Nick Miles (0:00)

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk. There's a divide in American politics between those who think democracy is in peril and those who think it's already been subverted, hollowed out from the inside. As President Trump returns to the White House, we go through the looking glass into a world where nothing is as it seems. The coming storm from BBC Radio 4. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts. At BDO, we know it takes time to stay up to speed on the rapidly changing retail and consumer products industry. That's why we're doing the legwork for you in our new BDO podcast, 60 Second Retail. We'll keep you in the know on events and trends impacting your bottom line in just a few short minutes so you can spend your time where it counts most, running your business. Check out the latest Episode now at www.bdo.com 60/second retail this is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles and in the early hours of Wednesday 22nd January, these are our main stories. President Trump has announced a multi billion dollar investment program for artificial intelligence infrastructure. The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said those responsible for a fire at a ski resort hotel which killed at least 76 people will be held to account. The Formula One motor racing team Haas has appointed the first female race Engineer in the 75 year history of the sport. Also in this podcast, all day long it's like a death by a thousand cuts. No wonder you're stressed out. There's a different way to handle that situation. A lesson in letting go. Donald Trump has made plenty of headlines with his executive orders in the first 24 hours in the White House. From pulling out of climate change agreements to pardoning the January 6th rioters. Here's another eye catching one. Shortly before we recorded this podcast, he announced a $500 billion investment in artificial intelligence Infrastruct. The money will come from three big tech companies. In advance of the announcement, our correspondent in Washington, Ione Wells, told us more about the program. It will be an announcement about three major business leaders, the SoftBank Group CEO, also Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, who run ChatGPT and also of Oracle Corp, three huge AI companies essentially to announce the creation of a new new company called Stargate, which we're told would invest up to $500 billion over the next four years in AI infrastructure. Now AI infrastructure essentially could involve things like new data centers, new sort of computers that essentially allow tech companies to expand because One of the, I suppose the sort of downsides of this, the way in which AI has so rapidly expanded over the last couple of years is that the infrastructure for it has sort of struggled to keep up. There is huge amounts of data and storage facilities required in order to allow AI to function, in order for companies to continue expanding its use and helping businesses to sort of use this new technology. Yeah, they need these big data centers, the chips, the electricity, the water resources. And the United States has set great store by wanting to stay ahead of the game, if you like, in terms of AI and not let countries like China catch up. So this is hugely important, isn't it? That's right. In part. This is about, I think, well, certainly from Trump's perspective, this is about sort of showing that the US Will be a sort of a superpower and as you say, strong competition to the likes of China when it comes to this new technology. Now, when he was a candidate for President back in 2016, he had promised to push through what he described as a $1 trillion infrastructure bill through Congress. That didn't happen in the end. So I think this is about sort of, again, part of his wider a flurry of measures that he's taken in the last 24 hours to show that he really wants to sort of get things done and that, in his words, nothing's going to stand in his way. Now, we don't know, as I say, many more details about what exactly this will look like in practice, other than it's expected that Stargate, this new company, would start building the project in Texas. But I think the details are still yet to be announced by both Donald Trump and It looks like these three CEOs of some of the world's biggest tech companies. Ione wells. The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has declared a day of national mourning following a fire at a hotel in a ski resort which killed at least 76 people. He said those responsible would be held to account. Four people have been arrested. Nikki Schiller has this report. Flames engulfed the wooden 12 story hotel in the early hours of the morning. Officials believe the fire started in a fourth floor restaurant and quickly spread. Bed sheets that had been tied together could be seen hanging from the building. With panicked guests forced to jump from windows to escape the flames. Turkish media reports suggest at least two people died when they tried to jump to safety. The hotel is investigating whether guests had been trapped in their rooms as the fire spread. Witnesses said they could hear the screams of people shouting for help. There were flames. We had to go downstairs and come out from below. There was no fire department around anyway, I guess because it was an emergency. It took one to one and a half hours for the fire department to come from below. At that time, the fourth and fifth floors were all burning. The people on the upper floors were screaming. A local governor said the distance between the hotel and the centre of the nearest city, along with the freezing conditions, meant it took more than an hour for fire engines to arrive. The building was smouldering for hours. It's the start of a two week school holiday in Turkey, so the hotel was busy with more than 230 people staying. It is popular with skiers from Istanbul and the capital Ankara. An investigation has been launched. The Turkish Justice Minister said four people have been detained, including the owner. President Erdogan has promised to hold those responsible accountable. Nikki Schiller, the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer has been speaking about a new threat to the uk. It relates to the murders of three young girls at a Taylor Swift dance class last year. More from the BBC's political reporter Rob Watson. It's about the case of Axel Ruda Cabana, who is the son of Rwandan immigrants. The case sparked riots because there were all these sort of rumors on the Internet that somehow Axel Ruda Gabbana was an asylum seeker, that he was an Islamic extremist. And it turns out that none of those things were true. But what is true and what we have discovered and what wasn't known at the time, there were so many contacts that he had with the authorities, so with the police, police, mental health workers, social workers, even the counterterrorism program in Britain. And essentially what Keir Starmer was saying is, look, you know, I don't know whether we should be calling this terrorism or not. I mean, it's certainly terrifying, but there wasn't any ideology behind it. But maybe we need to look at that the way we define terrorism. But I thought most interestingly said we need to look at this kind of threat. You know, people, mainly young men in their bedrooms, looking at stuff on the Internet and being prepared to carry out violence for the sake of violence itself. And this is a very sensitive issue, not only because of the horrific nature of the crime, but because of those riots that resulted from it. Yes, absolutely. Now, a lot of the rioters were responding to posts on social media that, as I say, had suggested that the government there was a cover up. They'd covered up that he was an Islamic extremist, that he was an illegal immigrant, that he was an asylum seeker, that none of those things were true. Now, of course, there is still anger amongst opponents of the government saying, yes, well, but the government could have released some of the details about him, surely. I mean, the government's counter argument is, well, if you do that, you prejudice a case because we have contempt of court laws here. So it's still a sore issue. But I think Keir Starmer has tried to head off this idea, a growing idea, not just in Britain, we've seen it in other countries of a sort of a culture where lots of people just don't believe authority, right? They don't believe the police, they don't believe politicians where they say, no, cover up. And Keir Starmer said, we need to look at that. And one of the ways to combat that is to have a thorough inquiry that doesn't sort of spare anyone's feelings, as he put it, about cultural sensitivities or institutional sensitivities, and that it's only by having a proper inquiry that you stop having that sort of minority of people in Britain who just don't really trust anything anyone in authority says. I mean, it's a fascinating, really important story in that regard. Rob Watson talking to Andrew Peach. The Formula One motor racing team Haas has appointed the first female race Engineer in the 75 year history of the sport. Laura Muller will work closely with the team's new driver, Esteban Ocon. Klizje Sala reports. The next IMF one fans tune in, they might hear something new. A female voice guiding driver Esteban Ocon. That voice. The choice belongs to German race engineer Laura Muller, a self confessed Michael Schumacher fan who studied mechanical engineering in Munich. She'll play a crucial role in advising the driver on strategy and making key decisions during competitions. It's something that's not lost on the team principal, who was keen to emphasize that Ms. Muller was chosen for her expertise and not her gender. Klitzjesaler. There are a few skills quite as elegant and impressive as playing the piano, but there are no shortcuts. Hundreds of hours spent racing your fingers across the keys can still lead to frustration. But a new robotic glove may now be able to help those who just can't quite get the hang of it. Our reporter Alfie Habershen is one of them. When I started playing the piano, I was hoping to play smooth renditions of Mozart or Beethoven. And perhaps after trying classical, I would turn my attention to jazz. Of course, things were different in reality. My fingers lagged behind and my teacher was disappointed. But I probably wouldn't have given up so soon if I'd had these robotic gloves. Made in Japan by Sony Computer Science Labs and the Neuro Piano Institute. They have a sci fi skeletal type look and strap onto the hand with small mechanisms that hammer down between the knuckles. When worn, they help the player's fingers to move faster across the keyboard. Here's someone playing without the gloves and now the same person playing with them. But what's really impressive here is that once you take the gloves off, you continue to play at a faster speed than before. Here's Dr. Shinichi Furaya who led the research. After our fingers are moved by the robot and then our brain can memorize these patterns because what we did is we stimulated our brain non invasively and then after that this stimulation can evoke the hand movement. Another way the creators demonstrated this was by showing that wearing the glove on one hand still makes both hands play faster. The invention also isn't just for beginners like myself. Previous research says that musicians often hit a mental block in their ability, but the glove can be used to help them overcome this. After practicing, let's say for two weeks, then maybe if nothing happens, happens, and you think like, aha, this is a kind of my seething. But this is not the truth, because if you experience something totally new, our brain can learn aha. This is a way to move the fingers and I didn't know that. And then we pianists can intuitively understand aha. Maybe we can try this way. The creators say the next step is for us to try wearing the glove in bed for better playing skills. The next morning, an appealing proposition for those of us wanting to avoid the hundreds of hours of hard work still to come. I escaped from one place to another eight times, carrying my hope and my tears. The moment that they have announced that there is a ceasefire agreement, I cried a lot. And I think I will cry more and more whenever I will return. Gazan's returning home after the ceasefire and counting the costs of the war There's a divide in American politics between those who think democracy is in peril and those who think it's already been subverted, hollowed out from the inside. As President Trump returns to the White House, we go through the looking glass into a world where nothing is as it seems. The coming storm from BBC Radio 4. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts. The Israeli occupied West bank has long seen battles between Palestinian Authority security services and Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters. Now, Israeli security forces have launched an operation to, as they put it, eradicate terrorism. There Our Middle east correspondent, Lucy Williamson has been in the West Bank. She begins her report looking at another of the areas of conflict there, the growing number of Israeli settlers attacking Palestinian communities. The fires in the Palestinian village of Al Funduk were visible from miles away, plastic and chemicals fueling the blaze at a gardening centre torched by Jewish settlers meters from Mohammed's family house. You will not hear anything more than screaming of the wives, women and children. And at the end, we don't have anything to protect ourselves, but they have everything to attack ourselves. Dozens of masked men came to the village, escorted, residents said, by Israeli soldiers. They surrounded several homes and torched vehicles and buildings. Earlier this month, three Israelis were killed in a shooting attack by Palestinians on passing vehicles in Al Funduq. And the release of Palestinian prisoners here this week as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal risks fuelling calls for revenge. Some violent settlers see the ceasefire deal as a reward for Hamas and say there's a price Palestinians in the west bank must pay. The new US President, Donald Trump, has signalled he's less inclined than his predecessor to intervene to stop them lifting sanctions on extremist settlers as soon as he entered office. Luay Tayam is the mayor of Funduk. Yes, we are very worried. Lifting the sanctions means it's a green light for anybody who wants to do any attacks. So this is what was Trump's message to the settlers. So you can go ahead with your attacks. We will not go after you. In the neighboring outpost of Ramat Gilad, one young man described the tensions between Israelis and Palestinians here as a war without end. If you have a bad neighbor, will you move out? No, you'll stay in your house and each time you'll try to defend yourself or eliminate them. Israel's army launched a fresh incursion in the Palestinian city of Jenin. Within hours, there were reports of at least eight people killed. Hamas responded by calling on Palestinians across the west bank to confront Israeli forces. Palestinians here angered by Israel's military confrontation. Jewish settlers angered by Israel's truce. Lucy Williamson Meanwhile, in Gaza, the ceasefire is holding despite fears of a breakdown. It's allowing many of the displaced to return to their homes, or what's left of them, after more than 14 months of war. We brought together three of those people. Khaled Shawar is a Palestinian surgeon who's been in Gaza since October 2023. He is Gaza City. Asma Mustafa is an English teacher who spent the war moving from refugee camp to refugee camp with her students. She's in Nuserat in the center of the Strip and 22 year old Dalia Taha in Khan Younis, who had been waiting anxiously for a ceasefire to get medical help for her sick grandfather. But for him, the ceasefire came too late. Dalia. First I lost my grandfather. He was suffering from malnutrition. It was so dangerous out there and we couldn't call the ambulance or get a car to him to go to the hospital. So it was really hard. The pain, the loss and the grief, like we are not happy. There is trauma, anxiety. We have been seeing death, injured people becoming like a part of our daily life. Let me bring you in, Khaled. You work in the healthcare system. I have been working in many hospitals since the start of the war. This changed many times as military operations on the ground demanded as some areas were out of service, some areas were besieged and some hospitals were distracted. So we have to move from hospital to another many times. How would you describe it now? The ceasefire is in place, but the healthcare system still in ruins. The ceasefire has brought much needed pause to the violence. We are grateful for the opportunity to start rebuilding our lives and our health care system. At least now you are not escaping from place to another to save your life or to avoid being killed. But the challenges and destruction is revealing. Day by day we are seeing very huge amount of distracted infrastructure. All healthcare system infrastructure are distracted actually. Asma, tell me about your situation. Where are you with your family? I have been displaced eight times during 11 months. And I was displaced from my home for 15 months. The most difficult months in my life ever. But the most achievement that I feel that I had achieved, that I'm still alive with my little daughters. I escaped from one place to another eight times carrying my hope and my tears. The moment that they have announced that there is a ceasefire agreement, I cried a lot. And I think I will cry more and more whenever I will return to my north, my beloved north of Gaza. I managed to teach more than 2,000 children when moving from a displacement camp to another and from shelter to another. I gathered children around me every time. And I decided every time in displacement to start again. This was. And I feel very exhausted. I need time to cry, I need time to silence, time to even relax. I have witnessed the most difficult, violent genocide that the world ever could be witnessed. But every time I keep looking into my students eyes, I know that there is still hope. Asma Khaled and Dalia talking to Andrew Peach and Israel rejects that claim about genocide in Gaza since Colombia signed a peace deal with the rebel group FARC. In 2016, Medellin, its second largest city, has become a popular tourist destination. In 2022, almost 1.5 million people visited the city. It's become particularly popular with a group of young men known as the Passport Bros. They're mostly from the United States looking for a better lifestyle, and that includes starting relationships with local women. Phoebe Hobson from BBC trending has been looking at how the influx of new visitors is also causing concern about a possible rise in the sexual exploitation of underage girls. Medellin has a year long good climate and is known for its innovation and buzzing nightlife, making it popular with digital nomads, especially men. If you look on social media, you'll see one group of men promoting it as a particularly good place to visit. They're known as the Passport Bros. It's a broad movement, but there are some central themes. They are mostly young men from the United States who've sought a better life for themselves abroad. Earning in dollars. You know, you're just able to live in paradise with beautiful people and only spend a fraction of what you were in your hometown. Austin is a 33 year old passport bro influencer who encourages men to travel to places culturally different to what he calls the west, in a large part to improve their dating lives. Any guy in the west can test this, you know, set your dating app location to not just Medellin. Set it to some place in Rio de Janeiro. Send it to a place in the Philippines. Each of these places have beauty standards. You're immediately one in, I don't know, 500, one in a thousand. And that can get you attention. Then you're going to help people learn English and you're going to learn about the culture and community of Colombia. Austin's videos are full of bravado. He jokes around with women and explains how much further your money can go when taking a girl out on a date. And in doing so, you're going to meet a beautiful Latina lady interested in learning English. But we've seen dozens of videos from other Passport Bros that promote sex tourism. For example, one TikTok account appears to be secretly filming young women in the street ratio of women. The video reads passportbro hookup. Workingwomen. Sex work in Colombia is legal and is common in tourist areas. What's concerning people in the country is some foreign men are traveling to exploit underage girls. Hola, Yeni. Como estas? Yeni Jimenez from Accion Muimiento Corazon, a non for profit that raises awareness of sexual exploitation. She's concerned about this Influx of foreign men Colombia Le esta prepara para les tristas tanqueros. Colombia was not ready for so many tourists. It's obvious when you see the tourists who has come to get to know the place and who has come to do harm. It's not family tourism here, it's male tourism. You'll see it in the street. Four, five, six men walking by themselves. I call them hunters because they are hunting. It's not sustainable tourism. In the days of the cartel, the biggest prize was to be with a young virgin girl. And we still carry this. We can't have this be what people are coming here for. Colombia has to move forward. In April last year, Medellin's mayor Federico Gutierrez banned prostitution in tourist areas after an American man was found in a hotel room with two underaged local girls. The 36 year old was held in police custody for 12 hours, but then left the country while officials investigated the case. Bali Ramirez is the president of the sex Workers Union. She says the policies are targeting the wrong people and the emphasis should be put on those wanting to sexually exploit underage girls and not on adult sex workers. The government isn't criminalizing those who are committing crimes, those tourists who are coming to exploit underage women. After the pandemic, the situation became obvious and got worse. We as union are completely against the exploitation of children and also sex trafficking. I asked Austin, whose Passport Bro videos do not promote prostitution, what he thought of those who do. He told us he hates what videos pushing prostitution have done to the Passport Bro movement. Being a Passport Bro can also be dangerous. At the start of last year, the US issued a warning and advised its citizens to be cautious as criminal gangs have been using dating apps to drug and rob men after several men died. Phoebe Hobson reporting, and you can hear her full documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Kite flying seems a harmless enough pastime, but tough competition has turned it into a dangerous sport in parts of Pakistan. This is because some competitors coat their strings with metal or glass, and that can lead to injuries or even deaths. That's why the authorities in the Punjab province of Pakistan have now passed a bill imposing harsh sentences on those building and selling kites. I got more from our South Asia regional editor, Ambrasanatharajan. Kite flying is very popular in South Asia. In India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, it is one of the favorite pastimes of people, especially children. I still remember flying kites, especially during summer vacation when you have plenty of time. Spend hours together flying your kite. You make your own with the Newspapers and then some bamboo sticks giving them a structure. Famously, after the Taliban was kicked out in 2001, people were allowed to fly kites again, weren't they? Yeah, this was more of competition between people, like whose kite can fly higher than others. And at the same time then you have the competition, you have enter into a duel with your neighbor or with your friend, how you can cut the other kite which will fly away. But what happens is when people try to strengthen the string with a glue or sometimes they go to the extremes like grind glass, powder or metal and then apply that on the string. So when the kite gets disconnected, when it goes off with the string, it can fall on some people on the road, which can go around the neck, slicing the neck, or it can fall on any of the transformers, electricity pylons where it can trigger short circuit. And people who are trying to chase these, they fall into a sewage canal and they get injured as well. So this is why in many countries where people are trying to say this is coating them with the glass or any of the metal string is illegal. And now Pakistan has taken the extreme step of banning production and marketing and sale of kites, of all kites. It does seem rather extreme because they think that it encourages a lot of youngsters and this happens like in thousands on rooftops, people do it. So, so the thing is, government has been introducing this ban and they also do punish people, but nothing seems to be working because this happens in a widespread way, especially during spring festival in the months of January and February. And that is why government now says that, you know, it's a total ban and the fines are going to be heavy. And for the manufacturers of these kites you can be jailed up to seven years. But many people are saying that now they get it on online. You don't have to go to any shop, whereas you can get it online. But it's all made even sometimes on the small lanes inside a residential area where nobody will come and notice. No, the issue is the laws are there, but how far they can implement to bring it under control. Ambrose O. Netarajan Here in the northern hemisphere it is mid winter when for some people their mood is at its lowest. Well, if this describes your current state of mind, you may want to take a look at one of the big selling self help books at the moment. The Let Them Theory is really a manifesto about how to not let things outside your control consume you. The author is Mel Robbins who has seven and a half million followers on Instagram. She told us more about her theory. The Origin of the let them theory for me is very simple. I was at my son's high school prom and I was being your typical micromanage, annoying helicopter mom. All of a sudden, my daughter pulls me towards her and she's like, mom, you're being annoying. Let them do what they want to do. Let them go where they want to go. It's their prom, not yours. Let them. And it just hit me like a sledgehammer. Why do I care about this? This is not only stupid, but it's stressing me out. And what I started to notice is that all day long, there are these moments where life gets to you. The traffic, the long lines. All day long, it's like a death by a thousand cuts. No wonder you're stressed out. There's a different way to handle that situation. If you feel like your life is draining and you're overwhelmed, and who doesn't feel that way? I'm going to tell you something. The problem's not you. The problem is the power that you give to other people and you give to the things outside of your control. If you're standing in that line and you feel yourself getting stressed, just say, let them. Because you have so many more important things to focus on. And the huge thing that you're gonna learn about using let them. And then the second part. Let me. Is that people reveal who they are through their behavior. So if somebody isn't treating you well, let them. And then you go to the second part and you say, let me. Let me remind myself that my power is never in trying to control another person. There's only three things in life I can control. I can control what I think about this. I can control what I do or don't do in response to this. And I can control how I respond to my own feelings. There's that famous Professor Margaret Mead quote. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. You can make a difference. Stop complaining about it. Let them do what they're going to do. Let me decide how I'm going to respond. And you can always, always, through your actions and your attitude, make your life, make your community, make your family, make your health a little better. Self help author Mel Robbins. And that's all from us for now. But there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later, and soon we'll be answering your questions about the second Trump presidency. Maybe you want to know more about executive orders and pardons or for us to explain Trump's plans for immigration? How will his threat of additional tariffs play out? And why would a Trump administration leave the World Health Organization? Please send us your questions or voice notes. The address is globalpodcastbc.co.uk. this edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll, and the producer was Alison Davis. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles. And until next time. Goodbye. There's a divide in American politics between those who think democracy is in peril and those who think it's already been subverted, hollowed out from the inside. As President Trump returns to the White House, we go through the looking glass into a world where nothing is as it seems. The coming storm from BBC Radio 4. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts.