This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
I'm Landon Aris. They build a beautiful bit of machinery that I get to then go and find it. They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak. I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1, back at base. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 14 hours GMT on Friday the 31st of January. Uganda says it's boosting defences in eastern Congo, even as advances by Rwandan back rebels raise fears of a wider war. We have the latest on the investigation into the air crash above Washington amid reports of staff shortages in air traffic control. And how the far-right AFD party is breaching the so-called firewall in German politics.
Also in this podcast, it's a wonderful increase in tiger occupancy and it shows that tigers can recover despite the odds of high population pressure, poverty and developmental pressures. Some good news in India as big cat numbers rebound.
Uganda and Rwanda have a history of involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Both are accused of backing the M23 rebel group, which is currently on the march in Congo and threatening to go all the way to the capital Kinshasa. Uganda, which, like Rwanda, shares a border with Congo, says it's boosting its defences inside Congolese territory.
For his part, the Rwandan President Paul Kagami has denied supporting the M23 rebels, but that denial wasn't accepted by the Congolese government. Here's its foreign minister, Teres Kaikwamba Wagner. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is being illegally occupied by Rwanda. This is the clear result of decades of impunity and of not holding President Kagami accountable for his flagrant violations and his disregard for international law.
The issue that we're looking at right now is a dramatic humanitarian situation. The main city in North Kivu Province, Goma, being occupied by the London Defence Forces with, as a puppet, the M23. A monster has been created in the Great Lakes region. Our call to action to all the stakeholders, but in particular, those countries that have been funding the London regime, is that this madness needs to stop.
For its part, Rwanda has long accused Congo of supporting Hutu rebels who were involved in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Yaland Makolo is a spokesperson for the Rwandan government. What we're living here in Rwanda and what we have been experiencing for the last 30 years is a situation of
extreme insecurity that is born out of the DRC's failure to secure their own country and to give rights to their own people. You know what happened here in 1994 with the genocide. The people who committed genocide fled when they were defeated to the DRC.
For the last 30 years, the DRC government has sustained, has financed, has supported and has armed the FDR, who have stated that they want to come back to Rwanda to finish the job. So this is what we have to deal with. Well, Southern African leaders are discussing Congo in a meeting in the Zimbabwean capital, Harari, today. I heard more from our correspondent in the city, Xingainyaka.
There are a lot of issues that they intend to address chief amongst them, the fact that the SADIC Southern Africa Development Community Forces, which have been deployed there since 2023, have come under increasing attack.
And so over the last week, we've seen about a dozen or so, most of them from South Africa troops that have been killed. And so there's a lot of concern about the impact that this situation will have on Southern Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo,
is a member of the region, even though Rwanda is not. And so I think there will be questions about the future of this particular deployment. It had expected the term had been expected to run up until the end of December. But there have been calls, especially in South Africa, which has suffered the highest number of casualties about whether the troops should be pulled out.
Yeah, I mean, we've seen a war of words between the South African president and the Rwandan president. Now we're hearing Uganda is strengthening its position. And of course, Congo has a history of embroiling other nations in the region in its conflict.
Absolutely. And I think Zimbabwe has learned that lesson about 20 years ago. It went into a war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, lost billions of US dollars, but that really hasn't brought peace to the area. And so I think that's one of the issues really for discussion here is
what, to what extent, consider leaders bring to bear some kind of an agreement to a cessation of hostilities. But what, as you said, we've seen, is a war of words increasingly between South Africa and Rwanda, where South Africa accused Rwanda of killing its peacekeepers and said that further attacks would be a declaration of war.
and Paul Kagami retorted and said that he believes that the static forces should pull out and that it's a belligerent force because essentially they're helping the Congolese army to fight against its own citizens. And so I think there really is a fear about the impact that this particular conflict in the way that it's deepening will have broadly on regions such as Southern Africa.
was a lack of staff to blame for the air crash above Washington DC on Wednesday night. 67 people died when a military helicopter collided with a passenger jet coming into land at Reagan National Airport, just across the Potomac River from Washington. At the time, only one controller was handling local plane and helicopter traffic rather than the usual two.
Sean Fruchnicki is a former pilot who has landed at the airport many times. What's his assessment? From everything that I've heard and seen, there doesn't seem to be anything unusual at all. In fact, it seems to be business as usual with one exception that there was one controller working two separate frequencies. That's very unusual. That's not what you would expect at such a high density, busy airport such as this.
At a news conference at the White House on Thursday, Donald Trump blamed diversity employment policies for the crash. But Democrats pointed to the president's recent decision to sack the head of the Transportation Safety Administration, dismantle the Aviation Security Committee, and impose a hiring freeze that could affect air traffic control staff. At the time of the crash, the Federal Aviation Administration had no leader after Elon Musk called on the previous boss to resign.
Pete Buttigieg, Transportation Secretary in the Biden administration, said they had grown air traffic control under their watch and had had zero commercial airline crash fatalities. Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen also criticized the rhetoric from the White House.
I was absolutely appalled that President Trump would take this moment of tragedy and politicize it. Start pointing fingers at different people without any basis for doing so. In fact, he conceded in response to a question.
He had no basis for making those claims. And yet he recklessly and irresponsibly did that. I think he owes the families of the victims an apology. I think he owes the country an apology. We need to get to the facts. What we don't need is President Trump making a political show out of this awful tragedy.
I got the latest from our correspondent Carl Nasman at Reagan National Airport. We were just speaking actually with some NTSB officials. That's the federal agency obviously in charge of this investigation. And they did confirm that those two black boxes, the flight data recorders from the American Airlines plane, that those have been recovered from
the river that they've already begun the process of now starting to extract the data, you have to open up these black boxes and then take a look at what clues might be within that information in those boxes. Of course, as you mentioned, there's going to be lots of factors that these investigators are going to be looking at
One of them is staffing. As we heard there, there was one person essentially doing two people's jobs. It's not normal, but if you look at the actual guidelines, it is considered satisfactory. It's not something that would necessarily raise a red flag because we know that there have been some serious staffing issues when it comes to these sorts of air traffic control towers, the staff that are in charge of safety here. It's been a problem really dating all the way back to the pandemic.
when we know that many people either left the industry or forced out due to flights being grounded. They're also going to be looking at some other close calls that have taken place in the past here at Reagan National Airport, just about 24 hours, actually, before this collision. There was another kind of close call. A plane was told to divert after a helicopter got too close to its intended landing path. So many factors will be looked at. This is an investigation moves on. We're expecting a preliminary report and about
30 days time, but any kind of final conclusions, that's going to take much longer. We're looking at months potentially a year. And has the actual recovery operation restarted after the polls earlier?
Well, looking out the window now, you know, the sun came up here about 45 minutes or an hour ago. It's still cold and the water out there is also really icy. So some of those recovery operations overnight had really slowed down. The people that have been working hour after hour facing some difficult conditions. In fact, we were hearing this is normal, but it does sound difficult that they're dry suits that they use to stay warm.
had been getting cut by either debris or ice out there. That is expected to pick up now that the sun is risen. It is getting a bit warmer here. But what they'll be doing is looking for clues. They want to try to recover pieces of the aircraft. And they're also presumably still looking for the remains of the other 30 or so people that they have not yet recovered. So certainly a grim task taking place.
out there in the waters of the Potomac River, even as we know, you know, flights beginning to really get back up to almost normal here. Lots of people coming to the airport. We saw that morning rush, people coming in with their suitcases ready to take their flights. Carl Nussman at Reagan National Airport in Washington.
India is home to three-quarters of the world's tigers, which are classified as endangered on the international red list. But now, in a rare conservation success story, a study has found that India's tiger population has doubled over the past decade to around 3,600 animals. Yet, Indredev Jala is a senior scientist at the Indian National Academy of Sciences.
It's a wonderful increase in tiger occupancy, and it shows that tigers can recover despite the odds of high population pressure, poverty, and developmental pressures provided you have the right attitudes and the right governance. South Asia regional editor Anbarasan Etsi Rajan told me how India had managed to achieve this growth. It didn't happen overnight. It has been the project going on for the last four decades. It started in the 70s when the
that then government declared wildlife sanctuaries are protected, they established a new reserves. So basically some of the reasons why the tiger population went down was rampant poaching and the loss of natural habitat. So once you declare a particular area as a tiger sanctuary, then you cannot set up industries and also it prevented sometimes local communities to go inside the forest to cut trees.
or other resources, because under the guise of these local communities, even poachers were moving in. So it has been a broader effort in terms of protecting the natural habitat, and also the local communities are also the first line of defence in terms of protecting tigers, so helping them in terms of providing job opportunities, economic growth, ecotourism, the money coming from them,
So they became the guardians of these sanctuaries and the third itself is taking various measures to stop pushing because there is a huge demand for tiger body parts in the Far East because it is believed that in the traditional medicine as value.
The various efforts have made this tiger number increase. That's what we saw in many new areas where the because of the increasing density of tiger, they're moving to new areas where people are spotting when I was in one of the reserves in southern India where for the first time they said that tigers are coming from the across the other state from Karnataka because because of the population. So it is indeed a very successful conservation story, but there are other issues as well.
Yeah, I mean, tiger numbers going up, moving to new areas, but also India's population, human population is growing. Isn't there a risk of encounters between humans and tigers? That's what we see in many parts of India where there is increasing human animal conflict where tigers attacking human beings because many communities, they still depend on forests to collect leaves, to collect firewood.
and then also take the cattle inside for grazing there. So that is when it comes into contact and also villages are increasing. So in that case the human wildlife conflict happens and that is when the government tries to solve the problem either by relocating some of these communities or educating them how not to enter into. But then recently we had an instance of a man eating tiger in Kerala.
in the southern state, where people said it had killed three or four people. Finally, they found this tiger dead. So, yes, it is increasing, but at the same time, the government is trying to contain by educating the villagers as well as providing them other opportunities. South Asia regional editor Anbar San Echev Rajan.
Advances in technology mean more people have devices that offer rewards for meeting fitness goals. It's called gamification, basically turning exercise into a video game. More companies are taking up this approach as they try to win a share of the $100 billion global fitness market. But are trackers and leaderboards a positive step? Sean Alsop has been investigating.
Growing up, I used to play a lot of video games which incorporated elements of physical exercise, like the eye toy for the Sony Playstation, or Wii Sports and Wii Fit for the Nintendo Wii. They were marketed as games first and foremost, but now, more people have gamification methods built into their fitness routines everywhere. I spoke with Falaz Assembler, professor at the Near East University in Cyprus.
The use of gamification in the fitness sector started with the 2000s. However, with the technological advancements, gamification has become more sophisticated and integrated in particular smart devices.
A report by the media company Business of Apps indicates that 326 million people around the world use fitness apps, with 224 million using smart watches which made gamification and fitness more accessible.
I'm in the UK in a gym called Dig Me, about to take part in my first spin class. And what makes this sessions different is that it uses the latest technology to add gamification to the classes.
with tracking progress, level up difficulty mechanics and achievements by high scores. I'm going to return to the gym later. In the meantime, I wanted to see how home workouts have changed.
In the 1980s, home fitness exploded in popularity. With workout videos, exercise channels and affordable home equipment all contributing to a new form of exercise that today is worth nearly $12 billion according to the research company Fortune Business Insights.
The fitness videos are now fitness streaming services, like Peloton. They're a company that make equipment like stationary bikes and treadmills, and have online classes available on subscription. The senior vice president of product, Brent Tireski. Since the first day is a Peloton, we've had the idea of a leaderboard showing you people with yourself. When you get started, we start tracking how many days in a row that you worked out. That notion of streaks really mattered to some members where
Their personal identity says, you know, I'm a 50 person and I'm going to maintain my weekly workout streak when the smartphone came out and people started getting notifications. We'll add notifications into our experiences to help people achieve their fitness goals. Back at Dickney Gym in the UK, my spin class is nearly finished. Here's the results. I'm wrong, James, Super, Rebecca, Go Well.
It was pretty intense, but I had fun. The scores are read out at the end. There's a leaderboard, and some people have gotten their points. Some people have leveled up. I've not got many points, but it's my first time and I'm a swimmer, not a cyclist. Sean also reporting, and you can hear more stories like that by searching for business daily, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. And still to come on the global news podcast,
Today, Tarunaki al-Mangatupuna is released from the shapers of injustice, of ignorance, of hate. A mountain in New Zealand gets the same legal rights as a person.
What does it take to go racing in the fastest cars in the world? Oscar Pia Street. Your head's trying to get roof one way, your body's trying to go another. Let's roll. It's very extreme in a sense on how close you're racing wheel to wheel. We've been given unprecedented access to two of the most famous names in Formula One, McLaren and Aston Martin.
I'm Landon Aris. They build a beautiful bit of machinery that I get to them. They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak. I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1, back at base. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
The Palestinian group Hamas has handed over the names of the next hostages to be freed as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal with Israel on Saturday. In return, more Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails will be released. From Jerusalem, here's Joe Inwood. Keith Seagull, Yard and Beebass, an offer, Calderon. The name which people may recognize first, I guess, is Yard and Beebass. The abduction of Mr. Beebass and his wife, Shuri, and their children Ariel in fear.
From near Oz was one of the defining images of the start of this conflict of October the 7th these two tiny redheaded children being taken away in their mother's arms on a motorbike and ever since then there's been real concern around the fate specifically of Shiri and the two children. Joe Inward reporting.
They call it Germany's firewall, the refusal of established political parties to cooperate with the far right. But the first cracks appeared on Wednesday when a non-vinding motion on migration passed in the Bundestag with the help of the far right AFD.
Today, German MPs have begun debating actual legislation on immigration put forward by the man tipped to be Germany's next leader, Friedrich Mertz of the Conservative CDU. Critics have staged protests outside the CDU's headquarters. Yen Zimmermann is an MP for the governing Social Democratic Party.
Ditrich meds everybody also in my own party. We said, if he goes into the basement saying nothing for the next four weeks, he will sail into the chancellery. But he was in a very obviously emotional moment. He went in front of the cameras and simply said, I want to have this vote and I don't
care where the votes are coming from and this is so wrong. It was emotional and now people are asking questions. Is this person fit for office?
All the debates on the immigration legislation was delayed earlier today amid disagreements between the parties. But it got underway just before we started recording this podcast. Our correspondent, Damian McGinnis, was watching from Berlin. Right now, I'm watching the debate from here, Oliver, and I can see the leader of the Conservative Party from here. He's just stepped up to the podium. He's now addressing Parliament. We've just had an incredibly fiery speech from one of the leaders of Olaf Scholz, who's sent to left Social Democrat Party.
where he accused the Conservatives of opening the doors to hell by allowing his motion on Wednesday, his parliamentary motion and non-binding suggestion to Parliament to be supported by the AFD. Now the Conservatives are going to step further today and today we are talking about a bill
So, a draft for a concrete law, both parliamentary procedures are about limiting migration, both contain some quite dramatic and drastic, and for many people quite controversial measures about limiting migration, but potentially just as controversial as the measures themselves, is this idea that the leader of the Conservatives, Fruj dei Hmerd, and who as you say is tipped to be Germany's next chance of looking at the polls right now,
appears to be prepared to allow suggestions and bills he puts forward to be supported by the far right AFD. And this is unprecedented in German politics because in modern Germany you've always had this so-called firewall which essentially keeps the AFD out of political power and means that they would have no influence on the government. This firewall now appears to be crumbling because what the leader of the Conservatives has done
He has allowed the far right to push through or with the far right support. He has managed to push through business through Parliament. And that for many people is the first step of the falling of this firewall. Yeah. So if Friedrich Mertz gets this bill through today with the help of the AFD, what will it mean for the election?
Yeah, I mean, the bill itself probably won't go much further because it's unlikely to go through the upper house because it's quite controversial, so many people in the upper house, though the regional leaders of Germany have said they're not going to support it, they're going to block it. So the bill itself will probably stop here, but from a symbolic and electioneering point of view, it's hard to overstate the importance of it because what it's done, it's really polarized
the German political party system even more than it was before. And what we're now seeing is a huge divide between the right and the left, and what we've also seen is that Friedrich Märter's Conservative party has taken a hard-line tack on migration. What he's done, he's pulled his party to the right,
He's saying goodbye to the era of Angela Merkel, who's a centrist who wants to win elections in the centre ground. And what he's trying to do is by talking so hard line on migration, he wants to win back right-wing voters who have defected towards the far right.
But many people say that his suggestions and letting himself be supported by the far right is simply legitimizing the AFT rather than undermining it. And I think that's why the debate right now in the Bundesliga is so ferocious because it's all about whether this is going to help the far right rather than take away their support. Damien McGinnis in Berlin.
Nearly three years of war and the occupation of a huge chunk of Ukraine has left more than 60,000 people missing. Some are soldiers missing in action, many others are civilians detained by Russian forces and then disappeared. And while Ukraine sometimes gets prisoners of war back in swaps with Russia, civilians are very rarely returned. Sarah Rainesford has met one woman desperate to know what happened to her parents after the Russians took over her town.
Every morning they were apart. Tatiana sent a video message to her only child.
It was a daily check-in because she and her husband were living under Russian occupation in Southeastern Ukraine and their daughter was worried. Ludbilla shows me a phone full of those messages and of memories. One is her dad's 50th birthday in life before the Russians invaded.
In all the images Tatiana and Oleg are full of laughter and life. But in September 2023, they were detained by Russian soldiers and disappeared. Lupila's grand saw it all, as armed men dressed in black burst into their home and took Tatiana and Oleg away in handcuffs. For four months, there was no trace of them.
Then one day Tatiana was abandoned at a hospital in a coma. She never regained consciousness. It's just so tough to think what they did to her and why. My mum was 51. She loved life. Then everything was cut short. Ludmina's father has still not been found.
If God forbid something happens to my dad, it will kill me. When the Russian army first rolled into Meletopel, Ludmina, during the protests, crowds sang the defiance then, waving Ukrainian flags in front of tanks and telling the troops to go home.
Then the Russians began rounding them up. Ludmiller fled, but her parents stayed.
I'd say, ma, maybe you should leave and she'd say just a little more time. Tatiana was convinced that Ukrainian troops would retake their city soon and liberate them. Some people die on the battlefield and others die in occupation, helping Ukrainian other ways.
But to me, she's a warrior. She knew the risks, but she had to help. Lebilla now knows her mother was charged with espionage, but only after she was dumped at hospital, unconscious. No one will say where she was held before that, or what happened to her. And her father is officially missing, although he was taken by Russian troops.
This is not an isolated case. In key of the Red Cross runs a helpline and most people calling have missing relatives to soldiers and civilians. The staff take details and fill in a database, but a tracing system can only work with information.
And although international law says both sides in a war have to inform about all detainees, Russia just doesn't do that.
After years of negotiations, a settlement has been reached in New Zealand that allows a mountain, the same legal right as a human. Rebecca Wood reports. Taranaki Monga is a pristine snow-capped dormant volcano, and standing at over two and a half thousand metres, it's the second highest mountain on New Zealand's North Island. It's known for its beauty, hiking, snow sports, and now something else.
Today Taranaki El Malatupuna is released from the shekels of injustice, of ignorance, of hate. That's Debbie Narrowa-Paka, a co-leader of the political party to party Maori and a descendant of the Taranaki tribes. She's speaking during the Parliament session that passed the law giving the mountain all the rights, powers and responsibilities of a person.
The agreement aims to compensate Māori from the region for injustices done to them during and after colonisation, including widespread land conversation. Paul Goldsmith is the government minister responsible for the negotiations. Mountain has long been an honoured ancestor, a source of physical, cultural and spiritual sustenance and a final resting place.
Traditional Maori practices associated with the mountains were banned while tourism was promoted. Pests such as possums were introduced and led to destruction of the native forest in some parts.
The mountain will no longer be officially known as Eggmont. That was the name given to it by British explorer James Cook in the 18th century, and instead be called Taranaki Malga. It will effectively own itself with representatives of the local tribes and government working together to manage it. Hundreds of other Māori turned up at Parliament on Thursday to see the bill become law and burst into song when it did.
The mountains not alone and being a natural feature of New Zealand to be granted legal personhood. In 2014, a native forest became the first to gain such status in the world, followed by a river in 2017. And our reports by Rebecca Wood.
That's all from us for now, but the Global News podcast will be back very soon. This edition was mixed by Mark Pickett and produced by David Lewis, our editor's Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.
What does it take to go racing in the fastest cars in the world? Oscar Pia Street. Your head's trying to get roof one way, your body's trying to go another. Let's roll. It's very extreme in the sense on how close you're racing wheel to wheel. We've been given unprecedented access to two of the most famous names in Formula One, McLaren and Aston Martin.
I'm Landon Arce. They build a beautiful bit of machinery that I get to then go and find it. They open the doors to their factories as the 2024 season reached its peak. I'm Josh Hartnett. This is F1, back at base. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.