Global News Podcast: Spain's Conservatives claim election victory

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

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Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. This edition is published in the early hours of Monday, the 24th of July.

The Conservative People's Party in Spain has claimed victory in the general election,

but it may not be able to form a government after its far-right allies Vox did badly.

More protests and last-ditch talks in Israel ahead of a parliamentary vote on controversial

plans to curb the power of the courts and the US TV weatherman who quit his job after receiving

death threats for reporting on climate change. Also in the podcast, no let-up in the fighting in

Sudan 100 days after the conflict began and later. Netflix releases its first ever original

African animation series. Will the far-right enter government in Spain for the first time

since the Franco dictatorship ended nearly half a century ago? Well, that had seemed

eminently possible before Sunday's election. But with the results in, it is looking a lot less

likely. As expected, the Conservative Popular Party won the largest number of seats to the delight

of its supporters. But the party's far-right allies Vox did badly, losing a third of their seats.

And so the right-wing bloc overall is short of a majority. Nevertheless, the popular party leader,

Alberto Núñez Fejo, says he will try to form a government. But he has fewer natural allies than

the current socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, whose party did better than expected.

So what should we make of it all? Sergei Forcada Freixas is our correspondent in Madrid.

Tonight we have a winner, the popular party, but it's a bittersweet

win for them because even if you add the MPs from far-right box, they fall short from a majority

and that was their goal, trying to reach a government, either in a coalition with the

far-right box or either with support in parliament. So even by winning, they may still be in opposition.

But that's not a victory either for Pedro Sanchez. The incumbent Prime Minister,

the socialist leader Pedro Sanchez, may also fall short from a majority. So in the end,

we may not have even a winner or even a Prime Minister for weeks. The most scenario that may

end up happening is actually going for new elections. Why did Vox do so badly? They lost

quite a lot of seats. It's actually that maybe they picked their ceiling in the 2019 elections.

When they got over 50 seats, they only got 10 seats before the 2019 elections. I think that what

happened is that those who had voted Vox in the past wanted Nune Fejo to be the president, the next

Spanish Prime Minister and oust socialist leader Pedro Sanchez. So I think that Nune Fejo managed

to capitalise part of the vote from Vox and also, to be fair, bring the debates. Santiago

Vazcal is the Vox leader, so he didn't manage to put his message out in a clear way. Nevertheless,

the conservative leader Nune Fejo will get the first chance at forming a government. Could he

perhaps persuade some of those smaller parties to join the popular party and Vox and enter government?

It's very difficult because the problem for those minority parties, like, for example,

looking at the Basque parties, for example, or some parties from the Canary Islands, they may

be okay with the conservatives. The problem is here. They don't want to have anything to do with

Vox. So that's the problem. If the conservatives need Vox, then they can't really have anyone else.

And with the results that we got in these elections, that's Nune Fejo's problems.

He can't rely on Vox plus other parties. So that's why this is a bittersweet victory

for the conservative candidate. Sergei Foucault de Freixas in Madrid.

Almost every weekend this year in Israel, thousands of people have taken to the streets over

government plans to curb the power of the courts. As parliament debated the first of those proposals

on Sunday, thousands of protesters gathered in Jerusalem.

Well, as the standoff in Israeli society approaches a possible climax, the Israeli Prime

Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in hospital after having a pacemaker fitted in an emergency

operation overnight. He says he is doing well and expects to be discharged in time for the vote

in parliament on Monday. Nevertheless, the Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited him in

hospital on Sunday for last-ditch talks. I asked our Middle East editor, Sebastian Asher,

exactly what the two men might have been discussing.

I think this is another effort by President Herzog to try to reach some kind of consensus about

this overhaul. He led efforts to try and get talks between the government, the opposition,

over several months, which haven't really gone anywhere. So this is very much a last-ditch

effort. President Herzog was actually in the US most of this past week. He's just arrived back,

so he rushed to the hospital where the Prime Minister is being treated. It seems to be in

pretty good shape. Nothing has come out of the meeting, but before he went in, President Herzog

described the situation Israel as an emergency and saying that agreement must be reached.

Also, President Herzog will be meeting leaders of the opposition later this evening to Yala Pid,

who was the previous Prime Minister, and Benny Gantz. Obviously, he's trying to do some last-ditch

mediation ahead of a vote that's due to take place on Monday.

They've been debating this in their connector. What is expected to happen in that vote?

The coalition that Benjamin Netanyahu finally managed to get together in the last election

is bigger than the ones he's had before, and at the moment, it's expected to hold.

So there's a second and third reading of the bill with the votes on the maps meant to happen

on Monday and to be over by this time tomorrow. So if the process isn't stopped, if that doesn't

happen, yes, this vote will go through. This is, remember, the only the first part of this agenda

that Mr. Netanyahu's current government, which is the most far right in Israel's history,

is intending to push through over the coming months.

Our Middle East regional editor, Sebastian Usher. The Greek authorities are carrying out more

evacuations on the island of Rhodes as firefighters battle three wildfires there.

Earth-moving machines were brought in to create firewalls to try to prevent the blazes reaching

densely forested areas. Thousands of people have already reached safety, including these British

tourists. We were told by the police to evacuate. We went and packed a bag. When we came back, fire

was halfway down the hill and we were keen to get on the bus and get away. It was a dangerous

situation and there was people that were fleeing with just a few belongings and as they were leaving

the hotel, the oil tank blew up and the hotel was flattened basically. Packing my stuff in my room

because I'm not believing this, then the alarm goes, do, do, do, do. Where I stayed is a hotel

for 800 people. There wasn't enough coaches to move 800 people, but the fire was coming.

I walked 12 miles in this heat yesterday. It took me four hours, a long seven or eight

hundred other people. It is horrendous. I've never been so scared my entire life to find experience.

Well, emergency services are also dealing with fires in other parts of Greece, including on

Corfu, where residents of a number of settlements have been told to leave. Greece, like much of

southern Europe, is in the midst of an intense heat wave. Julian Marshall managed to speak to

Olga Kefaloyani, Greece's tourism minister who's currently in roads. It's been a tough 72 hours.

I myself just arrived in the island of Rhodes. Only a small part of the island has actually been

affected by the wildfires. Still, this required for a mass evacuation and we had actually one of the

largest operations ever. 16,000 were transported by land and 3,000 by sea.

It's actually important to stress that the airport has been functioning as normal. We never had a

disruption with flights. So our main concern is the safety of locals, safety of our visitors,

and also to provide the necessary accommodation to all our visitors who were evacuated from the

hotels. And have you been briefed at all on the extent of the destruction caused by these wild

fires? Because of course not just tourists affected, but also local residents. The truth is that the

part of the island that was affected was mainly the part with a lot of hotels, also some of the

locals. But it's also important to stress that locals have been very, very helpful. We have a lot

of volunteers. Of course you understand that it was almost impossible to find 20,000 hotel rooms

on an island which is operating on high season. And of course it's one of the most attractive

destinations, maybe the most attractive destination in Greece. So we needed to temporarily house the

evacuees in hotels, but also in conference halls and sports centers and schools.

Are the firefighters still struggling to contain the fires? Are they getting foreign assistance?

We do have foreign assistance, but this is a part of a system that exists. So there's solidarity

between countries. Of course when it comes to the wildfire we remain very vigilant.

The brave firemen have been working around the clock to ensure that the fire doesn't get out of

control. Minister, how do you counteract though the obviously very negative publicity this is going

to generate around the world images of tourists having to flee their hotels because of wildfires?

Look it's important to stress again as I said that this is only in a small area of the whole

island. Everything else is operating as normal and it's very important that everybody was safely

evacuated. Olga Kefaloyani on road talking to Julian Marshall. Pope Francis meanwhile has waded

into the debate about extreme weather. In his weekly address in St Peter's Square he called

for leaders to take urgent action to combat climate change. We are experiencing here and in

many countries extreme climatic events. Various regions are affected by abnormal heat waves and

devastating fires. On the other in many places there are rainstorms and floods. I renew my appeal

to the leaders of nations to do something more concrete to limit polluting emissions. It is an

urgent challenge and cannot be put off. It concerns everyone. One of the country's experiencing

record breaking temperatures at the moment is the US. Chris Gloninga is a meteorologist in the state

of Iowa but he's had to give up his job as a local TV weatherman after receiving death threats for

linking extreme weather events to climate change in his reports. He's been talking to Audrey Brown.

Ever since I was a child I was interested in the weather when Hurricane Bob hit my hometown

back in 1991 and that passion just grew over time and I stayed in broadcast for that 18 year

span of time and prior to Iowa I made it to Boston which in the United States is a top 10

television market. It's where I started the country's first weekly series on climate change.

That recognition that I received from developing that series landed me the job in Iowa as chief

meteorologist. The station in Iowa wanted to fill a void because no one was really talking

about climate change and connecting the dots between extreme weather and what was happening

with our changing climate. I was there a total of two years before I decided to move on following

the death threat and obsessive emails that I received. What happened because if you've been

a meteorologist was this the first time you'd spoken about it? Audrey no it wasn't. In Boston

even I received pushback in talking about climate change but in Iowa it was instant. I started hearing

criticism and to me that was strange because the GDP in Iowa is largely based on agriculture,

makes up 11 percent the total GDP of the state and wind power makes up 65 percent of the electric

grid so the costs for energy are incredibly low and these wind turbines are supplementing

farmers income. So the pushback I received confused me. Last summer I received a death

threat and then harassing emails from the same individual for a couple of weeks into police,

made contact with him, he pled guilty to harassment in the third degree, paid $105 fine but that

really wasn't enough and it ended up in my going to therapy for about a year to try to figure out

what would happen next for me and my wife as we moved forward. You had been in this job for how

long? I had been in the job for a year before I received the death threat but I'd say the year

before the death threat there was pushback by people not liking that I was talking about climate

change. They thought I was bringing politics into my weathercast. You hear the common misinformation

that the climate's always been changing. How can humans be responsible for it? They blame anything

else but humans and I tried to explain that climate scientists have spent their careers

figuring out every other possibility other than anthropogenic causes but everything goes back

to us and burning fossil fuels. Chris Gloninger, a meteorologist in the US state of Iowa.

Politicians around the world are becoming increasingly worried about deep fakes, videos of

them saying or doing things they haven't actually done. The footage can be extremely convincing

and it takes time to work out what is real and what is fake. The technology firm Intel now claims

to have the world's first real-time fake detection system. It's called Fake Catcher and the BBC's

North America technology reporter James Clayton has tried it out. These days it's not totally clear

what's fake and what's not like this online video of President Zelensky telling Ukrainians to put

down their arms and surrender to Russia. It was fake but as AI developments make deep fakes

easier to make and more convincing, detecting them has become more and more important.

It's a problem that Intel claims to have solved by detecting blood under the skin.

Their new system is called Fake Catcher claiming to give real-time answers to whether a video is

genuine or not. We asked the question, what makes us humans? The answer is in our blood.

This is Ilke Demir, senior research scientist at Intel Labs in an advert for the system.

When your heart pumps blood, our veins are changing color and that color change is called

Photophylletismography, PPG for short. We take those PPG signals from many places on your face

and convert them into PPG maps and then we develop deep learning approach on top of that to

classify into fake or real videos. In essence the system is looking for tiny signs of blood

pumping below your skin, something deep fakes wouldn't have. Intel claims the system

is 96% accurate and can work on all kinds of deep fakes, so we decided to test it out ourselves

with Ilke at Intel's offices in Silicon Valley. We got a number of deep fakes and real videos of

Donald Trump and Joe Biden and then we put them through the system one by one. Liability protections

for companies are more important than individual financial relief for teachers or sanitation workers.

So in the beginning when it sees like very little it may say that okay this is this a PPG it looks

real and then it accumulates and finds it at the end 84% accuracy fake. That was correct.

Today as the sitting president in the White House I still believe that marriage should be

between a man and a woman. I'm a traditionalist okay really. Fake with 66% accuracy. This is

fake. Yay but it took time for it to get because I think the overall face resolution is low in this

one too so I think that is also affecting that. The system was good at finding fakes but not so good

at working out that a video was real kind of important. I'd be working with the leaders of

Congress now. I think fake. That is actually real. Really so that means like the PPG signals are

broken at some point so okay. Here's a problem with the system. It doesn't analyze for audio yet

so often videos that seemed fairly obviously real were still labeled as fake. Matt Groh at MIT

thinks the tech is interesting but wants more information around its effectiveness. I would

want to see a lot of testing done by third parties to audit the effectiveness and accuracy of these

algorithms. I don't doubt the stats that they listed in their initial evaluation but what I do

doubt is whether these stats are relevant to real world context. Deep fakes are going to become

more and more of a problem. Perhaps fake catcher will be part of the mix of tools people use to

catch them but it's still by no means the finished article. Our technology correspondent James Clayton

still to come on the global news podcast.

Meet TwoSet Violin the Australian musical comedy duo propelled to global fame via YouTube.

A senior Indian official has arrived in the northeastern state of Manipur to offer support to

women and girls affected by the ethnic violence there. Swati Maliwal, head of the Delhi Women's

Commission, appealed to the state government to support her mission. The BJP Hindu nationalist

authorities there and in Delhi have been accused of downplaying the persecution of the Kuki Christian

by the Meite Hindu majority in the state. More than 160 people have died since the violence broke

out on the 3rd of May but the Indian Prime Minister only spoke out after a video emerged last week

of two Kuki women being paraded naked by a Meite mob before allegedly being gang raped. Our

correspondent Divya Arya reports from Manipur. Shops are shot in this part of Manipur's capital

city in fall because another violent incident was reported here. Mostly residents in this area

are staying indoors stepping out only if they need some essentials. Now what really strikes you when

you come to Manipur is that the city and the state has been no internet for more than two and a half

months now. It is really hard to communicate and resume normal life and despite the fact that there

is no internet when we traveled around the state we found that the video that shows two women being

dislobed, paraded naked and then sexually assaulted was still being shared widely and people would

just take out their phones and show that video to us. It has fueled more anger, despair and

discontent amongst both communities. Thousands are still displaced and in relief camps unable to go

back to their homes after they were set on fire in the violence that happened in the month of May.

While there have been arrests after the video came out and there has been condemnation from both

communities especially spearheaded by women everybody's been pointing out that the state

government and the central government hasn't done enough that the prime minister has spoken but

spoken too little and too late. Until there is a concerted effort to find a political resolution

to the dispute sporadic incidents of violence can continue. We've heard of reports of fighting

across the border overnight curfew is clamped every evening and it will be very difficult

for people to go back from relief camps and even think of rebuilding their lives.

Divya Arya in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur. As well as Spain there was another

election on Sunday this time in Cambodia but unlike in Spain the outcome was known well before a

single vote was cast. Long time Cambodian leader Hun Sen was always going to win having destroyed

all opposition but after nearly four decades in charge the 70-year-old is now turning his

attention to handing over power to his 45-year-old son Hun Manet. Our Southeast Asia correspondent

Jonathan Head spoke to the BBC's Julian Marshall from the Cambodian capital Penangpen.

Cambodians know how Hun Sen plays it he's an amazing survivor he plays rough house politics

he's pretty thuggish he has outmaneuvered crushed every opposition movement he's faced of course

actually handing over to his son who's younger and less tested may well be a bigger challenge

than dealing with the opposition up to now. How will that work how will Hun Sen ensure

that his son Hun Manet succeeds him? Well it's interesting because the timetable now looks

quite fast he'd left it very vague and of course at times Hun Sen has told Cambodians I'll never

give up he flips around but it looks like he's going to do it within the first few weeks after

the election that suggests he's confident. Hun Manet has been groomed for this for a long time

he's Western educated very different personality from his father who of course had that incredible

baptism of fire as a sort of former Khmer Rouge fighter very different generation much smoother

much more presentable but probably lacks the kind of ruthless instincts and while opposition

parties have been greatly weakened in Cambodia and often be very disunited themselves there is a

lot of factional fighting inside Mr. Hun Sen's own party the oligarchs and the super rich families

who surround him are also ambitious and it's them he'll have to watch and what he's doing is all

these core of ministers who are the same age as him who came the brutal years of the civil war

are all aiming to retire at the same time his interior minister his defense minister

and they're all handing over to their sons as well it's like a sort of mass dynastic handover

we're not entirely sure how it's going to work we can be pretty sure that Hun Sen

feels it's going to go smoothly because otherwise he wouldn't be doing it.

Jonathan Head in Cambodia it is 100 days since fighting broke out between Sudan's army and its

paramilitary rival the rapid support forces or RSF the war has devastated the capital Khartoum

displaced more than 3 million people and triggered a sharp increase in ethnic violence in the western

region of Darfur numerous attempts to broker a ceasefire have failed and there's no sign that

either side is ready to negotiate peace Barbara Platuscia reports from Nairobi.

Barbara Platuscia

Netflix has released its first original African animation series super team four the eight part

series is set in a futuristic version of the Zambian capital Lusaka and tells the story of four

female teenage superheroes on a mission to save their city the series is the latest result of

Netflix's strategy of investing in global talent Malenga Moulindema is the director of

super team four and she spoke to Audrey Brown from Zambia.

Super team four is basically about 14 girls who are recruited by a former spy who happens to be

a granny and she recruits them to a secret superhero agency and they get to save the world

and she has a goat yes she has a goat and who are the super villains well we have a ton of

very interesting villains I think that people just have to tune in to get to know so oh come on

they're just a little taster what sorts of things are they doing to the world oh what are they

threatening they're doing a lot of very wacky things very interesting villainous stuff thinking

about them right now I'm laughing because they are quite funny and interesting so there's one

interesting one I think that people have seen in the trailer they're calling him croc man he is trying

to steal some items in the marketplace so that he can have a picnic with his lady love that you

soon find out who she is in the series so the girls say to him you don't have to steal to steal her

heart that's a great line so why this particular story about superheroes and and them being girls

and the granny being the spy master what's the connection that you'd like to create between your

target audience and the story that you're telling I think I was just thinking about

what I as a child would have enjoyed watching on tv so I put from so many different elements of

things that I watched on tv and also from just life in usaka zambia so granny's you know particularly

for a girl for the whole community but then for the girl there's that sort of connection you know

she's a source of wisdom like an encyclopedia in the family we love our grannies and I thought

about that relationship basically and then setting it in this kind of space where he makes sort of

the lead and of this pack of girls and we all believe that our grannies have superpowers right

exactly would you say that animation is a strong medium in Africa for instance you know the Japanese

have a very powerful tradition of animation I'm not sure that that that's the case in various

different African countries is it I think it's an industry that's growing and I think it's exciting

to think about if you know there's more investment put into the industry we're going to see very

extraordinary things coming out of Africa and this is where Netflix comes in right it's investing

in talent across the globe and this project is one of I imagine many what kinds of possibilities do

you see Netflix bringing when I think about the stories that we can tell I can begin from there

when you think about for example the anthology that has come out like it's as immortal you know

that sugarfish was a part of you cannot really box what can come out of Africa what about style

because animation has got such rich traditions across the world what did you draw on Lusaka

provided so much inspiration I mean it's incredible when you go back and look at what our artistic

director and director we look at the textures the clothes and some of the patterns like for

example if you go into mama case underground HQ in the center there's a space I think we pull from

Tonga baskets read baskets and the patterns there so there were a lot of things that they were taking

and expanding on and you could just see the vibrancy of Lusaka city how they played around

with patterns and colors Malenga Mulindema talking to Audrey Brown from Zambia now it all began with

a maths class in Australia where violinists Brett Yang and Eddie Chen met they formed a duo called

two set violin specializing in mixing comedy with orchestral music their youtube channel

gained around three million subscribers they're now on a world tour and Iona Hampson met them in London

two set violin is one of the biggest classical music acts online with millions of subscribers

and over 1.3 billion views on their youtube channel they are known for their entertaining

and informative videos ranging from mocking inaccurate depictions of violinists in film

creating fictional rap battles with famous composers like bark

complex polyphony as the old tonality they call me the real og that's why you're

coming back to me and even encouraging the biggest classical acts such as Hilary Han

to take part in challenges like playing Mozart on the violin while hula hooping

before their London show I met the duo I run my name is Brett Yang and my name is Eddie Chen

who told me how their friendship began we met in a very typically Asian way which was in maths

tutoring after school on a Friday the very next day on a Saturday we both had enrolled into our

very first time at the youth orchestra you know we were self-taught editing filming no experience

at all we're just playing violin musicians and that's kind of where things happened despite

venturing into the online world they told me sticking to their roots is crucial to their identity

you want to stay true to its essence but at the same time find ways to connect and meet people

where they are for example Singapore Symphony or Hilary Han they've all told us that their concerts

have had a lot more people that were like hey I'm from TwoSet and I discovered classical music and

now I'm going to concert for the first time Dr Brian Kavanaugh is a lecturer in digital innovation

at Kings College London he has worked with organizations including the LA Philharmonic

Orchestra and the English National Opera to help them adapt to the digital world one of the things

that's really impressive about what TwoSet violin are doing is that they offer a very wide range of

content and I think orchestras and opera companies and string quartets they can benefit from offering

perhaps a wider range of content over the past 10 years their channel has grown significantly

and allowed them to achieve their dreams of going on two world tours at the London gig I spoke to

some of their fans to find out what the duo means to them my name is Mood I live in Paris why did you

come all the way from Paris for the concert because they weren't coming to Paris they make fun videos

and since I play the violin I like them videos little by little I was like wait I'm part of the

community now because I was getting the inside jokes which is part of why I love to watch them

while Eddie and Brett make TwoSet there is one fictional musician I have to mention Ling Ling

Ling Ling is a representation of that perfect model student that your mother always compares

herself to yeah there's like Ling Ling practice 40 hours a day Ling Ling got A plus what are you

doing so much the world we see like a perfection we see like a view of everything being the completed

product and everyone doing well yeah especially with social media we all notice everything looks

so perfect but I think it's the imperfections that makes us human it's not an excuse to not be

better you don't just go oh nobody's perfect therefore I'm just gonna not practice but you

realize at a certain point the journey matters more than this destination that report by Iona

Hampton and that's all from us for now but the global news podcast will be back very soon this

edition was mixed by Philip Bull and produced by Emma Joseph our editors Karen Martin I'm Oliver Conway

until next time goodbye

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.