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Global News Podcast
Jordanian helicopters begin flying in aid to Gaza
00:31:23
They are delivering medical supplies and baby formula
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- [00:00]
Oliver Berkman
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.
- [00:06]
Nick Miles
Discover how to lead a better life in our age of confusion. Enjoy this BBC audiobook collection written and presented by best selling author Oliver Berkman, containing four useful guides to tackling some central ills of busyness, anger, the insistence on positivity and the decline of nuance. Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere when we weren't looking, looking. It's like busyness became a way of life. Start listening to Oliver Epidemics of Modern Life Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks.
- [00:43]
Nick Robinson
This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles and at 14 hours GMT on Tuesday 28th January, these are our main stories. We hear from our correspondent who's been on a rare aid trip with the Jordanian military inside Gaza. Hospitals overwhelmed, dead bodies on the streets. What can stop the battle for Goma raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the dramatic rise of the new Chatbot Deep Seek and the concerns from some that it's a vehicle for Chinese spying. Also in this podcast you would take the cells from this particular individual and effectively reprogram them back into their original state and then develop sperm or eggs from there. It could be a reality within the next 10 years. We examine the ETH issues as hundreds of thousands of Gazans continue to walk back to find what's left of their homes in northern Gaza. Jordanian helicopters have begun deliveries of aid to the territory, the first since the ceasefire was declared. The BBC joined the mission, the first international media organization to fly into Israeli held territory in southern Gaza since this ceasefire. Our correspondent Fergal Keen was on board. He's now back at the Al Zaqa Air Base in Jordan and he told me what he saw.
- [02:05]
Fergal Keen
We took off from here at about 10 o'clock in the morning and traveled for about an hour and then crossed over into Israeli territory and then down towards Gaza. And I suppose the first most noticeable thing was just the scene of desolation in front of us as we approached the Gaza Strip. We went straight to an area in the south and it is very close to Khan Yunis. When we landed, they kept the rotor blades running. We jumped off the helicopter to get out of the way really of the Jordanian forces who were delivering the aid. Now what was taken in this morning and you can probably hear choppers behind me at the moment, still ongoing this operation, but they brought in medicine in particular and also Baby formula. Why is that important? Well, if you put those things, for example, on a long road journey and there have been lots of road convoys from Jordan, there is a danger that if they get delayed, then they will spoil. And the need for medicine is acute. The health system in Gaza has been absolutely battered by months and months, 15 months of this war. And so that's why this air bridge, as the Jordanians are calling it, and which they've been joined in by the Italians, by the United Kingdom, is absolutely essential in terms of getting medical help to people who need it most.
- [03:26]
Nick Robinson
Fergal, that aid, as you said, went into the south. What do we know about aid getting in for the hundreds of thousands of Gazans returning to Gaza City, further north, where the need is going to be huge, isn't it?
- [03:37]
Fergal Keen
I think most of that is going to be going in at the moment via road. Now we have had a significant increase in the number of trucks being allowed to cross the border and bring aid in. But, you know, you set it against the scale of the need and the months and months and months of backed up need where you have around 2 million people displaced. I mean, you think about that figure, most of them with no proper home to go back to and roughly the same number of people dependent on international aid. This is a huge need and it's going to be an ongoing one. It's not going to be a crisis that fades from the headlines.
- [04:15]
Nick Robinson
We've been speaking to one of the people who stayed in Jalabiya in northern Gaza throughout the conflict. His name is Saeeb Al Zahr and we asked him what it was like now, being reunited with some of his relatives who've returned home.
- [04:29]
Oliver Berkman
Wow.
- [04:29]
Saeeb Al Zahr
It was yesterday. It was just another historical moment. The first one was when the ceasefire applied. This was the second historical moment that we could not believe. It was just a dream to meet our people again, to see them again. For a minute we felt that we will never see them again. So it was somehow like, you know, uniting the bodies with the souls of your beloved people. It was just a minute that I cannot describe to you the feelings.
- [04:57]
Nick Robinson
Can you build a life for your family there? Is it safe? Is it possible to carry on living in the north of Gaza?
- [05:03]
Saeeb Al Zahr
We believe that we are the land owner. So no matter what, we will build it again, we will rebuild it again. So it doesn't matter as much as they did destroy the houses, the trees, the roads, we will do it again, we will rebuild it again. We do believe in the future and then we have a hope and we will never lose hope. You know, losing a hope means losing your life. So we have a hope that, yes, tomorrow is coming. It doesn't matter even if you just have a land. You will start your life again and you will rebuild your home again.
- [05:36]
Nick Robinson
Saeb Al Zahr speaking to Nick Robinson. Conditions in Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo seem to be getting worse. There's intense fighting going on between The Rwandan backed M23 rebels, the Congolese government and UN troops. Four more South African peacekeepers have been killed, bringing it to a total of 13 over the past few days. Up to 2 million people are in the city, including hundreds of thousands displaced by conflict. Jens Laake is a spokesman for the United Nations Humanitarian Office.
- [06:09]
Oliver Berkman
This morning, our colleagues in the Democratic Republic of the Congo report heavy small arms fire and mortar fire across the city and the presence of many dead bodies in the streets. We have reports of rapes committed by fighters, looting of property, including of a humanitarian warehouse and humanitarian and health facilities being hit. Hospitals in Goma are reportedly overwhelmed, struggling to manage the influx of wounded people.
- [06:39]
Nick Robinson
Our reporter Emery Makumeno is in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa. He told me about the latest fighting in Goma.
- [06:46]
Emery Makumeno
Things became tense again with intensive gunshots and heavy artillery being shot in some parts of the city. People have been indoors since last Friday. They can't go out, they have no water, they have no electricity, food is running short and people don't even know they can only see what they are able to see from their wheels windows. So they don't know who is controlling the city of Goma. And conflicting reports claim that the government had pushed away the rebels and they've taken like 80% of the city. But on the side of the M22 they are saying that they are still gaining ground. So it is very difficult to confirm, let alone that the Internet is jammed there in Goma, so people are not even to show people what they are able to see.
- [07:36]
Nick Robinson
And Emery, I'm hearing that the World Food Programme is saying that they've stopped food deliveries and that is devastating for many people in Goma because a lot of people are living in refugee camps, aren't they?
- [07:48]
Emery Makumeno
Goma itself has relatively 2 million residents and this has been added by 800,000 internally displaced people. Most of them are living at the outskirts of the city, whether north of Goma where they're west of Goma. Because of the fighting, many who could find foster family have somehow left the IDP camps and flocked into the city, either in churches or in schools, wherever possible, they can hide themselves from the front line, which is now currently with them in Goma. So the situation is that people are now in need of food and they don't know how long they are going to stay indoor before they have access to anything to eat.
- [08:36]
Nick Robinson
And Emery, what are we hearing about the hopes of a ceasefire?
- [08:39]
Emery Makumeno
Currently there is nothing concretely on the table, so people have been fighting, gaining ground. The M23 has massively taken more territories until they have captured Goma. And at the moment the government is adamant that there won't be any negotiation, any direct negotiation with M23 that they label as a terrorist organizations. So this is like the kind of standoff we are experiencing now.
- [09:09]
Nick Robinson
Emery mcumeno in Kinshasa. The return of Donald Trump to the White House has raised expectations of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 remains the largest war in Europe since the Second World War. Moscow now has control of one fifth of its neighbor's territory. The UN says at least 12,300 civilians have been killed in UKRA. Our senior international correspondent Ola Guerin reports now from the southern city of Zaporizhzhia on how one bereaved family feels about the prospect of negotiations.
- [09:51]
Nick Miles
I'm making my way across the rubble at the side of a building. It's a four story apartment block and one whole section has been torn off. Strewn around here on the ground you can still see some belongings from those who lived here. I can see a. A child's shoe and there's a woman's handbag over there and a small blue soft toy. Among those who were killed here were several generations of one family. Yulia Tarasevich stands in the ruins and tells me life now is hell on earth. She lost her mother, Tetiana, who was 68, her daughter Sophia, 27, and her grandson Adam, who was just 17 months old.
- [10:53]
Oliver Berkman
It was one of truch of when this tragedy happened. The three of them had just come.
- [11:00]
Ola Guerin
Back from a war.
- [11:03]
Oliver Berkman
Just at that moment, a bomb fell. It flew into the house and exploded right there.
- [11:13]
Azizat Olalua
So in one moment we lost almost the whole family.
- [11:17]
Nick Miles
Adam's grandfather Serhi tells me Russia's bomb destroyed many lives and the dead must be avenged. He says Ukraine must fight on, not talk peace.
- [11:35]
Oliver Berkman
My view in negotiations is negative.
- [11:41]
Emery Makumeno
So many of our people have already died. That is no longer possible.
- [11:47]
Oliver Berkman
If the enemy is on our territory, the only contact we can have with them is combat.
- [11:57]
Nick Miles
In a cold, windswept cemetery at the edge of the city, we saw the results of combat all around. In the distance, there are graves of Ukrainians killed in the war. Lots of soldiers are buried here. Blue and yellow flags flutter above their graves. But many of those buried here are civilians. I was in this graveyard about a year and a half ago, and it's gotten much bigger since then. Yulia weeps at a grave surrounded by teddy bears where her grandson and her daughter lie buried. My beautiful daughter. Sorry I could not save you. Yulia knows that life goes on elsewhere, but she asks the world to remember that there is still a war in Ukraine and that Russia is still killing civilians.
- [13:03]
Nick Robinson
Ola Guerin reporting from the southern Ukrainian city of zaporizhzhia. More than 200 years ago, the author Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, her novel about a young scientist who creates a creature in in a scientific experiment. For some people, our next story may have echoes of that and ethical issues to grapple with too. Scientists are making such rapid progress that the board of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority here in the UK has been told that lab grown human eggs and sperm might be a reality within the next 10 years. Justin Webb spoke to Sarah Franklin, Emeritus professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, about the ethics of this. But first, Professor Robin Lovell Badge from the Francis Crick Institute, told him how all this would work, using skin cells or some other kind of tissue as the starting point.
- [13:56]
Professor Robin Lovell Badge
The idea is that they're reprogrammed back to an early embryonic state to give so called induced pluripotent stem cells. These correspond in many ways to cells in the very early embryo. And we know that they can give rise to any cell type in the human body, including germ cells.
- [14:14]
Nick Robinson
Give us a kind of case study, as it were, of who it was who would be potentially helped by that ability.
- [14:20]
Professor Robin Lovell Badge
One of the main drivers is to deal with, for example, children who've had cancers and therefore they've had radiotherapy or chemotherapy which has left them infertile. And it's very difficult with a child to take ovarian or testicular tissue and then preserve their fertility that way in a freezer, if you like. If you could take a skin biopsy or blood cells, whatever, and reprogram those into these induced peripherent stem cells, then we know in the mouse at least, you can coax these cells to specialize to give you the germ cells, which are the cell type that will ultimately give rise to sperm or eggs. The techniques aren't quite there yet, but it's going to happen. You would be not limited by age. Someone could have left cells behind and died. As long as you have a tissue sample, you could make, in theory, you could make sperm or eggs from those cells.
- [15:09]
Nick Robinson
And that, Professor Franklin, is a much more difficult area, society wide.
- [15:15]
Ola Guerin
Yeah, I mean, I think age and even mortality aren't actually now necessarily limits to reproduction given to. Given so many other interventions in biology that have become possible. But they are definitely the subject of much more social discussion in terms of what people feel, what you might say comfortable with or uncomfortable with. And in general, I think that discussion should be welcomed. You know, that's the way society will decide what the limits should be. That's the way society will decide what, you know, should be encouraged and what should be supported financially and so forth. And that is exactly what has happened with ivf.
- [15:50]
Nick Robinson
Are there areas, Professor Lovell Badge, that will simply be possible, but clearly right from the beginning just will be banned legally. And areas that we can think of quite easily.
- [16:03]
Professor Robin Lovell Badge
One is, I think it was referred to as solo parenting. I don't really like that phrase because there are other ways of solo parenting, but where you take cells and reprogram them back and then get. In theory, you could get sperm and eggs from a man. That's basically been done in mice. And so you would have one individual having their own child. It's not possible to do it from a woman because you cannot make sperm without having cells which originally had a Y chromosome. So that would be very technically challenging. And then there are other issues which are contentious but maybe slightly less dangerous. So that one is really dangerous is where you have multiple parents or you have. You could have multiple generations occurring in the lab before you then find out what an embryo would look like.
- [16:50]
Nick Robinson
Yeah. And that whole business then, Professor Franklin, of what a biological parent is, because in theory you could then have a parent who was the embryo and the people who donated the skin would be your grandparents. And that feels like something very different from what we are used to, to put it mildly.
- [17:07]
Ola Guerin
I think if we did have those sorts of possibilities, what would happen? There would be discussion about how to regulate those. And as Robin said, there are already very clear limits on, you know, clear red lines on what is impermissible. Historically, those, in the case of IVF and other technologies like this have been upheld on the whole. So there is reason to assume that the same process will happen again. And although the biological possibilities are new, that in itself has become something that has happened over and over. That a biological limit. Say, for example, that women can't use these because of the Y chromosome will probably most likely also be overcome at some point in the future. So the idea that biology itself will provide the limits hasn't really been the case for quite a while.
- [17:55]
Nick Robinson
Sarah Franklin, Emeritus professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, and Professor Robin Lovell, Badge from the Francis Crick Institute. Still to come, we hear about Bishop Marion Budd's sermon that upset Donald Trump.
- [18:12]
Bishop Marianne Edgar Budd
It was based upon very faith driven values. That is my prerogative from which to speak.
- [18:26]
Nick Miles
Discover how to lead a better life in our age of confusion. Enjoy this BBC audiobook collection written and presented by best selling author Oliver Berkman, containing four useful guides to tackling some central ills of busyness, anger, the insistence on positivity, and the decline of nuance. Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere when we weren't looking. It's like busyness became a way of life. Start listening to Oliver Epidemics of Modern Life available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks.
- [19:05]
Nick Robinson
A few days ago, not many people had heard of Deep Seek. Now the Chinese chatbot seems to have blown the global AI race wide open. It shot to the top of the US App Store on Monday, overtaking its American rival ChatGPT, and its creators say it cost a mere 6 million doll compared to the billions poured into AI by the likes of Microsoft and Google. As well as sending a wave of panic through the Western tech world, it's also raised questions of security. It's only a week since the short lived ban of TikTok based on concerns that the Chinese owned social media app is harvesting US data. Will Deep Seek raise similar alarm bells? Joe Tidy is our cyber correspondent.
- [19:49]
Nick Miles
Well, interestingly, that didn't come out of the press conference yesterday from President Trump. So the idea that Deepsea could be a threat to the US public who are downloading in their droves doesn't seem to be an issue at the moment. What we are seeing are some security experts tearing down the kind of privacy policy of this app saying, oh, look at all these things. It collects, for example, keystroke data. So it will measure the rhythm in which you type out your messages to Deepsea to kind of identify you. And it will store everything that you ask it, everything it answers, all your personal details that you put in when you sign up, all the kind of stuff. To be honest, that every social network and major app users, including the AI giants like OpenAI, the difference here of course, is where that data is going. There aren't many calls at the moment saying that, you know, we should watch out for this. This is a potential danger to the west, but that might grow now.
- [20:38]
Nick Robinson
There are inherent biases with all chatbots of this type. We've seen them in the past in favor of white males if you like. In the Western world, the algorithm for Deep Seek seems to be slightly different. There seems to be an inbuilt, China friendly censorship bias.
- [20:55]
Nick Miles
Yeah, it's really interesting. So when you type in something like what happened in Tiananmen Square, it'll start giving you a response, it will write out a couple of paragraphs and then it will suddenly delete it and say, sorry, we can't give you that answer. And that goes the same when you type in, for example, why is Winnie the Pooh a controversial character in China? And it starts writing, well, it's to do with uprisings against President Xi. Then it again deletes it. So you kind of, you start reading it and you get the answer and then suddenly it goes away. So what it's doing here is it's using the same kind of data that all these models are trained on, that is the open Internet and then it's thinking again about giving the answers.
- [21:31]
Nick Robinson
So if that is happening, you've got to think that in the future that's going to annoy customers, consumers of this, isn't it? So that might put the brakes on it being a world leader potentially.
- [21:41]
Nick Miles
But then again, you've got to think about how people are using these AI models. They're using them to do maths problems or coding issues, or write emails or help them decipher certain university grade level PhD manuscripts or whatever research papers. So I don't think this kind of stuff will come up that much. And yes, you're right when you said that there is a bias in all of these models because they're only trained on the Internet and most of the Internet is in English and it's mostly leaning towards sort of Western ideals of values and our kind of versions of history. So yes, I think it could potentially be embarrassing for Deep Seq if it tries to become the leading worldwide AI companion. But how much of that stuff is kind of grinding up against daily life? How much of those kind of fact checking historical records are a problem for people? I don't know.
- [22:30]
Nick Robinson
Joe Tidy, our cyber correspondent Nigeria has a very high number of children who don't go to school. But abductions by armed gangs and growing insecurity, especially in the north are making things worse. There have been hundreds of mass abductions since 2019, forcing many schools to close. Some parents have told the BBC they won't let their children return to class because they fear for their safety. As the world marks the International Day of education, the BBC's Azizat Olalua and her team gained access to Kiruga in northwestern Kaduna state where a mass school abduction took place last year.
- [23:12]
Azizat Olalua
That was the mood in Kuriga in March 2024 after at least 280 students were abducted from the community primary and secondary schools. 14 year old Mariam Alhassem was one of them. Mariam and the other children were held for 17 days before gaining freedom. A week after the attack, Idris Mariam's father, who had also been kidnapped before, decided to move his family from Kuriga. He only went back to pick up Mariam. After the students were freed, I relocated.
- [23:48]
Emery Makumeno
My family because of insecurity. Bandits attacked us constantly in Kuriga.
- [23:53]
Azizat Olalua
They migrated to Rigasa, a train station community on the outskirts of Kaduna state capital. Here they joined some other families who also fled their villages due to insecurity. But life in Rigasa is hard. Idris, who was a farmer back home, is now jobless, just like the other men and women here. Their economic challenges have forced the children to drop out of school.
- [24:20]
Emery Makumeno
Life in Regasa is very tough. No work, no food, no education for our children, let alone access to health care. There is no school nearby and we are afraid to send our children far away because we are still traumatized.
- [24:38]
Azizat Olalua
While older kids go out scavenging, the younger ones, like Mariam stay home to get Islamic education. The journey to Kuriga is a very high risk one. Many villages along this route have been deserted due to constant attacks by criminal gangs. There is no communication network on the road and in Kuriga, this heightened the risk our team faced getting rare access to the community. I am standing inside the compound of the primary and secondary schools where the 280 students were abducted from in March 2024. Although the government renovated the structures after the attack, the schools were closed for eight months, leaving the children in the village without access. Awal Adamu was one of the kidnapped students. Although most children in Kuriga are happy the schools have been reopened. Awwal says he's not going back.
- [25:37]
Emery Makumeno
I don't want to go back to school because I am still afraid and traumatized.
- [25:41]
Oliver Berkman
I am afraid that the government could.
- [25:43]
Emery Makumeno
Return and kidnap us again.
- [25:45]
Oliver Berkman
I am the only one that know.
- [25:46]
Emery Makumeno
The challenges I faced.
- [25:47]
Oliver Berkman
I prefer to be a farmer than.
- [25:49]
Emery Makumeno
Go back to school.
- [25:51]
Azizat Olalua
According to UNICEF, 18.3 million children are out of school in Nigeria. Most of them are in the north, with insecurity and poverty as contributing factors. Christian Monduate, UNICEF's representative in Nigeria, wants to see more action in solving the out of school problem. There should be an investment in safety school, an investment in the recruitment of more teachers, mainly teachers that are from these same communities or nearby communities. Kaduna State Governor Ubasani says he is addressing the issue for Mariam and the other children in Regasa. They hope it will be safe to return home soon in order to re enroll in school. I feel very sad spending too much time out of school, but I hope to continue my education one day.
- [26:43]
Nick Robinson
Macarantan that report was by the BBC's as is that oh La Lua, the bishop who was criticized by Donald Trump after she asked him to have mercy on immigrants, has told the BBC that some of the new president's policies are not in the best interests of our survival as a species. Marianne Edgar Budd, the spiritual leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, said in a sermon last week at a prayer Service attended by Mr. Trump that his inauguration had provoked fear among LGBT and immigrant communities. Mr. Trump responded by calling her a radical left, hardline Trump hater. The bishop has been speaking to James Kumarasami. He asked her what her thoughts had been when she'd written the sermon.
- [27:28]
Bishop Marianne Edgar Budd
I had been working with the themes of unity for some time, thinking quite a lot about what is unity in a country like ours and is it even possible, what some have called the culture of contempt, the outrage that we are so accustomed to now as normative speech, and the ways we characterize each other. So I was trying to address, okay, if we're going to be a country praying and working for unity, we have to have some foundations, foundations of dignity, honoring the dignity of every human being and speaking with humility because we all are imperfect. And then I realized as I was listening to my heart and then also listening to the inauguration ceremonies that there really was a fourth and that we were lacking in our public discourse right now. Mercy, compassion, a recognition of the people in our land who are in places of great vulnerability now. And I made the decision to appeal to the president after acknowledging his power and acknowledging that he had been elected and that he felt spared by God to do this work, that this God was a God of mercy.
- [28:31]
Nick Robinson
Given that you say you wanted to speak for those who did not feel.
- [28:35]
Oliver Berkman
Included by the president does that mean.
- [28:38]
Nick Robinson
You were speaking for people he would.
- [28:41]
Professor Robin Lovell Badge
Consider his political opponents?
- [28:42]
Nick Robinson
Was there a political element to this?
- [28:45]
Bishop Marianne Edgar Budd
The political element is simply that it was a prayer surface for the nation. And whenever we are gathered as human beings, we are in fact gathered in the polis, in the people. So yes, it's always political. It wasn't partisan and it was based upon very faith driven values. That is my prerogative from which to speak. I did want to counter what I thought was a gross mischaracterization of immigrants, for example, of being dangerous criminals. Because while there are some criminals in the immigrant population, as there are in all populations, it's a very, very small group of people relative to the who. The vast majority are not criminals at all.
- [29:26]
Nick Robinson
As well as talking about immigrants, you.
- [29:29]
Oliver Berkman
Talked about people being scared. I mean, are you scared now?
- [29:32]
Bishop Marianne Edgar Budd
I'm worried. I have been for some time. I respect the office of the presidency and I respect the results of the election. But I do feel that many of the policies that are now either being reversed or promoted are not in the best interest of our people, of our survival as a species. So, yeah, I would say there's good reason for worrying.
- [29:52]
Nick Robinson
Personally though, after the speech and the reaction you got from the president and I think from some of his supporters.
- [29:59]
Professor Robin Lovell Badge
As well, does that worry you?
- [30:01]
Bishop Marianne Edgar Budd
It's no fun being on the receiving end of some of the statements that have been made. But no, I'm very well supported and even protected. There are far more people who are.
- [30:11]
Nick Robinson
In greater danger than I. Bishop Marian Edgar Budd. Now, do you recognize this? It is the sound that accompanies Tetris, that addictive and rather stressful computer game where different shaped blocks rain down from the top of the screen, piling up if you don't get them in the right places in time. Well, it is now 40 years old and still going strong. Henk Rogers is co founder of the Tetris company. He told the BBC how he first came across the game.
- [30:43]
Saeeb Al Zahr
It started at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas in 1988, was made originally by a Soviet developer. Nobody thought it was going to be a big deal, least of all the company that actually published it. I went and talked to them and said, look, I want this game for the Japanese market. I would stand in line and wait for my turn to play, you know, every game that was at the show or try to anyway. And I get a few minutes to play every game. And so I need to sample every as many games as possible. In the case of Tetris, I found myself standing in the line four times, which meant that I was hooked to the game. I mean, right then and there I had to go back. I had to go back, I had to go back. That mean we had at least one customer me, and I was, I was completely hooked on the game. And the simplicity of the game did not bother me because I play a Japanese board game called Go, and if you look at it, it's the deepest, most interesting game of board games, but it's just black and white stones at the end of the day. When finally the negotiations started happening, I was negotiating again the biggest software company in Japan at the time and they finally passed on it because in 1988 they said that the game was too retro. Can you imagine that? So by the way, Tetris is still around and they're gone. I think it's going to be around just like football is going to be around forever. It's not going to go away anytime soon.
- [32:11]
Nick Robinson
Heng Rogers, co founder of the Tetris company and that's all from us for now. But there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want a comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcastbc.co.uk you can also find us on X at globalnewspot. This edition was mixed by Sid Dundon and the producer was Tracy Gordon. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Mars and until next time, goodbye.
- [32:47]
Nick Miles
Discover how to lead a better life in our age of confusion. Enjoy this BBC audiobook collection written and presented by best selling author Oliver Berkman. Containing four useful guides to tackling some central ills of busyness, anger, the insistence on positivity and the decline of nuance. Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere when we weren't looking. It's like busyness became a way of life. Start listening to Oliver Epidemics of Modern Life. Available to purchase wherever you get your audiobooks.