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Trump hits India with 50% tariffs
00:30:50
Steep tariffs are imposed on India by the US as a penalty for buying Russian oil
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A
This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm on Critinian at 13 hours GMT on Wednesday 27th August. These are our main stories. Donald Trump hits India with 50% tariffs for buying Russian oil. There's a growing diplomatic row between Denmark and the US over reports of a covert operation in Greenland. And Germany's cabinet puts forward plans for voluntary military service, which could eventually pave the way for conscription. Also in this podcast we have a report on how some people are exploiting emotions surrounding the Holocaust by creating fake images to earn money. And here's his flash down. SpaceX completes a successful test flight of the world's most powerful rocket, which NASA hopes will return astronauts to the moon. We start in South Asia where US tariffs of 50% on goods from India have come into effect as Donald Trump punishes the country for continuing to buy Russian oil and weapons. India, one of the US's strongest partners in the Indo Pacific, is amongst the countries being hit with the highest tariffs in the world. The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has called it economic coercion and is urging Indians to buy more locally produced goods. Vishwanshu Agaram Farewell is the director of a textile manufacturer in Mumbai. He said his company would be forced to look at new markets, but the higher levy was already making things tough.
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B
You know, with this 50% tariffs, especially US customers, they can't absorb these kind of margins in our industry and they are definitely looking for alternatives. So, you know, orders haven't been coming in lately and things are not good. Orders are drying up and things are not very good at the moment. We are doing currently being slightly larger and more this is impacting us a little more. We are offering some discounts to the customers to sort of navigate through these tough times. So the contingencies that we are looking at are the usual markets, the bigger markets, the economies like UK and even emerging markets like South America and uae. We are looking to try and build a relationship with them and work with them.
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A
Our correspondent in Mumbai, Archana Shukla, told us businesses had been hoping the 50% levy would be averted.
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B
They were announced a couple of days ago, but most businesses were hoping that there would be some sort of a truce, a resolution or some conversation around the trade deal and at least the extra 25% tariffs would go away. But that hasn't happened. So to some extent it was a surprise and a shock that India would become the highest taxed nation by the United States. But then businesses are also adapting to it and trying to ensure that there is some sort of semblance in their factories. They're trying to look at alternate markets now, although nothing will happen overnight. So in the short to mid term, there will definitely be a large impact.
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A
And will this turn out to be some game of chess? What's the political impact of this particular move? Will India buy less oil from Russia or do they frankly double down?
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B
Well, India buying less oil is not right as part of the strategy at the moment from the Indian government, it seems, you know, New Delhi has been buying cheaper Russian oil to bring inflation down in India, keep prices low, make energy security. But also, you know, prices are a very politically sensitive subject here. There are crucial state elections approaching. So right now, India, India may not want to look for other options which may increase energy prices here in India. But at the same time, there is also a sense here within India and in the government to not buckle under the pressure. You know, across bureaucrats and businesses, there is an understanding that this is a pressure tactics from the United States. President Trump wants his deal to go through for India to open up the agri markets and for also on a political term, be the strong man. And hence India should not buckle. And we've seen India has actually been very strong as far as their stance is concerned, saying that these decisions of buying oil have been commercial in nature and that it is their sovereign right to decide where they buy oil from and they will continue to also protect the interest of their farmers. Businesses are hoping there is more truce and talk.
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A
Our correspondent Archana Shukla reporting from Mumbai to Greenland now where there are reports that would not be out of place in a Cold War spy thriller. At least three U.S. officials close to President Trump have been accused of conducting covert influence operations. Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark, and the Danish foreign minister has summoned a senior US Diplomat in Copenhagen to discuss the allegations. Since returning to the White House in January, President Trump has repeatedly said he wants the strategically located resource rich island to be put under US Control and has refused to rule out using military force to secure it. I got more details from our reporter in Copenhagen, Adrian Murray.
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C
The summonings follows a report from Denmark's public broadcaster. Dr. They put that out this morning, having spoken to several different unnamed sources and people within Danish intelligence and government and authorities. And that suggested that at least three U.S. citizens, so not officials, but citizens, have been conducting covert influence operations in Greenland. And it said that the aim of this was to infiltrate Greenlandic society and promote independence away from Denmark. Now, they did give details of how one American was Compiling a list of Greenlanders who would potentially back the US and also with the aim to recruit for a succession movement. Now, it's all, you know, the stuff of sort of spy novels there. The report didn't name the three men, but it said that they did have previous ties to the White House. So it's not clear that there's any link today. It also said they were unable to clarify who the men were working for and whether they were under orders or acting independently. But, of course, you know, this is all very serious. The foreign minister has summoned the US Top diplomat, Trump's pick for ambassador. He's not in post yet, so Mark Stroh was called. And this is in diplomatic terms, summonsing an ambassador is a very, very serious reprimand. And this is the second time that this has happened this year because it also happened back in May following that Wall Street Journal report, which also alleged that US Intelligence agencies have been told to focus their efforts on Greenland.
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A
And do we know how this was carried out? Maybe via social media or using bots?
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C
Denmark's intelligence services have commented and they've said that, you know, Greenland is being targeted by various kinds of influence campaigns. They had warnings around the election time that, you know, social media might be exploited, but that didn't really appear to come to a large extent. I mean, what we're seeing now, according to the doctor report anyway, is that these seem to be compiling lists and contacts. It's not clear that this is a social media campaign, but Pet, that's the intelligence service, they say that these influence campaigns, they are designed to create discord. And it could be that they're trying to exploit sort of existing disagreements between Denmark and Greenland.
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Adrian Murray in Copenhagen. There's a splashdown. You can hear the elation and relief as the latest SpaceX rocket, known as Space Starship, lands safely after a successful test run. And the reaction was justified. That was the third launch attempt for the 10th test flight. It comes after a string of failures, with one rocket exploding on the launch pad. A Starship spacecraft had achieved a clean flight since November last year. It marks a step forward in the development of a craft that could one day return humans to the moon. And if SpaceX's founder Elon Musk's vision is realized, ultimately, Mars. James Koppnell spoke to Keith Cowing, a former NASA employee and the editor of the American program blog, NASA Watch. He asked him how the launch went.
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D
Well, SpaceX needed to have a good flight, and apparently they had pretty much of what they expected to do. It the rocket took off. The first stage came down the way it was supposed to. The second stage went into space, tossed out some practice satellites and came back to Earth and landed right in front of a camera. Although it looked a little weird in terms of the color and it got a little toasted. So I think they're going to probably have to look into that. But this is the sort of flight they needed and they got it.
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A
And we had postponed launches on Sunday and Monday. What didn't go right then and what can be learned from that, do you think?
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D
Well, Sunday it was an issue with an oxygen hose, a little gas leaking and like that's like Rocket Science 101. No leaks of oxygen on the launch pad, so they had to work on that. And then last night they were ready to go, but the weather at the coast of Texas didn't cooperate, so they had to call it off literally about a few minutes before they were going to launch. So tonight everything worked and the sky was nice and clear and they took off.
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A
Yeah. You did say though that it got a little bit toasted. I mean, that sounds to a non specialist slightly worrying.
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D
Well, yes, spacecraft going up is one thing, coming back through the atmosphere is another because there's a tremendous amount of heat. Now we've done this. Obviously people come home from space multiple times, but this is a new spaceship and they're testing it out. They deliberately pushed it beyond what they expected to ever see, just to see how far they could push it. And some things were toasting a piece of the end looks like it blew off and so forth, but it came back into Earth's atmosphere, flew like an airplane in a glider and then it landed, or almost. It pretended to land on the ocean, but you couldn't help but notice that the underside of it was orange and the front end was white. And I don't think anybody's ever seen that before. So we'll be waiting for that explanation.
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A
Yeah. As a space boffin, what would your best guess be?
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D
I don't know, honestly. It looks like some of the heat tiles may have burned off or I'm not sure.
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A
Was SpaceX under a little bit of pressure to get this one right or at least show some progress?
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D
Yeah, and of course the issue here is sort of when you have a government rocket like NASA, they spend a lot of money and they take years and years and we'll make sure it's perfectly right when they launch it, it works and they wait a long time before they do it again. Whereas with SpaceX, it was launched as often as you can. And every time you encounter a problem, you fix it. What you is you get your answers quicker than you might otherwise have gotten.
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A
And broadly the big picture here. Elon Musk, SpaceX Pretty keen on going to the moon, maybe to Mars in short order. How are they getting on? How's that objective looking?
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D
It's one thing if you want to spend a lot of your money on a rocket and you're going to use it to put satellites in space. They sort of demonstrated they can do that today. And that's One thing that SpaceX will be doing to make money is launching communication satellites. But the other is NASA has given them some money to a version of this rocket and use it as the way that we're going to land astronauts on the moon in 2027, a year and a half or maybe two years from now. That's a pretty hefty target to try and reach. So that was something that people are still questioning. But then again, during Apollo we had our problems and we still managed to make a deadline. So they really had to show that they could fix the problems they've had before and they've done that. But there's a long road ahead and as far as going to Mars and I think we need to go to the moon a bunch of times and launch a few hundred times with people from Earth before we consider doing that. But you know, if you launch once a week, you can get there pretty quick.
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Former NASA worker Keith Cowing, speaking to the BBC's James Koppenal. Over the past couple of months, AI generated pictures and stories about the Holocaust have been flooding social media platforms and getting thousands of likes, comments and shares. During the Nazi period, 6 million Jews were systematically murdered, as were many other people because of their ethnicity and race, including the Roma. The creators of these posts exploit the emotions attached to the Holocaust to generate engagement. Our correspondent Christina Folke was able to make contact with the group profiting from these fake images and getting paid through Meta's content monetizing program.
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C
It was an emotional response.
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A
It wasn't until I started reading some.
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Of the comments that I did question it.
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It wasn't this is AI driven.
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C
It wasn't like that because it was beautifully written.
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In early June, Jane B. From England commented on a Facebook post about a young girl called Miriam Gold who was killed in the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp. The picture is black and white and shows a dark haired girl knitting while looking into the camera. What chain didn't know then is that this Miriam Gold the post described never existed. What she saw is commonly known as AI slob, a type of post typically of an AI generated photo. And it's flooding every social media platform.
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F
This really is instrumentalization, manipulation, distortion.
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E
This is Pawel Savitsky, the spokesperson for the Auschwitz Memorial.
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F
It can damage the trust that people have in what they see because we already started getting comments on our Facebook posts that, oh, this is an AI generated photograph.
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Pavel says to be careful when seeing photos from inside the camps.
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F
The perpetrators didn't take photographs. Taking pictures for the prisoners was extremely risky. And in the story of Auschwitz, we only have four photographs. Jews risked their lives to take few pictures so that people could see what happened there. And here we have somebody making up the stories. This is not a game.
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E
Pavel tells me that he and the memorial have been dealing with AI slob for a while now. As part of this, he even reached out to Meta, Facebook's parent company, who said the posts do not violate their guidelines.
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F
But the only thing they could look into is that there are some administrators of these profiles.
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E
These posts stayed up until we put these accounts and similar ones in an email to Meta a day after we noticed that some of the accounts and pages we sent them had been taken down. And we also saw that they now had taken down the post c Auschwitz Memorial flagged in the first place. And then we got this.
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We removed the pages and groups shared with us and disabled the accounts behind them for violating our policies on spam and inauthentic behavior.
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Behind a lot of these posts was a network based out of Pakistan. We tracked these accounts and mapped every Holocaust AI image that we could find. The creators communicated and shared tips on public Facebook profiles and groups which showed that they were being paid through Meta's content monetization program. This is Facebook announcing the program in December last year.
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A
A new program that makes it easier.
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For creators to earn money on Facebook on more content. Meta rewards engagement in their content monetization program. Whilst they are not intentionally encouraging users to post false stories of the Holocaust, the creators post this sort of AI slob to get higher rewards.
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The key is traffic.
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B
It needs to be active and related to the content you are posting.
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This is Faisal Rehman, who is part of the Pakistani network.
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The more views you get, the higher your earnings will be.
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They buy Facebook pages, set them up with followers, enroll them in the content monetization program, and then often sell them on for profit. Others then fill these pages with AI generated content. One page can have earnings up to US$1,060 per month. And often these creators own multiple pages in Pakistan where the average monthly income is US$294. This has become an alternative way to earn a living. We challenged him on the harm he could be causing with his actions. He says these are all publicly available pictures. He is using USA Top Audience K pages in the choice of themes is based on what will perform well in countries in Europe, the UK and US as views from these areas generate the most money. He also adds that Facebook currently does not allow any pages from Pakistan to be enrolled, so the creators disguise their identity with softwares like VPNs. AI slob is everywhere on social media, even if you don't follow these pages. During this investigation I kept checking my Facebook timeline, which is now filled with AI slob about the Holocaust, often posted by accounts I had not even come across before.
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Christina Fulk reporting.
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Still to come, peatlands have actually always been a major defense instrument. Already the Greek and the Romans used it.
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We hear from one academic who believes peak bog should be re harnessed to strengthen a country's natural defenses. Pakistan's Punjab province has called in the army to help rescue people from areas devastated by floods. It comes after India warned Islamabad that it was releasing water from major dams upstream, acknowledging this would flood parts of what is Pakistan's most populous province and its breadbasket. Sialkot, a city in Punjab, has seen its wettest 24 hour period in nearly half a century. So far, more than 800 people have been killed in Pakistan by monsoon rain since June. Azadeh Mashiri reports from Narwal.
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The damage, the devastation, it's already here. Our team has seen it. Hundreds of more rescue boats have been deployed. One official told us they're racing to save casualties now in Naruuah. This district is heavily affected and that's because it's near the River Ravi that has swollen. There are dangerous levels of water there, as India had warned there would be after they released water from some of their major dams. That's what happens when reservoirs are overwhelmed upstream in India. It can cause heavy flooding here in Pakistan. Add to that the heavy rains that have been pounding the country this week. Sialkot, as you mentioned, has seen extreme flooding. That's an urban area and so homes, buildings, cars are submerged and rescuers are not only evacuating people but also their livestock. This is a country where more than 40% of people live below the poverty line and so these floods are ruinous to so many families and that's why many people we've spoken to in the past two days have told us they're refusing to, to evacuate. The government rescuers have set up shelters on higher ground and so, but officials have told us that the majority of people who do choose to be evacuated tend to go and stay with friends and family. They aren't comfortable staying at those shelters. And when I say that some people are refusing to evacuate, it's really large proportions of people. In fact, the village that we visited is a village of about 3,000 people. It's about two hours from Lahore, which is the second most populous city here in Pakistan. Now, While there are 3,000 residents there, half, about half of the residents were refusing to evacuate. So that shows you how many people are at risk when there's extreme flooding like this.
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A
Azadeh Mashiri reporting. In the Indian city of Mumbai, recent restrictions on feeding pigeons have generated protests and even clashes with the police. The new rules upset animal lovers and members of the Jain community who see it as their ethical duty to feed the birds at special sites called Kabudar Khanas, which basically means pigeon feeding. Now the government in Maharashtra, the country's most second populous state, which includes Mumbai, is looking at whether it's possible to continue to feed them in controlled circumstances. So why all this fuss about the pigeons in the first place? I asked our reporter Charles Havilland.
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H
Well, of course, pigeons do suffer from a rather unfortunate reputation in many countries, not just India, sometimes known unflatteringly as flying rats. I suppose what it comes down to is that the detritus and feathers from the birds and other things they leave behind can cause illnesses, sometimes respiratory illnesses, sometimes other kind of forms of poisoning. Last year, doctors explicitly linked the death of a boy, aged 11 in Delhi, not Mumbai, in Delhi, to having had contact with pigeon droppings and feathers. And there's also ecological arguments that pigeons have displaced smaller birds like the house sparrow. In other words, that pigeons, whose numbers have boomed more than any other bird in India, are simply kind of being. There is actually an overpopulation of these birds and those are some of the reasons that these Kabuttar Kanas, as you mentioned, have just been sealed off.
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A
So then I guess what's the counter argument? What's the opposition to this?
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H
Well, you mentioned the Jain community, an important religious minority in India who have a very, very ethics based attitude to all animals and specifically pigeons. They say that feeding the birds is an ethical requirement. This transcends religious divisions. There are reports recent BBC features have, have interviewed members of the Muslim community talking about the way that they see these birds as very innocent and want to protect Them, they've also been seen by some as a kind of symbol of Indian cities, also often featuring in Bollywood movies, etc, often actually being fed.
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A
Yeah, there's that iconic scene in Dilwale Dulhani Alejanga, isn't there, from 25 plus, what, nearly 30 years ago now?
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H
Yeah, that's right. Pigeons are, of course, a familiar presence on squares and balconies and even on air conditioners in Indian cities. So, yeah, there's a whole cultural dimension to the birds as well.
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A
So I guess what could the committee do? What's the approach that they're likely to take?
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H
Well, the, the committee is 13 people. I think it includes both health and animal welfare and Mumbai city officials, and presumably in Pune and other Maharashtrian cities as well. And they're going to consider whether controlled feeding of pigeons in Indian cities can be permitted without compromising human health. And it's been tasked with framing rules and guidelines. And there are complexities now because the feeding sites have been suspended, not necessarily closed permanently, but then pigeons have now moved to surrounding streets. Apparently one particularly busy 300 meter stretch in the Mumbai suburbs, waiting for food in new places that's led to traffic disruption, risks of accidents. So there's just a host of problems that they're going to have to tackle and it's not going to be easy.
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Charles Havilland reporting. Conscription in Germany was officially suspended in 2011 under then Chancellor Angela Merkel. But today, Germany's cabinet has approved draft legislation that would introduce voluntary military service and could eventually lead to conscription if recruitment goals are missed. As NATO seeks to strengthen its defenses following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the German government wants to boost the number of soldiers it has available. There are currently around 182,000 soldiers in the Bundeswehr and 49,000 reservists. The aim is to have at least 260,000 troops and to triple the number of operational reservists. Our correspondent in Berlin, Bethany Bell, has the details.
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I
According to this draft, what they want to do is to send an online questionnaire to all men and women over the age of 18 in Germany. Men will be obliged to fill out this questionnaire for women. It's voluntarily, and that will show whether they have an interest in volunteering for military service. And then those who are deemed to be suitable for military service will be invited to take part. But the government says that it will remain voluntary as long as possible. However, if the security situation changes, if they don't get the numbers that they want to see, then they could make conscription compulsory. This is something that will be complicated for some Germans. You know, there's been an enormous emphasis on not being a militaristic place. People have been brought up to have ideas of, of peace. However, others will feel that it is important to contribute to their country. The interesting thing as well, that this is something that is including women as well as men.
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A
Bethany Bell the former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been declared a flight risk and placed under round the clock surveillance. He's currently awaiting a verdict in his criminal trial due from next week. He's accused of trying to overturn that result of the 2022 presidential election. Our Latin America correspondent Will Grant reports.
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J
In the latest escalation in Jair Bolsonaro's coup plotting trial, Brazil's former president has now officially been declared a flight risk by a federal judge. The step comes after police apparently discovered a draft letter in which Mr. Bolsonaro appealed to Argentina for asylum. His legal team says the letter wasn't evidence that he is a flight risk. Under the decision, the Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered police to put the former right wing leader under full time surveillance, placing officers around his home to ensure he was complying with the restraining orders against him. It's a step which is sure to anger his supporters, including in Washington. Mr. Bolsonaro can count on strong support inside the Trump administration. In July, the US imposed a series of sanctions against Justice Moraes for alleged human rights abuses. The government of Brazilian President Lula da Silva also says the US has revoked the visa of the Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski, something Washington is yet to confirm. Former President Bolsonaro faces up to 40 years in jail if he is found guilty in his coup plotting trial of trying to overturn the result of the 2022 election and cling on to power.
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A
Will grant. A report by Human Rights Watch has accused security forces in Mauritania of serious human rights violations against migrants. It says these have been exacerbated by the European Union and Spain continuing to outsource migration management to Mauritan. This report from Guy Hedgco, Human Rights.
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H
Watch alleges that between 2020 and early 2025, Mauritania had pursued what it called an abusive migration control playbook, with security forces, military and border control personnel raping, torturing and extorting migrants, as well as using inhumane detention conditions. Mauritania has become an increasingly common departure point for African migrants trying to reach Europe. Europe via Spain's Canary Islands by boat. Nearly 47,000 people reached the islands last year after making the extremely dangerous crossing. The report said that the outsourcing of migration management to Mauritania by the EU had encouraged the abuses, which it said had in some cases been witnessed by Spanish security personnel. In 2024, Mauritania signed a new migration partnership with the EU in exchange for 210 million euros in funding. The Mauritanian government said it rejects allegations of violations of migrants rights.
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A
Guy Hedgecote reporting. Peat bogs, which store vast amounts of carbon, have long been an invaluable weapon in the fight against climate change. But a Dutch academic says they could also be a cost effective shield against a different kind of threat, a potential military invasion by Russia. Professor Hans Houston is now calling for drained wetlands to be reflooded to strengthen natural defenses and reduce carbon emissions.
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F
Peatlands have actually always been a major defense instrument. Already the Greek and the Romans used it, and that in the past, a lot of these peatlands have been drained for agriculture and for forestry. But that specifically the wet peatlands are really difficult to pass. So our idea is that while we anyhow have to rewet the peatlands for climate change mitigation purposes, we can as well also rewet the peatlands near the borders as an extra defense line. In 2022, of course, the Russians came from the north across the Pripyat marshes. These marshes have always been a major defense line. And actually when these peatlands were drained in the 1970s, 1980s, it was the minist of defense of the Soviet Union that protested most. And that's the idea now to rewet these peoples again, to restore actually the natural defense line that existed. You can compare them more or less with a minefield. A minefield is not inaccessible, but it is dangerous to walk there. You have to be very careful. A wet peatland is walkable. You can walk across a peatland, but it is not easy. So you do not have rapid progress. The more heavy vehicles like trucks and tanks, etc. They can cannot move across. A natural peatland is 95% of water. It is wetter than milk. It is wetter than beer. You do not drive a car across a lake of milk. In the same way, you cannot do it with a wet peatland. So it makes it very difficult to pass peatlands with heavy machinery. The wetter, the more difficult it becomes. Peatlands are actually pure carbon. The peatlands of the world, although they cover only 3% of the land surface of the world, they contain twice as much carbon than the entire biomass of all forests drain. Peatlands of the world are responsible for 5% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. So that's much more than all global air travel. So you can stop these emissions by rewetting them. So we have a really win win situation. You rewet peatlands for defense and you also gain a lot for climate change mitigation for biodiversity conservation.
- [30:13]
A
Professor Hans Jussen and that's all from us for now. But there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this episode or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcastbc.co.uk and you can also find us on XBCWorldService and the hashtag is globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Russell Newlove and the producers were Marion Straughan and Chaz Geiger. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Ankurda San. Until next time. Goodbye.