Global News Podcast - Thousands protest in France over President Macron's choice of conservative PM

Episode Date: September 8, 2024

Left-wing parties called for protests after Michel Barnier was appointed as French prime minister on Thursday. Also: the Oscar winning lyricist Will Jennings dies aged 80.

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. Life and death were two very realistic co-existing possibilities in my life. I didn't even think I'd make it to like my 16th birthday, to be honest. I grew up being scared of who I was. Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference.

It's the hardest step. But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care. To hear more stories of recovery, visit camh.ca. 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. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jalil, and in the early hours of Sunday, the 8th of September, these are our main stories. Tens of thousands of people have been demonstrating across France claiming President Macron has stolen democracy by appointing a right-wing prime minister. Security forces in Venezuela's capital have encircled the Argentine embassy

where prominent opposition figures have been sheltering for months. The heads of the American and British intelligence services say the world is facing a threat not seen sincenings who wrote many hits like this one has died at the age of 80 we begin in france where tens of thousands of people have been taking part in demonstrations claiming that president President Macron has stolen democracy by appointing a right-wing prime minister, Michel Barnier. The mostly left-wing protesters took to the streets of more than 100 towns and cities. These demonstrators in Bordeaux shouted resistance, resistance. Mr Barnier, a former foreign minister who also acted

as the EU's Brexit negotiator, was appointed by President Macron on Thursday after two months of political deadlock in the wake of inconclusive elections, which saw Parliament roughly split in three between a left-wing alliance, Mr Macron's centrists, and the far right. Although the left did win the most votes, it came nowhere near an absolute majority. The French far right leader, Jordan Berdella, had this warning for President Macron and his new prime minister. If Mr. Barnier wants to be the voice and the driver of the democratic aspirations that were expressed in the elections, then I will judge him on his policies.

If, on the other hand, he is the new frontman for Macronism and he continues the policy that was led by the French president Emmanuel Macron, then this government will fall. Nathalie Ozio is a French MP for La France Insoumise, the France Unbowed Party, which forms part of the left-wing alliance. Emmanuel Macron's decision to appoint right-winger Michel Barnier is just a betrayal of the people's vote and of the message that was sent on July 7th. So this is outrageous.

It's democratically scandalous. I think this protest day, today, September 7th, may be just the first step. The outrage, the anger is just increasing. And now people are fed up with Macron's methods and it cannot last longer. I asked our Paris correspondent, Hugh Schofield, if the left had got the turnout they were hoping for. It's always hard to judge

these things. The left is claiming success, of course. They're saying 150,000 on the streets of Paris. Police are saying 25,000. The police are more likely to be accurate than what the left's own estimations are. So I wouldn't say it was a massive turnout at all. But I mean, she's right, I think, in saying that this is only the beginning. This heralds, I suspect, a long period in which it's likely that there could be successive demonstrations, which are likely to increase in intensity and size. Because as you heard from her, they're very angry. They feel a righteous indignation that while they say they won the election in numerical terms, they've been kind of short-circuited and Macron's turned to the centre-right to form the next government. So they feel that they're

powered up now. They feel that they've got a cause that they can really whip people up with. And I suspect that's what's going to happen. Well, the left is saying that the far right, led by Marine Le Pen, are now effectively kingmakers. Do they have a point? Well, they do have a point. That language is in itself, of course, shows a certain point of view. I mean, what's clear is that the far right has a veto in effect on Michel Barnier. As you said, succinctly at the beginning, I mean, no party can govern by itself. So the only way a party can govern and essentially, you know, Barney is from the centre is if one of the other two blocks decides temporarily to either back him or at least abstain. And that's what's happened that the hard right is

abstaining, the populists are abstaining in effect from coming up with any strong view on Barney waiting to see what he does. That's why the left can say, oh, he's only there with the connivance of the hard right. And there's a sort of tacit alliance between the centre, the right and the hard right. Of course, it suits the left to sort of maintain that idea, because it looks like Macron's caught into bed with the fascists and all the rest of it. I mean, the reality is a reality of a very, very complex political situation. And that reality is also one in which, you know, Barnier is dangling on a thread. I mean, he could go any minute if the hard right decides to drop him. Hugh Schofield. As we record this podcast, Venezuelan security forces have surrounded

the Argentine embassy in the capital Caracas, which is sheltering six Venezuelan political figures opposed to President Nicolas Maduroing six Venezuelan political figures opposed to President Nicolas Maduro. The Venezuelan government has also revoked its permission for Brazil to represent Argentina's diplomatic interests. Jenny Kumar reports from Washington. Some of those sheltering in the embassy have posted on social media that electricity was cut off. They fled there after facing arrest for alleged political violence in March. The government has now accused them of planning terrorism and assassination attempts. It's also announced it's revoked Brazil's custody of the embassy

in an apparent attempt to remove diplomatic immunity. Brazil has said it would continue its custody of the embassy until another state was selected to take over. Jenny Kumar, the international order is under threat in a way that we haven't seen since the Cold War. That's a warning from the heads of the US and British foreign intelligence services. The CIA chief William Burns and Richard Moore, who leads MI6, have written an article together in a British newspaper warning of an unprecedented array of challenges to global security. In a joint appearance in London, they said they were working to disrupt what they called Russia's campaign of sabotage across Europe. They said that as well as resisting Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine,

they were also pushing for a de-escalation of conflict in the Middle East and working to thwart the Islamic State group. The BBC security correspondent Gordon Carrera was at the event. Ukraine's incursion into Russia may have taken Western spy chiefs by surprise, but the heads of the CIA and MI6 praised the operation as a significant achievement, while also saying the consequences remained unclear. There have been suggestions that fears over how the Russian leader might respond have slowed down the provision of support to Ukraine. But William Byrne said that while there have been moments of concern, Russian threats should not paralyse the West.

There was a moment in the fall of 2022 when I think there was a genuine risk of, you know, the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons. I have never thought, however, and this is the view of my agency, that we should be unnecessarily intimidated by that. Putin's a bully. He's going to continue to saber-rattle from time to time. Moscow spy services have been accused of becoming more aggressive in their operations in Europe, carrying out arson and sabotage. This has included using criminals, but Sir Richard Moore said this did not necessarily mean

they were becoming more amateurish. It's not amateurish, it's just a bit more reckless. I mean, I think Russian intelligence services have gone a bit feral. This was the first ever joint appearance in public by the heads of CIA and MI6, and the message was clear. Cooperation between their two spy agencies remains closer than ever. Gordon Carrera. The killing of an American-Turkish activist in the occupied West Bank on Friday sparked outrage, with the United Nations calling for an investigation and the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan describing it as a barbaric act. Witnesses say Ayşenur Ezgi

Aygi was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers and her family are demanding an independent US-led investigation into her death. Standing over the wrapped bodies of Ms. Aygi and a Palestinian girl in a hospital morgue, the governor of Nablus, Hassan Douglas, said the Israeli military would continue killing indiscriminately unless the war in Gaza ended. Bullets don't differentiate between an activist and a Palestinian girl. We tell the whole world it's time to stop the crazy war on the Palestinian people, the killing of children and the demolishing of mosques, churches, schools and hospitals. From Jerusalem, here's our diplomatic correspondent, James Landale.

The family of Aishanur Ezgi Egi said she'd been a passionate human rights activist all her life. In a statement, they said she'd been killed needlessly, unlawfully and violently by the Israeli military. They said an inquiry by the authorities in Israel would not be adequate and called on President Biden to order an independent investigation. The 26-year-old, who had joint US and Turkish nationality, had just graduated from Washington University in Seattle. She was taking part in a protest against an illegal settlement near Nablus in the West Bank. Witnesses and Palestinian officials said Israeli soldiers shot her in the

head. The Israeli defense forces said the incident was under review but claimed that soldiers had fired at an instigator of violent activity who was throwing rocks. The organizers of the protest, the International Solidarity Movement, insisted it had been peaceful and said Ms Egi had been 200 metres away from the soldiers. The United Nations called for a full investigation. The White House said it was deeply disturbed and had asked Israel to investigate. James Landau, voting has ended in Algeria in a presidential election which the incumbent, Adelmachid Tebboune, is widely expected to win. More than 24 million Algerians are registered to vote,

and President Tebboune's two challengers had called for a high turnout. But campaign rallies have struggled to generate enthusiasm in this North African nation. Richard Hamilton considers the significance of these elections. Ever since 1992, when elections were annulled, Algeria has been run by a military-backed government. In that year, an Islamist party was on course to win, but the Algerian elite was deeply worried by that prospect and halted democracy in its tracks.

The annulment provoked a bloody civil war that lasted until 2002. And in the aftermath, the country has been stable but tightly controlled and election results have been a formality. But then in 2019, something remarkable happened. Protests against the ailing president of Algeria, who's running for a fifth term in April's elections, have turned violent. Massive street protests broke out against the 82-year-old president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The demonstrations became known as the Revolution of Smiles,

as they were largely peaceful, or Hirak. They did succeed in forcing Bouteflika to stand down, but hopes of lasting change soon evaporated. As in Egypt and Sudan, the protesters felt the revolution had been stolen by the army. Algeria remains a repressive society and there's little freedom of speech or the media. Amnesty International has said the authorities have a zero-tolerance approach towards dissenting opinions. And that is why so many people did not want to endorse Abdelmajid Taboun. He voted today, making positive noises about the electoral process. The election campaign was a clean campaign, really.

The candidates were up to scratch. They painted an image that was a tribute to Algeria and Algerian democracy. With young people making up more than half the population, all three candidates promised improved living standards and reducing the country's dependence on oil and gas. The Electoral Commission announced that as of 5pm, there'd been a turnout of just 26%, compared to 33% during the 2019 elections at the same time.

78-year-old Abdelmajid Taboun is heavily favoured to see off two relatively weak challengers, as many other candidates have been prevented from standing. Official results are expected on Sunday. Richard Hamilton reporting. Now, let's turn to matters aquatic. We know that life under the surface of our oceans is plentiful, but not necessarily noisy. That was until now. A new book by the Canadian science writer Amarina Kingdon called Sing Like a Fish describes how the oceans actually have a vast range of sounds made by fish, crustaceans and even simpler forms of life,

which we humans cannot always hear. She spoke to Julianne Warwicker from Redmond Bay in Ontario. Right at World War One, because of the threat of U-boats and submarines underwater, and then slightly before that with the sinking of the Titanic, there was this huge rush to try to figure out how we could use underwater sound to discover threats, listen for threats, and make shipping safer. And as soon as we started developing the technology that let us overcome that problem of human ears not really working in the water, all of a sudden there was this huge amount of sound that we realized was happening. And one of those sounds was what the first early submariners called crackle. It sounded like crackling, like frying bacon or rain on a tin roof. And what this turned out to

be after decades of research was, in fact, fields of little shrimp that were snapping their claws. They have these very, very loud claws. They're called snapping shrimp or pistol shrimp. And they would clap their claws together and make a very loud popping bubble in order to defend their little territory. There was a real step up in World War II with underwater networks of hydrophones that were listening in the ocean. And we were sending sound over longer and longer ranges to try to ping off of enemy submarines. And the Americans had laid a string of hydrophones across the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. That's where you'd go if you were going to go up by sea right to Washington, D.C. And the problem was that around about April, May, all of a sudden the hydrophones were drowned out

with this humming noise. And at first, people were quite worried. And after some extensive investigation, they determined that in fact, it was the kind of toadfish that hums very, very loudly for a mate. And they do this every spring en masse. And unfortunately, breeding toadfish had drowned out these very strategically important hydrophones. And in fact, the first real systemic in-depth surveys of the sounds of underwater sea life were done by the military precisely because they needed to have manuals of what these sounds were so that people didn't inadvertently call in the big guns for what might turn out to be a fin whale or crackling shrimp or something like that. Do we know how much the other animals underwater can hear these sounds? We do. We can give fish, for example, hearing tests and we can generate audiograms. So you can kind of generate a line, much like a human who's ever had a hearing test,

of what frequencies a fish can hear and what sensitivities you can hear. And you can do the same with marine mammals. And you can also kind of do the same for a lot of invertebrates, a squid. But at the end of the day, we are still learning a lot, especially about the invertebrates. For example, lobsters and mussels, those animals can very much detect sound, but they don't do it with the same organs. No, I mean, they don't have ears, do they? We have ears. Fish have ears, but about 90% plus of the species in the ocean aren't vertebrates, but they still manage to detect sound. And a lot of the ways that they do this is with organs called statocysts or anything that allows

them to detect balance. Because those organs that detect balance, they rely on motion and sound is just a pressure wave moving through the water. How much is human activity then disturbing animals underwater? It's hard to tell because by the time we started to really listen underwater in the past few decades, we'd already been making quite a lot of noise underwater with ships. There's just so much constant 24-hour ship sound from shipping lanes that we don't really have a baseline of what an ocean without our own sound is like. Shipping noise has doubled in the ocean every decade since the 1960s. But also because of global warming, presumably those ships are traveling further north and further south than they once did.

Yes, exactly. So there are still areas of the ocean where shipping noise hasn't really intruded quite so much. One big area is the Arctic. So there's actually a lot of effort right now to get what we would call baseline levels of sound and listening year-round for what animals are up there in what might be close to a somewhat pristine soundscape. So that if we do bring human industry into the Arctic, we can at least kind of understand what the animals were adapted to before we came and try to minimize our impact. That was Amarina Kingdon, author of the book Sing Like a Fish.

Still to come, calls in Sweden for an end to the practice of fathers giving away their daughters at weddings. I'm not so fond of bands. Sweden is quite an equal country to begin with. I think that everyone deserves the wedding of their dreams. Life and death were two very realistic coexisting possibilities in my life. I didn't even think I'd make it to my 16th birthday, to be honest. I grew up being scared of who I was. Any one of us at any time can be affected

by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference. It's the hardest step. But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care. To hear more stories of recovery, visit CAMH.ca. 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. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. You're listening to the Global News Podcast. The Kenyan authorities say some of the children who were missing after a devastating fire at a boys' boarding school, have now been found.

But a government spokesman says at least 21 boys are now confirmed to have died after flames tore through the dormitory where they were sleeping on Friday. DNA tests need to be carried out on some of the bodies as they're so badly burnt. Officials say 17 children remain unaccounted for. The cause of the fire is still not known. Barbara Pletusche reports from the school in Yenyeri in central Kenya. Efforts to trace the missing boys continue. It's thought that some parents may have picked up their children without reporting that they did so. It's also been suggested that some boys may have taken refuge with members of the

community who rushed to try and help put out the fire. One woman at the school, Angela Kamani, said she's still looking for her 11-year-old nephew. She'd been at a late-night church vigil nearby when the congregation heard the children's screams. When we broke into the dormitory, there were some rescued, some unconscious and some dead, she says. We haven't found my nephew in hospitals and wonder if he's among those burned beyond recognition. It's such a heavy load of grief for our family. That's the fear of many others. DNA tests are needed to identify some of the remains. The authorities have also ordered an investigation into the cause of the fire. Barbara Pletosha in Kenya.

NASA officials say they fully expect to continue working with Boeing in space, despite the technical glitches suffered by the company's Starliner spacecraft. The capsule returned to Earth from the International Space Station this weekend, but the two astronauts it took up to the space station are now stuck there until next year. Experts will now pore over the spacecraft's data to decide when Starliner might fly again. Our science editor Rebecca Murrell has more. Just a beautiful sight as Starliner makes its way to the sands of New Mexico. Appearing in the night sky above the desert of New Mexico,

Boeing's Starliner capsule descended to the ground beneath three huge parachutes. The landing was successful and went to plan, apart from the fact the capsule was empty. The astronauts it was supposed to carry, NASA's Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams, stayed behind on the International Space Station. Sonny spoke to mission control before the capsule, nicknamed Calypso, undocked from the orbiting lab. You guys, it is the time to bring Calypso home. You have got this. We have your backs and you've got this. Bring her back to Earth. Good luck. Boeing's capsule experienced

helium leaks and problems with its thrusters after it launched in June, and NASA decided it wasn't safe enough to bring the astronauts home. Steve Stitch from the US Space Agency said the landing was a bittersweet moment for the Starliner team. From a human perspective, all of us feel happy about the successful landing, but then there's a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would have been the way we had planned it. We had planned to have the mission land with Butch and Sonny on board. I think there's, depending on who you are on the team, different emotions associated with that. It'll take a little time to determine the path forward. But today we saw the vehicle perform really well. We've got some things we know we've

got to go work on and we'll go do that and fix those things and then go fly when we're ready. Both Boeing and NASA will now be poring over the data from this test flight. They'll need to fix the technical problems before Starliner can fly again. Astronauts Butch and Sonny will instead ride home with rival company SpaceX, but not until February next year, extending what was supposed to be an eight-day mission to eight months. But NASA says the pair are in good spirits as they settle in for their much longer-than-anticipated stay in space. Rebecca Murrell, when you think of traditional Christian weddings, you'll most probably think of a bride walking down the aisle on the arm of her

father to the accompaniment of a classic wedding march. Well, that may no longer happen in Sweden. In a country where it's already common practice for the bride and groom to walk down the aisle together, a motion to actually ban the practice of fathers giving away their daughters at the altar has been submitted to the Protestant Lutheran Church by a pastor in the city of Gothenburg who claims it's a symbol of the patriarchal system. Amanda Kaplint got married in May. Julianne Warwicker asked her about her wedding

and whether she'd known about this Swedish tradition. We were aware of it when we started to plan our wedding more or less. I mean, you've always seen the Hollywood movies with the bride walking down the aisle with a father. But when we started planning it for real, then our priest told us about the Swedish tradition and how it's usually done here and that it has a lot to do with the equality that you are going into the marriage, both on your own willing, that you're not forced to do anything, that you are starting your life together. And for that, walking together down the aisle. So was there ever a moment when you thought you might do it the Hollywood way?

Well, yeah, all of my childhood, you know, small girls dreaming about their wedding. I thought that was the way that it was supposed to be done. And when you discussed it with the priest who obviously presided over the ceremony, how did that discussion unfold? You always felt you had the choice still, presumably. Yeah, but he recommended it very forcefully, so to speak. That's the way that it should be done and stuff like that. He liked to refer to some words from the Bible, actually, in Matthew 19. There's a saying that is, haven't you read, he replied, that at the beginning, the creator made the male and the female and said,

for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So he said that if anyone should go with the parent down the aisle, it should be the groom. Now we have this situation where a pastor in Gothenburg is putting forward a proposal for an actual ban on the bride arriving and being walked down the aisle by her father, because it's to do with a patriarchal symbolism that that pastor would like to see Sweden get rid of. Do you see that a ban could work here that would be applicable here? I'm not so fond of bans at all.

I think that it should be up to yourself, since it's your day and not somebody else's. Then at the same time, you should pay your respects to the church that you're in. You should pay your respects to the traditions. But if the priest is okay with it, and I think they should be, then I don't see why it should be a problem at all. And I don't really like the way of having someone else other than the ones marrying and maybe the priest deciding how to do the ceremony. Sweden is quite an equal country to begin with.

I think that everyone deserves the wedding of their dreams. Amanda Carpland. The award-winning lyricist Will Jennings, who worked with artists such as Barry Manilow, Steve Wynwood and Randy Crawford, has died at the age of 80. The American songwriter won a Grammy for Eric Clapton's Tears in Heaven and two Oscars for My Heart Will Go On from the film Titanic and Up Where We Belong from An Officer and a Gentleman. Guy Lambert looks back on his career.

Didn't we almost have it all? From Whitney Houston's Didn't We Almost Have It All.....to Steve Wynwood's Higher Love... ..Will Jennings wrote them all. In a career spanning five decades, the man from the small town of Kilgore, Texas, wrote for a number of smash hit artists, including B.B. King, Mariah Carey, Jimmy Buffett, Barry Manilow and Roy Orbison. Jennings collaborated on a whole range of songs for film soundtracks,

bringing illustrious success in the process. It was in 1983 when he won his first Academy Award for the song Up Where We Belong, sung by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes for An Officer and a Gentleman. The lift is up where we belong Far from the world below Up where the clear winds blow Fast forward eight years and he won a Grammy Award

for writing lyrics to Eric Clapton's Tears In Heaven for the film Rush, which was also nominated for a Golden Globe. You're here There's nothing I fear But above them all came the Celine Dion classic My Heart Will Go On, written for James Cameron's Titanic, sweeping home a second Oscar, a Golden Globe and a Grammy Award in 1997. In 2006, his legacy was cemented when he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

The singer Peter Wolfe paid tribute to Jennings on social media, calling his friend a maestro, brilliant mind and a gentle spirit who enriched his life in so many ways. Guy Lambert with that look back on the life of the American lyricist Will Jennings, who has died at the age of 80. 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, you can send us an email.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Sid Dundon. The producer was Liam McSheffery. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janette Jalil. Until next time, goodbye. Life and death were two very realistic coexisting possibilities in my life.

I didn't even think I'd make it to like my 16th birthday, to be honest. I grew up being scared of who I was. Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference. It's the hardest step. But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care. Just taking that first step makes a big difference. It's the hardest step. But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care.

To hear more stories of recovery, visit CAMH.ca. 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. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts.