Global News Podcast: Protests as Israel passes law which protects PM

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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Charlotte Gallagher and at 14 hours GMT on Thursday the 23rd of March,

these are our main stories. A critical moment for Israel as its parliament

approves the law that would prevent the courts from ousting the Prime Minister

if he's convicted of corruption. A Nigerian senator and his wife have been convicted of

trafficking a man to harvest his kidney for their daughter. Also in this podcast.

I say to Australia, don't miss it. Don't miss it. This is a real opportunity.

The Australian Prime Minister pleads with voters to back changing the Constitution

to recognise Indigenous Australians and the good and bad news about drinking coffee.

For months now, Israel has been rocked by protests with opponents of the nationalist

government furious with what they see as attempts to destroy democracy.

They were back on the streets on Thursday, blocking main roads and noisily protesting.

Just hours after parliament ratified a law limiting the circumstances

in which a Prime Minister can be removed.

We're here today to protest against the regime change that is ongoing

where the crunch time and the critical hours before the legislation takes place.

There is no way that we will allow Israel to become an autocracy and non-democracy.

So we are here on the streets Saturday nights, Thursdays, anytime that we can

to voice our real concern for this place that we love.

Critics say the new law is designed to shield the current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

from legal threats. He's currently facing a number of corruption trials.

Our Middle East correspondent Anna Foster is in Jerusalem.

As you reflected there, these protests have been going on for weeks now and it's all about

attempts by Israel's government, the most right wing in the country's history,

to try and weaken essentially the power of the judiciary and give MK's members of the Knesset

basically Israeli lawmakers powers to make their own decisions when it comes to things

like appointing judges or when it comes to things like overturning laws essentially.

And that is what has caused a huge fracture at the heart of Israeli society.

And you mentioned there that particular law which was passed overnight in the early hours

of this morning. Consider why a law like this would be important because in Benjamin Netanyahu

you have a current sitting Prime Minister who is also on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

Now that in itself is extraordinary in many ways and this particular law many believe

is designed to make sure that if he is convicted on any of those charges then he will not be able

to be automatically removed from that job of leading the country.

And when you're speaking to people around Israel, what are they saying to you?

Are they saying that they have hope essentially that this can be reversed or are people kind

of resigned to this fact and are really worried about the future of Israel at this point?

Well, when I mentioned to you that fracture in society that is really important because we

talk about these protesters, the fact that many of them are on the streets, there are estimates

that as many as half a million could take to the streets in Israel today. But that only represents

one part of Israeli society. There is also a large portion of society, people like at the

ultra-orthodox for example, who do support that right-wing coalition government. Bear in mind

that they had enough votes and enough seats to be able to put that coalition together

and be in a position to start pushing some of this legislation through.

So there are people who are supportive of those moves by the government to try and take a greater

level of control away, to try and as many of the protesters see it, to try and remove democracy

from this nation altogether. And that I think is where the inherent danger lies because there are

these two very different camps and these two very different opinions and at some point they're going

to have to reconcile and people worry about the long-term impact that that could have on the future

of Israel. That was Anaphosta Injury Islam. Well, as you heard there, the law passed on Thursday

morning to limit the circumstances in which any Prime Minister can be removed from office

is just part of a broader set of changes. This includes the overhaul of the Supreme Court,

which the government aims to do by the end of the month. The governing coalition says it's about

stopping what they call activist judges from interfering with the democratic will. Those

against it include former Supreme Court justices, governors of the central bank and heads of the

security agencies as well as several former prime ministers, including Ehud Barak. He was the leader

between 1999 and 2001 and the leader of the Labour Party until 2011. He's been telling the BBC's

Tim Franks why he's so concerned. It's the most severe crisis since the establishment of this

state. We had been through seven wars and 25 other infinite numbers of operations. We managed

extremely successfully against external threats. This one comes from within. It didn't start yesterday.

I warned against what I called budding fascism on the right wing. Seven years ago, in 2016,

this is an attempt to crash the independence of the judicial system and to push Israel out of

the family of democracies. It becomes so intensive that everyone, all the leading groups, stand firm

and say no. We won't let it, no passer-on, as they say in Spanish. But the truth is,

you can have hundreds of thousands of people on the street. They have a majority in parliament.

They have the desire to get this through in double quick time. Maybe by the end of this month,

there is nothing you can do to stop them. I think that Bibi already understood. He cannot win.

It's not legitimate. So there will be a clash, a constitutional clash without constitution.

The laws will go to the Supreme Court because independent citizens will question the legality

of these laws. And to the best of my judgment, with the presence of these protests, the Supreme

Court will cancel these laws. So they might ignore it, the government. But then the operational

units, let's say the head of secret service or head of police or head of the armed forces,

might fight these contradicting orders, namely the Supreme Court order to dismantle certain

illegal and new settlement. And the minister or the government will order not to do it.

And they know from all their academies or schools, they know that that's the law,

they will do it to have a backing, and they will refuse the orders from the minister and will follow

what the Supreme Court will tell them. And it will deepen the issue. But by then you will see

not 300,000 or 400,000, you will see a million people. And people will go to sleep in sleeping

bags and small tents around the Knesset until the government either capitulates or falls.

So I am very confident that whatever happens, we won't become neither Russia nor Turkey,

but also an angry opponent. Dictatorship will not survive in this vibrant Israeli society.

That was the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak speaking to the BBC's Tim Franks.

Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, there's been growing international concern China could also

invade its smaller neighbour, Taiwan, which it regards as a breakaway territory. I've been

talking to the BBC's Jane Corbyn, who recently travelled to Taiwan to make a documentary on

the threat from China. Well, there's real tension between Taiwan and China, and it's ramped up

really since Tsai Ing-wen became president in 2016 and was elected again in 2020. She's very careful

not to talk openly about going for independence because she thinks Taiwan is de facto already

independent, and she does emphasise continually it will never give up its freedom and its democracy.

Now, the people of Taiwan, we found are moving increasingly in favour of independence, even

the older generation who traditionally had not been as supportive, and the young overwhelmingly

support Tsai Ing-wen and her party, and they believe that Taiwan must be independent. Whereas

China, under Xi Jinping, has emphasised that unification, as he puts it, is the historical

trend and that Taiwan is a breakaway province of China, and it must return to the motherland.

And you were talking, Jane, about breakaway states as China sees it and reunification,

and that really echoes, doesn't it, what Russia said about Ukraine before it invaded. Is Taiwan

worried about a full-blown invasion? They are, and when it happened, they talked about it in terms

of it being a wake-up call that war was not unthinkable, and people have reacted. I went to

Camp 66, which is one of many civilian defence camps that have sprung up in Taipei, where

young people pay to actually go and train to use firearms and to defend themselves and to create

camps and do medical training, etc. Numbers of quadrupled going to these camps in the last year

since the invasion of Ukraine. The young increasingly feel that they, too, in Taiwan,

will have to defend their homeland, and at that training centre, I did speak to one of the young

people. I hope I don't ever need to do this at all, but when it comes to it, I need to be prepared.

You're determined to fight. I think so. This is my home. This is my family. I should.

And of course, what happens with Taiwan also impacts the wider world, doesn't it?

It does. And inside Taiwan, we have seen an increasing campaign of disinformation, cyber

attacks, dirty tricks, laid at China's door. The Taiwanese government accuses China of being

behind 11 million cyber attacks a month. It's one of the countries in the world most affected by

disinformation. I mean, the young of Taiwan have fought back. They have created their own sort of

digital warrior network to take down this disinformation. But it's an uphill struggle.

And as you say, what happens there affects all of us. It is a digitally connected society and

a major industrial power. And Taiwan manufactures 90% of the advanced chips that we all use in our

digital devices. Also, much of the world's shipping passes through the Taiwan strait

between China and Taiwan and would be impacted if there was an invasion or enable blockade.

That was Jane Corbyn and her documentary will be coming soon to BBC viewers internationally.

Australia's indigenous people and their ancestors have lived there for more than 50,000 years.

But as things stand, Australia's constitution makes no mention of them. All that though could

be about to change if the country's Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, gets his way.

Mr Albanese has unveiled the final wording of a constitutional amendment that could see the

first nation people finally recognised in law. Wiping away tears, Mr Albanese implored voters

to back the change. This is a modest request. I say to Australia, don't miss it. Don't miss it.

This is a real opportunity to take up the generous invitation of the Uluru

statement from the heart. This is about the heart. It's also about the head.

Standing alongside Mr Albanese was Thomas Mayer. He's an indigenous activist and said change was

desperately needed. It's not good enough that here in this country the life expectancy of indigenous

peoples is almost 10 years less than other Australians. It's not good enough that proportionately

we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. It's not good enough that our youth

languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future.

It's time for us to have a voice. To Sydney now and our correspondent Phil Mercer.

Not only would the referendum, if it's approved by Australian voters later this year,

acknowledge Australia's First Nations peoples in the Constitution for the first time. It would

also set up what's called an Indigenous voice to Parliament. This would be an independent panel of

indigenous leaders elected by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in this country

to guide and shape government policies. So constitutional change in this country doesn't

come easily since 1901 when Australia became a federated country. It has had 44 referendums,

eight of which have passed. There are those critics of Mr Albanese's referendum plan who believe

that it is an elitist white project that will do little to address chronic disadvantage

in Aboriginal communities. There is dissent on the opposition benches in federal Parliament.

The leader of the National's Party, which is part of the Conservative opposition, David Little Proud,

believes that the voice to Parliament representing Indigenous people would simply add another layer

of bureaucracy. There are other Australians who believe that Australia's Indigenous people don't

need a voice to Parliament. They need a treaty with the government to improve greater self-determination

and decision-making on the ground. So there will be a pretty vociferous debate before the referendum

later this year. That was Phil Mercer. Still to come. When I was suing fentanyl, I became a mess.

I was barely getting by, barely buying food. I'd had to force myself to eat. A report from Southern

California on the rise of fentanyl drug trafficking from Mexico.

Love Genessa is the true crime podcast from the BBC World Service and CBC Podcasts,

investigating the murky world of online romance scams. She was trying to get me to send her money.

Catch up with the whole series now. Search for Love Genessa wherever you found this podcast.

You win their arts. You win their wallet. For a man in Nigeria, it seemed like a fresh start.

The promise of money and a trip to Britain. In reality, it was a trap laid by a Nigerian politician

and his wife who hoped to take his kidney. Today, the couple have been found guilty of human trafficking

by a court in London. Our correspondent Tom Simons told me about the case. Well, it does sound

horrendous, doesn't it? But the lucky thing is that this attempted donation, attempted transplant,

did not go ahead because doctors at the Royal Free Hospital in London who would have done the

transplant in a private wing of that hospital decided that they felt that the potential donor

didn't seem to know what was going on, wasn't medically suitable really, and really blew the

whistle. And the police only found out about this when the potential donor, who we can't name for

legal reasons, went to a police station and told his story. But it is a very unusual case.

Doctors who are aware of this sort of issue say it's very rare in Britain, certainly very rare

for somebody to come to the UK, bringing a donor with them in an attempt to, and as happened in

this case, pretend that the donor was a family member of the person who would receive the donation,

Sonia Aquaramadi, the daughter of the Nigerian senator, in an attempt to really dupe doctors

into going ahead. And the couple involved in this, rich, powerful, have an incredible amount

of influence in Nigeria. They tricked someone who was very poor, essentially, and hoodwinked

him into coming here. Exactly. They are at two ends of the social scale. The potential donor

is a market trader who was selling mobile phone accessories from what are called wheel barrows

in a market in Lagos, trying to make a name for himself, trying to make some money to send back

to his family. At the other end of the social scale is Ike Aquaramadi, a man who is very well

known in Nigeria, who has connections and homes all over the world, and a wife who has been praised

in the Nigerian newspapers on her 50th birthday. And so the difference in power was what really

made this case very relevant and meant that the British police and prosecutors could use modern

slavery law for the first time to deal with an instance of attempted organ trafficking.

And this middleman, Dr Obina Obita, played a crucial role. He was effectively paid by the

senator to find the donor who, it turned out, was a friend of Dr Obina's own donor because

Dr Obina had previously had a transplant himself at the Royal Free Hospital from a young Nigerian

donor who we heard in court was said to be a relative of his but wasn't. So there are still

questions to be asked about this case and the police are continuing to investigate in the UK.

And did they say in court what had happened to this victim?

I understand that he is in the care of a charity in the UK. He's still in the UK. A couple of days

ago spoke to his lawyer in Nigeria who said that he was trying to make the best of the situation he

had found himself in. But the lawyer confirmed to me that at no point did the potential donor,

at no point did he really have an idea of why he was coming to Britain and that the first time he

realised what was going on was when he was sat with a senior doctor, a kidney specialist at

the Royal Free Hospital in London. That was Tom Simons. The World Health Organization says the

West African nation of equatorial Guinea has reported a further eight cases of Marburg disease.

The first was reported last month. The WHO believes that transmission of the deadly disease,

which symptoms include high fever, followed by bleeding and organ failure, is already widespread.

East African countries are also on high alert after the WHO confirmed five

Marburg deaths in northwest Tanzania on Wednesday. Tanzania says it's confident the disease has

been contained. The Africa Centre of Disease Control and the World Health Organization have both

sent in health teams to help. Dr Machidisa Rebekah Moti, the WHO regional director for Africa,

spoke to Reddy Clabby about the Tanzanian outbreak.

This is an outbreak that was confirmed on the 21st of March following a person showing signs

of an unknown disease on the 16th of March. What I'd like to say is that the Tanzanian

authorities have responded very quickly to this and as you know WHO is already on the ground. We

have a national office with a team that went immediately to support the national authorities.

So as far as we know there have been eight confirmed cases and several other suspect cases

in this region in Bukoba, in Kagera region and what is very encouraging is that the response

has been extremely swift. Among those who have been infected are four healthcare workers, one of

whom is deceased. We're following almost 200 contacts of these cases and what is being done

now is of course to make sure that all the preventive interventions are being put in place,

particularly informing people in the community. There's a concern that the first case was buried

not safely in the community and as you know this is a hemorrhagic fever so all body fluids

the potential to infect other people and we're instituting now very strict procedures for

protecting people including families, including relatives around anybody who's ill and particularly

anybody who's being buried. So Dr. Moedu what kind of challenges then does the Mabek virus present?

The mortality rate at the moment we have a case fatality rate of about 60 percent that's very

high and of course the rate of infection is also a concern. It's not as transmissible as the Ebola

virus so we have graded this outbreak as of high risk internally in Tanzania of moderate risk for

the surrounding countries like Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi and of low risk at the international

global level. What would be your message then to people in that in that region who are worried

and don't have enough information about how to bury their loved ones what do you say to them?

What's most important in such a response is to mobilize local people who can explain to the

community what to do. So we want people not to be in touch with body fluids if you've been

nursing somebody at home be very careful about even touching the bedclothes because body fluids

like sweat blood might have infected these this is how people get infected and most importantly

really report this to the nearest health authority follow their advice advise the neighbors and family

to take similar precautions and absolutely do not carry out burials in the way that we like

to bury our loved ones now we must just follow what we advise to do. That was Dr Machideso

Rebecca Moti the WHO's regional director for Africa. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that's

50 times stronger than heroin and was first made in the 1960s for pain relief but it's now responsible

for tens of thousands of drug overdose deaths every year and now Mexican drug cartels are making it

and smuggling it across the border causing further misery. Linda Presley reports from Southern California.

Once you cross the Mexico-US border at San Isidro in Tijuana it's a half hour tram ride to

downtown San Diego this is just one of the many routes along which Fentanyl finds its way into

the United States. I started taking fentanyl when I was about 23-24 and how did you take it?

I started smoking it. We'll call this young woman Susanna she graduated from heroin to fentanyl.

When I was using fentanyl I became a mess I was barely getting by barely buying food I'd

had to force myself to eat. I became very obsessed with the drug that I almost didn't believe that

I could ever stop and it scared me because I thought that there was no hope. Susanna's one

of the lucky ones she survived and is now in residential rehab. So what have you got here?

These are doses of naloxone an agent that's used to temporarily block the effects of

fentanyl and other opioids. This is Dr Stephen Campman the chief medical examiner of San Diego

County. We make them available to our investigators that go to death scenes

where they might encounter powdered fentanyl that they could breathe. Naloxone is squirted

up the nose and although it's now widely available in California it isn't always to hand when it's

needed. In 2021 the last year for which there are reliable figures Dr Campman says 814 people

died of a fentanyl related overdose in the county. The drug wasn't originally made to be taken like

this it was made to help induce anesthesia and surgery and then later good uses found for

treating people with chronic pain or cancer to be administered in small doses over long

periods of time. When people smoke it they get way too much way too fast. Fentanyl is being

pressed into counterfeit painkiller tablets and it's added to heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.

American ports of entry are the first line of defense against fentanyl. Around 120,000

people cross the border from Mexico at San Isidro in Southern California every day.

The director of the port Marisa Marine has her work cut out trying to intercept fentanyl.

It's very lucrative business for the drug smuggling organizations and so a very small

amount will provide very large profits for the organizations working to smuggle this across

our border. For the cartels synthetic drugs like fentanyl have become a massive source of revenue

with deadly consequences for Mexico's northern neighbor. And you can hear more about fentanyl

in San Diego on this week's assignment on the BBC World Service. The Indian opposition leader

Rahul Gandhi is facing the prospect of two years in jail for derogatory comments about the prime

minister. A court in the state of Gujarat has found him guilty of criminal defamation.

Mr Gandhi, who's an MP for the Congress party, will appeal against the sentence

and he's been granted bail. Our South Asia regional editor and Barrister Neshwar Rajan told me more.

The Congress party says that the case itself was brought by a covertly and dictatorial BJP

government because Mr Rahul Gandhi was exposing the dark deeds. This all refers to a speech Mr

Gandhi made in 2019 during an election rally when he was saying why all thieves have a surname

called Modi. But actually he was referring to some of those who made economic offenses,

who fled the country and they had the surname Modi. So many people thought he was having a

dig at the prime minister and that's why the governing BJP leader from Gujarat state, from

where Mr Modi hails from, they went to court on defamation saying that he insulted the entire

community because people have the surname Modi in people in western India. So now the court has

given him in a two-year sentence but he can now appeal, he's been given bail, he can go to higher

court against this verdict. But this is all part of this ongoing political drama in India.

Now many opposition parties, they accuse the government of trying to target opposition leaders

by filing cases so that they cannot talk against this government and this trend is continuing.

But the governing BJP rejects all these accusations and they say no one is above the law.

And the opposition and the government of course have their eye on the elections next year. What

kind of impact is this kind of thing going to have? The governing BJP can go to the people

saying that you know he has been convicted, he has been given two-year sentence but then the

Congress can also go to the people saying that they are being victimized for speaking against

the government's misdeeds. That was embarrassing at Rajan. An investigation by the BBC has revealed

that English Premier League clubs took 81 domestic flights to and from 100 matches earlier this year

and as our sports editor Dan Rowan reports this has unsurprisingly raised questions about their

environmental impact. This investigation found that in just two months there was evidence Premier

League clubs had taken 81 domestic flights across 100 matches including cup competitions.

Flights lasted an average of 43 minutes with the shortest just 27 minutes.

But the data also pointed to evidence that 37 of the 81 flights for players

had an associated so-called positioning flight beforehand. These are often empty.

In a statement the Premier League said it recognised the need to take action on climate

change and was committed to reducing its overall climate impact. The FA said it was a matter for

the clubs but with domestic flights known to be much worse for the environment than road or rail

travel these findings will raise questions about whether the top of the sport is putting marginal

gains in performance ahead of sustainability and setting a poor example. That was Dan Rowan.

Now I'm hoping this next story is going to be a good news story because I've had five cups of

coffee already today and it's one of the world's most popular drinks. About two billion cups are

consumed every day and a new study has tracked coffee drinkers in the US and it's provided

fresh insight into its effect on human health. Peter Goffin reports.

I can't start the day without my coffee. People say it all the time and this study

shows that getting your morning cup really does make you more active but also has an impact on

your sleep and heart rhythms. Researchers at the University of California tracked 100 people

asking them to drink coffee for two days then abstained from caffeine for two days at various

times over the course of two weeks. They found that coffee drinkers experienced a significant

increase in premature ventricular contractions that feeling when your heart takes an extra beat.

Doctors say these palpitations are not usually a risk for healthy people and there was no

significant increase in another type of palpitations premature atrial contractions which are sometimes

listed as a side effect of caffeine consumption. The study also showed that on days when participants

drank coffee they slept for 36 minutes less on average and the more coffee they drank the less

they slept. Despite the lack of shut eye though people took an average of 1000 more steps when

they'd had coffee. The researchers say it's unclear why though it may be that caffeine gave

them more energy or motivation. What is clear is that taking an extra 1000 steps a day has been

linked to a decrease in mortality from all causes which means in essence the more active you are

the longer you're likely to live. That was Peter Goffin and that's all from us for now but there

will be of course 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 globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk.

You can also find us on Twitter at Global NewsPod. This edition was mixed by Lewis Olsoc

and the producer was Marion Straughan. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Charlotte Gallagher. Until

next time, goodbye.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.