Global News Podcast: Trump charged with four counts over 2020 election

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

I'm Gareth Barlow and in the early hours of Wednesday, the 2nd of August, these are our main

stories. The former US President Donald Trump has been indicted on four more criminal charges,

including conspiracy and witness tempering when he attempted to cling on to power after

losing the 2020 election. The first French flight evacuating European citizens from Niger

following last week's coup has departed. An Uber has posted a quarterly profit for the first time

since it began operating. Also in this podcast. Voyager 2 has been exploring space since 1977.

It's almost 20 billion kilometres from Earth. NASA is relieved to have received a signal from

the distant spacecraft after it lost contact by accidentally sending it the wrong way.

We begin in the United States where on Tuesday the former President Donald Trump was indicted on

four counts by a federal grand jury in special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into the

January 6th attack on the Capitol and the efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The charges are

conspiracy to defraud the US witness tempering and conspiracy against the rights of citizens.

Mr Smith made this statement. The attack on our nation's Capitol was an unprecedented assault

on the seat of American democracy. It's described in the indictment it was fueled by lies. Lies by

the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the US government. The nation's

process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.

In this case, my office will seek a speedy trial so that our evidence can be tested in court and

judged by a jury of citizens. Before Jack Smith addressed the reporters, I spoke to our Washington

correspondent Sean Dilly about this third criminal case against Mr Trump. What is interesting is

there are no direct charges related to the actual violence per se, at least nothing on insurrection

or incitement as far as the violence on the 6th of January because, of course, intent was always

going to be hard to prove that. The charges relate to the period of time from the election onwards.

Basically, there are six co-conspirators who are not named beyond conspirator one, two, three,

four, five and six. Four of those are attorneys and the allegation in chief is that Donald Trump

and others worked together essentially to interfere with the election to disrupt that

peaceful transfer of power and to speak to legislature around the United States to persuade them

not to confirm, not to certify the results that people had voted towards changing what

they call slates. If you like, that's a summary of how people voted. From Joe Biden, who rightly

won the election, to Donald Trump. The indictment makes for interesting reading. Just thumbing

through it, it goes through all sorts of detail in terms of how conversations were had with

lawmakers, where it was suggested that there was not necessarily evidence for the claims,

but a lot of theories. With regards to the next steps for Donald Trump, what's coming up?

Well, in the very immediate future, this Thursday, he's required to appear in court in Washington,

DC, to face these four counts in relation to the election and the claims that he attempted to

overthrow them. It's not the only case he's got going on, of course, and they shouldn't be confused.

So for instance, we might have seen coverage on the BBC fairly recently and beyond about another

case in Florida. It's also a federal case and Jack Smith, who's the prosecutor in that case

separately, is the case that relates to documents, classified documents that it's alleged he shouldn't

have held on to. A court date for a trial has already been set for Florida for May next year.

That's separate, again, to other charges in New York state, where it's claimed, again,

quite separately to these cases, that Mr. Trump had been involved in accountancy practices in and

around the way hush money was paid to a former adult actress, Stormy Daniels. So he's got quite

the calendar of court cases coming up. He has, again, called Jack Smith the prosecutor. He's an

independent prosecutor for the US government. He's called him deranged. And again, he's pointing to

claims he's made previously, that the timing of these charges are more related to stopping him

being president than anything to do with justice. Sean Dilly speaking to me from Washington.

As we record this podcast, the first of three French planes sent to evacuate European citizens

from Niger following last week's military coup has taken off from the capital, Nyaime. The French

foreign ministry organized the flights after demonstrators attacked the French embassy on Sunday.

However, France says it has no plans to repatriate an estimated 1000 French soldiers

stationed there. They're part of a multinational team that's been countering Islamist militants.

The general's who seized power have accused France of planning to intervene to reinstate

the elected president, but Paris denies this. Rebecca Kesby spoke to the French MP, Natalia

Pouziereff, a member of Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance party, and is also on the National

Defence and Armed Forces Committee in the National Assembly. So what is the scale of the evacuation?

They are like hundreds of French nationals that live in Nyaime,

because the airspace is closed. I think there may be no other options than to evacuate them.

Niger got independence in 1960. Since then, there's been a very close political relationship,

a very strong economic relationship over those years. But in the past year or so,

we've seen increasing hostility against French assets in the country. What's gone wrong diplomatically?

Well, I would say that so far the partnership was going well. Of course, there has been French

bashing in the area, but this is beyond French bashing. This coup d'etat is maybe instrumentalizing

the image that France has in the region, but we can assume that the reasons behind the coup are

because the president, Bazoum, has dismissed one of the key leaders of the Niger armed force.

Meanwhile, Germany, Italy and Spain have also taken steps to evacuate their citizens from the

country. Our security correspondent, Frank Garda, told us more about the situation in Niger.

It's pretty dire, not just for Western forces, but for Niger as a whole. Now, I know there's plenty

of people in Niger who didn't welcome the presence of Western forces, who said that they weren't doing

enough to combat the jihadist insurgencies in the region, like Boko Haram. But Niger has been

getting hundreds of millions of euros in aid, financial assistance and military training every

year from the EU, from the Americans, from the French. All of that is now drying up. Now,

almost certainly, I would be amazed if it doesn't happen, Russia will step in. So this is the third

domino after Mali and Burkina Faso in the Sahel Belt, along with Central African Republic, where

Wagner will become the dominant security force. And I think this, look, let's try and be open-minded

about it. Maybe Russia will put lots of aid in. Maybe they will be able to defeat the insurgents.

But right now, this is looking pretty bad. And there are no easy options. And I think it would

be wrong to think that this is the West versus the Junta in Niame, because the whole of Ikewas,

or almost the whole of Ikewas, that's the economic community of West African states,

are against this push or against this coup. They've called on them to reverse it, to restore.

After all, the elected president, he was democratically elected, whatever his faults,

and these bunch that have taken over, General Tijani and others, they were not democratically

elected. This is a coup. It's undemocratic. And it will almost certainly, as I say, usher in

the Wagner group, who have a pretty brutal record of suppression in the Sahel countries.

Insight and analysis from Frank Gunn. Hundreds of staff of Russia's economic

development ministry spent Tuesday working from home after a drone struck the skyscraper,

housing it. It was the second such attack in recent days on the so-called I-Q quarter tower

in central Moscow's business district. Russia's air defense said the drones flew in direct from

Ukraine. Meanwhile, earlier Russia's defense ministry said it destroyed three Ukrainian

sea drones that tried to attack two Russian naval ships in the Black Sea. Ukraine hasn't

commented publicly, but one official in Kyiv said more drones, more collapse, and more war

were coming to Russia. From Kyiv, here's our Ukraine correspondent, James Waterhouse.

Kyiv has warned of the war coming to Russia, and the last days have suggested,

on the surface at least, the tide marks have inched closer. The glossy surroundings of Moscow's

financial district used to be a place which felt far from Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Two drone strikes involving the same skyscraper have changed the day-to-day reality for people

like Anastasia. After the first attack, everyone said it wouldn't hit the same place twice,

and today we all woke up and were a bit shocked. I don't know what I'm going to do,

but I think I'll move from here. Ukraine has been blamed for what the Kremlin calls a terrorist

attack. It is always hard to say definitively who is behind strikes like these deep inside Russian

or Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine. Professor Justin Bronk is from the Royal United

Services Institute. Often there's very little surveillance radar actually looking at the kind

of bulk of, in this case, Russia in depth before you get to key areas like Moscow,

where of course there are additional layers of defense. So for a lot of that flight path,

it's actually potentially very difficult to track those UAVs in real time.

What Kiev has done is a war of more attacks to follow because of what it describes as Russia's

own actions. There are Russian media reports of an increase in arson attacks on military

recruitment centres. Last week the Kremlin raised the age limit for people to be conscripted

and increased the fine for anyone trying to resist conscription. Drones now frequently land on both

sides of the border in this conflict. Only with Ukraine, dozens of civilians die every week.

That was James Waterhouse. Well, the Ukraine conflict seems to have taken the world into a

new era of drone warfare with both sides now using them. Evan Davis spoke to Francisco Seromatens,

who runs One Way Aerospace, which builds and supplies drones to Ukraine.

We work with two ministries providing a short range Kamikaze drones, which we call scalpels.

These are used by infantrymen to engage enemy armor, enemy infantry. We're also developing a

long range Kamikaze solution. It's 750 kilometre range, Kiev to Moscow range, which can deliver

precisely 43 kilograms on board. It has two artillery rounds. We're working with local

partners to mass produce the system in Ukraine. Over the next few weeks, hopefully, you'll see

it deployed within occupied Ukraine and elsewhere as well. Right. So just to be clear, in Ukraine,

you were building drones that could be launched in Kiev and could strike Moscow.

Correct. You could deploy from within Ukraine and hit anywhere basically up to Moscow and beyond.

And one of those longer range drones, just describe it to me. How big is this thing we're

talking about? So it's 2.3 metres with all the electronics on board, which enable to fly under

jamming. It's a very quite a cheap platform. It's about 24,000, 25,000 US dollars. So it means we

can produce on mass scale quite quickly, an affordable kinetic structure and that can hit

pretty much anywhere within occupied Ukraine, but also into strategic sites within Russia as well.

And the MOD, the Ministry of Defence in Kiev, the Ukrainian defence,

is a client of yours, a customer of yours? Are they buying them now or is there something you

will be doing and will be providing in future? We don't comment directly on any uses, but basically

there's a process of tests that has to be conducted, which also includes kinetic testing.

So until that's conducted, then the procurement will be complete. But we haven't completed that

entire process yet. But we should have in the next few weeks, I imagine. Francisco, are you

a regulated business in some way? I mean, can you just sell your drones, which obviously can be

quite a weapon? You can't just sell them to anyone. No. I mean, so UK export licensing only limits

for things that are sensitive in nature, so like nuclear weapons, satellites and so forth.

So technically, you could sell these systems to other countries relatively and flexibly,

but from Ukraine it's rather difficult because it's a time of war and these are considered a

defence article by Ukrainian standards. But by UK standards, it doesn't cross the threshold of

as a weapon because it doesn't actually contain a defence article. But the UK is actually very

permissive. So to even get an export licence only a few weeks is actually quite easy.

Francisco Saramotin is from the One Way Aerospace Company.

Since the mass protests in Iran last year, hundreds of young, injured protesters have

fled the country in the hope of treatment somewhere else. Three months ago, Sima,

with her three-year-old daughter, escaped Iran and found refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan.

But Iraqi doctors say they're not equipped to deal with her injuries. They say she needs to go

into a country with advanced medical facilities and have warned that if infection in Sima's arm

continues, it might have to be amputated. The BBC's G.R. Gol met Sima in Iraqi Kurdistan.

A mountainous terrain lies between Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan. A route reddled with land mines

and patrolled by Iranian forces who don't hesitate to shoot.

I am driving from Soleimania, a major Kurdish city in northern Iraq,

to a village near the Iranian border. In the past few months, tens of young,

injured Iranian protesters have crossed the border on foot and they have come to Iraqi Kurdistan

to deal with their wounds. Sima Murad Beghi, 26, is one of the injured protesters,

recently under the cover of darkness, fled Iran with her daughter

and found refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan.

For three grueling hours, we walked through a heavy rain and thick mud. I was forced to give

my daughter a sleeping pill for the journey, ensuring a noiseless trip.

In mid-September last year, Mahsa Jina Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman,

was detained in Tehran for allegedly violating strict Islamic dress code.

Her death in police custody sparked mass protests in Iran.

Despite numerous arrests, injuries and deaths, people didn't retreat. We were hopeful.

Nine months ago, in the Kurdish city of Bukhane in northwest of Iran,

Iranian security forces fired 300 bird shard pellets at Sima, causing severe injuries.

Losing a significant amount of blood, I felt myself fainting. At that moment,

my daughter was a thing on my mind. Sima was rushed to the city's hospital,

where the police and intelligence agents were lurking.

I could hear nurses shouting, she needs a blood transfusion.

At missed the urgency, an Islamic revolutionary guard shouted,

throw her out of the hospital. I could hear everything I struggled to say,

don't let me die, yet I couldn't talk.

Taking Sima to a private hospital in another city, her family remained anxious,

fearing the regime agents might arrest her on her hospital bed.

To save Guard Sima, the doctor recorded her injuries as a car accident.

I could only sleep two or three hours a night,

with my dreams transferred into a relentless nightmare haunted by the sound of gunshots.

Sima shows me an x-ray of her hand. Around 200 white dots could be seen.

They are bird shard pellets remained in her hand. Sima has multiple open fractures

with her elbow bearing severe damage. The pellets caused significant tissue destruction.

Despite Sima's physical and psychological wounds, defiantly she says,

she would protest against the Islamic regime all over again.

I was one for the sake of my daughter, I shouldn't protest.

I always replied, I protest for the better future for my daughter.

Iraqi Kurdistan doctors say Sima needs immediate care in a country with advanced medical facilities.

They were worried if her infection continues, they have to amputate her arm.

That report by Jiagol in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Still to come?

We know that exposure to high altitude could have some effects.

For instance, headache, increasing your heart rate and your blood pressure, some nausea.

So how do millions of people around the world acclimatize to working at high altitude?

Find out later.

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Hi, I'm Hannah. I am the host of a new daily podcast, What in the World? from the BBC World

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This is one of the most dangerous passages for migration in the world. It's about 106

kilometers long through really dense, unroaded, thick jungle. And this is a minefield for dangerous

snakes and other predators, slippery rocks, erratic riverbeds, which are really challenging

to navigate for adults, let alone children who are increasingly making up a number of

these individuals passing through, currently about 20% are thought to be miners,

and half of those are under five. So those are the natural elements which cause a lot of danger.

But then you've also got gangs and other armed groups who occupy a lot of this area,

who are making millions off individuals through trafficking and smuggling methods,

making their way from South and Central America, trying to get up to that US-Mexico border.

Considering the physical, the natural and the human hazards, why has the number of migrants

increased this year? There are as many reasons as there are migrants. Everybody has their own

individual reason. But the majority of these migrants are coming from Venezuela, Haiti and

Ecuador. And for example, in Haiti, there is a humanitarian crisis, a security crisis,

and a political vacuum. So it's a real push factor to try and leave the country.

And thousands are trying to flee. And there's a similar story in Venezuela where

political turmoil is leaving many under the poverty line, really struggling economically.

So there are lots of push factors, but then also a lot of confusion about

migration policies. Earlier in the year in April, Title 42 ended. And that was an emergency

measure brought in by former US President Donald Trump to basically allow the immediate removal

of migrants. No questions asked due to the pandemic starting. So it's precisely under health reasons.

So when that came to an end, a lot of people were given misinformation about if they could come,

if they were allowed to be in the country. There's a lot of confusions with human traffickers.

Smugglers really capitalised on that confusion, allowing people to believe with a lot of fake

false hope that they would be able to get to the US, perhaps through the daring gap,

and make a life for themselves there. The voice there of Mimi Swabey.

The United Arab Emirates is reportedly offering to treble the salaries of Israeli doctors if

they move to the Gulf state. It follows a one-day strike by Israeli doctors over the passing of

contentious legal reforms in Israel, which many believe will damage democracy. Here's Mike Thompson.

More than 3,000 of them are said to have joined a social media chat group seeking advice on

relocating abroad. Many have voiced deep concerns about a law passed last week

that limits the power of the Supreme Court to challenge government decisions.

In addition to tripling the doctors' salaries, the UAE is also reported to be offering so-called

golden visas, allowing them long-term residency. The Emirates normalised relations with Israel

three years ago. Mike Thompson there. The popular ride-hailing app Uber has posted its first-ever

quarterly operating profit since launching back in 2009. It attributed the surprise result to

strong growth in its core mobility and delivery businesses. Michelle Flurry reports from New York.

This marks a significant milestone for Uber, which has spent heavily to grow its business

over the 14 years since it was founded. The ride-hailing company reported its first-ever

operating profit of $326 million, a far cry from the $713 million loss a year earlier.

It also generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow during the last three months. The results show

that despite high inflation in many countries where it operates, customers are still willing to pay for

the convenience of hailing a ride and getting food delivered to their door. A number of trips

taken hit an all-time high. Michelle Flurry. Around the world, from Tibet to the Andes to

the Ethiopian highlands, millions of people work at high altitude. It used to be the case that most

people who worked in the mountains were from there. They lived and worked close to where they were

born. But in this modern globalised world of mass migration, more and more people are working

in environments that their bodies are not accustomed to. The BBC's Gideon Long has been asking what

that means for their health. Good morning. My name is Leonardo Espos. I've been working at Escondida

for 10 years. I'm Caroline Abayay and I've been at Escondida for 16 years. Those are just two of

the workers at Escondida, the largest copper mine in the world. It's in Chile and it's at 3,100m above

sea level in the Andes Mountains. That's over 10,000 feet up. To give you an idea that's higher than

the highest peak in Germany, it's higher than Mount Olympus in Greece and higher than anywhere in

mainland Australia. Leonardo and Caroline are among 150 million people worldwide who work at

high altitude, generally defined by medics as 2,500m or above. I've been talking to doctors about

what all this means for workers and the companies that employ them. My name is Jacqueline Pichler.

I'm from Switzerland working as a pulmonologist for now several years. My name is Alberto Pacheco.

I am the head of health for Minerals America at BHP. BHP, the company that Alberto works for,

owns and operates the Escondida mine. We know that exposure to high altitude could have some effects

for instance the high altitude mountain sickness when you have a headache, increasing your heart

break and your blood pressure, some nausea, problems to have a good sleep and it will depend on what

level of altitude are you exposed to. The main challenge for the body is the reduced oxygen

availability. The heart rate is increasing so people who work at altitude, they have a reduced

performance and especially where they have to work hard, like physically hard, this is very limiting.

At Escondida, Alberto Pacheco and BHP are responsible for thousands of employees.

So what should these workers do once they finish their shifts? Come back down to the low lens to

get some oxygen rich air or stay where they are? The vast majority is the seven by seven shifts so

seven days are the mine, seven days off. Right, is that because that has been established and

recognized as best practice rather than going up and down every day? Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

If you are seven days at altitude you have a level of acclimatization to altitude and if you are

seven days at low altitude you don't lose your acclimatization. It is possible to live and work

healthily at high altitude but you do have to make a bit more effort. Here are Leonardo

and Caroline, those two workers at Escondida. Working at around 3,000 meters has been a good

experience for me. In all the years I've been working here I've never had any problems with

the altitude but that also depends on each person looking after themselves when they're not working

taking care with food, with exercise. It is essential to stay in good shape at this altitude.

My experience of working at altitude has been really good. I don't have any problems with it.

My way of taking care of myself is by sleeping well, being careful with my food and doing exercise

at the weekend. When I'm not at the mine I also, well, I sleep well, I do things to relax including

doing exercise. For companies operating at altitude it must be incredibly expensive to look after

their staff. All those medical checks, doctors, nurses, on-site ambulances, specially designed

bedrooms so people can sleep at night. I asked BHP's Alberto Pacheco about the cost.

Well, obviously it's not cheap but really the most important asset is the people so if we have to

spend money we will spend. That report by Gideon Long. Now a message from Mission Control.

An excerpt there of the song Space Oddity by David Bowie. The danger of a spacecraft losing contact

with planet Earth has long been established in our interstellar consciousness. Something goes wrong

and an astronaut floats off into the void. Well, nothing so drastic this time but after sending

the wrong command NASA lost contact with Voyager 2, raising fears of trouble. Now though the craft

has signalled that it's in good health, Terry Egan reports. Voyager 2 has been exploring space

since 1977 making it nearly 46 years into its mission laden with science instruments and hurtling

at more than 55,000 kilometers per hour through the stars it's almost 20 billion kilometers from

Earth. At that distance 18 hours are needed for any signal to reach us. But last month the craft

was sent a mistaken command and it tilted its antenna to point two degrees away from Earth.

As a result the probe stopped sending data, data that should make its way to an array of

giant radio antenna spread out across the world.

Voyager 2 is the only craft ever to fly by Neptune and Uranus. Like its twin, Voyager 1,

it carries a golden record with Earth's sounds, pictures and messages to tell our story in case

it's found by extraterrestrials. On Tuesday officials said they had detected what they called

a heartbeat signal from Voyager 2 so they know it's still in operation. They will continue to

bombard the vicinity of Voyager 2 with the correct command hoping to reposition the antenna.

If all else fails the craft is programmed to reset its orientation multiple times each year

in order to keep its antenna pointing at Earth and the next reset is due on October the 15th.

In the meantime the probe is expected to remain on its planned trajectory through the universe.

That report by Terry Egan here, back down on Earth.

And that's all from us for now but there will be a new edition of the Global News

podcast a little later on. If you want to comment on this one or any of the topics

covered in it, do send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bvc.co.uk.

You can also find us on Twitter at globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll,

the producer with Liam McCheffrey, the editor as always, Kara Martin. I'm Gareth Barlow and until next time, goodbye.

For more information visit Berlin.de slash World of Berlin.

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