Global News Podcast - US exit polls show democracy and the economy are the top issues in the election

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

US exit polls show state of the democracy and the economy are the most important issues. Also Israel's Prime Minister fires his Defence Secretary and a piece of 77 year-old cake goes for a princely sum.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This podcast is brought to you by WISE, the app that helps you manage your money internationally. With WISE, you have up to 40 currencies at your fingertips. You can receive money, pay bills and send money across borders without hidden fees. You always get the real time mid market exchange rates. See exactly what you pay every time. Join millions of WISE customers worldwide. Download the WISE app today or visit wise.com.

T's and C's apply. going to unravel this all. From the BBC World Service, this is World of Secrets, season five, Finding Mr. Fox. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard and in the early hours of Wednesday the 6th of November these are our main stories. The first preliminary wave of national exit poll data in the US has just been released

with voters saying the state of democracy and the economy were the most important issues when deciding who to vote for as president. The Israeli Prime Minister has fired his defence secretary, Yoav Galant, and a French court has convicted a gang of people smugglers after the biggest trial so far involving those operating small boats in the English Channel. Also in this podcast... She was telling her mum off yesterday, because she wants to get some food and she's running around and she's flicking her head out trying to get mum to lie down. So she just knows

what she wants. Haggis, the newborn pygmy hippo, a sensation at Edinburgh Zoo. Now as we record this podcast, with many polls still open across the United States, the first preliminary wave of national exit poll data has just been released with voters saying the state of democracy and the economy are the most important issues when deciding who to vote for as president. The BBC's North America editor Sarah Smith is with the Harris campaign in Howard University which is just three kilometres from the White House

and she spoke to Nuala McGovern. We may be waiting quite some time before we see Kamala Harris herself of course because who knows whether there'll even be a result for her to come out and talk about here but there is a stage all set up at lined with these stars and stripes and it's got a podium ready for her to stride up to if indeed she has an acceptance speech to make or and has to concede defeat but who knows knows when that might be. In the meantime there are television and broadcast crews, journalists from all over the world. I mean it couldn't be more international the press pack that I am with here because there is such intense

interest in this election from every corner of the globe. Really quite something, particularly when you think of the such a short run-up that she had to this huge night. I mentioned Howard University that it is a historically black college and university in the United States and interesting she has picked that place to make it her night. Yeah and she studied here, she graduated from here in 1986 so it'll be something of a homecoming for her when she gets here, whether it's a joyous one or not remains to be seen. But yeah, it's very emblematic that she has chosen a historically back college and university

in which to make this speech. She's always made a very great deal, in fact, of the sorority sisters that she joined here and they have helped her a great deal through her campaign and her career. And it will be a very, very momentous moment, of course, if she walks out here onto this stage in front of me and becomes the first female president, let alone the first black female president or South Asian female president.

This will be a very historic moment, and she's chosen a very apt setting if, if, indeed, that's what happens later. We just don't know. So how about Donald Trump, the former president bidding to become the next president? The BBC's Gary O'Donoghue is in West Palm Beach near Mar-a-Lago, the private club in Florida where Mr Trump lives and where he'll spend this evening. We're expecting possibly at some point during the evening that Donald Trump may come over

and we're hearing of course that some of the advisors in his campaign are suggesting that he should claim victory early if he's ahead in some of those swing states you've been talking about. Other elements suggesting that he could end up looking very foolish if he does it too early. I think the one thing we do know is that Donald Trump will make up his own mind on that one. He did say earlier in the day when he was voting over on Palm Beach that he would accept the result if, he said, if the election was fair. If the election was fair, but that is the very big if. It's

interesting though that you've got that competing narrative about whether to come out early or not. Yeah and of course this is background isn't there, there's history to this back in 2020 where I was there standing a few yards from the West Wing when he came out at 2.30 in the morning claimed victory. It was incredibly shocking moment because no one knew who'd won the election at that point. No one could say whether he'd won it or whether Joe Biden had won it.

And then we know what happened in the subsequent weeks after that, culminating, of course, on January the 6th and the storming of the Capitol. So I think there are clearly divided opinions on what he should do tonight. And the complicating factor here is that last time around, Republicans were very cautious about voting by mail and things like that, and Democrats did that in huge numbers. Republicans have done it much more this time, so he may start to see his numbers pick up later on in the counting process

in some of those places where there are large mail-in ballots. So it's going to be more complex this time around, rather than last time where we saw him ahead in Pennsylvania, this crucial state, and then Joe Biden gradually overtake him in the subsequent days until Pennsylvania was declared four days later on the Saturday and that's what put Joe Biden over the top. That was Gary O'Donoghue in Florida. So what have been the big issues in this election? Valerie Sanderson spoke to Rowan Bridge in Washington.

I mean I think the overriding issue for most people in this election is the economy frankly. It's like you know this is a story that's been true for the past 30 years. It was James Carville who worked on Bill Clinton's campaign who coined the phrase it's the economy stupid. Meaning that that is the thing that drives voters perhaps more than anything else. And Kamala Harris faces the challenge that post-pandemic inflation has been high in this country and a lot of people have felt that. You know, if you talk to some of the Trump voters that I spoke to this morning, for example, you know, whether they like Trump's bombastic style or not, most of them felt better off economically under Donald Trump and

felt the country was doing better economically under Donald Trump. And I think in that clip that you played there of Kamala Harris, there's a sort of acknowledgement of it. She's sort of talking about what she will do for the economy, knowing that that is an issue that's very important to voters. Then outside that, they both have their own issues that they think play well for them. In Donald Trump's case, that's immigration and he's made great play of immigration in his campaign rallies. For Kamala Harris she's appealed to kind of women voters and moderate Republican women voters particularly over the issue of abortion and abortion rights.

So I think the economy is an overall issue that affects everybody and underneath that both sides feel there are other issues that play well for them. And Ron, who do you think are the people who are going to decide this election? I mean is it going to be older women? Is it going to be younger men? Well, I mean that's a very good question. The answer is it could be either of the above. You have, as you say, a country that is kind of split down the middle, and so in which case you are talking about, are there sections of the electorate that you can either peel off from the other side, or maybe undecided, or don't normally vote, that you can pull out and vote for your side? In Donald Trump's case, if you listen to a lot of his speeches, a lot of his approach, it's been a kind of sort of laddish appeal to young men. If you look at where he's appeared, it's

been on podcasts that appeal to men who wouldn't watch the news, who were low propensity voters, as they call them, people who don't normally go out to vote. Now, has Donald Trump's strategy and approach and language motivated those people to turn out? If they do, that could be significant for Donald Trump. Kamala Harris has specifically targeted, you hear her talk a lot about young voters, she's been appearing on university campuses for some of her rallies, and she's talked about the issue of abortion, which she thinks appeals to moderate Republican women. We've seen people like Liz Cheney, who's a former Conservative Republican congresswoman campaigning for Kamala Harris.

She thinks that that is going to be something that brings out moderate Republican women who may vote for her and that could be crucial in this election. Rowan, I know this is an impossible question. I have to ask it. I mean, when are we going to know the result? Is it going to be days? Hours? Weeks? Yeah, I mean, it's a very good question and I think it ultimately comes down to, you know, how close are some of these races? So let's look at past history, you know. 2012, Barack Obama, the polls closed in California and the US networks basically declared him a winner straight away. 2016 Donald Trump declared the winner early hours of the following morning.

Joe Biden took till the weekend. What I'm saying is it could be any of those scenarios. That was Rowanbridge in Washington. Well the last polling stations will close in Hawaii and Alaska at midnight US Eastern time. That's 5 o'clock GMT. With the chance of recounts and legal challenges, it could be a few days before a winner is declared. Our correspondent John Sudworth has this report on how the US electoral system works and why the final result will be decided by a few swing states.

As Americans cast their ballots, it's not the popular vote that matters. Instead residents of each US state are voting for a share of the 538 seats that make up what's known as the Electoral College. The first candidate to reach one more than half of those seats, 270, is the winner. It's mostly a first-past-the-post system in each state. Candidates who lose even by a small margin get nothing, which can lead to interesting outcomes, as in 2016. Anibal Perez-Linan is a professor of global affairs at Notre Dame University. The election was very tight, right, but if you just count the number of votes at the

national level, there was a slight advantage for Hillary Clinton. But then when you translate those votes state by state into electoral and into electors, right, the majority of the electors favor Donald Trump. In most US states, with such strong majorities one way or the other, we can be all but certain which candidate is going to win the Electoral College votes. Which is why the contest comes down to just seven swing states. Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina, where polls suggest the electorate is finally

balanced. Four years ago, Joe Biden won the state of Georgia by little more than 11,000 votes, a tiny margin. It was a result that prompted Donald Trump's infamous post-election phone call to officials in this state, asking them to find those few thousand votes that would swing Georgia his way, handing him the 16 electoral college seats up for grabs and therefore the White House. They refused. The closer the actual vote in these swing states, the longer we'll have to wait for a definitive outcome, especially when you factor in the tens of millions of postal and early ballots that have to be counted separately. Last time round,

it took four days for a winner to be declared. John Sudworth. The FBI says several hoax bomb threats were directed at US polling stations in three battleground states and that many of them appeared to come from Russian email domains. And that's not the only way foreign actors are said to have been involved in the campaign. US intelligence agencies say social media have been inundated with election related content. This is one video that went viral in recent days. It falsely shows an individual who claims he's from Haiti saying he voted in Georgia.

The US intelligence agencies are saying it's the work of Russian influence actors. We came to America six months ago and we already have American citizenship. We are voting Kamala Harris. Yesterday we voted in Gwinnett County and today we are voting in Colton County. BBC Verify has been studying this issue for months and reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh told Rebecca Kesby about the sorts of videos they've been investigating. From the moment we started tracking this campaign earlier in the year, most of the videos were sort of in line with Russia's interest in Ukraine, so they were anti-Ukraine, pro-Kremlin.

But in the last couple of months we've noticed that there's been attack towards targeting the US election campaign. And specifically, they're trying to make these videos to pretend like the BBC or Fox News or Sky News or ABC or CBS are saying that America as a country near collapse, that sort of the election is so dysfunctional, that there's widespread voter fraud, all of those things that are sort of supposed to sow discord in the US, that's the area that they're targeting. Right and so they're very convincing then in terms of the way that they're presented. And just expand a bit more on the messaging, what sort of people do they seem to be trying to target? Well, because the videos are in English, obviously the target seems to be, and because many of them specifically are about the US and the election campaign, they seem to be targeted

at people in the United States in particular. And they're sort of banking on the idea that people see these videos and believe them, and basically they cause sort of unrest or mistrust of authorities. Kamala Harris specifically also is targeted and her husband Douglas Emhoff are sort of targeted in some of these videos. And so you said that the US intelligence services believe they have evidence that it is coming from Russia. What is the solid evidence that that's the source? US intelligence agencies together issued a joint statement and they said that they have evidence from

sort of previous activities and also obviously there's said that they have evidence from sort of previous activities and also obviously there's stuff that they're not going to share with us, but they say that they have some level of confidence based on past monitoring and sort of pattern of behavior that this operation arises from Russia. Now we also made the same conclusion when we were looking at this operation check and working with our colleagues at a fact-checking organisation, logically and finish, Investigative Organisation Check first. They also believe they have spotted IPs and that are based in Russia. And Shane, is it possible to know whether people believe these videos and whether they will make

a difference perhaps in this election? Well, that is actually really difficult to say. What I can tell you is these videos, when you look at them, some of them in particular that have a sort of very well-made narrative, they're actually, it's not really that easy to spot that these are fake and these are not like real videos made by these news outlets, unless you go and check their websites, their social media accounts, and see, you know, they've never posted this stuff.

So it is possible, but thankfully, I think from what we've seen so far, the videos have actually failed to get that much engagement. You know, a handful of them have gone viral and most of them actually haven't got that much attention. The videos that we're a bit more worried about, which is like not part of this operation, you know, in the last week or so, we have seen three specific videos targeting three of the key battleground states in the US, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and

Arizona. One in Pennsylvania was supposed to show one poll worker basically tearing apart mail-in ballots for Donald Trump. One in Georgia was supposed to show two Haitians illegally voting in Georgia. And another one in Arizona was supposed to show the Arizona Secretary of State being involved in a massive voter fraud operation. And all of these three videos, the US intelligence agencies also believe are the work of Russian influence actors. But the difference here is that these three videos have actually gone viral.

Like a lot of people have unfortunately seen them, have been sharing them. And that's why very quickly US intelligence has come down and said these videos are fake. BBC verifies Cheyenne Sardarizadeh and he was speaking to Rebecca Kesby. Now obviously there is going to be a lot going on before the next scheduled edition of the Global News Pod so I will be back with a bonus edition which we will probably record around 445 GMT-ish more or less depending on what we have to say and

depending on when you are listening to this one, you can find live radio coverage of the US election on the BBC World Service. Still to come? If you think when that was given in 1947 rationing was still going on, mostly people who would have received a piece of cake like that would have thought, I've got to eat it. A princely-salmot auction for a slice of cake from Queen Elizabeth's wedding. This podcast is brought to you by WISE, the app that helps you manage your money internationally.

With WISE you have up to 40 currencies at your fingertips. You can receive money, pay bills and send money across borders without hidden fees. You always get the real-time mid-market exchange rates. See exactly what you pay every time. Join millions of Wyse customers worldwide. Download the Wyse app today or visit wyse.com. Tc and C supply. An adventure of a lifetime. Sailing around the world. Delivering a renovated yacht thousands of miles around the globe, from Brazil to Europe.

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 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. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

has sacked his defence minister Yoav Galant. Mr Netanyahu said there had been too many gaps between them in the management of Israel's wars. Paul Henley spoke to John Donison in Jerusalem. We've heard over the past year there have been reports of shouting matches between the two men over Israel's war strategy in Gaza in particular. Mr. Galant was very much behind the war when it started just over a year ago but in recent months he has said the government should be prioritizing a hostage release deal with Hamas ahead of continuing the war and of course that's something that Mr. Netanyahu

has rejected. Yoav Galant was often described as a moderate to explain his difference of opinions with the Prime Minister, but he was a strong supporter of the war, wasn't he? He was, and all these things are relative. He has been pretty hawkish over the past year about the war in Gaza, but his replacement, Israel Katz, is perhaps even more hawkish and he clearly had strong differences of opinion with Mr Netanyahu not just over the war in Gaza but also the issue of the exemption of Israel's ultra

orthodox citizens from serving in the military that is something that he thinks thought shouldn't continue. He'd fallen out with Mr Netanyahu over that, saying that, you know, the ultra-Orthodox at a time of war in Gaza and also now in Lebanon, they should be serving like everyone else. Who is protesting in Tel Aviv and why? Well the opposition parties in Israel have called for protests this evening, but a lot of those protests are being driven by the hostage families forum, who are very concerned, they say, over the sacking of Mr. Galant.

They have asked that Israel Katz, the new defence minister, should prioritise that hostage deal, something they feel that Mr Netanyahu has not been doing. We've had protests also outside the prime minister's office here in Jerusalem, not huge, so it is going to be interesting to see how those develop over coming days. I mean, you cannot ignore also the timing of this. Mr Gallant had a much better relationship with the White House than the Prime Minister's relationship, which to be honest is pretty frosty at best. And the timing of this on the day of the US election, I think, can't be ignored.

That was John Donison in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Israel's war in Lebanon against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group is expanding. The Beqa Valley, the militant group's heartland in the east of the country, is coming under increasing attack. In the last week, more than 160 people have been killed in Israeli strikes there. Israel says it only targets Hezbollah sites, but rescue workers with Lebanon's civil defence force say a large number of civilians are being killed. Our correspondent Quentin Somerville sent this report from Lebanon and some listeners may find parts of his report upsetting. I'm calculating the situation in my head, focusing if there are victims, if there is

a fire, if there was another airstrike. Samir Ishkiyeh is 32 years old. For the last 14 years he's been part of Lebanon's civil defence force. He's the CDF's head of operations in Zaatli, in the Bekaa Valley, in the east of the country. There's been an Israeli strike on an apartment block in El Karak, just minutes from his station. He's at the wheel of the ambulance on his way to the scene. So two buildings have been affected but one has taken a direct hit and it's partly collapsed at the bottom here. This is a daily occurrence in this area and the civil defence staff are

telling us that when they arrive at the scene, there's half a dozen casualties that they're seeing every time. Even in 2006, the last war with Israel, there was nothing like the intensity of these bombardments. Meanwhile, Samir is deep in the rubble. There are survivors underneath the pancaked floors of the apartment block. First victim I found was a child. I don't know if it's a girl or a boy, because it was half child.

Sorry to explain that, but it's from the stomach and up. From stomach and down, there is nothing. It's hard. It's too hard. Samir says the strike left six dead, including three children. Israeli drones buzz overhead constantly. At night, Hezbollah rockets could be heard on more than half a dozen occasions, being launched from nearby.

I spent more than two weeks with the CDF and the Bacca. The pattern of Israeli strikes and civilian casualties would be repeated again and again. Last Monday was one of the most intense bombardments on Baalbek, a city with a UNESCO protected site, sprawling and magnificent Roman temples. We're right by some of the Roman fortifications and an entire house was wiped out here. I'd say five people were killed. The locals say that there's been a shift in the Israeli targeting, that they are increasingly targeting not military infrastructure, Hezbollah infrastructure,

but civilian homes and apartments. Israel said it had struck 110 Hezbollah-linked targets that day. Some two-thirds of the 63 killed were women and children, according to local officials. And the wards of the local hospital are crowded with the injured. The cries you can hear in the background at Dar Amal Hospital and in the Children's Intensive Care Unit are from three-year-old Celine. She has burns to her face, an Israeli airstrike hit her home, killing both her parents.

Two of her sisters were also killed, her brother was killed. In the next room is two-year-old Kian. He was wounded in an Israeli airstrike. All he wants is his mum, Najat. She's by his bedside. I'm crying because I'm afraid for my baby. If they think they can break us, they're mistaken. Even if I have to sacrifice my son, my husband, my father, my mother, my sister and myself. In the last month Israel has unquestionably diminished Hezbollah's military might.

But the group's strength has deeper roots and here in the Bekaa Valley its bombing campaign and the high civilian toll is for now hardening, not weakening support for the group. That was Quentin Somerville in Lebanon. A French court has convicted a gang of people smugglers after the biggest trial so far involving those operating small boats in the English Channel. All 18 members of the gang were given prison sentences. Their trial was the result of a Europe-wide operation targeting a smuggling network thought to be behind more than 10,000 small boat crossings to the UK. Our correspondent Andrew Harding reports. This is a significant breakthrough for French prosecutors who'd asked for heavy prison sentences for the gang in the hope of deterring others. Most of those convicted today are young Kurdish

men from Iraq, but one is an Iranian man arrested in the UK back in 2022 as part of a huge Europe-wide police operation. For several years, the gang controlled most of the small boat crossings from northern France. Their leader, already convicted on other smuggling charges, had been running the whole operation from a French prison cell. He now faces another 15 years in jail. The trial was complicated, involving multiple European nations and police forces. It generated 67 tons of paperwork. Some will claim the guilty verdicts as proof that these vast people-smuggling networks can be unraveled.

Others warn that the real ringleaders are safe outside Europe and that there are still plenty of willing recruits for what remains a very lucrative industry. That was Andrew Harding. A 77-year-old piece of cake has sold at auction for more than two and a half thousand dollars. It's part of the wedding cake of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip and it was discovered in a suitcase belonging to a housekeeper who worked at the Palace of Holyrood House in Edinburgh. Jo Black reports. From the palace balcony Elizabeth and her husband waved to the cheering crowds. November the 20th 1947 the nation and the world witnessed the wedding of the young Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip. During the celebrations, the royal couple had several wedding cakes.

Now 77 years on, a slice of wedding cake from that day has gone under the hammer. It was found by Marian Poulsen's family. She had been a housekeeper at Holyrood House and was given the cake as a token of thanks for buying the newlyweds a dessert service. She died in the 1980s and it was found stashed away, still in its original presentation box, along with a letter from the future Queen, under a bed with some of her belongings. Today the cake went to auction, its £500 estimate quickly surpassed. Jonathan Benson is the director of Ream and Dancy, an auction house in Colchester. It's a little slither of history.

If you think when that was given in 1947 rationing was still going on, mostly people who would have received a piece of cake like that would have thought, I've got to eat it, particularly if the Queen has just sent it to me. It may be nearly 80 years old, but the appetite to own this particular piece of cake has now cost the buyer more than £2,000. That was Jo Black. Now move aside, Mu Deng, there is another Pygmy Hippo set for global stardom. If you've got no idea what I'm talking about you clearly

haven't spent enough time watching online videos of a tiny newborn hippopotamus, Mu Deng, wobbling around her pen in a Thai zoo earlier this year and the internet went wild. And now Edinburgh Zoo has its own pygmy called Haggis. Johnny Appleyard is from the Hoofstock team at Edinburgh Zoo and Ben Wright asked him what makes Haggis so special? For the species it's a good ambassador animal. Pygmy hippos are endangered in the wild, there's only around 2000 left. So for us as a charity as well, just be able to play a role in that and the much wider picture is quite an exciting time for us. And obviously for us as keepers, it's nice to have a little one around, it just makes

our jobs a bit more exciting. She's only five days old, I think, So I imagine not doing much apart from sleeping. But what's she like? Yeah, she's good. She's actually already got a little bit of an attitude, just like a mom. She was born on Wednesday afternoon. So we did some close monitoring with her for the first couple of days. And then now she's just started to get a bit more mobile.

So the first couple of days, she's just sleeping most of the time and hiding in the hay. But now she's starting to follow mom about. So she's getting sleeping most of the time and hiding in the hay but now she's starting to follow mum about so she's getting up and about and yeah she's already got a little bit of an agitated attitude I would say. She's like just like a mum. A mum's a bit feisty and so is a little one. Yeah so what do you mean a bit of an attitude? She just knows what she wants. She was telling her mum off yesterday because she wants to get some food and she's running around and she's flicking her head out trying to get

mum to lie down so just knows what she wants. And how are Haggis' parents getting on, Otto and Gloria? So Otto at the moment, he's actually separate. So when mum gives birth, she normally separates us off in the wild. So in captivity, we do the same thing and she doesn't really tolerate the male being around. So he's outside now. He's in a separate area of the enclosure, the male himself and with no responsibilities whatsoever. And yeah, mum's spent most of all time with the baby. We separate her often, have her swim in the morning. But yeah, just right now she's spending probably 90% of her day just

laying down recovering and getting her energy back to feed the little one. And how big is Haggis? Give us a sense, but bag of flour size? Yeah, so she's currently when we waited this morning, she's six and a half kilos. So it's just probably just the size of a big bag of pasta. Right, and eating? Yeah, eating really well. Yeah, she started putting on weight about 200 grams a day when we first started, we first started weighing her and now she's putting on a good hefty half a kilo a day just through

drinking mom's milk. And full size, how big is a pygmy hippo? Pygmy hippo is probably the same size as a really big Alsatian dog. So in terms of height-wise, they weigh at least around 300 to 500 kilos. So it wouldn't feel like a pygmy if it was running towards you? No, it wouldn't. You definitely want to get out of the way. That zoo in Thailand did a great PR job didn't it of posting videos of moo deng

Will you be trying to harness haggis for publicity sent her viral judging at the moment? It seems to be doing the same thing obviously that was necessarily our intent, but obviously it's nice to jump on that But the actual social media side of it is good because it's actually promoting the species So that's that's our that's our role as a charity is to try and do our bit to promote the plight of these animals. So the fact that Moudang went viral and now this one seems to be doing the same thing, it's actually good for the species in the whole because it just gets the species out there. Especially Pygmy hippos who sometimes often come foul to the being overshadowed by the bigger hippo.

That was Jonny Appleyard and if you want to see a picture of Haggis, the pygmy hippo, I will obviously share it on altogether too many social media platforms, or you can just go to BBC.com. And that's it from us for now, but we will be back with a bonus edition of the Global News

podcast in a few hours time. If you would like to comment on this edition or the topics we covered in it, do please send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on x at globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll. The producer was Rachel Wright. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jackie Leonard and until next time, goodbye. pay bills and send money across borders without hidden fees. You always get the real-time mid-market exchange rates. See exactly what you pay every time. Join millions of WISE

customers worldwide. Download the WISE app today or visit wise.com. T's and T's apply. An adventure of a lifetime. Sailing around the world. Delivering a renovated yacht thousands of miles around the globe, from Brazil to Europe. 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 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.