Global News Podcast: Nuclear watchdog head demands action to prevent disaster in Ukraine

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service with reports and analysis

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I'm Paul Moss and at 14 Hours GMT on Thursday the 9th of March, these are our main stories.

The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog has warned that luck could soon run out

after more shelling cut power to the Russian occupied Zaporizhia nuclear plant.

Georgia's governing party has withdrawn a controversial draft law aimed at limiting

foreign influence. Protests over new laws in Israel have seen roads occupied and military

personnel blockading their own base and there's been a damning report into an American police

force whose officers shot a young black woman dead. Also in this podcast,

we look back at the life of Topol, star of Fiddler on the Roof.

The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog has demanded immediate action

to prevent a potential disaster at the Russian occupied Zaporizhia nuclear plant in southern

Ukraine. Rafael Grossi's remarks came after renewed shelling temporarily cut the plant's

only remaining external power line which provides electricity for essential cooling of radioactive

material. That line has now been reconnected but Mr Grossi said it was only a matter of

time before attacks on Zaporizhia lead to disaster. I am astonished by the complacency. Yes, the

complacency. What are we doing to prevent this from happening? We are the IAEA. We are meant

to care about nuclear safety. Each time we are rolling a dice and if we allow this to continue

time after time then one day our luck will run out. The damage to the Zaporizhia plant power

supply was just one consequence from another night of Russian attacks on Ukraine. Energy

infrastructure and residential buildings were hit by missiles in 10 different parts of the country.

At least eight people were killed. Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky condemned what

he called Russia's miserable tactics. These Kiev residents described hearing the explosions

overnight. I heard a very loud explosion, very loud. We quickly jumped out of bed and saw a car

on fire, then other cars on fire as well. The glass shattered on the balconies and windows.

I woke up from the explosion, quite a strong one, but I could never imagine that it would

happen in my backyard. I read the news that cars were on fire. When I went outside I realised

those cars are in the yard. It's hard to explain how I feel because one meter left or right and

it could have been my apartment. We had the air race arena for like seven hours or something

and the explosions they were like at three at four a.m. then at five a.m. so we had to be up all night.

The BBC's Zhanna Bespyatchuk is in Kiev and herself was welcomed by last night's attack.

It seems to involve, she says, a new kind of Russian rocket. What we got to know a few hours later

from the Ukrainian military that this night, for example, the Ukrainian capital was targeted by

the Russian hypersonic missile called Degar. It's one of the most dangerous missiles for

the Ukraine and Ukrainian air defence. Because what's the problem? In fact, all air defence systems

that Ukraine has at its disposal for now, they can't shut down these hypersonic missiles which fly

tenfold higher speed than normal cruise missiles. Russia has used all possible types of its missiles

against Kiev today. It has launched also a huge number of missiles against Kharkiv,

against Odessa where energy infrastructure was hit this night. Russia doesn't normally feel the

need to justify or explain attacks like this on Ukrainian cities, but this time it says it did it

in response to the incursion last week. I wonder what you made of that, why they would feel the

need to explain what they did this time? Of course, obviously, that might be an important message to

Ukraine that there are certain red lines in this conflict which Ukraine doesn't allow from the

Russian point of view to cross. And one of them is to invade the Russian territory.

So Russia invaded the Ukrainian territory, but Ukraine is not allowed to carry out any similar

military operations. The Ukrainian government officially stated that it has nothing to do

with this particular incursion into the Bransk region in Russia. They can't explain who exactly

did it, but one of the theories that I heard from the Ukrainian officials that this incursion was

carried out by some partisans, some insurgents in Russia, or the way around it was the provocation

set up by the Russian side itself to set it up as a false flag operation in order to justify

next new massive attacks on Ukraine.

To Georgia now, where protesters have vowed to carry on demonstrating against the government,

this despite the fact that it's withdrawn the controversial draft law which had originally

brought them out onto the streets. There have been two days of violent clashes over the laws

which would have forced organisations to register as foreign agents if they received funding from

abroad. Critics claim this could end up restricting civil liberties and that this was similar to

measures passed in Russia. In a statement, the governing party Georgian Dream said it was cancelling

the proposed changes, accepting that the bill had caused a division in society.

I spoke to Rehan Dimitri, our correspondent in the capital, Tbilisi, and asked her why this

wasn't enough for the protesters. It is not a victory yet. They are saying that is civil society

and all of the protesters that have filled the streets here in Tbilisi over the past two days,

they're saying that they will be back protesting this evening because they want more clarity from

the government, how exactly it intends to withdraw this law. They're saying that the statement from

the government is vague and they do not trust the government. They want to see all of the people,

protesters who were arrested over the past two days to be released and they want guarantees that

Georgia and its government will take this country to the west and not back into Russia's orbit.

So quite a U-turn from the Georgian government and they said they want to guarantee peace and

stability in the country and therefore they made this decision. But in their statement,

there are some sentences that are quite vague. They didn't say that it was a bad decision.

They're just saying that they perhaps need more time and once the emotions subsided,

they are planning to go out to the public and attempt to explain why this law was important

or is important for Georgia. That was Rehan Dimitri. You don't get reports much starker than this.

An official investigation into an American city's controversial police has found they were racist

and used unnecessary force as a matter of routine. Louisville police gained international notoriety

two years ago when they shot and killed a young black woman during a raid on her home. Today,

the U.S. Attorney General, Merrick Garland, condemned how they'd behaved. This conduct is

unacceptable. It is heartbreaking. It erodes the community trust necessary for effective policing

and it is an affront to the vast majority of officers who put their lives on the line every

day to serve Louisville with honor. The black woman killed by Louisville police two years ago

was called Breonna Taylor and her name became something of a rallying cry for racial justice

protests around the country as our North America correspondent Peter Bose reports.

The botched armed raid on Breonna Taylor's home led to this.

Months of protests demanding that the police officers involved be held to account. The medical

technician had been asleep with her boyfriend when officers burst into her apartment. She was hit

with six bullets and died. The outcry that followed helped fuel the Black Lives Matter protests.

Now a department of justice investigation into the Louisville police has found that it engaged in a

pattern of civil rights violations. They include the use of excessive force including unjustified

neck restraints, the unreasonable use of police dogs and tasers, searches based on invalid warrants

and unlawful discrimination against black people. Breonna Taylor's mother gave her response to the

investigation's findings. Does this give you the vindication you've been waiting for?

No, I mean it's heartbreaking to know that everything you've been seeing from day one

has to be said again through this manner, you know, that it took this to even have somebody

look into this department. It's a, I don't know. Three years after the killing of Breonna Taylor,

the use of excessive force continues to call into question police tactics around the country.

Five black officers from the Memphis Police Department are facing murder charges

over the killing of Tyree Nichols, the 29-year-old black man whose violent arrest was caught on video

in January. More of the footage is due to be made public, although a judge has blocked its release

to allow lawyers for the officers to review the tapes. They've all pleaded not guilty.

Peter Bowes reporting. As we said, a new report on the Louisville police force has just been

released. Ben Crump, a lawyer for Breonna Taylor's family, told James Copnell what effect he thought

the report should have. Breonna Taylor's legacy will be that nobody else will be killed like she

was because of the reasons she was killed. What tends to happen after a report like this? Because

it's not, of course, the first one looking into police behavior in parts of the U.S.

What is likely to change? Where should pressure be applied so that that change happens?

The consent decree is going to help because now you're going to have the Department of Justice

in the courts monitoring the police conduct in Louisville, Kentucky, for the next three years.

So it's a step in the right direction to make sure that they're going to have oversight so

they don't continue to violate the constitutional rights of African Americans in Louisville, Kentucky.

Beyond that oversight, presumably there needs to be fundamental change to the way police are

what, trained, recruited? I think all the above and supervised as well because you have to look at

how they are being interviewed and who you're hiring, how they're being trained, how they've

been supervised and how they are being disciplined. The lawyer Ben Crump speaking in Louisville,

Kentucky. Mexicans have got used to a special kind of American tourist people coming for cosmetic

surgery. Thousands make the journey south for cheaper facelifts and nose jobs and also for

some for more necessary medical procedures. But trips like this can come with unexpected dangers.

This week, news came out that a visiting group of four Americans were kidnapped,

one of whom had traveled to Mexico for a so-called tummy tuck. Their ordeal ended when

two of them were killed. The BBC's Angelica Casas in Texas told Bola Masuro why people still come

despite the endemic violence. They're risking themselves because a lot of these places are

dangerous. They're violent because of the cartel and organized crime activity that's going on.

But at the same time, if they need this medical care, sometimes it's the most affordable way to

get it. And yet people do know because many of our listeners will be thinking, oh, but why aren't

these hotspots which provide these medical services? Why aren't they in areas where tourism is rife

and where it's safer rather than in these insecure places? And why people are willing to go there,

knowing that there are these risks? In a lot of these towns, actually, there is a combination of

these tourist areas and then also the neighborhoods and the regions that are more controlled by

cartels and organized crime groups. I think it's like a lot of places in the world. If you go to

a city, there's usually going to be the tourist side and then the side that maybe the government

doesn't want you to see. So it's kind of the same for a lot of these Mexican towns. And usually,

the medical services are available right upon crossing the border. So you don't really have to

go far to get to your hospital or to your doctor's office because the infrastructure has almost been

set up to accommodate people that are crossing the border to go find these services. So if you

cross from, just as an example, if you cross the Nuevo Laredo Tamalipas, which is a four-hour drive

from Matamoros, where the kidnappings happened over the weekend, as soon as you cross dentist

offices, just kind of fill the first two main roads that you go by and then nearby our hotels.

So this is just kind of how the towns have been set up for an industry that is booming

and it's booming despite the violence. And it's fair to say, isn't it, that the customers who go,

the patients who go, some of them have become regulars and they kind of have ways and means

that they try and circumvent or at least try and protect themselves and mitigate the risk.

Can you describe some of them, Lisa? Yes, that's true. And I did speak to, for example, one woman

who's been going there for 10 years for treatment and she goes once a month. And the things that

she does is, for example, she doesn't go alone. She doesn't travel alone to and from. She always

goes either with her sister or her son. She is also not traveling at night. She's going straight

to her destination when she crosses the border. She's not commuting anywhere by foot. And some

people also have registered their vehicles in Mexico so that whenever they cross, they can

change their license plates to Mexican ones and not be targets because they would have a U.S.

license plate. So those are some of the precautions that people take.

And Helica Kassa speaking to Bola Masuro. How do you maintain security in a vast

desert-dominated region where differences of religion and ethnicity have a nasty habit of

producing violent clashes? That is the challenge for governments in the Sahel region of Northern

Africa, which has been dogged by Islamist insurgencies, as well as separatism and fighting

over land. Well, the government of Mauritania claims to have had more success than most at

keeping conflict at bay. And that, it believes, is due in part to its rather unusual military

patrols carried out by troops traveling by camel. The BBC's Caroline Luay has been to investigate.

The camels are not faced by the heat. But for humans, the rising sun starts to sting in the

morning out in the Sahel. There are waves of sand dunes as far as the eye can see. This barren, dry

land marks the border between Mauritania and Mali, stretching for over 2,000 kilometers within a region

rife with conflict and militant groups. The town of Ashmim is less than 50 miles from the border

and home to a special force. A group of about 20 camels are sitting inside a vast military barracks.

Soldiers, dressed in long green nomad outfits, the AK-47s dangling around their shoulders,

are strapping saddles onto their backs. This is the Meharis unit. They form a special force

of the Mauritania army, and their instructor, Absar Sidi, says they've been carefully selected.

We are recruiting men who come from this area because they know the terrain and they know the

population here. The nomad unit consists of 300 men, and with the camels, they are able to reach

parts of the land unreachable by 4x4 vehicles. They go on patrol missions for weeks and sometimes

even months before returning to their main base. For the last 10 years, Mauritania hasn't experienced

a single terrorist attack. In its palace, in the capital, Noaxoth, a thousand kilometers away to

the west, President Mohamed Ul-Gaswani tells me that the threat is felt right across Mauritania.

The presence of this threat in Mali represents a threat to my country. These terrorists,

even in small numbers and less equipped, are extremely dangerous and very aggressive.

So, on our end, we need to be on the same level to not lose the battle.

Back at the border, the Meharis unit's tasks involve more than security.

The colonel of the border force is joining a team distributing medicine and other supplies

in a local nomad village. He believes these measures are key to fighting the root causes

behind the violence. When it helps locals improve their quality of life,

they are more resistant towards terrorism, since terrorists like to recruit from the poor and

vulnerable. The nomad unit is able to support the authorities in preventing jihadist groups

from coming over the border. But controlling such a vast land in this volatile region will remain

a difficult task. Caroline Luaye

Still to come on the podcast, how the controversy surrounding Kanye West's

anti-semitic comments last year has increased demand for his Yeezy trainers.

We stand against everything that he says. We just sell it because it's a collector's item,

and there's very limited supply at this point. We are a reseller and we sell collectible grade

sneakers and things that are sold out. Protesters in Israel had called for a day of resistance,

and they certainly managed to make a mark. Roads have been occupied,

reservists from the country's navy blockaded one of its main ports. And the Israeli prime

minister was forced to travel to the airport by helicopter, because so many people were trying

to stop him from reaching its entrance. The hard-line national security minister,

Itmar Ben-Gavir, himself went to the airport where he condemned the obstruction.

The policy is to prevent the blocking of Ben-Gurion airport. A mother who's sending

her daughter abroad for surgery called me yesterday. Do you understand the sense here?

They want to block the entrance. My policy is to prevent the blocking of traffic and main roads,

and I'm dealing with this. The mass action was intended as a protest against a new law,

which critics say will weaken the Supreme Court and its ability to hold the government to account.

But despite the various demonstrations and occupations, our correspondent in Jerusalem,

Yilan Nel, told me the Israeli government seems to have no intention of backing down.

At the moment, we're not seeing any real political response. Actually, there's just been criticism

of the protesters calling them anarchists, and we've had comments from the Israeli prime minister,

Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that his message to the protesters is that democracy is strong.

We've had one of the key figures from the coalition government saying that the legislation

is continuing to go through parliament. He accused the opposition of refusing to engage in dialogue.

And I gather that in the midst of all this, while they're fighting demonstrators on the domestic

front, there's been another three Palestinians killed when Israeli soldiers raided a West Bank

town. Can you tell us more about that? Yes, so it's interesting because we have the US defense

secretary Lloyd Austin visiting. He was obviously here to talk about the security situation. His

own meetings were affected, were disrupted by the protests taking place. But just hours before he

arrived, three suspected Palestinian militants were shot dead by undercover agents of Israel's

border police in the north of the occupied West Bank. Now, this comes despite a UN call, lots of

international calls for restraint to halt what's been called the cycle of violence that has really

intensified particularly this year. And we know that these men who were killed were in their 20s

and their funerals have all taken place. The Israeli military has said that they shot at them

first, that they were in this village close to Janine, which has been a real flash point in

recent weeks to carry out arrests. And it's said that they found guns and explosives in the car

in which these men were traveling. Very briefly, you mentioned Lloyd Austin, the US defense secretary

being there. Any idea what exactly kind of message he might be bringing from the US presidents?

I mean, what we've seen in initial statement is that the usual kind of thing about commitment to

Israel's security. He was here to talk about the ongoing situation and we know that there is a lot

of international concern, particularly going into this period of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan,

that the violence should be brought down, the tension should be brought down.

The sportswear company added us cut ties with Kanye West last year after the rapper made a

series of anti-Semitic comments. But that left them with a huge stack of his signature Yeezy

trainers piling up in the stock room. And the shoes have now become a collector's item,

resold for higher and higher prices. John McCadlow is chief executive of the sports shoe retail chain

Impossible Kicks. He told Sean Farrington that controversy around the rapper doesn't seem to

have dented sales. We've seen about a 30% spike in Yeezy sales since they cut ties with him back

we'll call at the end of October of last year. So consumers don't care about what Kanye West has

said. It's very interesting. A lot of people are targeting the product as a collector's item now

and a lot of people when they come into a resell store don't even know he's associated with the

product. A lot of people actually are just buying the shoe just because it's stylish and it's very

comfortable. So it appeals to all age spectrums. How do you think it will change what added us do

next? It's very interesting. I mean the product that they do have that they're sitting on does have

about you and I think that they have to do a lot of soul searching to decide what they want to do

with it. I was just actually reading an article that the CEO has gotten more than 500 business

plans on things to do with the sneakers and I'm sure there's a lot of resellers that are

very interested in getting them because there's still a lot of people that do want the product.

Just briefly John, do you think twice about selling the product now?

We stand against everything that he says. We just sell it because it's a collector's item

and there's very limited supply at this point. We are a reseller and we sell

collectible grade sneakers and things that are sold out. So it kind of meets the criteria of what

we do in our business model. John McCardlow. There are actors who've achieved fame in many roles

and then there are those who will always be remembered for just one. That was the fate or

perhaps the achievement of the man known simply as Topol, star on stage and screen of the musical

Fiddler on the Roof who's died at the age of 87. His performance as Tevye the Dairy Man

pretty much defined the character. All others who played it could only follow in his wake.

Vincent Doud looks back at a career of acting and song.

Heim Topol's life changed totally when in his early 30s he won the role of Tevye the Dairy Man

in Fiddler on the Roof on stage and then unexpectedly in Hollywood. The story was set

in a Jewish village in Ukraine before World War One. Topol had played Tevye on stage in Hebrew

in Israel and that got him the same role in London in 1967.

Being far too young, he admitted later, meant at first he overplayed.

I was sure that a man of 50 is a very old man that he speaks like that and all that.

The character developed into something that is more right now than it used to be.

Heim Topol had started as an actor in the Israeli army. He acted in the satirical theater group

The Green Onion and became known in films at home but nothing ever eclipsed Tevye.

One of the great musical roles which Topol made his own.

Vincent Doud reporting. Well Andy Nyman played the role of Tevye in the London West End production

of Fiddler on the Roof. Speaking to Nick Robinson he described the effect Heim Topol's performance

had on him growing up as a Jewish boy. I saw the film when I was a boy and the impact of

his performance and that story was just extraordinary. As a young Jew growing up

in Britain you never really get to see yourself reflected in things and seeing

his unbelievably truthful powerful iconic performance made a huge impact. So then when

I was asked to do it of course the first thing you have to do is just think you can't even compete,

you can't compare you just you have to just put that aside as the sort of the perfect pinnacle

of it and do your own version and but yeah he was a giant. Add to that the vast personality

that Topol brought and the challenge wasn't it because as a young man he had to make himself

look old as an old man he had to make himself young. Five decades playing the same character.

Yeah I mean I played the role for a year. How he did that role three thousand times

over you know four decades I have no idea because the energy it requires not just physically but

emotionally but you're absolutely right I mean that and it's so captured in the film. He is you

look at him the Yiddish word is a mensch and there's something about his persona that just

sings out in that role. You just you want him as your father he's a strong man physically he's a

strong man emotionally he's a bit of a fool at times but you just love him there's just a sort

of warmth that pours out of him through the screen and and you know if you were lucky enough to see

him on stage you know into the fit. Andy Nyman talking about Heim Topol who's died aged 87

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 globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk you can also find us on twitter at global news pod. This

edition was produced by Alice Adderley it was made by Danny Cox. The editor is Karen Martin

I'm Paul Moss. Until next time goodbye.

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