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I'm Nick Miles, and at 14 hours GMT on Thursday, the 2nd of January, these are our main stories. The first victims of the New Year's Day attack in New Orleans are named. Syria's new Islamist led administration has updated the school curriculum, prompting concerns in some communities. 40 years on, from the deadly gas leak at an Indian factory, toxic waste is finally removed from the site.
Also in this podcast, El Salvador's government records a record low homicide rate, but all is not, as it seems, and... I was basically clearing the clay, and I was hitting a hump, and I thought, it's just an abnormality in the ground, but then it got to another three metres long, it was hump again. What a set of huge footprints tells us about how dinosaurs got around.
Details are emerging of some of the 15 people killed in New Orleans as they celebrated the new year. A truck was driven at high speed into crowds before the driver was shot dead by police. The FBI has identified the attacker as Shamshud Din Jabar, a US citizen and army veteran from Texas. The families of some victims have released their names before the authorities complete post-mortem examinations.
Just before we recorded this podcast, I got an update from our correspondent in New Orleans, Tom Bateman. I asked him what's behind speculation that Shamshad Dinjaba wasn't the only suspect involved.
It was a theme that was emerging throughout New Year's Day from the FBI really suggesting that he could have had accomplices. I think one of the elements to this was that they had seen some security camera footage which at first officials believed may have been people planting improvised explosive devices. Now our understanding is that they have stood down that belief over that particular bit of footage. I think that was actually innocent. But we have still had
the continuing line from the authorities that they believe others are involved. The Louisiana Attorney General last night saying that she was certain that there were likely other individuals, multiple individuals, she said involved. One of the
Part of the inquiry they're focusing on there is an Airbnb property, a female from where we are here in the heart of the city, where a fire broke out early New Year's Day morning before the attack took place. And the Attorney General saying that their line of inquiry there is that may have been used to purpose improvised explosive devices, you know, potentially by Jabbar and other accomplices. Meanwhile, Tom, we're beginning to hear more details about the people who died, aren't we?
Yeah, and the first thing that strikes you, I mean, the police haven't confirmed officially any of the names yet, but they're being widely reported by local media is just the ages of those involved. You know, this was three o'clock in the morning on New Year's Day. Virtually all of the victims named so far are in their 20s or late teens. These were young people. And some of them well-known Martin Beck, who was a well-known American college football player,
his brother posting tributes to him on social media. Love you always brother, he has said. Another an 18 year old aspiring snikaira deadu who had her mother said snuck out with a friend and another 18 year old cousin to come to
The New Year's Day party here where we are, her relatives describing how they had seen the truck fled out of its path only to realise that she had succumbed and been hit by the truck itself. I want to imagine that the atmosphere is still pretty dour there and a lot of security around.
Absolutely. We're standing at a spot at the moment where parallel with Bourbon Street, that very famous thoroughfare, and a big police closure continues around the centre. I'm looking at a Louisiana State Trooper van and State Troopers opposite us here. Barriers still in place as they continue to search for evidence on the street itself. One thing I would say about
New Orleans and particularly around here is just the sense of resilience you get. This is a place that is absolutely filled with music. Every street corner you pass, every music venue and bar you walk past continues to blare out music. People are still coming here because of why people come to New Orleans, but people are concerned and continue to come back to the scene to pay tribute. Tom Bateman in New Orleans.
Despite the Islamist nature of the new authorities in charge of Syria, they've made a point of saying that they will govern for all Syrians and protect the rights of minorities. But there are growing concerns that will not be the case in practice. Now the education ministry has posted the new school curriculum on Facebook, and it has done nothing to allay those fears. I heard more from our Middle East regional editor, Sebastian Asher, who's in Damascus.
This has been published ahead of the new school term, which begins in a couple of days, and it's for all ages. I mean, the things that kind of stand out that people have picked out here are, for example, in science teaching that evolution will not be taught anymore, the Big Bang Theory won't be taught. In religious studies, some people feel that there's been a move
more towards kind of strict Sunni Islamic way of thinking. There has been the removal also in religious studies of any reference to pre-Islamic gods and goddesses and pictures of their statues, which make up very much the history, obviously, of the country are gone. Queen Zenobia, one of the great heroines of
Syrian history back in the Roman era seems to have been somewhat diminished in terms of the coverage that she will get. As you would expect, everything to do with the Assad era also is gone. That includes poems praising the Assads, but also in history, in French, all the examples that are given over that. They've been excised. I mean, I think that was done just bang.
to get rid of it without any kind of sense of changing or what they do with it. And it's a work in progress and clearly something that the officials felt had to be done before the reopening of schools.
And Sebastian, which of the changes you've mentioned do you think will most worry minority groups there? Well, it's partly minority groups. I mean, what I've felt in the way that it's been reacted to is it's really this sense of civil society, which, of course, with the full of the Assad regime has had a resurgence. And many people who were exiled or in exile have returned, even if it's only for a short time. And I'm meeting and trying to think up ways that they can
push Syria forward in this new era and they feel that this is something that they need to nip in the bud now and what they're particularly grieved by is not just these examples by given but the fact that the authorities who are in place now have made decisions without input from the whole of society which is what they've been saying. There's a national dialogue conference that's due to take place possibly this month
which is meant to bring all these communities together to discuss the way forward. And they feel that this has preempted that. And because it's education, it's the way that young minds are shaped. It seems particularly important. So protests have been called for Friday and any time really until Sunday in an attempt to full-store this. So I think that's really where the alarm has gone off. In civil society, activist feeling, we have to make a stand now. We have to make our message clear now.
In southern Gaza, the sandy strip of land along the coast, Almawasi, has been designated by Israel as a safe humanitarian zone. Despite this, Israel has previously attacked the site, accusing Hamas operatives of hiding among displaced people there.
Hamas now says the latest Israeli airstrike in the area has killed 11 people, including its police chief and a number of Palestinians sheltering in those makeshift tents. Our Middle East correspondent, Yolan Nell, is in Jerusalem.
We're now hearing of two strikes that have taken place in this Khan Yunus area of what's called the humanitarian zone. The first of them happened in the early hours of the morning and you can see on social media pictures of tents ablaze and at least 11 people killed there. We heard from a Hamas interior ministry statement, the Director-General of Gaza Police and his assistant were among those killed.
And then we had a separate statement from the Israeli military a short time ago, which just addresses one other individual they said was targeted, the head of internal security for Hamas in Gaza. And they accused Hamas of hiding among civilians in this area and also
say that they took steps to avoid harming civilians. But the BBC has also spoken to the father of three boys who were killed in that strike. Asia's 7 and 11 and 13, their funeral took place a short time ago. And in this latest strike, well, the Israeli military says that it's been targeting Hamas fighters using a municipality building in the humanitarian zone. But local people are telling us that it was
civilians who were sheltering in this area. That was your land now. One of the largest discoveries of dinosaur footprints in the world has been revealed in a quarry in the south of England. The tracks were made 166 million years ago in the Jurassic period. Excavations by Oxford and Birmingham universities found some of the trackways reach 150 metres long. Our science editor Rebecca Morel went to take a look.
Dewey's farm quarry in Oxfordshire is a hive of activity with trucks, diggers and tippers excavating the limestone from the ground but it's also the site of a remarkable discovery. I was basically clearing the clay and I was hitting a hump and I thought it's just an abnormality in the ground but then it got to another about three metres long it was hump again and then another three metres hump again
Gary Johnson is a worker at the quarry and the bumps and dips he uncovered were in fact huge dinosaur footprints. This summer, scientists, students and volunteers came to excavate the quarry and they unearthed the largest dinosaur trackways ever found in the UK.
This site really is extraordinary. It takes a moment to notice the footprints, but when you do suddenly realise there are hundreds of them running off in various different directions. Now, I'm standing next to a trackway made by a sauropod, a huge long-necked dinosaur. Its footprints are about a metre long, and you can see them evenly paced, running across the floor of the quarry.
We're trying to extract the earth with a series of trowels in order to reach the bottom of the track. Professor Kirsty Edgar is a micropaleontologist from the University of Birmingham. Well, this is one of the most impressive track sites I've ever seen. I've been to all of the track sites in the UK now.
And in terms of scale, in terms of the different types of tracks that we see, the size of the tracks, you step back in time and you can sort of get an idea of what it might have been like these massive creatures just roaming around about their own business.
The trackways that crisscross the quarry were made by two different types of dinosaurs. Large four-legged sauropods and a smaller carnivorous dinosaur called megalosaurus that walked on two legs. Compared to the sauropod prints, which are those large sort of sub-circular prints, this is smaller. Dr Emma Nichols is a vertebrate paleontologist from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
It's almost like a caricature of a dinosaur footprint. So it's what we call a tridactyl print. It's got these three toes that are very, very clear in the print. And it's not just one print here. They kind of go off into the distance. Yeah, we've not uncovered the start or the end of this trackway. So in both directions it goes under material in the quarry.
These footprints were made 166 million years ago as the animals amballed across the mud in what was once a shallow tropical lagoon. Professor Richard Butler is a paleobiologist from the University of Birmingham.
It might be that there was a storm event, something like that that came in, deposited a load of sediments on top of the footprints and meant that they were preserved rather than just being washed away. He says a footprint can reveal a lot. You can learn things about how that animal moved, you can learn how fast it was moving, you can learn exactly what the environment that it was living in was like. So tracks give us a whole different set of information that you can't get from the bone fossil record.
The future of the footprints isn't yet known, but the scientists are working with the quarry's operators and natural England on options for preserving the site. They believe there could be more footprints, these echoes of our prehistoric past, just waiting to be discovered. That report was by Rebecca Morel.
Still to come in the Global News Podcast. Football in Paris is a bit all over the place, which means that if you want a big second club, you've got to focus on the long term. I've invested a lot to make a club that is gradually contesting the leadership of PSG. It's the only top flight football club in Paris about to gain a new rival.
For just as long as Hollywood has been Tinseltown, there have been suspicions about what lurks behind the glitz and glamour. Concerns about radical propaganda in the motion pictures. And for a while, those suspicions grew into something much bigger and much darker. Are you a member of the Communist Party? Or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
I'm Una Chaplain, and this is Hollywood Exiles. It's about a battle for the political soul of America and the battlefield was Hollywood. All episodes of Hollywood Exiles from the BBC World Service and CBC are available now. Search for Hollywood Exiles wherever you get your podcasts.
When a country announces a record low number of murders, it should be seen as an achievement. But it's also a time for questions. Firstly, is it credible? And secondly, how has it been achieved? Both questions are particularly valid for El Salvador, which only a decade ago had by far the highest homicide rate in Latin America.
The government says 114 murders were reported last year. More evidence President Nye Bokele would say that his campaign against organised and violent crime is working. Our online Latin America editor, Vanessa Buschluter, told me what we should make of those claims.
I think they have to be taken with a large pinch of salt. If you look at a report which was published this year by the Renown News Magazine foreign policy, they looked at how these figures were collated. And they found that from 2021, the government of Na'yibukhele left out some of the murders which happened in the country.
First, for example, they stopped counting those bodies that were found in mass graves or clandestine graves. Then they stopped counting the people who were killed by the police or the military. And finally, they also stopped counting those who were killed inside prisons. And the foreign policy report estimates that the undercount amounts to 47%.
nevertheless, that most people would agree there has been some kind of reduction over the last few years. But the way that has been achieved is incredibly controversial. Tell us why. That's right. President Naipukele started declaring a state of emergency some years back. And that allowed him to arrest many people and hold them in pretrial detention without any kind of deadline.
So 1.6% of the population are actually now in jail. That's one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. And as a result, the rate of violence in the country has gone down and his measures are incredibly popular. These measures have got a
support rate of 92% in the country. But of course, human rights and constitutional rights are being trampled on. And also, the US Justice Department has accused his government of actually negotiating with some of the gang leaders. So talking to the leaders, the top echelons of these gangs,
and getting them to kill fewer people or hiding the bodies. So that's something that's happening across Central America where gangs are no longer leaving the bodies lying in the streets or stringing them up at lampposts but just hiding them in clandestine graves and therefore
Those figures are then massaged. In December 1984, one of the world's deadliest gas leaks occurred in a chemical factory in Bhopal, India. Several thousand people died immediately and many more in the years to come from the effects of the gas. Here's how it was reported by BBC correspondent Mark Tally at the time. Hospitals in Bhopal have had to set up tents to treat the victims of gas poisoning. Most of them are suffering from respiratory and eye problems.
Some patients say they were afflicted with temporary blindness. Most of them come from the slum areas near the insecticide plant of the multinational union carbide. For now, 40 years on, the Indian authorities have at last moved hundreds of tons of hazardous waste from the site. I heard more from our correspondent in Delhi, Arondai Mukaji.
But nearly a dozen trucks were used to transport the waste in tightly packed containers under very stringent security measures. In fact, one official who was overseeing this entire operation was quoted as saying India had not witnessed the movement of hazardous waste at this scale in the past.
So what's happened now is that the waste has been moved over 200 kilometres away to a dedicated site where it will now be incinerated. Officials say that this is going to be done between a period of three and nine months and a small batch will be burnt first at high temperatures to first examine the impact on the environment. And based on those results, the pace of the incineration for the remaining waste will be decided because
Many locals and activists in the area have raised red flags saying that when you incinerate this, it could pollute the water bodies in the area, but the government has denied all of these worries saying all safety measures will be taken into account while going through this process. So for 40 years, this waste has been sitting there at the site of this terrible disaster. Only now is something being done about it. Why has it taken so long?
And that is really the big shocker, in fact, court on the 3rd of December last year, which is last month, incidentally, had given a four-week deadline finally to authorities for disposal of the toxic waste. In fact, they'd even pulled up authorities questioning why there has been such a long delay in doing this. In fact, they blamed it on inertia by officials. That was the word used. And also asked whether authorities were simply waiting for another tragedy to happen.
Arondoy mentioned there the opposition from some people living near the disposal site. Rashna Dingra is part of a campaign group seeking justice for the survivors of the Bhopal disaster. It is a big green wash and a big media frenzy that the government has made this out to be the waste that has been transported to a substandard facility where it will harm more people there. So this is absolutely no relief.
to people of Bhopal and actually people and survivors of Bhopal are very concerned of a slow motion Bhopal that is going to happen in a place 300 kilometers from here in a place called Picapur where they plan on incinerating this waste and tripling the amount of waste and then burying it in a landfill, you know, which is already leaching and possibly will contaminate the only water source of this another big city called Indor.
of Drashna Dingra from the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal. For the last 80 years, the details of hundreds of thousands of people in the Netherlands accused of collaborating with the Nazis have been tucked away in an archive in the Hague, open only to researchers and direct descendants. From today, though, anyone will be able to access those files, and as you can imagine, that's making some of the families of those named rather uncomfortable.
Three-quarters of the Dutch-Jewish population, more than 100,000 people, were murdered whilst the country was under Nazi occupation during the Second World War. Martin Eichhoff is the director of the Niard Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. He told the BBC's James Menendez more about the archive.
It has more than 300,000 files of individuals who were suspected of collaboration in Dutch society after the German occupation, which ended in 1945. And in the end, about 20% of them was convicted by a special court. And while the files are
part of this central archive, which will now become a public archive due to the Dutch Archive Act, and what we also did in the Netherlands was to make this archive digitally available, so it would become publicly online, but that was withdrawal a little bit due to privacy concerns.
But it is digitised, though, so although people can't access it through the internet, if they go to the archive, they will be able to search it in a digital way. Is that right? Yeah, exactly. So in the past, you could only search on the name of the perpetrators or the suspected perpetrators. And now you can also search on the basis of the names of victims. And that's a huge
progress of course for historical research, but also it has societal impact for families. Well, let's talk a little bit about that. Are you worried about the possible consequences of opening this up? I mean, one can imagine that the descendants of people named as collaborators might be nervous. That's true.
Whether there are many stakeholders in the first place of course there are families and then I speak of the first, second, third and even the fourth generations of families that have a history of collaboration but there is also families who were persecuted, being Jewish or having been part of the resistance.
And i think it's important not to generalize here there are many organizations in that society who represent these groups and in general they are in favor of making this information available online but there's also the fear of kind of renew public coordination of the families of collaborators involved and that is of course something we should take very serious as well.
And why are some of those groups in favour of opening this up? I mean, is there a belief that generally it's better to have all this out there and in public? Again, opinions are different, but I know from talks to these people, I've talked to them that some expect a kind of closure, because new information becomes available, and there's also an expectation that it will lead to rings.
new discussions on the history of collaboration in that society, which can well be an incentive for a kind of reconciliation on this topic. But you have to be careful because it's a very complex archive. It was a very complex time that society wanted to restore the rule of law and prevent people from taking personal revenge based on collective hatred.
And for us, it's very important that we explain to people that you should not take the information at face value, but the context is important. You should do some source criticism. But I expect, and I also see this happening already, that the Second World War and the complexities of living under occupation are discussed again in that society, which is, of course, a good thing, because every generation has new questions. That was Martin Eikof.
Now, if you're a football fan in Paris, there is really only one team to follow. Paris Saint-Germain, PSG as it's known. Unlike other big European capitals, there really is no other top-flight Parisian team. Now, though, that may be about to change, a little-known second division club called Paris FC has just been sold to France's richest man, Bernard Arneau, in an alliance with the drinks company Red Bull. And as Hugh Schofield reports, their sights are set high.
They make a lot of noise, the Parry FC Ultras, but let's face it up till now they haven't had that much to chant about. The club's been stuck in Division 2 for years, always nibbling at promotion, never quite making it. Suddenly, those things are shifting. Big money has come. And with it, the prospect of a place at French football's top table. Yes, it would be great to have a local Derby, Paris FC against Paris Saint-Germain against PSU, that would be great.
That's Darren Tulett, presenter on Bean Sports Television, who relishes the idea of, at last, a true Paris football rivalry. They had to create, back in the 90s, a rivalry between PSG and Marseille, and it really was something which was set up by TV companies and the presidents or owners of the clubs at the time.
But if you've got a local rival, that's something which is a little bit more real, isn't it? If you've just got a neighbor from just down the road one, he says, knock you off of your perch. I think that's kind of exciting.
Antoine Arno, son of the LVMH luxury goods magnate Berner, is the man in charge of the investment, teaming up with Red Bull, which has its own expertise in managing football. He's bought a majority stake in the club from its owner, French businessman Pierre Farrace. When I met Pierre Farrace at his headquarters, he told me the plan was to move slowly, nothing too flashy. The main task to get Parry FC up into Division 1 this season, then stay there.
Next, PSG. Football in Paris is a bit all over the place, which means that if you want a big second club, you've got to focus on the long term. I've invested a lot to make a club that is gradually contesting the leadership of PSG, but there's a long way to go. And now, with the Arno and Red Bull, we have the means.
Among the fans at Pari FC, there are mixed feelings. They pride themselves here at not being PSG. Indeed, many Pari FC fans are ex PSG fans who left when the Kataris started putting in the mega money. Members of the old clan fan club, who meet in a bar near their Charlottey Stadium, see themselves as the original Paris football fans, unpretentious, authentic working class.
The money is both good and bad, says one. Good that will get the spotlight on us, but bad if it attracts the wrong kind of person. What we don't want is to become a brand like PSG, says another. We don't want to be an image to bring in the stars and sell shirts. Stars are fine, but we just want to be a football club.
Next stop for Pari FC, a new stadium. Their current one is unsuitable. In the immediate term, they get a share with the rugby club Stadt Ronset. But later, there's the intriguing possibility that they might replace PSG who are looking to move at the historic Parque de Pras, which would then ring to a new set of Chas. Hugh Schofield reporting from Paris.
And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later on. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, 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 Sydney Dundan and the producer was Sean Powell Hartle. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles, and until next time, goodbye.
For just as long as Hollywood has been Tinseltown, there have been suspicions about what lurks behind the glitz and glamour. Concerns about radical propaganda in the motion pictures. And for a while, those suspicions grew into something much bigger and much darker. Are you a member of the Communist Party? Or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
I'm Una Chaplain, and this is Hollywood Exiles. It's about a battle for the political soul of America and the battlefield was Hollywood. All episodes of Hollywood Exiles from the BBC World Service and CBC are available now. Search for Hollywood Exiles wherever you get your podcasts.
