Global News Podcast: Russia arrests woman for pro-war blogger killing

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

from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are

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I'm Janet Joliel and at 14 hours GMT on Monday the 3rd of April, these are our main stories.

Russian investigators have arrested a 26-year-old woman in connection with a cafe bombing

that killed a pro-war blogger in St. Petersburg. The head of NATO says Finland will be formally

welcomed into the alliance on Tuesday. The former president of Kosovo Hashimtachi has pleaded

not guilty to war crimes at the start of his trial in The Hague.

Also in this podcast? It has a battery life of 25 minutes. That was not a problem because you

couldn't hold this up for 25 minutes. It was so heavy. We speak to the man who made the first

mobile phone call 50 years ago. Russia is calling the bomb blast that killed a top

military blogger on Sunday a terrorist attack. Investigators have detained a 26-year-old Russian

woman in connection with the explosion which occurred at a cafe in St. Petersburg. As a blogger,

Vladimir Tartatsky was meeting members of the public. Media reports say he died after a statuette

he'd been given by a woman exploded. The spokeswoman for the Russian investigative committee, Svetlana

Petrenko, confirmed the detained suspect was believed to be that woman. The Russian investigative

committee in cooperation with police detained Daria Trepova on suspicion of being involved

with the explosion in a cafe in St. Petersburg. The necessary investigative procedures are now

being carried out with her. We are trying to identify the motive of the crime. Investigators

will decide on the form of detention for her. The authorities also say that Daria Trepova has

previously been detained for taking part in protests against the war in Ukraine. Russia's

anti-terrorism committee has blamed the bombing on the Ukrainian secret services and supporters

of the jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The Russia editor of BBC monitoring Vitaliy

Shevchenko told us more about the detained woman. The Russian Interior Ministry has published what

seems to be an excerpt from her questioning in which she admits that she had brought the statuette

that exploded. But when she's asked about who gave it to her, she says, I'd like to answer that question

later. Now Daria Trepova, she doesn't really have a name or a following. All we know is that she's

been taking an interest in politics. Last year she was arrested at an anti-war rally and her

husband who is now abroad, he says, he's been telling the media that he doesn't believe that

Daria could do anything like this, that she could have willingly and knowingly killed a human being.

The Kremlin is calling this bombing a terrorist act and is blaming Ukraine, accusing Ukraine of

being behind this. But in reality, there could be a number of suspects, couldn't there Vitaliy,

not just anti-war activists, but maybe even supporters of the war.

Indeed, Volodymyr Tatarovsky, the blogger who was killed, he was one of a number of

people who are known as war reporters in Russia. He was at the extreme end of the war reporter

scale. And within that group, he was accused by other people like him of being too soft on

Ukrainians, even though his views were pretty extreme. So given that he was part of this very

volatile crowd, it's easy to imagine that he had some enemies there. But of course,

the officials in Moscow, they've been saying it's the Ukraine that did it and they also

have been pointing the finger at followers of Alexei Navalny, the jailed Russian opposition

leader as well. Officials in Russia say that they have been involved as well. And this comes

months after the assassination of a high-profile figure, the daughter of a Putin ally, Alexander

Dugin. There is speculation there could be a connection there. Could you just tell us,

how shocking is this bombing in the cafe? I mean, we hear all the time about violence

in Ukraine, but in Russia itself, how much of a shock is this causing?

It's extraordinary. In fact, I can't really remember the last time a cafe exploded in Russia

killing somebody that prominent. But of course, parallels are being drawn with the murder of

Daria Dugina. And people who blame Ukraine says they've been saying that this is something that

Ukraine is clearly capable of. Vitaly Shevchenko. Ukraine has meanwhile rejected any suggestion

that the bombed out city of Bakhmut is now in the hands of Russia. The head of the Wagner

mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigoshin, had made the claim in a video after raising the Russian flag

over Bakhmut City Hall. It is the 2nd of April, 11 p.m. local time. The building behind me is the

city administration. This is a Russian flag. From a legal point of view, Bakhmut has been taken.

It is ours. The enemy is concentrated in the western parts of Bakhmut.

But a spokesman for President Zelensky described this as a

funny fake and urged people to remain calm in the face of what he said were invented victories.

Russia has been fighting to capture Bakhmut since the middle of last year with casualties

now numbering in the tens of thousands. Our correspondent in Kiev, Hugo Besheger,

told us more about Mr Prigoshin's video message and Ukraine's reaction to it.

He is saying that the Russian flag is now flying over Bakhmut and we just had reaction

here from the head of the president's office saying that Bakhmut is Ukrainian and essentially he

is dismissing the claim that Bakhmut is Russian. So it is very, very difficult to independently

verify those claims and counterclaims. For a very long time we have been talking about Bakhmut.

Fighting there has been intense. Both Russia and Ukraine have suffered heavy losses. But this

city is in a victory there, is symbolic for both sides. The Ukrainians say that

holding it is key for the defense of larger cities in the east. The Ukrainians are expected to

launch a major offensive to try to take back territory that's now under occupation. So they

say that it is vital to hold Bakhmut. And for the Russians capturing Bakhmut would be a rare

victory in this war. And I think the leader of the Wagner group wants this victory because this

is the group that has been leading the fight there in this battle for this city in the east of the

country. Hugo Besheger, one of the justifications Vladimir Putin has given for his invasion of

Ukraine, was Kiev's interest in joining NATO and his claim that the alliance was coming too

close to Russia's borders. And yet Moscow's aggression over the past year has only served

to push its neighbours nearer to the west. Now the head of NATO Jens Stoltenberg has

announced that Finland will be joining the bloc within hours. This is a historic week.

Tomorrow we will welcome Finland as the 31st member of NATO. Making Finland safer and our

alliance stronger. We will raise the Finnish flag for the first time here at the NATO headquarters.

It will be a good day for Finland's security, for Nordic security and for NATO as a whole.

I put it to our Europe regional editor Paul Moss that Finland would not be joining NATO this week

if Russia had not invaded Ukraine. Finland's always had a strange relationship with first

the Soviet Union then Russia. During the Cold War Finland really didn't do anything without

checking it was okay with Moscow and certainly wouldn't have joined NATO but the invasion

of Ukraine changed all of that. But even since the Cold War Russia and Finland did have quite

good relations lots of business links and tourist links well that's all over isn't it. Finland's now

firmly in the NATO camp it's building a huge fence along this 1300 kilometre border the business and

tourism links have waned away and yes NATO's identity now expanded to include Finland which

is bringing I should say a pretty large armed forces well-trained group every Finnish person

man mailed as conscription so they all do military service. It makes a big difference to NATO as well

as Finland. And yet this had been a joint application by Finland and Sweden but Sweden has not yet

made the cut. No Turkey is what this is all about Turkey or anyone joining NATO needs to get

unanimity from all the other members Turkey has some problems with Sweden it says it says that

some of the Kurds welcomed by Sweden are terrorists and it's also objected to a Swedish arms embargo

on Turkey. Now Sweden has changed some of this it lifted the arms embargo it says it will crack down

on some of the people Turkey thinks of as terrorists but instead it's since Turkey has said no we're

still not happy they're basically using the leverage here to to get as many concessions as they can

bear in mind there's a presidential election coming up in Turkey so the president is clearly

trying to sort of sound like a strong nationalist figure. And Finland's entry into NATO comes just

a couple of days after it held elections. Yeah funny isn't it you wait forever for one Finland

story in the news and you get two at once indeed yes the social democrat Sanamarin has lost very

narrowly a conservative national coalition party has got the most votes their main issue there was

the economy nothing to do with Russia in fact huge debts piling up in Finland and the conservatives

one with an argument that basically called for spending cuts now there will be negotiations

to form a coalition but it looks like Sanamarin has lost power. Paul Moffs as international

investigators gather evidence of atrocities in Ukraine a war crimes trial concerning events in

another part of Europe has begun in The Hague the former president of Kosovo Hashim Dachi and three

co-defendants have been appearing before a special court they stand accused of an array of crimes

including murder torture and persecution during the independence war in the late 1990s against

Serbia. Here's prosecutor Alex Whiting. This case is also about the victims and their families

victims of terrible crimes who have waited more than 20 years for justice

victims who have been told again and again over those last 20 years get over it

move on that is in the past stop talking about it turn the page justice is too hard

justice is too expensive all of those things are easy to say when you are not a victim

in the years since that war of the 1990s and Kosovo's eventual independence

Mr. Thachi has served as its prime minister foreign minister and president he denies all

the charges against him we heard more from our Balkans correspondent Guy Deloni

opening statements from the prosecution have started we'll also be hearing from council

for the victims which as Alex Whiting was saying there it's a very important aspect

of this particular trial they'll be explaining a little about how people were affected by these

alleged crimes we've heard very briefly from Mr. Thachi and his three co-defendants they've

confirmed they're not guilty pleas but I think what's very important is that the prosecution

has emphasised that it's not the Kosovo Liberation Army that's on trial but these four individuals

who are accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes and they said that they were

responsible for the murders of 102 people and the forced disappearance of 20 others

during that conflict in the late 1990s and already we've been seeing the prosecution

producing documents found in the defendants homes showing there was a chain of command in the KLA

and that the defendants the prosecution says could not deny knowledge or responsibility

for the alleged crimes and it's also produced evidence showing that the KLA targeted political

opponents for illegal detention so not just ethnic Serbs our Roma people but ethnic Albanians as well

who were considered to be political opponents and the prosecution also making the point that the

families of the victims have waited a very long time to see this day in court why has it taken

so long to bring these charges it's staggering isn't it how slow justice can move when it comes to

these sort of crimes and this isn't even international justice it's a court of Kosovo

which has been set up in the Hague with international officials so that you can't have the kind of

witness intimidation and interference that's been a problem in previous attempts to put former

leaders of the KLA on trial so we have seen and for example the former prime minister of Kosovo

Ramu Sharedinai twice tried and twice acquitted at the international criminal tribunal for the

former Yugoslavia but it's it's been very difficult to prosecute other people especially

when they're at the head of government in Kosovo and that's really rankled with victims who say

they've never found justice for the crimes committed against them and briefly if Mrs Thatcher

is found guilty that won't be accepted in Kosovo but depends who you ask I mean some people still

see him as a hero of the liberation and they do swallow this line that it's the entirety of the

KLA and the liberation struggle that was on trial that's why you're seeing these protests against

the trial Kaidolani now think back to a time before these sounds were a part of everyday life

well 50 years ago today marty cooper of the Motorola telecoms company made the first ever

public mobile phone call but the brick-like handset he used back in 1973 was a far cry from the

sleek and powerful smartphones we use now our technology editor Zoe Kleinman has interviewed

mr cooper who's now 94 there were no cordless phones there were no large-scale integrated

circuits the digital camera hadn't been invented the internet didn't exist and i was standing on

6th avenue in new york holding this new gadget called a cell phone and i'm demonstrating it to

a journalist like you i wanted to show him the freedom that comes out of being able to

take a phone be able to call anybody in the world and to be anywhere at any time and the

occurred to me that a good person to call would be my counterpart in the bell system the bell

system is a monopoly that if you wanted to have a telephone in the united states and many other

countries in the world you have to rent it from the from this monopoly i took out my phone book

that gives you an idea what primitive times these were and i called my counterpart in the bell system

and amazingly he answered and i said joel i'm calling you a cell phone but a real cell phone

a personal handheld portable cell phone to this day joel does not remember that phone call and i

don't believe him but he doesn't dispute that i made the call tell me how it worked that first

model of yours this phone weighs over a kilo it has a battery life of 25 minutes that was not a

problem because you couldn't hold this up for 25 minutes it was so heavy and all it did was make

phone calls you could make a call make a call and receive it but it could call anywhere in the world

and we could not make it any smaller the battery alone was about a third of the of the

photo battery technology has improved over the years and of course we have integrated circuits

now and every every cell phone now every mobile phone has a supercomputer as you know i never

could imagine that either hard to believe he's 94 that was marty cooper the mobile phone pioneer

speaking to jerry cleiman still to come and this feels like a direct attack on queer people just in

general across the country a proposed law to restrict drag shows ignites controversy in kentucky

lives less ordinary is the podcast from the bbc world service that seeks out extraordinary

stories from around the globe i'm in a trench in ukraine with shells flying overhead petrified

it's a window into other people's worlds it can't be separated from the addictive nature of my

personality and it's available now feeling incredibly alive when death was at its closest

search for lives less ordinary wherever you get your bbc podcasts welcome back to the global news

podcast six years ago a suicide bomber here in the uk killed 22 people many of them children at a

concert in the english city of manchester now a father and daughter martin and eve hibbert who

were left with severe disabilities have filed legal action against the conspiracy theorist

who claims the attack was faked martin was paralyzed from the waist down eve suffered

severe brain injuries and will need care for the rest of her life our disinformation and social

media correspondent mariana spring told us more about what's being called a landmark case during

the original investigation i revealed the kinds of conspiracy theories and hate that had been used

to target martin eve and other manchester arena and terror attack survivors and also the tactics

which spilled offline and there was one conspiracy theorist in particular a man called richard d

hall who'd posted online about tracking down survivors of the manchester arena attack in real

life um to their homes and their workplaces one of those is eve hibbert and he later admitted

that he had spied on eve from a vehicle parked outside her home as you can imagine for martin

and eve and the other manchester arena survivors to hear that um this was spilling over into real

life was was really scary and left them feeling very unsafe and it's part of that that has propelled

martin today and his decision to file this claim against richard d hall for harassment and for

defamation which is a landmark case here in the uk as you say a landmark case here in the uk first

time it's happened here in the uk but it has happened in the us and a lot of people will have

heard about a very similar case over the false claims made about the sandy hook school shooting

yes um this case involving alex jones over in america and alex jones is um a talk show host

um he's an infamous conspiracy theorist and one who has pushed these really quite shocking

conspiracies about the sandy hook shooting that happened in 2012 um in the us and suggesting that

it was staged it was faked um and it was the families of people affected by that attack

who decided to take him to court um and they won and he was ordered by that a us court to pay nearly

1.5 billion dollars in damages we don't expect quite so much money to be involved here but martin

at least and his legal team have told me that they really think this could set a precedent and

certainly that the it shows us how that the case that unfolded in the in the us has set a precedent

here in the uk and perhaps could further around the world because conspiracy theorists like richard

d hall just won't accept reality they they persist in repeating these lies and causing distress so

it's a very difficult case isn't it because you have to deal with people like that but at the same

time there are also concerns about freedom of expression there are and uh it's interesting

since the investigation went out um at the time i confronted richard d hall at the market store

where he worked and where he was selling a book in dvds promoting these theories and he told me

i was wrong about how he operated but since then he's posted online um continuing to suggest that

the manchester arena attack was staged in some ways and also taking aim at other disappearances

or disasters that have happened um in response to a legal letter sent by martin's team um he again

doubled down and continued to push this stuff um how it's dealt with is a question that policy makers

social media companies um people all over the world are grappling with um and there is always that

question do we risk silencing or censoring people um i certainly think for martin and having interviewed

him on several occasions now he strongly believes in freedom of expression but for him there's a

line and he feels like it's the courts that are the only place he can seek the justice that he so

wants mariana spring could an artificial nose help to fight wildfires with the climate heating up

recent years have seen record-breaking fires in australia north america and europe one hot spot

is the u.s state of california and is preparing to test a piece of technology which could reduce the

billions of dollars worth of damage caused by wildfires by sniffing them out in their first few

minutes peter goffin reports more than seven thousand wildfires raged across california last

year alone homes were burned entire towns were evacuated nine people were killed firefighters

are alerted to these blazes in a number of ways ai-assisted cameras drones nasa satellites even

lookouts stationed in watchtowers the problem is that by the time the flames and smoke can be seen

by the human eye or the camera lens the fire may already have spread out of control the state fire

service cal fire is about to launch a pilot project that uses solar powered sensors to detect

chemical changes in the air in the earliest moments of a blaze before a smoldering burn

becomes an open flame karsten brinkschelter is the head of dryad networks the german startup that

developed the technology he says it could speed emergency response times by valuable minutes

or even hours think of it like an electronic nose we can detect gases like hydrogen carbon monoxide

and all teleorganic compounds and it's using artificial intelligence built into the sensors

to detect the typical smell of a fire we then sent an alarm over a wireless network that we

equally also install in the forest enabling the sensors to send their alarms and their coordinates

directly to the fire begets the technology has already been piloted on a small scale in more

than 20 places across the us canada and europe the cal fire trial will deploy around 400 sensors

and monitor a stretch of redwood forest roughly the size of 400 football fields the united nations

has warned that as the effects of climate change worsen wildfires will become more intense and more

frequent increasing by 14 percent by 2030 and 50 percent by the end of this century and wildfires

are drivers of climate change too emitting tons of carbon and destroying trees and plants which

absorb co2 from the atmosphere peter goffin one of the most prominent indigenous leaders of the

past century in australia has died unipingu an elder of the yangu people was 74 his filmersa

in sydney his name meant sacred rock that stands against time and he spent a lifetime fighting for

indigenous land rights and recognition here in australia he challenged powerful mining companies

he negotiated with them for the benefit of indigenous people safe to say the passing of

unipingu at the age of 74 will bring about a huge amount of sadness around the country and people

are saying many of them that he will have a lasting legacy and that legacy being one of hope

filmersa here in britain the prime minister rishi sunak has been unveiling plans for a new police

task force to crack down on gangs that sexually exploit children and it's ignited a row over racial

profiling after members of the government linked the problem to british pakistani men

mrs sunak who's of indian heritage claimed that political correctness had prevented action from

being taken against non-white criminals here's our political correspondent ioni wells an independent

inquiry into child sexual abuse that concluded last year found that police and councils still

don't understand the risk of organized gangs grooming children in their areas and aren't

collecting data which would help identify abusers ministers say this new task force will

support police investigations and will record suspects ethnicity to gather better data on the

makeup of gangs the home secretary suella braverman also outlined plans to change the law so that

anyone working with children in england would be legally obliged to report suspicions of abuse

she said some authority figures had previously looked the other way because of a fear of being

accused of racism the independent inquiry referred to there found that grooming gangs in the north

of england consisted mostly of men of pakistani heritage however an extensive government report

in 2020 concluded that across britain as a whole offenders are overwhelmingly white

saba kaiser was the ethnic minority ambassador to that independent inquiry it is very very dangerous

for the government to turn child sexual abuse into a matter of color child sexual abuse does not

have a skin color it doesn't have a religion it doesn't have a culture child sexual abuse does

not discriminate and so therefore it is really really important that we as a nation have a singular

societal response to this issue to this pandemic of child sexual abuse instances in this country

disappointedly i would say that the government has yet to demonstrate a shown acknowledgement of

the scale of change that's needed to create and sustain a national movement against the rape and

sexual abuse of children saba kaiser now to the us state of kentucky where a proposed law to restrict

drag shows has ignited public debate the governing republicans say the rise of so-called family

friendly drag shows is wrongly exposing children to sexual content james menendez reports from kentucky

it's an unlikely setting a community sports hall in frankfort the state capital of kentucky

frankfort's really just a small quiet town of painted wooden houses and neat lawns and yet

here on the basketball court under a glitter ball a series of drag artists are strutting their stuff

but the republicans who control the state assembly have drag performers in their sites

they're trying to push through a law that would ban drag in public places and anywhere where there

are children if there's any hint of sexual content tonight's show has been organized by espadjet

who herself performs as jet black honestly my biggest fear my biggest worry is that it is a limit

of self expression because drag and burlesque and all of it it's ultimately an art form that people

use to be able to feel like themselves to be able to embrace sides of themselves that they can't

necessarily in their everyday life and this feels like a direct attack on queer people just in general

across the country do you want to sit down sure i mean yeah why don't we just sit across the

corner of the table that's probably best so what do you proponents of the measures have to say

here's republican state senator lindsay tichner drag's been around forever but we've never seen

it proposed as family friendly we've never seen children be invited into those types of performances

and so we started seeing more and more of this over the last year creeping into different parts

of kentucky all you know across the state in different places drag queen story hour family

friendly drag shows and different events and so as we watched more of this creep into kentucky

we started to think this is not appropriate for kids they're not sitting there they're they're dancing

they're performing they're doing sexually explicit things and now they're trying to reshape it to

normalize it in my opinion to sexualize children and on the other side of the political aisle democratic

state senator caron burg she knows only too well the harm that prejudice can do her transgender

son henry recently took his own life she tells me the bill is dangerous and misunderstands what drag

is about they are taking drag which is basically a cultural celebration of the lgbtq community

that has nothing to do with disrobing taking off clothing being sexually promiscuous or

overt these are people that are celebrating beauty and they are making it that because

it makes them uncomfortable that was democratic state senator caron burg ending that report by

james menendez 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 podcast or the topics covered you can send us an

email the address is global podcast at bbc.co.uk you can also find us on twitter at global news pod

this edition was mixed by alicia thirsting the producer was allison davies the editor as always

is caron martin i'm janette jaleel until next time goodbye

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.