Global News Podcast: China and Russia denounce a defence deal by the US, UK and Australia

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I'm Alex Ritzen and at 14 hours GMT on Tuesday the 14th of March, these are our main stories.

Beijing warns against a new security pact between the US, Britain and Australia to counter

Chinese influence in the Pacific.

Tourists are allowed back into China for the first time since Covid struck.

Colombian drug criminals are accused by the president of violating the hard-won ceasefire.

Also in this podcast, India's Supreme Court rejects the government's call to reopen the

issue of compensation for victims of the world's worst industrial disaster.

He took off his glasses and his eyes were swollen and red and he said just go inside

and shut the doors. It was like somebody had burnt a mountain of chilies, the eyes they were burning.

And riding motorbikes could become a whole lot harder for tourists in Bali.

Russia has joined China and criticised yesterday's security deal between the US and UK to supply

nuclear-powered submarines to Australia.

Beijing has described the move as embarking on a path of error and danger.

The security pact, known as the AUKUS agreement, is aimed at countering China's influence in

the Asia-Pacific region with a new fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.

Moscow claims the submarine pact would bring years of confrontation to Asia.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin had this warning.

The US, the UK and Australia have gone further and further down a wrong and dangerous road

for their own selfish political gains. This involves nuclear-armed countries transferring

a large amount of highly enriched weapons-grade uranium to a non-nuclear weapon country.

Posing a severe risk in nuclear proliferation.

Our security correspondent Frank Gardner told me more.

This is probably the moment of highest diplomatic and rhetorical tension

between China and the West since Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan last summer.

If you remember, that was followed by a series of very aggressive, very provocative military

exercises by China in which it essentially encircled Taiwan and gave it a foretaste of what it might

expect in the future. China is bizarrely certainly making out that it's feeling encircled by the

US and its allies. But of course, this is a product of some of its own actions because it is

effectively colonized parts of the South China Sea. It's taken over atolls that are claimed by other

nations, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, and in some cases, it's even turned them into

static aircraft launch pads and said that other countries need permission to sail past them

when it's declared under international law that this is open sea. Then, of course, there is the

constant threat by China to, as they call it, reunify with Taiwan. I was in Taiwan recently,

and they say reunification is not the right word. We were never unified with the People's Republic

of China. We are self-governing. It's things like that which are creating a lot of tension here.

But, of course, against the backdrop of all of this, you've got the Ukraine war. The big question

is, is China going to send weapons to Russia? Because Russia is running out of weapons,

China's got an awful lot of them. This is probably not good for the West and Ukraine

in terms of the Ukraine war, because there is a risk here that the angrier that China gets

with the West, and by the West, I mean, in this case, the August trio, United States, Australia,

and UK, the more it may be tempted to cozy up and help President Putin out of the mess he's

got himself into in Ukraine. Yes, because it is the question of whether this is a bipolar or a

tripolar world now. Yes, I mean, I think tripolar is probably the most accurate in the sense that

you've got one sort of power center coalescing around China and Russia's leadership, and you've

got a number of countries like Belarus, Eritrea, Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea that have sort

of tend to be in that camp. It's not a formal arrangement. It's certainly not a Warsaw pact,

but it's starting to coalesce. And then you've got NATO, of course, but you've got the US-led group

that now includes Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan, which is allowing China to feel

threatened. Now, the idea of these submarines that are going to take ages to build, by the way,

these AUKUS class submarines, they won't be delivered for until the 2030s. In the meantime,

the US is probably going to lend Australia three of its Virginia class subs. Australia doesn't have

currently any long-range nuclear submarines. And by nuclear, I mean nuclear-powered, not nuclear-armed.

And this is a really important distinction, because China is saying that this is going to

increase proliferation in the region, but these aren't carrying nuclear missiles. What they are

doing is they are mobile intelligence centers that can float around underwater and detect things,

which China, of course, doesn't like that, because China considers that the Western Pacific and

indeed even part of the Indo-Pacific are very much its sphere, and that this is an awful long

way away from the United States and NATO countries, and they have no business being there. China is

great one for saying non-interference, and it considers that Taiwan is a domestic internal

matter that has nothing to do with any other country, and they totally reject the idea of

US or anybody else coming to the defense of Taiwan. Briefly, it's only a few submarines.

China's military is massive. Is it really going to make any difference?

Potentially, yes. You're absolutely right. China's military, it is massive. Most of it is outdated,

but they are on a massive rearmament program, particularly to trouble the number of ballistic

nuclear missiles they've got. And by that, I do mean nuclear-armed, thermonuclear weapons. No,

China is absolutely set on becoming the premier world power by 2049, which is the centenary

of the foundational communist China. So it's not going to, I think, stop them in that ambition,

but it's an annoying road bump for them. Frank Gardner. After more than a year of war,

much of Ukraine's infrastructure has been destroyed, leaving many people struggling

without food, medicines, and power. In the Kherson region and the south, a group of volunteers have

been trying to help, delivering basic supplies to hundreds of local residents several times a

month. This work takes them within range of Russian troops, which, as a BBC team witnessed,

frequently puts their lives at risk. Victoria Zuhai reports.

A former gymnasium turned distribution center stacked full of groceries and essential household

items from soap to toilet paper. Some Ukrainian volunteers build a human chain, filling up small

vents outside. They are working concentrated and at speed. A constant threat is hanging in the air.

This warehouse is located in South Ukraine, between Zaporizhia and Kherson, and within

the range of Russian artillery fire. Once a few vents are fully loaded, they set off in a convoy

to deliver the goods to remote villages, facing multiple threats along the road.

Serhii is one of the volunteers on board. In Marginets, it is difficult and intense,

but in the area where we are headed, two people were under a very difficult occupation and went

through so much misery. As soon as the convoy leaves town, it becomes visible to the Russian

military. Shelling can happen anytime, and it's not long before they receive reports of artillery

fire close by. Serhii arrives in a small village which hadn't seen any aid in over three weeks.

The vehicles get quickly surrounded by a happy but exhausted-looking crowd of people.

For many here, this is the only source of food. Volunteer Kostya starts recording a video

when suddenly this happens. A shell exploded just a couple of hundred meters away.

Minutes later, a second shell explodes, this time much closer. Our BBC team decides to evacuate.

We are being targeted by incoming fire from Russian positions. We are driving off,

and volunteer Kostya is still recording and narrating what had just happened.

We are leaving Milovaya. There was an artillery attack just now. It was so strong. I've never

heard anything like it. The Ukrainian authorities later tell me that nobody was killed in that

specific attack. Meanwhile, Kostya, Serhii and the other volunteers continue to deliver aid to the

next village. Victoria Zuhay. The Bhopal Gasly in India in 1984 is widely considered to have

been one of the world's worst industrial catastrophes. Campaigners say around 25,000 people died,

and up to half a million survivors suffered respiratory problems. One of those survivors

was Farah Edwards Khan, who was ten years old at the time. She recalled what happened in a BBC

interview in 2012. It was about 1.32 in the night, and we were fast asleep, and there was a banging

on the door, and my cousin was standing outside. It was the middle of the night, but he was wearing

dark glasses, and he took off his glasses, and his eyes were swollen and red, and he said,

what's happened? He said, just go inside and shut the doors. There's been a terrible gas accident.

It was like somebody had burnt chilies in a warehouse, a mountain of chilies, the ice,

they were burning. Now, India's Supreme Court has rejected a government plea for further compensation

for the victims. It said there was no reason to dig up the issue again more than three decades

after the initial settlement, when Union Carbide paid out $470 million in damages without admitting

any responsibility. South Asia regional editor and Barristan Etirajan told us more.

One of the arguments put by the Supreme Court was that this was settled in 1989 between the

government of India and Union Carbide, which is now owned by Dow Chemicals, out of court

settlement of $470 million. And what is the point in revisiting this particular settlement 30 years

later? And the government should have argued if there had been any claim of fraud or any other

issue with the settlement, then they could have considered. But the government did not argue on

that point. The main argument was that it was not enough. It was a paltry sum, and people are still

suffering. So they were asking for about $1.1 billion. So on technical grounds, the Supreme

Court said there was no rationale in bringing this up after a clear settlement was announced.

Because the company behind this never admitted responsibility, did it?

It was a huge controversy at that time. As you said, it was the worst

industrial accident at that time. I still remember in the 1980s, we were all watching

these black and white photographs and black and white television at that time before the

advent of the color television, the grim pictures emerging after Bhopal and the thousands of people

dying at that time. And then the Union Carbide always argued that it was managed by the Indian

subsidiary, and they never took any responsibility. In fact, many of those executives who were

imprisoned in long-drawn court cases were all Indian executives. And so this out-of-court

settlement did not satisfy many activists and also people who were still suffering.

You know, the ways still lying there, it's not been cleaned properly. People are still

having health issues. And that's why people said the sum was like, for example, $2,200 per person

for family, which was nothing because people lost their family, their belongings, and all

the relatives. So that is why there was a lot of pressure on the government to revisit this case.

But the Union Carbide always maintained that it was an Indian subsidiary. And in fact,

once they merged or it was bought by Dow Chemicals, Dow Chemicals did not take any of the liabilities.

So briefly, where does this go next? Now it is for the activists to put pressure on the government.

In fact, the Supreme Court also said the Indian government can dip into their own pockets to

give more compensation to the victims. But still, the legacy of this tragedy is there.

People are still suffering in the city of Bhopal.

Anbarasan, Eta Rajan. The Colombian President Gustavo Petro has accused the country's largest

drug trafficking cartel, Clan del Golfo, of breaking a ceasefire agreement by supporting

attacks by illegal gold miners. On Sunday, miners destroyed an aqueduct in the northwest of the

country. I heard more from our reporter Mimi Swabi. The Clan del Golfo is the biggest cartel in

Colombia. It's thought to be made up of around 6,000 members who are battling rival gangs,

paramilitary groups, and also the Colombian authorities to kind of keep their stronghold

in northwest in Colombia. This is a very lucrative drug trafficking point in the country, but also

a big mining area. So this is how the cartel have really got into the seams of society and have

control over the area is within that mining community. And Colombia has been wracked by

civil war for decades. It had looked so close. It looked as though maybe the end was in sight.

How did the ceasefire come about and why is it going wrong?

You're right. This was a really exciting moment last year when Gustavo Petro took presidency.

He was a former guerrilla member himself. He was part of the M19 group, and his whole campaign

was centered around bringing peace to the country who had had so much bloodshed, so much pain that

people were really looking to him as a figure of hope. And he started negotiation talks with

criminal organisations, many rebel groups, including FARC and ELN. But he hasn't quite

managed to get this cartel under control. This ceasefire was agreed in December, but as you said,

an ambulance, a toll and an aqueduct has been destroyed through the miners. It's thought that

the cartel will have been paying the miners to pass off the violence as a social strike.

But Gustavo tweeted that affecting a town's water and putting the lives of boys and girls and

humans at risk, the clan's hostility towards the population that has broken the ceasefire.

It isn't actually the actions. It's the intent at the public, which has really crossed the line

in Gustavo Petro's opinion. Given that all the other rebel groups pretty much have come on side,

how is the clan Delgolfo able to stand up and why aren't the others putting pressure on them?

Only at the weekend, second round of peace talks with ELN seemed very hopeful. Like you said,

this is moving in the right direction in many aspects. But this cartel is very separate from

rebel criminal groups. This is a drug cartel, a gang. And they are extremely powerful. They are

extremely wealthy. Colombia earns nearly more in illegal mining than it does in Trafficking

Cocaine. So this is a hugely powerful and hugely lucrative industry. They are very separate. And

Colombia is a big country. And each territory is often aided by geography as well. It's next to

the Panama border, their area, their turf. So it's easy to get in and out. The links are

very helpful for them in this situation. When two massive earthquakes struck Turkey and Syria last

month, killing more than 50,000 people, it didn't take long for questions to be asked as to why so

many buildings had collapsed. Now, a team of engineers from the UK has travelled to Turkey

to try to find the answer. The group has carried out assessments of major earthquakes over the last

three decades, more from our science editor, Rebecca Morrell. The team of leading experts from

academia and industry will carefully assess a whole range of buildings in Turkey. They are

visiting cities and rural areas to build up a full picture of what happened when the earthquake

struck. Work with their colleagues in Turkey has already revealed some examples of poor construction.

They've found large pebbles taken from riverbeds that have been mixed into concrete,

which weakens its strength. They've also discovered still reinforcements that are of

substandard quality. But the team believes the size and nature of the earthquake also played

a part in the devastation. The ground movement in some areas was so great it exceeded what some

earthquake-resilient buildings had been designed to withstand. Professor Emily So from Cambridge

University is co-leader of the investigation. It's important to get the full picture rather than

just looking at a snapshot of a single asset or a single building because the successes of the

ones that are still intact and perform perfectly well is as important as as neighbours that have

collapsed and actually having that distribution and having that overview is really key to what we

do and what can learn from this earthquake. The engineers will report their findings in a matter

of weeks and hope that they can inform how buildings are reconstructed in the years ahead.

Rebecca Morel. Coming up, spinning great apes. We found that great apes were spinning as fast as

Sophie Whirling-Dervishes, which is a tradition where individuals spin with the specific purpose

of entering a trans-like state. China says it will resume issuing visas to foreign travellers

on Wednesday in a major easing of pandemic restrictions. The country welcomed more than

65 million tourists in 2019 and is eager to reignite its languishing tourism sector.

Stephen MacDonald is in Beijing. For more than three years, foreign tourists have not been able

to enter China. In stark contrast to the tens of millions of international travellers who are

coming here every year prior to the coronavirus outbreak, now China's foreign ministry has announced

that from tomorrow tourist visas will again be issued. The removal of the last cross-border

restrictions imposed to tackle COVID marks major step towards the resumption of normal life in

post-pandemic China. Stephen MacDonald. Another country which lost tourists to COVID is Indonesia.

They've been returning to the island of Bali but the local governor isn't happy with some of the

visitors. He's planning to clamp down on foreigners riding motorbikes. This follows an increase in

cases of people breaking local traffic laws. Olivia Noon has more.

From late February to early March, more than 170 foreign nationals violated traffic orders on

the island. The local governor said that tourists were often riding with our helmets,

t-shirts and a driver's license. Motorbikes are a popular mode of transport for tourists,

with the rental bikes providing travellers with easy access around the island,

which doesn't have a well-developed public transport system. Tourists use the bikes to

weave through traffic and travel through back alleys. This Russian tourist had been riding

without a helmet. I came here today without a helmet, right? I figured that I was close

and you can ride without a helmet. I understood that I was violating local laws but some kind

of situation here could be like that. And why am I doing all this, which obviously is definitely

wrong, and maybe after this interview I will always wear a helmet here. But nevertheless,

I personally find myself at ease. It's now been proposed that tourists will have to use vehicles

provided by travel agents instead. The new proposal is likely to come into force later this year,

but it's divided opinion on the island, which is still recovering from financial losses because

of Covid. The chair of Bali's Motorbike Rental Association said the plans were hasty and that

the authorities should act on specific violations rather than setting a blanket ban. But the

Governor says if you're a tourist, then act like one and use vehicles provided by travel agencies.

Olivia Noon. A Japanese MP is to be stripped of his status as a lawmaker after failing to attend

any parliamentary session since his election last year. Yoshikazu Higashi Tani, who also

goes by the name of Gashi, is famous for his videos on YouTube. In a recent video,

he appears to be in Turkey speaking to children affected by the earthquake.

A member of parliament who is not in parliament, Alex. Yoshikazu Higashi Tani, as you heard

there, he's known as Gashi on YouTube. He's a famous celebrity gossip YouTuber that's turned MP. He

was elected to the upper house in July last year and he has not attended one single session in

parliament since the day he was elected. He was given many warnings, a last chance, but I think

he's angered enough people in the chamber that the unanimously have voted to expel him. I think

he's the first lawmaker in Japan to actually be kicked out of parliament without actually setting

foot in parliament. So what has he been doing? We heard that clip of him in Turkey there.

That's right. He's believed to live in the United Arab Emirates. He was actually expected here in

Japan on March 8th last week to come to parliament in person and apologize himself. This was demanded

by the chamber as a last chance, if you will, or also a form of punishment that you come and

you apologize to a plenary session. He said on YouTube that he would actually come, but again,

no show. This is another name for him now, the no show MP, and that has angered the upper house

even further. So now he is to be expelled. They're going to finalize that later this week. I think

in the history of Japan, first of all, this is the most strict form of punishment for a lawmaker

and it only happened twice since 1950, but this is the first time it has applied to an MP for

failing to tend for the lack of attendance. Briefly, how are people in Japan responding?

This has been going on for a while, and I think again, he's kind of been famous for not being

there. But one of the other members of his party, Hamada Satoshi, has actually addressed the upper

house and said it was illegal to expel Mr Higashitani, but it looks like this is going to be confirmed

that he is going to be stripped of his title. To Kenya now, where people are questioning a

controversial new policy, which will see thousands of bars and restaurants shut down,

the action comes in a bid to curb what the government sees as a major alcohol and drug abuse

problem. It's announced that in central Kenya, only one bar will be allowed to operate in each town

as Emmanuel Egunza reports. Central Kenya is battling what the government wants, is an alcohol

and drugs epidemic. Authorities blame it on the high number of unregulated bars and pubs and an

influx of cheap illicit brews. That's why Kenya's deputy president, Rigadi Khashogwa, has announced

a new directive. We want to appeal to our governors to sit down and agree that they cannot license

each and every outlet to be bar and restaurant to sell 24 hours. It is wrong, it is unacceptable,

that in the pursuit of revenue, licensing every outlet to be bar and restaurant,

you want to destroy an entire generation. And the government has been widely supported by

residents here in central Kenya. In the next county of Muranga, I meet 58-year-old Rosemary Kimani.

She works as a community health worker and says she lost her husband to alcoholism while

three of her children are all battling dependency. Parents have spent fortunes to educate these

young men, but the only work they do is wake up in the morning and go to drink. You can't find

these men even with girlfriends, as all their energy is fortune now, they're a local illicit

brew. They don't have time for family. Are we really going to see a new generation?

Under the new directive, only one bar will be licensed per town. Premises will also be required

to strictly sell alcohol between 5 p.m. and midnight. But business owners say this will

lead to the closure of hundreds of legitimate bars and restaurants and entertainment sports

and cost massive job losses. They want the government to deal with the actual problem

which they say is illicit brews. Simon Wangi is the chairman of the Kenya Bar and Hotel Association.

When they talked about one club in one town, especially Mount Kenya, let us call a spade a

spade. You'll be closing 17,000 businesses in the central region. You're talking about one bar,

but have you really talked about the products? Let us now differentiate things. What are people

drinking in Kenya? Not about the bars. How many bars are there? That's another, but what are the

products of this bar? That should be the conversation. Local NGOs and the church have

intervened to try and set up rehabilitation centers, but they are expensive and out of

reach for many addicts. Attitudes here have also made it harder with many young people saying

alcohol and drug abuse are not the major problem in Central Kenya. There's currently no exact data

as to just how many people are affected by alcohol abuse here in Central Kenya. But experts warn

that an entire generation could be lost here if nothing is done to tackle the crisis.

Finally, to a story that may get your head spinning, a new study has found that great apes

deliberately spin around in order to make themselves dizzy. Dr Adriano Lemera is an

associate professor of psychology at the University of Warwick in the UK who co-led the study.

My colleague Rob Young first asked him why he decided to study this.

It was such a conspicuous behavior once you see it. It's difficult to forget it. I've lived many

years in the jungles of Indonesia following wild orangutans. When I was back at the university

trolling through the YouTube and came across these videos, it was just remarkable. It differed

from the natural behavior and at the same time looked so much like things that we all know and

have experienced and have fun with. So what is it you think they are trying to do?

What our approach was to see how fast they were spinning, how many revolutions they were

achieving per second because they were clearly falling onto the ground dizzy on the floor

afterwards. And so of course the behavior as we know it has very little to no obvious utility at

all. And so it was really it really indicated that to us that great apes were indeed purposely

seeking this head rush and brief sense of elation. So they're just having fun.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. In a way, yes. I mean at least as a projection of our own experience.

And so to confirm the the intriguing possibility that they were as well as we do seeking this rush,

we compared the spinning speeds of great apes with human world traditions that involve spinning from

ballet and other dance pirouettes to circus acts on suspended ropes. And what we found was that in

this recreational way, great apes were achieving speeding spinning speeds as fast as some of the

best professional human performers who must go through dedicated and intense training to prevent

the nauseating effects of spinning. And indeed, we found that great apes were spinning as fast as

Sufi whirling dervishes, which is a tradition where individuals spin with the specific purpose

of entering a trans-like state. And so, you know, it confirmed to us it was a way a non-invasive way

of confirming that great apes are also probably self inducing similar effects just momentarily.

Psychology Professor Dr. Adriano Lamera. And that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition

of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in

it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcastbbc.co.uk. You can also find us on

Twitter at Global NewsPod. This edition was mixed by Ricardo McCarthy and the producer was Tracy

Gordon. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritzen. Until next time, goodbye.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.