This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
Hello, hope you enjoyed the pre-recorded newscast episodes that we did throughout the Christmas holiday period. Well, I mean, all newscast is pre-recorded because we record it and then tidy it up and then you listen to it afterwards. But you know what I mean? Anyway, normal services resumed. I'm sat in the newscast studio. It is Thursday afternoon. We're watching all the new stories occurring all around the world and in the UK and picking the most important ones to talk about. And Laura and Paddy will be back this weekend as well. Just proof.
that everything really is back to normal after a few days of festivities. So let's get on with this episode of Newscast.
Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio here and we're recording this episode of newscast about half past four UK time and we've just been watching a briefing in New Orleans given by Christopher Raya who's deputy assistant director of the FBI's counter-terrorism division and he was updating journalists while everyone on the process of the FBI's investigation into that ramming attack
in New Orleans, on New Year's Eve, which killed at least 14 people and left 35 injured. And the suspect, the person at the FBI, believed carried out that attack and who was killed by police officers on the night is Shamsud Din Jabbar. And we've been hearing a few more details about how he rented their truck
In Houston, in Texas, on the 30th of December, drove it to New Orleans on the 31st of December. And along the way, he was posting videos that the FBI have uncovered on social media where he said that he wanted to kill enough people that he would get publicity for his cause. And his cause was the so-called Islamic State group, which this guy had apparently placed his allegiance to as early as last summer.
So we've been getting more details about the investigation and the FBI have called for people to come forward with their own information, whether that's people who are in New Orleans or New Year's Eve or people who knew Shamster Din Jabar. The FBI also said that at the scene they found two homemade explosive devices, which did not go off. They also confirmed
that this was a person acting alone. They'd initially suggested that they were going to look at links to other people, but they've said this was just one person, not part of some kind of wider thing where they're investigating other people. Now, earlier, just before that news conference in New Orleans, I spoke to half of the America podcast that we make here at the BBC. That is social media investigations correspondent Marianna Spring. Hello. And Justin Webb. Hi, Justin. Hello there.
Mariana, first of all, what do we know about the suspects? We've been getting some more details from the investigators of the last 24 hours. Yeah, we have. And as you can imagine, because this is the kind of attack that unfolded when it was New Year's Day or late into New Year's Eve, early in the hours of the morning, there's been loads of videos, posts, people have been kind of forensically analyzing
the alleged attackers social media profiles. So we know that the attacker's name is Shamasu Dinjabar. We know that he was a US citizen from Texas, that he was a member of the US military. And there have been quite a few people pouring over social media posts that showed him, for example, sitting at a desk at a computer on a US military Facebook page. There have also been questions about
videos that he, Joe Biden said that he'd shared videos which showed his support of IS, the terrorist group. And people are coming, as you said, coming through his social media to see what they might perceive as clues about his background. And so there's this YouTube video has emerged from 2020 where he is introducing himself as a real estate agent in Texas.
Good evening, I'm Chancellor Dangerborg, Property Manager with Blue Metal Properties and Team Lead at the Midas Group at Core Realty. I just want to say hello and let you know a little bit about me. So I'm born and raised in Beaumont, Texas, and now live in Houston. And I've been here all my life with the exception of traveling for the military where I spent 10 years, where I learned the meaning of great service and what it means to be responsive and take everything seriously, dotting eyes and crossing T's to make sure that things go off without a hitch.
And then Justin, it doesn't take long to see the words Islamic and state then attached to these reports in this incident, but it's very unclear to what extent there is a kind of bigger link here. Yeah, I mean, unclear the link, but the really crucial thing about him and you heard it there.
in what he said, but also in the kind of tone of him, is that although Donald Trump and others have been talking a lot about the threat to America from outsiders coming in, indeed Donald Trump actually posted about it in the hours after the attack,
This was homegrown. This guy, not only as he said himself, lived in America. The only time he'd been abroad was when he was doing military service for America. So something happened to him and to his mind while he was in America. And that is one of the difficult and complex aspects of this that everyone is going to have to deal with.
You mentioned Donald Trump and him posting on social media about it. We're in that weird period, sort of, OK, Joe Biden is president until the inauguration and then Trump takes over. But there is a bit of a vacuum at the moment. Much more than usual. I think it's fair to say. I mean, Biden really has faded.
And he came out and spoke, but you really have the kind of strong sense that he is not fully in control of things in a way that an outgoing president would be normally, and that everyone is looking to Donald Trump, partly because Donald Trump is promising to be a radically different president. So everyone is naturally going to be interested in what it is that he seems to be planning to do. But there is this real sense now.
that American leadership has already in so many ways passed on to to Don Trois. He's been holding court in Marilago for weeks now with a lot of important people going there, a lot of people from outside the US going there as well. So yeah, it immediately focuses attention, not on Joe Biden, but on Donald Trump. And Marianna, what are other people making of this on social media? Because everything gets weaponised instantly, whatever the facts or the lack of facts.
I think what's been quite interesting in this case, like Justin said, is that a lot of people are taking their cues from Donald Trump. We see it quite a lot that he's got very committed fans for want of a better word supporters who will kind of decide to post the messaging that he favors. Initially, he spoke about immigration or open borders, a suggestion that maybe this was someone who'd come from outside of the United States. He's now pivoted a bit and on truth social, he then posted
very specifically taking aim at the FBI and the security services at local, local government suggesting that they're at fault here calling. And I quote his true social post here, talking about the violent scum that have infiltrated, infiltrated all aspects of our government and our nation itself. And so you see on social media again, and I've been looking at my undercover voters feeds, my fictional characters, who've got social media profiles across the main sites and the Trump supporting ones.
are getting almost exclusively posts that started initially to be about immigration. And now that we believe this attacker is a US citizen, are actually about the FBI, the corrupt state, that this is actually part of some bigger, more sinister plot. And we were talking about this before, but to what extent is this about conspiracy, which obviously a lot of social media likes to
grab onto. And to what extent could this also be about incompetence and quite serious questions for law enforcement in terms of their ability to protect people that night, questions about bollards that were being repaired and stuff like that. And Justin, not to make you do the kind of Alistair Cook letter from America thing that I always make you do when we talk about America. But New Orleans, I mean, okay, New Orleans, New Year's Eve, party time, party time, but also New Orleans city like synonymous with massive tragedy from the from the hurricane a few years ago.
Yeah, very much so. I mean, New Orleans, you know, troubled in so many ways, poverty's stricken in so many ways, and yet still a mecca for young Americans in particular to go and enjoy themselves. It has a hedonistic quality that a lot of American cities don't have, actually, Miami, I suppose, and a few others maybe do. So if you are an Islamist, and if you believe that America is the source of so much evil in the world, and if you think that
decadent behavior is, and this has been a strand of Islamist thinking for many decades, and some of the early Islamists had actually been in America and lived in America and seen these things and seen, you know, women uncovered and all the other things that upset them so deeply. And if, you know, you want to see kind of decadent behavior, New Orleans is a pretty obvious target. So there's no real question about
why it would be targeted. It is also, as you point out, a trouble place and a place that has seen tragedies in the past that have been added to by a failure of the institutions locally to be able to cope. The hurricane and the floods were a classic example, but in this
On this case, you have bollards that are meant to protect the revelers from people driving cars into them. The bollards were being repaired. The bollards have been being repaired since November. Nobody had managed to get them back in place. Why is that? Well, we'll discover in the days and weeks ahead. But part of it could just be money.
and local incompetence and all these other things. New Orleans is a place where there are no strangers to things going wrong and things going wrong as it were with the kind of infrastructure of America that's meant to keep people safe. Now, the FBI said this wasn't being linked to the separate incident that happened in Las Vegas at around about the same time.
where a cyber truck, which is made by Tesla exploded outside a Trump hotel property. And with that, because a few people have been linking that online, it's interesting there that Elon Musk, rather than kind of being the political activist, he's been for the last few months, he went back to being kind of the the businessman and the entrepreneur and the main brand spokesperson for Tesla, his company.
Yeah, I thought it was really interesting because we've seen the way that Elon Musk on X responds to various political points in the States and we'll use them often to kind of push what seemed to be certain ideological arguments to agree with Donald Trump, or even perhaps to exert a little bit of pressure on Donald Trump. In this case, he came out to very strongly say he didn't believe this to be a malfunction of the car, which of the Cybertruck, which was something that had been suggested initially, and then
After that, he kind of almost was saying, well, it's good it happened in the Cybertruck because it made the explosion less bad than it could have been. He posted saying to quote him, the evil knuckleheads picked the wrong vehicle for a terrorist attack. Cybertruck actually contained the explosion and directed the blast upwards, not even the glass doors of the lobby were broken. So he was really kind of out there protecting and defending the brand and getting a little bit less stuck in, although he continually pushes this narrative of kind of corruption and failings in government.
But less stuck in than you might think because I guess he was having to defend the Cybertruck. Amazing though that something that could end up being treated as a terrorist attack if it's treated in the same way as the New Orleans attack has become a sort of tech bro product blog off.
But it's also the symbolism of it all. It's outside Donald Trump's hotel. It's Elon Musk's, like this vehicle, Tesla, which is obviously synonymous with Elon Musk, that has been used. Again, we still don't have clear answers right now about exactly what's happened. But it does raise really serious questions about, to what extent it was targeted, the message it was trying to send. Elon Musk is so now kind of connected to Donald Trump in this new administration, it feels, that I think it will cause quite a lot of questions in a similar way to the assassination attempts.
about how people are protected or the level of anger and polarization and risk of violence in the States.
And the other thing Elon Musk has been posting about a lot on X, the platform that he owns is Tommy Robinson, his real name is Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who's currently in prison for 18 months because he was fine to be in contempt of court because he'd repeated some untrue claims about an asylum seeker that had been contained in a film that he'd made and circulated quite widely on social media. And Elon Musk is joining in this campaign to have him released
So if you've been on X at all over the past couple of days, really, you will have noticed this real uptick in conversation about Tommy Robinson, like you mentioned, about kind of British politics. He almost getting really, really involved taking aim at MPs here in the UK, Labour MPs, Jess Phillips, for example. And in some ways, this just feels like an intensification.
or escalation of what we've been seeing on X now over the past couple of months especially. We did a special episode of America's that was all about this really how X is evolving and the ability of networks of accounts and I use the word networks quite loosely but accounts that constantly amplify each other stuff so there's one that I looked into called inevitable West has been posting a lot about Tommy Robinson.
and Elon Musk is then amplifying that, and it's all centered around this argument about freedom of expression, them arguing that he has somehow been unfairly treated, that there have been real examples of cover-ups or corruption, but then taking it that step further and suggesting that things that actually were kind of wrong, weren't wrong, and so on and so forth. And again, it all boils down to this question of the way that X
amplifies content that provokes a reaction. That happens on all the sites, but that does feel like a particular focus on this kind of content and accounts like inevitable West told me, well, it is ideological. We kind of want stuff to move further right.
And a bit of a challenge, Justin, for programs like this is a program about how do you report and hold some of that Elon Musk to account? Because in the previous chapter, billionaire tank bro, involved in American politics, interesting for all those reasons. But now he's got an explicit link to British politics that he himself is making explicit, but we can't get him on the phone for the 810. It's really interesting, isn't it? And he is going to potentially will quite a lot of power in this country.
And how we deal with that and how we treat him fairly and how we try to get him involved so that he can make his case and be questioned about his case. If he won't speak to us, it's going to be really difficult. But his ability, I mean, there's a lot of chat, wasn't there, a few weeks ago about the potential that he might give a lot of money to the Reform Party?
to reform the UK, but does that really matter? Does the money side of it possibly is a bit of a red herring? It's just his ability, as Marianna says, to amplify certain things on X and then get them talked about. You might save your supporter of his, or if you're a believer in some of the causes that he backs,
Well good thing too because we on the BBC maybe don't talk about them enough and that's the legitimate point to make. So it's really difficult to find ways of sorting out the things he amplifies and talks about that are legitimate and those that just are complete nonsense because there is some nonsense there as well.
Whether you agree with him or not, there is just this fundamental problem about the ability to put points to him, ask him questions, ask X questions at the number of times as we've chatted about loads of times in this studio that I have emailed Elon Musk or emailed X, put questions to them. I received no response. I've received one response over the past two years. And we do know that X, although it doesn't engage with us necessarily very much, they are still engaging in some ways with authority. So like in November,
X told the European Commission that they strive to be the town square of the internet by promoting and protecting freedom of expression. So there's Elon Musk's
And also, it's another one of those things where there's a bit of transatlantic confusions, maybe not the right word. But when we've talked about before, the American justice system is kind of much more open for debate, whereas the British legal system tends to be once you're convicted and you've exhausted your roots of appeal and you're serving a sentence. It's kind of that that that's it, really, whereas in America, it's much more kind of open season. And it's the same with freedom of speech, isn't it? Like the levels of
protection of freedom from speech on either side of the Atlantic. In America, your dad can get you off as well if he happens to be president. I mean, there are all sorts of aspects of that. But the presence of Elon Musk in our lives just muddles all those things. There's two systems end up to be squeezed. And also, Elon Musk doesn't fully understand our system. And so he sometimes says things about our system that are just wrong because he doesn't grasp exactly how it works.
which is not necessarily a criticism of him, but it's an interesting thing that someone from a completely different system can instantly, because of social media, believe somehow that there are simple plain things that can be said that are true and ought to be acted on, and it just isn't as simple as that. It is going to have an impact though, and I think he's going to have an impact now on what happens to the FBI, just taking it back to the US, because the FBI is an organization
which is in considerable difficulties to put it mildly, because Donald Trump wants to put at its head someone who despises it, actually, and believes that it's behaved really badly, including to him, a guy called Cash Patel, a lawyer. And if he does that, he does it at a moment when America potentially, and we've had this one attack,
In New Orleans, potentially the Tesla thing as well may well have been an attack. There could be others to come. So do you mess with the FBI, the principal law enforcement organization, an intelligence organization domestically, at the very time that America is under attack?
Or do you pull back and say, OK, maybe maybe that guy Cash Patel isn't the right man, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that man honestly don't know really. And I'm not sure really that Trump himself would know at this stage which way to go. But all of it, you know, to go back to your point about being on Musk and X, all of it now amplified the politicians who have to make the decision because Cash Patel would have to be.
put forward through the Senate and have to be approved by the Senate. But in an atmosphere where on X, those senators who had reservations about him will be pilloried and maybe praised by others. I mean, it's all such a different political atmosphere to the one that there was just a few years ago. So interesting. Justin, thank you. Thank you. Marianna, thanks to you too. Thanks very much.
Now we're going to look at British politics and the big British political news is happening in Brockstow Borough Council and that's in the East Midlands and Alex for Scythe has been monitoring it all. Yes. What's happening in Brockstow? So it's actually quite significant. So Brockstow being a background, Brockstow Borough Council has been run by Labour.
since 2023 when there were elections and Labour took control. And before that, it was run by Labour and some other parties in a sort of coalition. Anyway, what's happened today is that 20 Labour councillors on Broxdobe or a council have quit the Labour Party, which means that Labour no longer runs that council. And the reason that they've all decided to quit on mass is because they say they don't like the direction of the party under Kiyastama and they cite some specific policies. Oh yeah, there's multiple reasons within that one big matter reason.
Exactly, so the big meta reason is they don't think that Labour is the party they campaign for, or delivering in government on the things that Kiyastama promised, and the kind of specific policy reasons that they cite are the cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance for pensioners, the decision not to compensate the Waspi women, so that's women that say they were caught out by the change in the state pension age,
The government's position on the war in Gaza, which they say has not been strong enough. They also cite an upcoming increase in bus fares when the cap on bus fares goes up. All part of the reasons that they don't think the Labour policy platform is correct.
And also, I see from their statement, they're unhappy about Labour's planned reorganisation of local government, which you and I talked about a few weeks ago, and then it seemed quite sort of technical, but this is like the rubber hitting the road when it comes to local democracy now, because this borough council will under those plans be subsumed into a bigger council.
Yeah, quite possibly. That's the idea behind this reorganization. And I think that's a sort of secondary element to what's going on here. So you've got this decision by them to resign and all the reasons they say they don't like what Kiestam is doing in government. But secondary, I think there are some very clear local tensions. Now, I think part of that
is that the council leader who was Labour until he's now independent, he is a guy called Milan Radolovic. He has said that he's not happy about this local government reorganisation and of course Broxto could disappear as a council under the plans to make bigger councils, fewer bigger councils.
And there's also been quite a lot of local dispute over the people that are chosen to stand for Labour, both at the general election that we had last year, but also for the upcoming county council elections, which are going to take place in Nottinghamshire and elsewhere in May. So there are some local disputes, but they also say the reason is the broader direction of the Labour Party, which obviously for Kierstammer, at the beginning of a new year when he's just talking about change and rebuilding, it's not the way he would have wanted it to start.
And what does the Labour Party have to say about all of this? Are they bothered? Yes, I think they are bothered. I mean, the local Labour Party, so the people who have stuck with Labour in Broxto, they say it's very disappointing, disappointing that these people have left, but also disappointing that they have decided to sit as independents only 18 months after they were elected as Labour councillors, because that's referring to the last time there were local elections in that area.
And then I've also had some chats with people at a national level who say it's not entirely surprising that they've decided to leave because there has been this like history of dispute between the local party and the national party as well. And locally, these people who've left say that 10 of their numbers stop from standing, the national party disputes that and said they're allowed to go through the proper process but there's a due diligence and some of them weren't chosen. So you get the sense that there's definitely been a bit of a tension between
elements of the local Labour Party in Broxto and the national party for some time. But I think the fact that they are citing some of the policy positions of the Labour government, and we know that even on the Labour backbenchers in Parliament, there are some MPs who have raised concerns that I've spoken to about things like the way the Winter Fuel payments was handled,
and other things like the conversation around the Wall Street women. So I think that reflects some concerns that are bubbling away more broadly in some corners of the Labour Party. And the reason this has all come to a head is because there are very specific local tensions in that area as well. And the other reason this is a big story is because, well, the first half of this year will be all about the build up to the local council elections in places like this, not necessarily in Brockstow, but the councils all across England.
Yeah, and it won't be Brockston specifically because they're county level. So it would be the sort of level above Brockston local authority or be Nottinghamshire for that area. But that's the only real electoral test that we're going to have this year in England because obviously by the general election last year, we've got elections in Wales and Scotland coming up in 2026. So I think that is an early electoral test. And it's, you know, we know that the last time there's elections before, it was a pretty high watermark for the Conservative party. So they're expecting to do pretty badly.
But I think because Labour have slumped in the polls and we all know all the caveats around the polls, right? But of course, Labour have slumped in the polls since their big, big general election win in July. I think people are going to be looking at these election results and unpicking them a little bit to see what they can tell us even at this really, really early stage after the general election about how kind of the public media is how people are feeling.
But this is a bit of a parallel universe because at Westminster, Labour will still have a massive, massive historic majority, and the next general election is still potentially four years away. That's why everything about this has to be seen in that kind of bigger context. And I think if we just sort of pull back a little bit, because you and I have spoken many times about how fast-moving politics has been over the last few years, it just has felt like turmoil after turmoil after turmoil.
You have got to see everything that's happening at the moment in the prism of the fact that Labour are sat in a whacking great majority and are likely to be pretty comfortably in power for four and a bit years. And almost every government has wobbles at the beginning. I think that's pretty normal. The question is whether Labour can pull some of this stuff back and when they start to pull some of this stuff back.
and i think on some of the policy issues like the winter fuel in particular where there definitely is discontent at the way that was managed yes in some quarters the decision itself but also the way all the communication around that was handled and everything there was sort of they announced then there was a gap before the budget when they announced all the other things they wanted to do which they point to as investment in public services and supporting people
So that kind of question around communication and management and expectation management and how you explain to the public why you're doing what you're doing. There has been some sort of grumblings in the party around that and I think it's that kind of stuff that's worth looking out for to see if they correct. And also the thing about the Winter Fuel decision is that it's a story with a long sort of half-life because you have the decision made in the summer
And then the effects felt in the winter, and we're just about to enter a period of very cold weather. And of course, the separate payments for vulnerable people for when it's very cold, that's separate from the winter fuel payment. But it means that it comes around again. And of course, the energy price cap has just gone up as well. So energy bills are just creeping up a little bit as well. So I think when you can put all of that compound, all of that,
And I do think it was as crucially was you're completely right, it's a sort of story that's come in stages and then of course all that push to get people to apply for pension credits or it might make them eligible for the winter fuel payment and how many people are on it and how many people aren't. I think all of that has meant that that sort of issue has really dominated certainly for longer than the government would have wanted it to.
Right, let's end with a little behind the scenes here. So one of our last conversations we had before we had the Christmas holidays was you saying to me, oh, I've got to do this program for Radio 4, which is like all the correspondence from around the BBC, like predicting what's going to happen or thinking about the big themes of 2025. And I've got to pick a person to watch.
as in, like, who do you nominate as somebody who's going to be very important this year? And you were kind of arming and eyeing about who to pick because there's a few options. Now, I know you're in the studio next door recording that very program today. Who did you pick? Who do you reckon I picked? See if you can read my mind.
Neither far out. Close. I went for Zia Yusuf, who was a huge chairman of Reform UK because I think there's lots of parties watching Reform UK really closely for their performance over the next 12 months. But I think the big question for the party is whether they can do what they say they want to, which is professionalize, get candidates in place, sort their structures out, avoid the issues they had during the election with candidates saying terrible things.
that the party then had to distance himself from and the use of some man that's tasked with doing that. So I think reform your case, success will not hinge on how successful he is in his job. And that comes back to Nigel Farage on the end, because will he be able to maintain his relationship with Nigel Farage? And will they continue to be some kind of dream team for the years ahead? Because people have not lasted the course of Nigel Farage in the past.
And also he's never been able to groom a successor. There've been lots of people, like, oh, they could be the next Nigel Farage if he decides to retire, unlikely, or is no longer available to be the fair haired. Well, yeah, one of the big criticisms of parties that Nigel Farage has led in the past is that they're one man shows. And, you know, Nigel Farage is trying, and I think the whole reformer trying to make it a bit more sustainable under reform UK. But there's also something in that, you know,
They're a party that prides themselves on being a party of independent thinkers, and people who are prepared to speak out on things that they believe in. But of course, that can sometimes lead to tensions because, you know, a lot of independent thinkers coming together in one room. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see what happens, which is why, ultimately, over the Christmas break, I decided to plump for him as an important person to watch in the broader political picture this year.
Must have had some very compelling conversations around the Christmas party. I'm always thrilled. Right, Alex, thank you very much. And thanks to you two for tuning into this episode of Newscast. There will be another one along very soon. Bye bye. Newscast from the BBC. Well, thank you for making it to the end.
of another newscast you clearly lose stamina.
Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation. It felt a really safe and welcoming space. After yoga classes, I felt amazing.
But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker, a journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders. I don't have my passport, I don't have my phone, I don't have my bank cards, I have nothing. The passport being taken, being in a house and not feeling like they can leave.
World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry with the hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually.
and it's done so skillfully that you don't realise. And it's like this, the secret that's there. I wanted to believe that, you know, that
Whatever they were doing, even if it seemed gross to me, was for some spiritual reason that I couldn't yet understand. Revealing the hidden secrets of a global yoga network, I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this and to put my reputation and everything else on the line. I want truth and justice.
and further people to not be hurt for things to be different in the future. To bring it into the light and almost alchemise some of that evil stuff that went on and take back the power. World of Secrets Season 6, the Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
