Global News Podcast - Why Venezuela moves towards freeing political prisoners

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

In Venezuela, families of political prisoners have been rallying outside the Supreme Court in Caracas, chanting for the release of their loved ones. Lawmakers in the country have approved the first step of an amnesty bill introduced by the interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, in a move towards freeing hundreds of opposition politicians, journalists and human rights activists detained under previous governments. Also: scandal in Norway as police launch corruption investigation into the former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland's ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Scientists in China find a potential alternative to conventional cervical cancer tests. We find out how South Africa's fight against HIV has been affected by the sweeping cuts to the United States foreign aid programme. Finland becomes the latest country to adopt a priority traffic system, allowing lights to turn green for emergency vehicles. How a previously unknown Michelangelo drawing became an auction sensation. And - why ski jumpers are being accused of a very unusual form of cheating in the run-up to the Winter Olympics.The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail] credit: Ronald Pena

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I've spent the last three decades trying to better understand money across the border room, the newsroom and the trading floor. That's longer than most podcasts hosts have been alive. But even though I've got questions, join me, Maren's Upset Web, every week for my show Meryn Talks Money from Bloomberg Podcasts, where I have in-depth conversations with fund managers, strategists and experts about her markets really work.

And join me for a separate episode where I answer listener questions and how to make those markets work for you. Follow Merriman Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Keith Adams, and in the early hours of Friday the 6th of February, these are our main stories. Lawmakers in Venezuela advance an amnesty bill for hundreds of political prisoners, a central demand by opposition figures and the United States.

Scandal in Norway, after several high society figures, are found in the Epstein files. A former Prime Minister is now being investigated by the police. And have scientists in China found a less invasive way to test for cervical cancer. Also in this podcast. More material, a greater surface area in the suit, it can quite dramatically affect how far a ski jumper can fly. Controversy at the Winter Olympics, the strange way some ski jumpers might be cheating. We start this podcast in Venezuela. Those chants come from outside Venezuela's Supreme Court in Caracas,

where families of political prisoners were calling for their release on Thursday evening. Earlier lawmakers unanimously backed a bill introduced by the country's interim leader, Delci Rodriguez, marking a first step towards freeing hundreds. of opposition figures, journalists and human rights activists. Among those watching was Manuel Labrador, whose father, a former regional lawmaker, has been imprisoned since 2024. This gives us a lot of hope amid the uncertainty.

It has given us more hope and strength to continue with this struggle that we all share. There are people here whose relatives have been unjustly imprisoned for years and today we want everyone to be free, not just a few but all of us, with our relatives back on the streets. Well, BBC Monitoring's Latin America analyst, Luis Fahardo, has been following developments from Miami.

As you mentioned, it is a first step and an important first step, it would seem like, towards meeting one of the main demands of the Venezuelan opposition. Of course, they have been denouncing for many years that there are hundreds of political prisoners still being held in Venezuelan jails, and this certainly seems to be a first. move in that direction. Of course, there is a process that would still need to happen for this

bill to become a law. There is a period of public consultation and another reading by the national legislature. So there's still some steps that would need to occur before this actually becomes a law. But it's certainly a move that has been uploaded, that has been welcomed by many people in Venezuela who have been demanding that the U.S. intervention should start to result in real political changes in Venezuela. And it is a move that aligns with the U.S. demands, I suppose. Certainly, the U.S. government has been saying that one of their big demands is precisely this, that prisoners are released. And it's also going to help the U.S. government

deflect criticism of those of some commentators who have said that the situation after the U.S. military intervention had not changed that dramatically in many senses. in the fact that the Chavista apparatus, the Chavista government was still very much in charge and still continuing with practices that had been condemned, but of course internally and in the international community as well. So it is going to be an argument used by the U.S. government as well to suggest that things are indeed changing, maybe slowly, but they seem to be changing to some degree in Venezuela.

But isn't the judiciary in Venezuela still loyal to Nicholas Maduro? That is a crucial question not only about the judiciary, but about all institutions in Venezuela. There seems to be, in some cases, an apparent duality in cases where the government seems to be obeying U.S. demands and some cases in which it still operates the way it has been operating before. So it is still unclear how much autonomy this government still has and how much it is only following U.S. orders. Luis Fahardo. To Norway next, which is being rocked by scandal. after revelations from the Jeffrey Epstein files.

The documents have revealed relationships between the late convicted sex offender and a number of people in the country's elite, including the Crown Princess, an ambassador, and now police have opened a corruption investigation into the former Prime Minister, Toby and Jarlane Jarlane. Paul Kall Lundset, head of the Economic Crime Unit, explains why they've taken this step.

It is the information that's from come in the so-called Epstein filen. Information that's emerged in the so-called crime. Epstein files has provided reasonable grounds to investigate whether any crime has been committed. There are indications that there have been potential beneficial transfers to him in his positions as Secretary-General of the Council of Europe and Chair of the Nobel Committee. Well, the BBC Stephanie Zacherson told me what we know so far. So this is to Norway, one of many people's most known, most trusted, senior political figures. To Björn-Yarglant, he served as Prime Minister.

of the Labour government in the 90s. He was Secretary General of the Council of Europe for 10 years. He was chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in 2009 to 2015, which obviously awards the Peace Prize. It's a very prominent figure. And since the latest tranche of the Epstein files were released about a week ago, there had been very vocal calls to launch investigations into his dealings and his connections with the late second.

offender. It has emerged, for instance, that he requested Geoffrey Epstein's help with a property purchase, that Tobin Jagland with his family, had planned to go on a holiday to Epstein's island, although that appears to have been cancelled before it happened. And to be very clear, he has not been charged with a crime here, but this investigation is now being opened by Norwegian police. And he has also made a public apology and admitted to. to what he called an error of judgment. So what happens now? So Eirchokrim, which is the economic crime unit,

they have labelled this potentially aggravated corruption. So what they will be looking into is investigating whether any gifts, travel or potential loans were received in connection with Toblin Yagland's positions. Now they're requesting documents from Yagland, his lawyers. And it was also quite a complicated. matter because of Yagland's previous role at the Council of Europe, he currently enjoys immunity. So the current Norwegian government, including the foreign minister and the prime minister, they have had to send a request to lift that immunity so that the police can conduct a full investigation.

And I watched an interview with Yagland's lawyer who was interviewed on Norwegian TV on Thursday evening. He said that he's convinced Yagland will be proven to not have done anything unlawful. He welcomed an investigation by the police and he said it's better that they do a proper investigation rather than the Norwegian media, which obviously, of the last couple of days, have been reporting extensively on this. And this is just one story, isn't it,

involving Norway and the Epstein files? I mean, it's had a really big impact in the country. It has indeed. It's been quite a historically shocking week for Norwegians. We had the revelations of the Crown Princess, the future queen of Norway, Crown Princess Metamaritz, having had extensive contact. She appears in the documents, I believe, more than a thousand times. There's extensive text messages, plannings of holidays, lots of conversations between the two.

She has also had to make a public apology. But in the kind of context, in Norway currently, there's a lot of people that say this is really proof that her judgment is not up to par to be the future. future queen of Norway. And we have also seen a very prominent ambassador that has been suspended from her roles because it appears that she had close connections with Epstein, including him potentially leaving her child millions of dollars in his will. And now we have this investigation opened into a former prime minister. So yes, the Epstein documents, the contents of them that's reverberating around the globe. But in Norway, has been a quite shocking week.

Stephanie Zacherson, many women find cervical smear tests for cancer, painful, intrusive and inconvenient and put off going to the doctor to have it done. But scientists in China have identified what they say is a potential alternative by testing menstrual blood for signs of cancer. The researchers found this way of testing

was nearly as good at picking up people who had the disease as other methods. Our health correspondent, Sophie Hutchinson, explains how the study was carried out. Scientists developed what they described as a mini-pad, and it's a piece of sterile cotton, which sticks onto a sanitary pad. And once that piece of cotton has collected about two-thirds of menstrual blood,

the women put it into a container, into a solution called cell preservation solution, and then put it in the post, sending it off to a lab, where it was then tested for HPV, the human papilloma, virus, which causes almost all of the cervical cancers that we know about. The research was done in Wuhan, in China, and the women who took part were age 20 to 54. There were more than 3,000 of them.

And there have been other research programs, but on a much smaller scale, like programs in hospitals and things like that that showed there might be some positive results. But they wanted to broaden it out to a kind of community project, if you like. And at the same time, as these, women sending off results in this way from their menstrual blood. They were also tested in conventional ways. And so those two different types of tests were compared with each other. And they just showed amazingly positive results. I mean, the accuracy was similar to that of, you know, your typical test that you get when you go to your GP. And in fact, the negative results, so that's women with no signs of the virus, were 99.9% accurate, so identical to the standard tests in a clinic.

So there is a real desire to change things for women and try and protect more women, but obviously it's still going to take quite a bit more work. Sophie Hutchinson. Fiona Oskine from the charity Cancer Research UK said she was encouraged by the results and hopeful that less invasive tests could be developed in the future. Some of the big barriers that we see are either having had a painful experience in the past or being worried about experiencing pain when you go for your cervical screening, which is a really understandable kind of off-putting reason for people not to want to go,

but we would always advise people to talk to the nurse or doctor that's doing your screening, explain if you've had an experience in the past that means that you might be a bit more worried about. Anything will have any specific concerns. There are other barriers as well, so some of the more practical ones around kind of getting time off work, childcare, trying to get to the GP or other clinic setting where you're having your screening done and things like both the transport and the cost of that being. barriers for people. And for some people as well, there are kind of cultural barriers. So for certain ethnic minorities in particular, there can be kind of stigmas around testing for HPV and kind of

having tests that involve kind of an intimate area of the body can be a really kind of big barrier for people taking part. So it's quite a wide spectrum. It's really important that, you know, screening programs aren't static like all of medicine. It's not something that is a kind of one and done. We need to constantly be innovating, researching, understanding how we can improve things, how we can make things more accessible and better for the people that are taking part. So tests and research like this is really important to kind of take into consideration as a screening programme stays relevant and evolves. Fiona Osgan from Cancer Research UK.

Still to come in this podcast. 10 million is the bid. 18 million. 19 million is big. 20 million. 21 million is bid now. Huge sums for a tiny drawing of a foot. But then it was a Michelangelo.

even if the seller didn't know it at first. I've spent the last three decades trying to better understand money across the border room, the newsroom and the trading floor. That's longer than most podcast hosts have been alive. But even though I've got questions, join me, Merrin's Upset Web, every week for my show Merrin Talks Money from Bloomberg podcasts, where I have in-depth conversations with fund managers,

strategists and experts about her markets really work. And join me for a separate episode where I answer listener questions and how to make those markets work. for you. Follow Merritton's Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. This is the Global News podcast. It's been one year since the United States announced sweeping cuts to its foreign aid program and one of the major casualties was South Africa, particularly its HIV and AIDS programs. Our Africa correspondent, Mayeney Jones, has been meeting some of those who are on the country's front line fighting the virus and sent this report.

I'm in Cape Town in Philippi Village, one of the toughest townships in the country. And there are a couple of mobile clinics here run by the Desmond Tutu Foundation. It's midweek, so relatively quiet, but there's a small group of women sitting in the shade, waiting outside the mobile clinic to receive preventative HIV medicine. I spoke to a couple of them. I'm essay two. I'm 28 years old. How helpful is it to have clinics that come within communities, like,

Philippi. It's very helpful because you don't have to walk that much. You don't have to use money for taxes and all that. A lot of mobile clinics were sponsored by America and a year ago the US government announced that they were going to cut their funding. It was not a good at your war, not happy. Why did you want to be on preventative medicine? Anything can happen. You can't even trust the guys there to dating now. You can use a condom, but the condom can disappoint. My name is Okulah. I'm 19 years old. Do you think that if there are no more mobile clinics and people just have to go to public hospitals,

do you think more people will not go and catch HIV? That would be a big problem because a lot of people don't like going to the clinic. We have to wait and stuff, so people wouldn't go to the clinic. This is the cab injection for prep. In areas like Philippi, clinics like these are essential. It's one of the reasons researchers are worried that cut. could lead to a surge in new infections. The impact was profound because it was so sudden.

Professor Helen Rees, heads with its RHA, one of the world's leading HIV research institutes. When you suddenly withdraw funding and you have to suddenly withdraw services, it's going to have a huge impact on the well-being of people living with HIV, but also an impact on what's happening with the whole outbreak in South Africa. Why should the world care about HIV funding here? Well, HIV is a unique disease because it affects the persons, the individual's immune system if they're not on treatment. If we don't keep focusing on HIV globally, we could allow a large number of people to acquire HIV for the world. That is bad news.

If we're worried about pandemics, we do not want millions of people who are immunocompromise. It's not just HIV prevention that's been impacted by the funding cuts. South African researchers are global leaders in the field, partly due to US funding. But the government says they can no longer rely on America. Dr. Aaron Matsualeidi is the Minister of Health. At any rate, you are aware that the US has moved. There's no chance of them going back. They have adopted a new policy called America First Global Health Policy,

which I believe, frankly speaking, no nation on earth that respect itself should accede to. We all know what crap is. It also protects you from HIV. Dr. Motswaleigh hopes the government will announce more HIV funding in its upcoming budget. It's also working with other donors to fill the gap left by the US. Through the Global Fund, it secured 900,000 doses of Lennar Kappavir, a new twice-yearly shot that gives complete immunity against HIV. It's due to be rolled out within months.

But researchers say more will be needed to stop new infections from growing. For communities in Philippine and across South Africa, this will be essential. So how do you insert it? Mayone Jones. Now, any emergency worker will tell you that time is critical when it comes to get into the scene of an accident or a fire. A handful of countries, including South Korea and the Netherlands, already have priority traffic systems,

where lights automatically switch to green to allow emergency vehicles to pass through busy junctions. Finland will soon begin. become the latest country to join that list after a successful trial on its roads. Technology journalist Gareth Mitchell told us how this automated system will work. What they're doing ingeniously is putting together some technology that makes sure all the traffic signals along the route of the emergency vehicle that the lights turn green at each of the intersections as the vehicle's approach. So what's going on is that this is Finn Traffic, which runs traffic control and management in Finland.

They've been telling me that the technology involves a number of different components, including transponders on the emergency vehicles. So they're only activated when the blue lights are on. But when you have a blue light situation, the transponder transmits the vehicle's location to the centralised traffic management system. And so from there, then, a whole load of very clever software then sequences the traffic lights to create what they call a green wave. It's very satisfying wave of green lights that just,

open up in front of the emergency vehicles. But of course, the other thing that has to happen is making sure that the opposing vehicles stop in time. You know, you can't literally just have lights just turning red all of a sudden that's going to cause chaos. So because they have this transponder system that can give the traffic management computers enough warning of the vehicle approaching, it means there's plenty of time to gradually turn the light red at the intersections so that opposing vehicles can stop safely to allow those emergency vehicles to power on through. Gareth Mitchell. A small chalk drawing of a foot from the early 16th century has just sold at auction for $23 million. Nothing extraordinary about that because it's by the Renaissance master Michelangelo.

It's believed to be a study for a figure in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. But what is extraordinary is that the unsuspecting owner had submitted a photo of the sketch for an auction estimate online with no idea of what it truly was. Andrew Fletcher is the global head of old masters at Christie's in New York, which sold the item. He told my colleague James Menendez about the drawing's journey from online portal to auction house sensation. The drawing is a very recent discovery from 2025. We sent in to Christie's Estimate Request portal system and as an anonymous drawing and was immediately recognised by my colleague in the drawings department who jumped on a plane to San Francisco, brought it back with her that night, took it to the Met within a few days,

and basically took it from anonymous drawing to being a drawing by Michelangelo for the Sistine ceiling in the space for a couple of months. It's a study in Red Chalk for the right foot of the Libyan Sibyl at the east end of the Sistine ceiling, one of the last figures Michelangelo painted. There are very, very few drawings for the Sistine ceiling left in existence because Michelangelo famously had several bonfires of his drawings. And while he would have made a drawing for pretty much every limb, hand, foot, head on the cysteen ceiling, and therefore there would have been 100 or even thousand such drawings, only about 50 remained today.

And none of them are in private hands or have come to auction, I should say. So incredibly rare. And just to pick you up what you said at the beginning, I mean, is it, does it happen very often that a Michelangelo is sent through your sort of online portal, which presumably, you know, people send things in on spec saying, you know, I've got this, you know, is it worth anything? I mean, has that happened before? Well, through the estimate request portal, that has not happened before as far as I've aware. But what I would also say, Christy's did discover another Michelangelo three years ago,

which we sold in Paris for about 20 million euros. And that, again, was hiding unrecognised as a Michelangelo. So we've got quite a good recent history with these drawings by Michelangelo. That was not for the Sistine ceiling, however. And it's gone for way beyond its estimate. which again points to the rarity value of these drawings. Absolutely. I mean, genuinely that was in my 23 years in the business, my favourite auction moment that we've just had.

We had, I think, at least eight people on the telephone bidding, several in the room. I think we had a couple online. And it took, what did it take, 45 minutes, I think, which is kind of an exceptional length of time for a lot to sell. But it started at a million. And 45 minutes later, the hammer went down at $23.1 million. So it was a really, really exciting auction room and there was a huge round of applause at the end. You could feel the tension deflate as soon as the hammer hit the rostrum.

Andrew Fletcher from Christie's Auction House. Now, the Winter Olympics in the Italian Alps officially kick off today. But ahead of the opening ceremony on Friday evening, there's a somewhat bizarre story making the rounds. The World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, has had to weigh in about claims that male ski jumpers, have been artificially enhancing the size of their genitals with injections of hyaluronic acid. That's before having their suit measurements taken. Apparently a bigger ski suit gives the jumper more lift.

Warda says that it will have to investigate such tactics if any evidence is found that it actually happened. But how would this strange practice really help them? Matt Lawton is a sports correspondent for the Times of London newspaper. There's a long history in ski jumping of this kind of manipulative. there was a situation at the World Championships last year with the Norwegians involving the Olympic champion where they actually tried to manipulate the suits by adjusting the seams of their suits because the fact of the matter is if you have more material, you know, a greater surface area

in the suit, it can quite dramatically affect how far a ski jumper can fly. You might wear some kind of prosthetic or you might, you know, one of those suggestions, is that the athletes have put clay into their underwear to make that region larger. You know, there is an obvious incentive for doing this because there's a scientific study that we've quoted today which says that an extra two centimetres of circumference in terms of the suit can equate to an extra five metres from the 90 metre jump. Now, one of the reasons that WADA exists, it's not just about catching people for cheating. It's about athlete welfare.

This is the first time it's been put to WADA. This is very much the genesis of potential story. But we told Banker the president of Warda did respond and said, OK, he had a slightly bright smile on his face. But he said, look, we might have to look at this. Matt Lawton from the Times. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at global podcast at BBC.co.com.

You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. the hashtag global news pod. And don't forget our sister podcast, the global story, which goes in depth and beyond the headlines on one big story, available wherever you get your podcasts. This edition of the Global News podcast was mixed by Chris Ablaqua and the producers were Guy Pitt and Stephanie Zacherson. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Keith Adams. Until next time, goodbye. I've spent the last three decades trying to better understand money across the boardroom, the newsroom and the trading floor. That's longer than most podcast hosts have been alive. But even though I've got questions, join me, Merrin's Upset Web, every week for my show

Merrin Talks Money from Bloomberg Podcasts, where I have in-depth conversations with fund managers, strategists, and experts about her markets really work. And join me for a separate episode where I answer listener questions and how to make those markets work for you. Follow Merrin Talks Money on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen.