US air crash: 64 feared dead
en
January 30, 2025
TLDR: Military helicopter hits passenger jet in Washington, no survivors expected. Israeli soldier freed from Gaza captivity. Possibility of F1 racing returning to Africa.

In a devastating event, US authorities have confirmed that more than 60 lives are likely lost due to a mid-air collision between a military helicopter and a passenger jet over the Potomac River in Washington. This tragic incident, which occurred just before 9 PM, has resulted in a shift from a rescue operation to a recovery mission, as no survivors are anticipated.
Key Details of the Accident
- Date and Location: The crash occurred on January 30 in Washington, near the busy National Reagan Airport, which handles 90% of the airport’s flights.
- Aircraft Involved: The collision involved a Black Hawk military helicopter and an American Airlines passenger jet.
- Passenger Details: The flight carried 64 people, many of whom were part of the figure skating community traveling from Wichita, Kansas.
- Initial Response: Emergency responders faced challenging weather conditions including heavy winds and icy waters during their operations.
Eyewitness Accounts and Investigations
- Eyewitness Reports: Webcam footage captured an explosion at the moment of the impact, followed by the aircraft crashing into the icy river.
- Investigation Insights: Investigators have begun reviewing the event to understand how such a collision occurred, despite existing safety protocols. Aviation expert Jeffrey Thomas stressed that mid-air collisions are extremely rare in modern air travel due to traffic collision avoidance systems (TCAS) designed to prevent such tragedies.
Broader Context: Hostage Releases and Global News
In addition to the air crash, the podcast also discussed the recent release of hostages in Gaza, including three Israeli individuals, amidst a ceasefire agreement. However, Israel has suspended the release of 110 Palestinian prisoners, leading to increased tensions. This situation underscores the complexity of geopolitics in the region, with various factions involved in negotiations yet facing public outcry over handling and communication.
Hostage Release Insights
- Release Details: Eight hostages were freed as part of ongoing negotiations, but the chaotic scenes at certain handover points raised security concerns and fueled public anger.
- Political Reactions: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the handling of some releases, calling it unacceptable and intensifying the debate surrounding Hamas’ actions.
Global Perspectives and Humanitarian Crises
Another issue highlighted was the tensions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where fighting risks rekindling ethnic conflicts reminiscent of the Rwandan genocide. Former UN investigator Jason Stearns discussed the implications of armed groups like M23 gaining control in Goma, emphasizing the fragile state of regional security.
Humanitarian Implications
- Military Movements: The Congolese army remains significantly larger than M23 forces, yet lacks training and effectiveness due to historical fragmentation, raising questions about the capacity to maintain order.
- UN Exclusions: The podcast concluded with a discussion on the newly implemented ban on the UN's Palestine Refugee Agency (UNRWA) by Israel, which could significantly impact humanitarian efforts, particularly with rising needs for assistance.
Conclusion: A Day of Tragedy and Tension
The podcast highlighted a day filled with tragedy and tension ranging from the devastating air collision to ongoing geopolitical conflicts and humanitarian crises around the globe. As investigations continue into the crash and discussions evolve regarding hostage situations and foreign interventions, these events serve as stark reminders of the complexity and fragility inherent in global affairs. Readers are encouraged to stay informed about these developments for a better understanding of their implications in both local and worldwide contexts.
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Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 14 hours GMT on Thursday the 30th of January. A US military helicopter has collided with a passenger plane above the Potomac River in Washington. More than 60 people are feared dead. Eight hostages, including three Israelis, have been freed in Gaza, but Israel has suspended the release of 110 Palestinians in exchange. And a warning that the fighting in Congo could reignite ethnic tensions seen during the Rwandan genocide.
Also in this podcast. The Brazilian film that's making history.
Reagan National Airport sits just across the river from Washington, D.C., a seven-minute drive from the White House and right next to the Pentagon. Being so close to the U.S. Capitol, it is very busy. In fact, it has the single busiest runway in the country. But as we record this podcast, it remains closed after a military helicopter collided with a passenger jet coming into land just before 9 o'clock last night. The moment was recorded by air traffic control.
The webcam footage from the nearby Kennedy Center showed a huge explosion at the moment of impact. Both the plane and the helicopter then plunged into the icy waters of the Potomac below. In the past few hours, the authorities have been giving an update. John Donnelly is a fire and emergency medical services chief.
these responders found extremely frigid conditions. They found heavy wind, they found ice on the water, and they're operated all night in those conditions. Despite all those efforts, we are now at a point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation. At this point, we don't believe there are any survivors from this accident.
And we have recovered 27 people from the plane and one from the helicopter. And we will continue to work to find all the bodies and collect them and reunite them with their loved ones. Well shortly before we came into the studio our North America correspondent, Nomiya Iqbal gave me an update from the airport.
Investigators are obviously starting to look into exactly why the Black Hawk and the passenger flight collided. I'm not able to get too close to the scene, but I can make out just across the way on the Potomac River. What is happening, you can see the red flashes of the emergency crew that are there. Obviously this is now a recovery operation, not a rescue one. The plane is essentially in three parts sitting in waist-high frigid water. You can also see
And some of the photos that are emerging, just the sort of the top of the chopper that is in the water as well. As you mentioned here, the main runway here is the busiest in the country. It's thought to like handle 90% of the airport's flights due to the space. And here it's quite normal, especially in DC, you know, we're not far as you mentioned from DC.
to see civilian aircraft and military aircraft in the sky at the same time. But investigators are saying that there were no sort of unusual travel patterns here, that the American airline flight and the military helicopter were doing, you know, there was nothing unusual about their practices. They have located the two aircrafts, as I mentioned, the fuselage of American Airlines' craft was inverted. It's located in three different sections, as I mentioned.
But yes, we're very much at the early stages in terms of finding out exactly what happened. Now the plane had 64 passengers and crew on board. It was flying from Wichita in Kansas and we're hearing that there were a number of people involved in the figure skating community on board.
That's correct. There has been an update. There was Russian Americans. There has been a statement from the Kremlin. Just to mention also the families of these people are inside the terminal. This flight was just minutes from landing on the runway and people were here waiting for that flight to arrive. I mean, it's just pretty unfathomable, the tragedy of it. And they are, of course, waiting to find out exactly what's happened to their loved ones.
And briefly, what do you make of Donald Trump's post on his social media site saying this is a bad situation and it should have been prevented?
Yeah, Donald Trump is already sort of speculating, I would say, about this. For the president, this is, I would say, one of the first big crises of his administration, and it's a new administration, finding its feet. His transport secretary, Sean Duffy, was only sworn in yesterday. It's the first week for his new defense secretary, Pete Hankseth, as well. And so there will be pressure on the administration to get to the bottom of exactly what's happened.
Namir Ighbal in Washington. The recording of air traffic control revealed that shortly before the crash, the helicopter crew were asked if they had the American Airlines passenger jet in sight. There was no clear response. So what might have happened, Jeffrey Thomas, is an aviation consultant. These sorts of things don't happen in the United States anymore. I mean, America has the safest airline system in the world. There are literally tens of thousands of flights every day.
Mid-air collisions were supposed to be something in the past before the technology enabled aircraft to talk to it, electronically talk to each other and a worn pilot of an impending collision. That's a system called TCAS, which is traffic collision avoidance system. It saved literally tens of thousands of lives over the last
20 or so, 30 years, an amazing bit of technology. All commercial aircraft are fitted with it and most military aircraft are fitted with it. And basically how the system works is that signal that the transponder signal goes out to air traffic control and is picked up by all these flight radar apps that we've all got on our phones.
the aircraft send those signals out so what they aircraft also have is a receiver which also picks up that signal and the computers compare the two signal you know what am I doing and what's he doing or she doing and they alert the pilots for an impending
collision and tell them what to do to climb or to descend and they give the opposite advice to the other aircraft. So technically it should never have happened. It's absolutely perplexing and terribly tragic. Aviation consultant Jeffrey Thomas.
Eight more hostages, three Israelis and five Thai farm workers, have been freed from Gaza as part of the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. The Israelis have now suspended the release of 110 Palestinian prisoners due to be freed in return. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas of what he called unimaginable cruelty after chaotic scenes at the release of seven of the captives in the southern city of Khan Yunus.
Well, the handover of the seven took place near the now destroyed childhood home of the dead Hamas leader Yair Sinwa. The two Israelis were civilian women, Abel Yehud, and eight-year-old man Gadi Moses. They were reported to be being held by Islamic Jihad, not Hamas.
Earlier Hamas had freed the final female Israeli soldier it was holding Agamburger. She stood on a stage holding a certificate and waving before being driven away by the Red Cross. Our correspondent Nick Beek in Tel Aviv told me first about what happened in Harnunis.
There were really, really chaotic scenes and they were witnessed by people here in hostages square in Tel Aviv on the big screen. They could watch it and I think people looked on with anger and real despair because what happened was there was an initial first hostage release in Jibalya in the north of the Gaza Strip which went pretty much according to plan but then
with the freeing of Arbel Yehud, a 29 year old civilian. It was absolute pandemonium because she was paraded around. There was a crowd surrounded by hundreds of masked and armed men and there's been really a chorus of condemnation starting with the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying this is completely unacceptable.
You've got government ministers as well as far-right politicians saying that this shows why Hamas must be destroyed forever, so it really did change a public mood. Certainly in this spot, and it might well have done for a lot of people across the country, and what we're hearing is, yes, the delay of the Palestinian prisoners, some 110 of them today, has now been delayed as a consequence according to the Israeli government.
Yeah, now Hamas were criticised after the very first hostage handover of this ceasefire deal. They then moved to a more orderly handover with the four female Israeli soldiers on Saturday. Again, they did the same today with that one soldier. Is it a different group involved in the handover in Khan Eunice? Because the others were said to be being held by Islamic Jihad.
Yes, I think you're right, and I think this could well be a key explanation for the chaos that ensued. It was the Palestinian-Islamic Jihad group that was holding our belly of hood, and also Gadi Moses, an 80-year-old who was also released today. And so you had, as we were watching these scenes, almost moments of disagreement between men in the green of Hamas, and
the Islamic Jihad fighters in yellow and black. There didn't seem to be any coordination. We've heard for the past 15 months how a breakdown in communication or uneasy communication between the militant groups has really led to a vacuum of information about the fate of some of the hostages. And today I think you could suggest that this led to what we saw. It was a complete contrast from
The choreography of Saturday when the four female soldiers who were released were taken up onto a stage, they were waving, they were smiling. Of course, we don't know what they were really thinking, but it was very carefully choreographed. Today it was not, it was the opposite of that huge crowds and it looked like they could have been a crush at one moment. Nick Beek in Tel Aviv and Reuters is reporting that Hamas has said it has been informed by the Red Cross that Israel will release Palestinian prisoners later in the day.
And later in this podcast, we will return to Gaza and look at the implications of Israel's ban on the U.N. aid agency for Palestinian refugees. But first, Brazil is perhaps best known for its football, carnival and beaches, but now it's making waves in the world of cinema. I'm still here is breaking box office records and has become the first film in Portuguese to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars.
The historical political drama is based on a real story and is touching raw nerves for Brazilians at home and abroad, as Tom Brooke reports. The film I'm Still Here is set in Brazil in the 1970s, when the country was living under a military dictatorship.
At the center of this story, based on real events, is Onissi Piva, played by Fernando Torres, whose seemingly joyous family life has changed forever when her husband, Rubens, a former leftist congressman, disappears after he is apprehended by the military. In Brazil, the film has been a big box office success, and it's brought the country its first ever Oscar Best Picture nomination for a film in Portuguese. As well as nominations for Best International Feature,
and the Fernando Torres of Best Actress. It's a big shot in the arm for Brazilian cinema. One reason why the film is eliciting such passion in Brazil is because it's touching on the years of military dictatorship when many democratic rights were suspended. Rodrigo Brandau is a Brazilian filmmaker. This is really about a topic that people are talking about on the streets right now. What is the value of democracy? Should we fight for democracy in Brazil?
This is really on the news every day in Brazil. So I think this film really captures that and it's offering everyone an opportunity to talk about it and to sort of debate it.
The film was launched at the Venice Film Festival last year, where top Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salos explained how he was moved to tell a story of Onisi Piva's response to her husband's forced violent disappearance. It was an extraordinary story of a family enduring an act of violence, and with a woman really finding herself in the middle of it. I fell in love with that woman.
That woman is Onisipiva, played by Fernando Torres, who's now a strong Oscar contender.
But the actors' chances of winning may have been weakened because a comedy sketch from 20 years ago, in which she appeared in Blackface, recently resurfaced. She has apologized, stating that when she performed the sketch, the racist history of Blackface hadn't yet entered mainstream consciousness in Brazil. Torres maintains that in, I'm still here, she tried to stay truthful to her character who prevailed in the wake of her husband's disappearance to emerge as an activist for the rights of indigenous people.
That's what we tried, I think, to be faithful to this woman that believed that the way to fight against dictatorship and authoritarianism was through education and justice. The film is shining a light on a dark chapter in Brazilian history where hundreds went missing under a right-wing dictatorship. Although it wasn't his plan, Director Walter Salus claims his film has relevance to other countries where far-right groups have gained ground.
And when it's happening in so many different places, I feel the anguish of the times we live in. And I think it's important to talk about it.
Quite a part from its political themes, the film is important to Brazilians for sentimental reasons. The film's leading lady, Fernando Torres, appears in a picture which also features a performance from Fernando Montenegro, her 95-year-old mother. 25 years ago, she was nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars but lost to Gwyneth Paltrow. So now the country is rooting for her daughter to make history and finally bring home the Oscars gold to Brazil. Tom Brook reporting.
And still to come on the Global News Podcast. A lot of up and down. I think it would be amazing. A lot of fast corners. That is always what I like. If there's one thing I'll look forward to if we ever race here will be the overtaking opportunities. Is Formula One returning to Africa?
M-23 rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo are tightening their grip on the city of Goma, and reportedly taking more territory in the east. The armed group, which the UN says is supported by Rwanda, is advancing south towards another major city, Bukavu. Efforts to end the fighting are in disarray with the Congolese president, Felix Gisickiri, refusing to attend talks in Kenya. In a televised address on Wednesday night, he was defiant. The force, the defense, you wonder?
Rwanda's defense forces in support of their M23 puppets are continuing their terrorist enterprise on our soil, sowing terror and desolation among our populations. I share your pain and indignation at these barbaric attacks.
These acts are not only an attack on the Republic, but an affront to the history and dignity of our people. In these difficult times, I call on you to be resilient and above all to resist.
The Congolese president. The UN force in Congo has warned that the fighting risks reigniting ethnic tensions dating back to the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and before. Jason Stearns is a former UN investigator. He spoke to my colleague James Copnell.
M23 by most estimates are somewhere between 8 and 12,000 troops, about half Rhonda and half M23 fighters. And while they have good equipment and are very well trained, the Congolese Army has 120 or 130,000 troops, and so 10 times as much.
They also have a military budget of a billion dollars. For many years, the Congolese army has lacked training, lacked investment. But I think more importantly than that, the Congolese army has purposely been kept fragmented and far from the capital. The primary goal of the Congolese elite has been to keep them actually not very efficient for fear of a coup. And I think that weakness is coming back to haunt them now.
What do you assess then as M23s objectives? Now they've taken GOMA. Is it to take control of further areas of the East? Is it to have a more settled control over GOMA, setting up a civilian administration? What are they likely to do next? Well, I think they are very much setting up administration wherever they go. They're burning administrative records. They're setting up their own parallel administration. They're gathering taxes. They're issuing birth certificates. So it does seem that they have
Long-term objective of ministering this territory and I think they're going to be doing the same in goma I think that their objectives evolve as they move along if you'd asked me and even them 23 declarations several weeks ago They weren't talking about overthrowing the government they were talking about Protecting the tutsi population and so on and so forth now since the fall of goma their pronouncements have become much more ambitious They're talking openly about marching all the way to kinshasa overthrowing the government
There was an interview given by Rwanda's regional representative, the person who used to be the ambassador in Kinshasa yesterday. And even he said that the M23's ambitions are to either overthrow the Congolese government or to push so far that they can get into a power sharing agreement with the Congolese government. Do you assess that as possible? I mean, there's Preston, of course, in the DRC for rebels coming from the East and sweeping the whole way through the country. But in the current context, is that possible? Is that likely?
Well, I think there's a few things you need to look out for. The first one is the reaction of the international community. Yesterday, the UK Foreign Secretary David Lamy had, I think, a very stern phone call with Rhonda that really changed the tone in the UK Rhonda relationship where he said that a billion dollar of aid is now up in the air because of Rhonda's actions in the DRC, Germany's Reviewing Its Aid Package. This is all very new. Up until now, not a single donor had even mentioned the possibility of aid scuts to Rhonda, which is a very aid-dependent country.
If the West really wants to turn on the screws on Rwanda, they can turn the screws on. The question is, what is their reaction going to be? The other thing is Rwanda has about half of its troops now either deployed in the DRC or in peacekeeping missions.
If they push much further into the Congo, I think even Rwanda that has a very professional efficient army will be strained. Its supply chains will be strained. It's going to be difficult for it to do what it did in 1996 because in 1996 they had the support of Uganda, Angola, Ethiopia at the time. And so things have changed.
Jason Stern's former UN investigator in Congo. Returning to the Middle East now in the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, UNRAP is expected to stop work today after being banned by the Israeli Parliament. A small number of the agency's workers were sacked after being accused of involvement in the October 7th massacre. The UN says UNRAP's work is irreplaceable and that barring it will hurt the most vulnerable.
The Peace Research Institute, Oslo, has just published a report on the possible consequences of the ban. Its author, Jürgen Jenserhagen, has been speaking to our Geneva correspondent, Imogen folks. Unra is what we call the backbone of the humanitarian operation, meaning that they don't only bring in aid themselves. They are really the operation which all other humanitarian actors depend on, whether that's deconfliction, that is, coordination with the Israeli army for security purposes.
maintaining storehouses, securing distribution centers. UNRA has 5,000 staff members working on aid and healthcare in the Gaza Strip, whilst other comparable organizations have a handful, a couple of hundred at most. So all the other agencies really depend on UNRA. The paradox here is that the ceasefire allows for more aid to come in, which is good and necessary. The operation for distribution is being picked apart at the same time.
The other UN agencies have said there is no plan B we cannot step in. Wouldn't it be better to come up with a plan B? The UN's official position is there cannot be a plan B because they cannot accept the legality of the law. The expulsion of the UN agency is illegal and by stating that they are working on a plan B,
is a de facto acceptance of illegal law. The other part of it is really that the laws were passed with a 90-day timeline, and that simply isn't enough. If we think about this logistically, if we put aside the principal stance, what we heard when we interviewed people with a lot of humanitarian experience is that transforming the type of operation that Unra has in that kind of environment to do it properly takes two to three years.
And here we have 90 days. The flip side of the coin is, given that Unra will be banned, wouldn't it be better to scramble as much as possible within those 90 days to make sure that at least something was there? And there, there's really a catch 22, the tension between the principal stance and the humanitarian imperative. And the UN apparatus really loses out either way. If they go all in on the principal stance, they're not adequately prepared on the humanitarian stance.
If they go all in on the humanitarian stance, they're undermining themselves in a principled sense, which then opens for other actors in other conflicts and other contexts to also think about expelling the UN. But a lot of people in Israel would point to the possible involvement of UNRA workers, possible connection to the October 7 attack and say, we cannot work with this organization.
Those allegations are extremely serious. And I think it's very clear, if you look at this objectively, that once UNRAA were told that some of their staff might have been involved, they took steps immediately. They fired all those accused, even before they had seen the evidence. They started investigating it, and they asked Israel for concrete evidence. And there's been quite a lack of Israeli evidence and has received lists of names. But when they've asked for follow-up proof, the evidence has very often been lacking.
One has to remember that in Gaza, UNRA employs 13,000 people. UNRA's official line here is that they have zero tolerance, but they acknowledge that it's not zero risk. And here is another paradox.
Whoever is going to take over an operation, employing thousands of local Palestinians in Gaza, it's not completely unlikely that individuals representing a military faction might sneak in. And everything must be done to ensure that that doesn't happen. But I think the best approach would be, okay, let's work together to have stronger vetting processes.
let's share intelligence so we can ensure that this type of expression doesn't have any research in the entire operation. It really undermines the stability that one says one wants to achieve in Gaza because education, functioning humanitarian processes, development on the ground, working healthcare, that's the kind of thing that fights extremism, the type of war we've seen in Gaza over the past 15 months, that does not fight extremism.
Jürgen Jenssehaugen of the Peace Research Institute Oslo talking to Imogen folks. Next to some new technology, but it's hoped could one day revolutionise food production. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US has created robotic insects that could help artificially pollinate crops. In the same way bees do now. Suhan Kim is the researcher behind the project. He told Tony Livesey more about the invention.
you're actually trying to make the world smallest drone. Our robot is the size around like four centimeter by four centimeter, and then the weight is less than a single gram. So using that robot, we can do multiple different things that can't be achieved through commercial drones right now, such as artificial pollination.
And actually, we are taking totally different approach from commercial drones right now. So drones are using electromagnetic motors and propellers. But we are actually getting inspired from nature, starting from creating very small but powerless artificial muscle. So muscle weighs around 1.1 gram. And then we are attaching flapping wing structures, something we can see from the nature, so that we can flap the wing and then generate the thrust so we can fly and then do some tasks.
How far are you off actually this being a thing, Suhan, rather than a research project?
Technologically, we still have several things left to make it commercialized. So right now our drone is attached to external wires. So external wires are sourcing the power from huge devices externally. So we will have to develop a small battery and small circuits and the small sensors, cameras and stuff so that we can make everything onboard and then have our robot fly autonomously in the air. So we are really pushing hard to get there, hopefully within like five years
Yeah, what else do you have in mind for this creation, these robotic insects? We are thinking of some tasks that require the robot going into a very clustered area or very narrow area or doing very delicate task process. So the other thing we are thinking of is something like turbine inspection. Think of turbines in the airplane. It's very complicated to structure that the larger drones can't really go in. And then
The other thing is like if they fail inside the turbine, it will cause huge damage to the airplane. So those things are something that we envision that the small drones can do way much better than the larger drones. Suhan came from MIT.
Now, I can't quite understand the attraction myself, but motor racing, specifically Formula One, is hugely popular around the world. But one region that misses out is Africa. It hasn't held a race since 1993. But now there's a bid to bring F1 back to the continent. It's being made by Rwanda. Calvin Kimathi reports.
Nestled among its famous thousand hills, Ronda's capital Kigali boasts a unique setting for a potential African Formula One Grand Prix. The country is hoping to become a new playground for the world's best Formula One drivers, many of whom are already analysing the potential challenges Ronda could offer. Drivers like Charles Leclerc, Max Verstappen and Fast London Ories.
It's natural. Around here, if you go for a cycle or for a run, it's tough. I think for racing, it'll be a perfect place to have a circuit, so I'm excited. A lot of up and down, I think, would be amazing. A lot of fast corners, that is always what I like. If there's one thing I'll look forward to if we ever race here, would be the overtaking opportunities. Run does bid centers on a brand new facility with a truck designed by former Formula One driver Alexander Wools.
The cost of hosting a Grand Prix from scratch varies depending on many factors, but one estimate puts it at over $270 million. That excludes an annual race promotion fee of up to $50 million, and an annual maintenance fee of $18 million.
Christian Gakoya is president of the Ronda Automobile Club, the organization in charge of the country's motorsport activities, which is leading Ronda's F1 bead. I can't comment on the budget, but I believe what it costs will have to be done, and it has to be really done out to the standards. Why not use that money to help people? Why not use it to develop something good for the people? Because it's for the same people. Ronda is used to hosting F1 stars.
In December 2024, the sports governing body the FIA held its annual awards bash in Kigali, the first time it's been in Africa. So, why are Formula One bosses so interested in Rwanda? A question for Mohammed Ben-Sulayam, the FIA president.
Rwanda is not new to support and also to functions and exhibitions. So you have the president of the country, Mr. Portuguese Army is supportive. Africa is here, an event here of Formula One, and Rwanda is the best place. It's certainly true that Rwanda has invested in sports, staging events like the Basket Boa Africa League.
He is here, it will host cycling's road race world championships. But Rwanda's government has been accused of investing in sports to enhance its global image and mask what one organization describes as an abyss-motruck record on human rights. A strategy labeled by critics are sports washing.
Louis Madge is the central Africa director from the Human Rights Watch.
These are accusations the Rwandan government and its international sports partners have dismissed as Rwanda's Chief Tourism Officer Irene Moreira has been telling us. It's just a distraction from actually acknowledging the amazing and outstanding achievements that this country has made. Whether it's Rwanda's scenic hills or the history of Kailami, it's clear some will be left unhappy. But for motorsport farms, Formula One is moving closer to a return to Africa.
And that report by Kelvin Kimarthi. And that is all from us for now, but the Global News Podcast will be back very soon. If you want to comment on the pod or anything in it, send an email to globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service and use the hashtag Global News
This edition was mixed by Mark. Pick it and produced by Alfie Hamishin, 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 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 then go and have fun in. 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. 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 then go and have fun in. 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.
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