This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Discover how to lead a better life in our age of confusion. Enjoy this BBC audiobook collection, written and presented by bestselling author Oliver Berkman, containing four useful guides to tackling some central ills of modernity. Busyness, anger, the insistence on positivity and the decline of nuance.
Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life. Start listening to Oliver Berkman, epidemics of modern life, available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.
I'm Nick Miles, and at 14 hours GMT on Tuesday the 28th of January, these are our main stories. We hear from our correspondent who's been on a rare AIDS trip with the Jordanian military inside Gaza. Hospitals overwhelm dead bodies on the streets. What can stop the battle for Goma raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo? And the dramatic rise of the new chatbot, Deepseek, and the concerns from some that it's a vehicle for Chinese spy.
also in this podcast. It could be a reality within the next 10 years we examine the ethical issues.
As hundreds of thousands of Garzans continue to walk back to find what's left of their homes in northern Gaza, Jordanian helicopters have begun deliveries of aid to the territory, the first since the ceasefire was declared. The BBC joined the mission, the first international media organisation, to fly into Israeli held territory in southern Gaza since this ceasefire. Our correspondent Fergal Keene was on board. He's now back at the Alzaka Air Base in Jordan, and he told me what he saw.
We took off from here at about 10 o'clock in the morning and travelled for about an hour and then crossed over into Israeli territory and then down towards Gaza. And I suppose the first most noticeable thing was just the scene of desolation in front of us as we approached the Gaza Strip. We went to an area in the south
and it is very close to Canunus. When we landed they kept the rotor blades running. We jumped off the helicopter to get out of the way really of the Jordanian forces who were delivering the aid. Now what was taken in this morning and you can probably hear choppers behind me at the moment.
still ongoing this operation, but they brought in medicine in particular and also baby formula. Why is that important? Well, if you put those things, for example, on a long road journey and there have been lots of road convoys from Jordan, there is a danger that if they get delayed,
then they will spoil. And the need for medicine is acute. The health system in Gaza has been absolutely battered by months and months, 15 months of this war. And so that's why this air bridge as the Jordanians are calling it and which they've been joined in by the Italians, by the United Kingdom, is absolutely essential in terms of getting medical help to people who need it most.
As you said went into the south, what do we know about aid getting in for the hundreds of thousands of garzens returning to Gaza City further north where the need is going to be huge, isn't it?
I think most of that is going to be going in at the moment via road. Now, we have had a significant increase in the number of trucks being allowed to cross the border and bring aid in. But, you know, you set it against the scale of the need and the months and months and months of backed-up need where you have around two million people displaced. I mean, you think about that figure.
most of them with no proper home to go back to and roughly the same number of people dependent on international aid. This is a huge need and it's going to be an ongoing one. It's not going to be a crisis that fades from the headlines. We've been speaking to one of the people who stayed in Jalabia in northern Gaza throughout the conflict. His name is Saib Al-Zah and we asked him what it was like now being reunited with some of his relatives who've returned home.
wow it was yesterday it was just another historical moment the first one was when the ceasefire applied this was the second historical moment that we could not believe it was just a dream to meet our people again to see them again for a minute we felt that we will never see them again so it was somehow
like, you know, uniting their bodies with the souls of your beloved people. It was just a minute that I cannot describe to you the feelings. Can you build a life for your family there? Is it safe? Is it possible to carry on living in the North of Gaza? We believe that we are the land
owner. So no matter what, we will build it again. We will rebuild it again. So it doesn't matter as much as they destroy the houses, the trees, the roads, we will do it again. We will rebuild it again. We do believe in the future and then we have a hope and we will live or lose hope.
You know, losing a hope means losing your life. So we have a hope that yes, tomorrow is coming. It doesn't matter. Even if you just have a land, you will start your life again and you will rebuild your home again. Saib Al-Zah speaking to Nick Robinson.
Conditions in Goma in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo seem to be getting worse. There's intense fighting going on between the Rwandan-backed M23 rebels, the Congolese government and UN troops. Four more South African peacekeepers have been killed, bringing it to a total of 13 over the past few days. Up to 2 million people are in the city, including hundreds of thousands displaced by conflict. Jens Laerke is a spokesman for the United Nations Humanitarian Office.
This morning, our colleagues in the Democratic Republic of the Congo report heavy small arms fire and mortar fire across the city and the presence of many dead bodies in the streets.
We have reports of rapes committed by fighters, looting of property, including of a humanitarian warehouse, and humanitarian and health facilities being hit. Hospitals in Goma are reportedly overwhelmed, struggling to manage the influx of wounded people. Our reporter, Emery Macamino, is in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa. He told me about the latest fighting in Goma.
beings became tense again with intensive gun shots and heavy artery being shot in some parts of the city. People have been indoors since last Friday. They can't go out. They have no water. They have no electricity. Food is running short.
And people don't even know they can only see what they are able to see from their windows. So they don't know who is controlling the city of Goma. And conflicting reports claim that the government had pushed away the rebels and they've taken like 80% of the city.
On the side of the M20, they are saying that they are still gaining ground, so it is very difficult to confirm, let alone that the internet is jammed there in Goma, so people are not even to show people what they are able to see. And Emory, I'm hearing that the World Food Programme is saying that they've stopped food deliveries, and that is devastating for many people in Goma, because a lot of people are living in refugee camps, aren't they?
Goma itself has relatively 2 million residents and this has been added by 800,000 internally displaced people, most of them were living at the outskirts of the city where the north of Goma were the west of Goma.
Because of the fighting, many who could find the foster family have somehow left the IDP camps and flocked into the city, either in churches or in schools, wherever possible, they can hide themselves from the front line, which is now currently with them in Goma. So the situation is that people are now in need of food, and they don't know how long they are going to stay indoors before they have access to anything to eat.
and Emery, what are we hearing about the hopes of a ceasefire?
And at the moment, the government is adamant that there won't be any negotiation, any direct negotiation with M23, that they level as a terrorist organization. So this is like the kind of standoff we are experiencing now.
The return of Donald Trump to the White House has raised expectations of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 remains the largest war in Europe since the Second World War. Moscow now has control of one-fifth of its neighbour's territory. The UN says at least 12,300 civilians have been killed in Ukraine.
Our senior international correspondent, Olegarran, reports now from the southern city of Zaparisha on how one bereaved family feels about the prospect of negotiations. I'm making my way across the rubble at the side of a building. It's a four-story apartment block, and one whole section has been torn off
Strewing around here on the ground, you can still see some belongings from those who lived here. I can see a child's shoe, and there's a woman's handbag over there, and a small blue, soft toy. Among those who were killed here were several generations of one family. But they didn't feel anything. They didn't feel anything.
Yulia Tarasevich stands in the ruins and tells me life now is hell on earth. She lost her mother, Tatiana, who was 68. Her daughter, Sophia, 27, and her grandson, Adam, who was just 17 months old.
When this tragedy happened, the three of them had just come back from a walk. Just at that moment, a bomb fell. It flew into the house and exploded right there.
So in one moment, we lost almost the whole family. Adam's grandfather, Serhih, tells me Russia's bomb destroyed many lives, and the dead must be avenged. He says Ukraine must fight on, not talk peace. My view and negotiations is negative.
So many of our people have already died, that is no longer possible. If the enemy is on our territory, the only contact we can have with them is combat.
In a cold, windswept cemetery at the edge of the city, we saw the results of combat. All around in the distance there are graves of Ukrainians killed in the war. Lots of soldiers are buried here.
Blue and yellow flags flutter above their graves. But many of those buried here are civilians. I was in this graveyard about a year and a half ago. And it's gotten much bigger since then. Yulia weeps at a grave surrounded by teddy bears, where her grandson and her daughter lie buried together.
My beautiful daughter, sorry, I could not save you. Yulia knows that life goes on elsewhere, but she asks the world to remember that there is still a war in Ukraine and that Russia is still killing civilians. All again reporting from the southern Ukrainian city of Zapurisha.
More than 200 years ago, the author Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, her novel about a young scientist who creates a creature in a scientific experiment. For some people, our next story may have echoes of that and ethical issues to grapple with too. Scientists are making such rapid progress that the board of the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority here in the UK
has been told that lab-grown human eggs and sperm might be a reality within the next 10 years. Justin Webb spoke to Sarah Franklin, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, about the ethics of this. But first, Professor Robin Lovell-Badge from the Francis Crick Institute told him how all this would work using skin cells or some other kind of tissue as the starting point.
The idea is that they're reprogrammed back to an early embryonic state to give so-called induced pluripotent stem cells. These correspond in many ways to cells in the very early embryo, and we know that they can give rise to any cell type in the human body, including germ cells. Give us a kind of case study, as it were, of who it was who would be potentially helped by that ability.
One of the main drivers is to deal with, for example, children who've had cancers, and therefore they've had radiotherapy or chemotherapy, which has left them infertile. And it's very difficult with a child to take a variant or a particular tissue and then preserve their fertility that way in a freezer, if you like. If you could take a skin biopsy or blood cells, whatever, and reprogram those into these induced periobversion stem cells,
then we know in the mouse at least, you can coax these cells to specialize to give you the germ cells, which are the cell type that will ultimately give rise to sperm or eggs. The techniques aren't quite there yet, but it's gonna happen. You would be not limited by age if someone could have left cells behind and died. Or long as you have a tissue sample, you could make, in theory, you could make sperm or eggs from those cells. And that, Professor Franklin, is a much more difficult area, society-wide.
Yeah, I mean, I think age and even mortality aren't actually now necessarily limits to reproduction given to given so many other interventions in biology that have become.
possible, but they are definitely the subject of much more social discussion in terms of what people feel what you might say comfortable with or uncomfortable with. And in general, I think that discussion should be welcomed. That's the way society will decide what the limits should be. That's the way society will decide what should be encouraged and what should be supported financially and so forth. And that is exactly what has happened with IVF. Are there areas
Professor Lovell badge that will simply be possible but clearly right from the beginning just will be banned legally and areas that we can think of quite easily.
One is, I think it was referred to as solo parenting. I don't really like that phrase, because there are other ways of solo parenting. But where you take cells and reprogram them back and then get, in theory, you could get sperm and eggs from a man. That's basically been done in mice. And so you would have one individual having their own child. It's not possible to do it from a woman because you cannot make sperm without having cells which originally had a Y chromosome. So that would be very technically challenging.
And then there are other issues which are contentious, but maybe slightly less dangerous. So that one is really dangerous, is where you have
multiple parents or you could have multiple generations occurring in the lab before you then find out what an embryo would look like. Yeah, and that whole business then, Professor Franklin, of what a biological parent is, because in theory you could then have a parent who was the embryo and the people who donated the skin would be your grandparents, and that feels like something very different from what we are used to, to put it mildly.
I think if we did have those sorts of possibilities, what would happen? There would be discussion about how to regulate those. And as Robin said, there are already very clear limits on clear red lines on what is impermissible. Historically, those in the case of IVF and other technologies like this have been upheld on the whole. So there is reason to assume that the same process will happen again. And although the biological possibilities are new,
that in itself has become something that has happened over and over, that a biological limit, say for example, that women can't use these because of the Y chromosome, will probably most likely also be overcome at some point in the future. So the idea that biology itself will provide the limits hasn't really been the case for quite a while.
Sarah Franklin, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge and Professor Robin Lovell-Badge from the Francis Crick Institute. Still to come, we hear about Bishop Marion Burd-Sermann that upset Donald Trump. It was based upon very faith-driven values, that is my prerogative from which to speak.
Discover how to lead a better life in our age of confusion. Enjoy this BBC audiobook collection, written and presented by best-selling author Oliver Berkman, containing four useful guides to tackling some central ills of modernity. Busyness, anger, the insistence on positivity and the decline of nuance.
Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life. Start listening to Oliver Berkman, epidemics of modern life. Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks.
A few days ago, not many people had heard of deep-seek. Now, the Chinese chatbot seems to have blown the global AI race wide open. It's shocked to the top of the US App Store on Monday, overtaking its American rival, Chat GPT. And its creators say it cost a mere $6 million, compared to the billions poured into AI by the likes of Microsoft and Google.
As well as sending a wave of panic through the Western tech world, it's also raised questions of security. It's only a week since the short-lived ban of TikTok, based on concerns that the Chinese-owned social media app is harvesting US data. Will DeepSeek raise similar alarm bells? GoTidy is our cyber correspondent.
Well, interestingly, that didn't come out of the press conference yesterday from President Trump. So the idea that deep-seat could be a threat to the US public who are downloading in their droves doesn't seem to be an issue at the moment. What we are seeing are some of the security experts tearing down the kind of privacy policy of this app saying, oh, look at all these things it collects. For example, keystroke data. So it will measure the rhythm in which you type out your messages to deep-seat to kind of identify you.
and it will store everything that you ask it, everything it answers, all your personal details that you put in when you sign up. All the kind of stuff, to be honest, that every social network and major app uses, including the AI giants like OpenAI, the difference here, of course, is where that data's going. There aren't many calls at the moment saying that we should watch out for this. This is a potential danger to the West, but that might grow.
Now, there are inherent biases with all chatbots of this type. We've seen them in the past in favor of white males, if you like, from the Western world. The algorithm for deep-seek seems to be slightly different. There seems to be an in-built China-friendly censorship bias.
Yeah it's really interesting so when you type in something like what happened in Tiananmen Square it'll start giving you a response it'll write out a couple paragraphs, and then it'll suddenly delete it and say sorry we can't give you the answer, and that goes the same when you type in for example, why is Winnie the Pooh, a controversial character in China and it starts writing what it's to do with uprisings against President Xi, then again,
So you kind of, you start reading it and you get the answer and then suddenly it goes away. So what it's doing here is it's using the same kind of data that all these models are trained on, i.e. the open internet and then it's thinking again about giving the answers.
That is happening. You've got to think that in the future, that's going to annoy customers, consumers of this, isn't it? So that might put the brakes on it being a world leader. Potentially. But then again, you've got to think about how people are using these AI models. They're using them to do maths problems or coding issues or write emails or
help them decipher certain university grade level phd manuscripts or whatever research papers so i don't think this kind of stuff will come up that much and yes you're right when you said that there is a bias in all of these models because they're only trained on the internet most of the internet is in english and it's mostly leaning towards western.
ideals of values and our kind of versions of history. So yes, I think it could potentially be embarrassing for Deepseak if it tries to become the leading worldwide AI companion. But how much of that stuff is kind of grinding up against daily life? How much of those kind of fact-checking historical records are a problem for people? I don't know. Joe Tidy, our cyber correspondent.
Nigeria has a very high number of children who don't go to school. But abductions by armed gangs and growing insecurity, especially in the North, are making things worse. There have been hundreds of mass abductions since 2019, forcing many schools to close.
Some parents have told the BBC they won't let their children return to class because they fear for their safety. As the world marks the International Day of Education, the BBC is as is that Ola Lua and her team gained access to Kiruga in northwestern Kaduna State, where a mass school abduction took place last year.
That was the mood in Korea in March 2024, after at least 280 students were abducted from the community primary and secondary schools.
14-year-old Mariam Al-Hassan was one of them. Mariam and the other children were held for 17 days before gaining freedom. A week after the attack, Idris Mariam's father, who had also been kidnapped before, decided to move his family from Kuriga. He only went back to pick up Mariam
after the students were freed.
The migrated to Rigasa, a train station community on the outskirts of Kaduna State Capital. Here, they joined some other families who also fled their villages due to insecurity. But life in Rigasa is hard. Idris, who was a farmer back home, is now jobless, just like the other men and women here. Their economic challenges have forced the children to drop out of school.
Life in regards is very tough. No work, no food, no education for our children. Let alone access to health care. There is no school nearby and we are afraid to send our children far away because we are still traumatized.
While all the kids go out scavenging, the younger ones like Mariam stay home to get Islamic education. The journey to Kurega is a very high-risk one. Many villages along this route have been deserted due to constant attacks by criminal gangs. There is no communication network on the route and in Kurega. This heightened the risk our team faced, getting rare access to the community.
I am standing inside the compound of the primary and secondary schools, where the 280 students were abducted from in March 2024. Although the government renovated the structures after the attack, the schools were closed for eight months, leaving the children in the village without access to education. Awol Adamu was one of the kidnapped students. Although most children in Kriga are happy the schools have been reopened, Awol says he's not going back.
I don't want to go back to school because I am still afraid and traumatized. I am afraid that the government could return and kidnap us again. I am the only one that knew the challenges I faced. I prefer to be a farmer than go back to school.
According to UNICEF, 18.3 million children are out of school in Nigeria. Most of them are in the north, with insecurity and poverty as contributing factors. Christian Munduarte UNICEF's representative in Nigeria wants to see more action in solving the out of school problem.
There should be an investment in safety school, an investment in the recruitment of more teachers, mainly teachers that are from these same communities or nearby communities. Kaduna State Governor Ubasani says he is addressing the issue. For Mariam and the other children in Rigasa, they hope it will be safe to return home soon in order to re-enroll in school.
I feel very sad spending too much time out of school, but I hope to continue my education one day. That report was by the BBC's Azizat Ola Lua.
The bishop, who was criticized by Donald Trump after she asked him to have mercy on immigrants, has told the BBC that some of the new president's policies are not in the best interests of our survival as a species. Marianne Edgar-Budd, the spiritual leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington said in a sermon last week at a prayer service attended by Mr. Trump that his inauguration had provoked fear among LGBT and immigrant communities.
Mr Trump responded by calling her a radical, left, hard-line Trump hater. The bishop has been speaking to James Qumrasami. He asked her what her thoughts had been when she'd written the sermon.
I had been working with the themes of unity for some time, thinking quite a lot about what is unity in a country like ours and isn't even possible. What some have called the culture of contempt, the outrage that we are so accustomed to now as normative speech, and the ways we characterize each other. So I was trying to address, okay, if we're going to be a country praying and working for unity, we have to have some foundations, foundations of dignity, honoring the dignity of every human being.
and speaking with humility because we all are imperfect. And then I realized as I was listening to my heart and then also listening to the inauguration ceremonies that there really was a fourth and that we were lacking in our public discourse right now, mercy, compassion, a recognition of the people in our land who are in places of great vulnerability now.
And I made the decision to appeal to the president after acknowledging his power and acknowledging that he had been elected and that he felt spared by God to do this work, that this God was a God of mercy. Given that you say you wanted to speak for those who did not feel included by the president, does that mean you were speaking for people he would consider as a political opponent? Was there a political element to this?
The political element is simply that it was a prayer surface for the nation, and whenever we are gathered as human beings, we are, in fact, gathered in the polis, in the people. So, yes, it's always political. It wasn't partisan, and it was based upon very faith-driven values that is my prerogative from which to speak.
I did want to counter what I thought was a gross mischaracterization of immigrants, for example, of being dangerous criminals, because while there are some criminals in the immigrant population, as there are in all populations, it's a very, very small group of people relative to the whole, the vast majority are not criminals at all. As well as talking about immigrants, you talked about people being scared. I mean, are you scared now?
I'm worried. I have been for some time. I respect the office of the presidency and I respect the results of the election, but I do feel that many of the policies that are now either being reversed or promoted are not in the best interest of our people, of our survival as a species. So yeah, I would say there's good reason for worry. Personally, though, after the speech and the reaction you got from the president, and I think from some of his supporters as well, does that worry you?
It's no fun being on the receiving end of some of the statements that have been made, but no, I am very well supported and even protected. There are far more people who are in greater danger than I. Bishop Marion Ergabat. Now, do you recognise this?
It is the sound that accompanies Tetris, that addictive and rather stressful computer game, where different shaped blocks rain down from the top of the screen, piling up if you don't get them in the right places in time. Well, it is now 40 years old and still going strong. Hank Rogers is co-founder of The Tetris Company. He told the BBC how he first came across the game.
It started at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 1988. It was made originally by a Soviet developer. Nobody thought it was going to be a big deal. Lisa, all the company that actually published it. I went and talked to them and said, look, I want this game for the Japanese market. I would stand in line and wait for my turn to play every game that was at the show.
or try to anyway, and I get a few minutes to play every game. And so I need to sample every as many games as possible. In the case of Tetris, I found myself standing in the line four times, which I meant that I was hooked to the game. I mean, right then and there, I had to go back. I had to go back. I had to go back. That mean we had at least one customer, me.
And I was completely hooked on the game. And the simplicity of the game did not bother me because I play a Japanese board game called Go. And if you look at it, it's the deepest, most interesting game of board games. But it's just black and white stones at the end of the day. When the finally the negotiations started happening, I was negotiating against the biggest software company in Japan at the time.
And they finally passed on it because in 1988, they said that the game was too retro. Can you imagine that? So, by the way, Tetris is still around and they're gone. I think it's going to be around just like football is going to be around forever. It's not going to go away any time soon. Hank Rogers, co-founder of The Tetris Company.
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, all 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 Sid Dunden, and the producer was Dracey Gordon. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles, and until next time, goodbye.
Discover how to lead a better life in our age of confusion. Enjoy this BBC audiobook collection, written and presented by best-selling author Oliver Berkman, containing four useful guides to tackling some central ills of modernity. Busyness, anger, the insistence on positivity and the decline of nuance.
Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life. Start listening to Oliver Berkman, epidemics of modern life. Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks.