he was trapped. And I remember asking him early on, what's the first thing that you're going to do when you see your son?

And he sort of stopped and was like, well, you know, I'm obviously going to hug him and I'm going to hold him. But it's also something so indescribable at the moment because although he had hope, it just felt like it was so far away. And then there was this beautiful picture that emerged afterwards of just this man kissing his son on his forehead. I mean, it was this like really tender moment captured on camera. It was really quite powerful. And this story, at a glance, it looked like it could have been disastrous, especially at the beginning. And Samira, as a reporter, you've covered stories all over the world. What's it like for you to cover this story that in fact had a positive outcome? I mean, it's super great to be able to finally say, oh, look, it's good news. In fact, actually, this story, I would say, is great news because not

only did everybody get out, everybody is safe and healthy. Like no one got sick, no one was injured. You couldn't have asked for a better outcome for these 41 construction workers. That was Samira Hussain speaking to me from Delhi. And we will share that photo of the father celebrating the safe rescue of his son on our socials using hashtag happypod. A critically endangered Sumatran rhinoceros has been born in Indonesia's western island of Sumatra. This is the second Sumatran rhino calf to be born in the country this year and a welcome addition to the species, which is critically endangered. There are fewer than 50 Sumatran rhinos left. A female named Delilah gave birth to a 25kg calf

at a sanctuary in Weikambas National Park in Lampung Province, at the southern tip of Sumatra Island. I spoke to John Taylor from Save the Rhino International. He told me more about these rhinos and the efforts to preserve the species. They are wonderfully evolutionarily distinct and unique animals. They're the most close living relative of the woolly rhino that used to walk around in Europe. They're small, brown, hairy, and they sing to each other in the forest. They live in deep forest in Sumatra and they're usually isolated so when they want to meet up with another rhino to breed they actually sing through the forest, which is absolutely fantastic.

This rhino, second one that's been born this year. So what does that mean for the local population of the Sumatra rhino? The Sumatra rhinos are critically endangered. The IUCN, the World Conservation Union, did an estimate last year and their estimate is between 34 and 47 animals. So to have two births at the sanctuary in Sumatra is extraordinary. Just these two that have been born in the last two months represent 5% of the global population of Sumatran rhinos. Tell me about the ongoing conservation efforts. How are these rhinos being protected? The main problem, the main threat they face now is isolation. They've been forced

into smaller and smaller fragments of forest. So the government of Indonesia is leading a conservation programme to try and locate these few remaining animals to bring them out of the forest into safe places, into sanctuaries, where they can meet other rhinos and hopefully start building up their numbers to a point where eventually they can be released into safe natural habitat again. Are you confident that the population can recover? There is really good hope. The expertise that's been built up in Indonesia is fantastic and this record of breeding success is absolutely wonderful news. And at the same time there's a lot of effort being put into protecting the remaining habitat

so that if we can build up the numbers enough they can be re-released. There's a lot of hope certainly. There's evidence of other species where the numbers have got really low in historical times, and with really good conservation efforts like the work that's going on in Sumatra now, their numbers have been able to build up again. So there's really strong hope. John Taylor from Save the Rhino International. A Vancouver-based tech firm has developed a set of earbuds that its founder hopes offer a far simpler and accessible way to operate technology. They're called Naki earbuds and they use tiny sensors to pick up the smallest of movements in your head

and jaw. These are turned into electronic signals that can then be used to control devices through a Bluetooth connection. The man behind it is David Segal. He's an American inventor and tech entrepreneur. He spent a long time researching brain implants and ways to control tech with one's mind, but then he came up with this set of earbuds as a simpler, non-invasive, accessible controller. Naki earbuds have been named one of this year's best inventions by Time magazine. David told us more about how it works. How this works is the earbud goes inside your ear and would function like any other smart earbuds that you'd buy off the shelf. However, they're always scanning for that unique primer that tells the earbuds that the user wants to do something. So just with the gentle

flex of your jaw, we're using those signals to switch between modes. One mode might be adjust the chair height. Another mode might be wheelchair drive control. So the user would flex his or her jaw. They'd look at the display and it'd say either chair height, chair angle, drive control. And let's just say it's in drive control. From there, just with a very, very subtle nod down, it's almost like hitting the gas. It's the go signal for the wheelchair. And then from there, the wheelchair will just turn wherever you're looking. If at any time you want to stop, you just kind of pull your head back against the wheelchair seat and it just promptly brings you to a stop. Now, you had this tested, didn't you, by the former Vancouver mayor, Sam Sullivan.

Tell me about that. Yes. What a phenomenal gentleman. And this is a gentleman that has spent the larger part of his life in a wheelchair as a quadriplegic due to a skiing accident. When he first heard of Naki, he couldn't wait to try it out. And we met up with him at his home in Vancouver. And that was the very first time he'd ever had a chance to use the wheelchair. And his reaction was, it was almost, my throat tightens up even hearing it because sometimes I'm not used to these reactions. He said, I've been waiting for something like this my entire life.

And there's no words. It's hard to put into words how important it is to hear those words come out of Sam's mouth. And just the sound of hope creates such enormous drive for me. It's hard to put into words. David Segal. And we spoke to Sam Sullivan about his experience using Naki earbuds. Well, it's really meant to enable people like me to access the whole world, really. It's a superpower in a way that I will be able to control many, many aspects of my

environment. You know, it's not just controlling your chair, it's now controlling your computer, turn your lights off and on, turn your heat up and down. Each layer that you get into has a different set of controls for different parts of your life. So when you tested these for the first time, what was that process like? Well, I had very little training, you know, it was just throw me in the chair and get the earbud in and then start moving my head around. And it was amazing. I was able to completely control my chair right away, which was surprising. I said, look, mom, no hands. So I was just doing wheelies around my lobby, just exploring, you know, sort of like a newborn horse, you know,

galloping around, just experiencing all of these new feelings. I thought, let's go for a walk, you know. Having these technological breakthroughs and having the opportunity to participate in life will make it possible for so many people with disabilities to just live their best life. So it's a great liberating moment, this NACI. And Sam, how does it feel to know that there are people out there like Dave Segal, who are dedicating their lives and their careers to this field of making this kind of technology? Oh, it's like a miracle. Like, where did this guy come from?

So many challenges that we have, and this guy drops out of the sky. Wow, how lucky I am and how lucky we all are to have people like him that are willing to really throw their significant abilities behind solving problems for us. If, you know, it's measuring the relief of all of these, this bondage, you know, that you're in when you can't move, you know, to be able to help someone throw off these kind of shackles and do things that they never imagined they could do. That truly is a very wonderful thing. Former Vancouver Mayor and NACI earbuds tester Sam Sullivan.

Coming up in this podcast, celebrating 100 years of the Scottish Country Dancing Society. So a large crowd had already started to gather and then as typically Scottish the accordionists struck up and the whole street started to dance. The whole street danced the Dashing White Sergeant. 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 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. Welcome back. We're sticking with the theme of innovation and technology with this next story. Electric vehicles are widely known as being environmentally friendly, but among various challenges that the industry faces to become as affordable, efficient and eco-friendly as possible, batteries are a key player. In Sweden, researchers have found a way to more efficiently recycle lithium and aluminium from batteries. Their method allows the recovery of 100% of aluminium and 98% of lithium in each battery. Lea Roquette is a PhD researcher at

Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. I spoke to her and her supervisor and research leader Martina Petranikova. We use one family of recycling method that is called hydrometallurgy, that is getting out from the battery waste all the different valuable metal into the liquid solution and then we have a succession of different operations that will recover one after the other all the elements and lithium is recovered at last in those typical flowcharts that have been developed in the last decade. And our approach is to recover lithium at first in the flowcharts before any of the other elements. And that would help improve the overall recovery of lithium in the total process. And so how might this new method of recycling, how might that elevate the process?

In the traditional way, there can be some loss of lithium because when we separate different metals from each other and we have to recover them in a very high purity, usually this can lead to a loss of the lithium and also of the other metals. And the technology which is available these days is very long. So it has a lot of steps to separate all the metals and also impurities from each other. And this technology makes this process much shorter. And a question for you, Lea. When you were in the laboratory doing this research, what did it feel like when you realised your experiment was working? I think I was very excited, but I was also a bit more calm

on the approach. And I was aware that it's only the beginning. So now we are bringing the light on lithium, but I am alone in the lab trying step by step to develop a full process that company are 20 people to work on that for five years. So it is like academic work growing on the laboratory scale and we try to do good work. And what about you, Martina? How was it for you that your PhD candidate was making these discoveries? Well, I was, of course, very proud and I'm still very proud of her. What we also realised that it's a huge sort of like discovery

and what Lea discovered was that we were not getting only the lithium but also aluminium which in my opinion it is a huge step forward because she was able to actually separate lithium and aluminium together. So for me it's not only the lithium is important but also aluminium because aluminium is impurity in this step so we have to remove it if we want to have a good performance. What's been the feedback like from your colleagues and your family and friends to this discovery? My family, no one is from a scientific background. So I think they, yeah, they are very excited when they saw my face in the news, but no much more than this. They know that I am very engaged for environment. So they were happy that I'm trying to find and do something meaningful. And then colleagues.

I mean, lots of us, we are having projects around recycling and many of us are doing great work. So we push each other in the daily life. Those industries which cooperate with us, they are also very proud of us, of course, because we work with the car producers and also battery producers, and they are very interested in this research. And also our colleagues, I think that they're very proud. Lea Ruket and Martina Petranikova from Chalmers University in Sweden. A grandfather from the UK has become the European arm wrestling champion, a sport he was inspired to take up after watching online videos while in bed with COVID.

Mark Walden, who's 54, began arm wrestling competitively three years ago. Now he's won a gold medal at the Grandmasters category at the European Championships in Finland. He spoke to BBC Sports' Caroline Barker. Can we talk about delicate age? So you are how old?'m 54 now so 54 but you were 53 with covid coming through it watching the videos think oh you know what competitive

arm wrestling that's what i've not done so how how do you train then to become a competitive arm wrestler i've been training now for three years i had an inkling that i might have a prowess perhaps in the sport so like everybody else has just said, I went along to Zahn Wrestling Club. On Thursday night, I'd spoken to them and said, I'm going to come along. And I thought, I'm just going to smash everyone. It's going to be easy. And everyone smashed me. Even the lightest, smallest guys pinned me to the pad.

And I was totally demoralized. And they were like, oh, no. OK, either I give this up right now or I train really, really hard and get good at it. And so obviously, I've made myself that promise. And I train really, really hard. I train harder than harder than most to be fair because I've got a lot of catching up to do I train half an hour every morning my home gym that's pure armwrestling training and then I do an hour to an hour and a half in my commercial gym and that'll be a 50 50 split between overall strength training and armwrestling and then we train on a Thursday

evening for about two and a half hours just table time armwrestling so lots of training. And I say you're a bit good you're a European gold medalist but we'll get to that because hang on you say that you do armwrestling so you've got to have someone to train against right or is there like a machine you train against? So when I'm training at home I have a table just an armwrestling table set up with a cable system and so I can work on all the angles that I would be with while I'm holding someone's hand just to get strong in those positions and then when we go to the club there's probably 10-15 of us there and we will just basically take turns arm wrestling each other setting up in positions where we would perhaps be in a losing position and need to get out of it and then take turns of you

know trying to pin the person things like that. Thank you for explaining that because I had this image of you at home with your garage door up and inviting all the neighbours around to train against you. Or it could be your grandchildren because I hear one of them has a nickname for you. I get called the Hulk. That's actually my granddaughter that calls me the Hulk because she's wearing a T-shirt and she likes it,

so she calls me the Hulk. My grandson likes to arm wrestle me now and again and obviously he's the strongest seven-year-old in the world because he pins me every single time. I don't understand how that works. You wouldn't be letting him win, would you now, Mark? Absolutely not. He wins every time.

Well, you know he'll take your European gold medal off you. What was that like for you winning that? That was a really, really good experience for me because sadly I'd lost my father just before I went out to Finland. It was in Finland. And I kind of thought, you know what, if I can win this, if I can even place this, it'll be for my dad. And I got through to the finals and I phoned everyone up

and I said, I've got through to the finals, I've got through to the finals. I was actually on the B side, which means I've got to win twice to win the competition because the guy that I pull against has not lost yet and I've lost one match. So I've got to win twice. I'm like, well, chances are low, but, you know, we'll see how we do. And I gr grin and bared and tried my hardest 100 percent 110 percent I pulled him and I beat him the two times I needed stood up on a podium and uh yeah it was the best

experience ever and obviously that was my dad as well I stood up there with the flag and listening to the national anthem it was absolutely super. Mark Walden speaking to Caroline Barker. Dance and music are at the hearts of many cultures around the world, and Scotland is no exception. Scottish dancing has been performed to traditional tunes for centuries, bringing together people from all backgrounds and parts of the country. The Royal Scottish Country Dance Society has just marked its centenary year, and crowds gathered in the city of Glasgow to celebrate by, of course, joining together for a jig. We spoke to William Williamson, the chair of the society.

We all wandered along to Buchanan Street, so a large crowd had already started to gather. And then, as typically Scottish, the accordionists struck up and the whole street started to dance. The whole street danced the Dashing White Sergeant. And that was a mixture of our dancers and the general public, because there's one thing we do in Scotland is we enjoy a party wherever and whenever it happens. It was wonderful. It was wonderful. Amazing. I'm so pleased. I mean, the photos and the videos I've seen of this are just superb. I mean, smiling faces, incredible dancing. I mean, I could never even attempt anything so complex. Now, Harry, you could. And that's the thing. You absolutely could. This is

the thing about Scottish dancing, and that's why it survived. You know, it can be as formal as you want, or it can be as informal. So there was at the weekend, we had a ball, a formal ball on the Friday night, but there we were dancing in our training shoes and jeans on the Sunday morning. And it's that, in Scotland, all levels of society danced. They danced the same dances. It would be done in the kitchens of the cottages. It would be done with the aristocracy and the big hussies, as we call them. But in Scotland, there was never that separation. So everybody danced. And wherever we go in the world, it would be expats originally would start the dancing

wherever they landed in America, Japan, wherever. Now it's local people who do it. And we have three huge branches in Japan. We have a wonderful group in Buenos Aires, and they're all Argentinians. And of course, we have people in Australia, New Zealand. We even have a branch in Hawaii. But it's that Scottish bit about wanting everyone to come and join in.

It's very much a living tradition, but with that wonderful Scottish element of come on and join us. So Harry, there will be a Scottish country dance group near you. So go and join it and have fun. You'll have a great time. I think if anyone can convince me, I think it's you, William. I think I'm very tempted. Now, for those listeners that have never seen Scottish country dance, can you describe it for us?

All right. So it's the social dancing of Scotland. So it tends to be done in teams, I suppose. And you progress down the set to the foot of the set and then another couple starts at the top. And it's done to fabulous music. And that's unique to Scotland, that rhythm, where you put the short note before the long note. That's what gives it that and it's called the Scotch Snap and the music is just wonderful and it gives it that great spirit to get everyone on the floor and dance. And to you William, what is the importance of Scottish dancing? Scotland's culture is its heart and at the heart of that is Scotland's songs, Scotland's music and Scotland's dance and it all comes from that great Scottish heart that of welcoming, of friendship. Let's all get on, let's all be friendly, let's all join in. William Williamson celebrating 100 years of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society.

And this music was performed by David Oswald and his band for a special episode of BBC Radio Scotland's Take the Floor, marking this special anniversary. That is all from us for now. But remember, we love to hear your news. Email us stories that will make us smile. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You've been listening to The Happy Pod from the global news podcast this edition was

produced by anna murphy it was mixed by max cadman the editor is karen martin i'm harry until next time goodbye 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 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.

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