Global News Podcast: Turkey-Syria earthquakes one month on

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Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 14 hours GMT on Monday the 6th of March,

a month on from the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. An estimated one and a half

million people are still sheltering in tents. South Korea agrees to compensate its own citizens

over crimes committed under Japan's occupation. And insiders say Twitter can no longer protect users

from online abuse and disinformation. Also in the podcast, how an insurance policy could be key to

preserving one of the most famous shipwrecks of all time and explore rich Swiss chocolate.

Matterhorn no more. White Toblerone is changing its packaging design.

The earthquakes in Turkey and Syria on the 6th of February left more than 52,000 people dead

and at least 156,000 buildings destroyed or damaged beyond repair. But what is life like for those

remaining in the disaster zone? A month after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck, an estimated

one and a half million people are living in tents among the rubble of their former homes,

as Anna Foster reports from southern Turkey.

Not everyone is leaving Iskenderan Station.

The trains do still pull out regularly and now they're free,

carrying people away from this devastated region. The Turkish disaster agency AFAD says almost

2 million have now left. But two long rows of carriages here don't move at all. We've turned

this place into a home. Me, my wife, my daughter and her husband and my two grandchildren. The

quarters are clean. Outside, they provide tea, soup and fruit juice and cake to the children.

Yilmaz Jujuk and his family live on board this train now. The luggage racks are filled

with the few possessions they managed to retrieve from their damaged home.

They wanted to put us in tents, but I refused. Tents are cold and this place has a notoriously

strong wind. When it blows, all the tents will end up in the sea.

Many families are living in tents, but there aren't enough to go around.

Some have moved into sprawling new encampments guarded by the Turkish military. The better ones

have portable toilets and playgrounds for the children. But some people are determined to stay

as close to home as they can, even living right next to the rubble, like the Ujussoys.

In the shadow of this building, which is leaning to one side with cracks in the walls,

steps away there's a tent and they've put coloured solar lights, because at night that

is the only light they have now here. There's no power. They've moved some of their plants,

even a small side table and a picture. They're doing everything they can to build a new home

outdoors. Muzian Jellep is 74 and she's living in the tent next door with her husband.

Their cows are close by. The couple are keeping watch on their house from across the road.

My valuable articles are in there and thieves are roaming around. Bank, bank, bank, gunshots.

The police are barely keeping them away. So many thieves. How can I leave here?

More than 160,000 buildings were destroyed or left badly damaged in the quake. Work has

started to demolish the dangerous ones, but there isn't enough mechanical equipment in the country

to do a job like this quickly. That noise you can hear is the arm of a crane pounding

the last supporting structure of a building which is still standing for now. It's leaning to one

side and they're trying to bring it down fully. Back in Samanda, night is falling and it's time

for dinner. Chicken and potatoes cooked on a camping stove and eaten from paper plates.

Nobody knows how long they'll be living like this for, but they do know that crucial

presidential and parliamentary elections should be happening in just over two months time.

And basic shelter for earthquake survivors has now become one of Turkey's biggest political issues.

Anna Foster reporting from Southern Turkey. Disputes over Japan's brutal 35-year occupation

of Korea before and during the Second World War have long poisoned relations between Tokyo and

Seoul. There have been some attempts in the past to agree Japanese compensation only for the row to

erupt again. Now South Korea has agreed to compensate the victims itself, but that has

angered Korean survivors who say Japan should pay. The government says it's a done deal now

with the announcement of the solution to forced labour, but this is invalid both legally and in

terms of public sentiment. We won't stop marching vigorously until it's scrapped.

It's so pitiful. The government is pushing ahead with pro-Japanese trade negotiations

that trample on the established legal rights of its citizens and exempt Japanese war criminal

enterprises from legal responsibility. It is unacceptable violence.

Co-German of victims groups there. So why is Korea paying when Japan was responsible?

Jean McKenzie is our sole correspondent. Because this agreement is actually, as you've hinted

at, about so much more than just compensating these victims for the horrendous conditions that

they were forced to work in during Japan's occupation of Korea in Japanese factories

and Japanese mines. They were treated appallingly, they were paid nothing, and they were in their

words treated as slaves. But this is not just about compensating them. It is about fixing the

current relationship between South Korea and Japan. Relations between these two countries have been

marred for decades because of these issues stemming back to the colonial period, and this

has been one of the final sticking points. So when the South Korean president, the new president,

came to office last year, he promised to mend relations with Japan. This was his sort of

flagship foreign policy, but it was really this issue he was going to have to resolve to move

things forward. And so he's found a way, albeit an unpopular one, because the Japanese companies

are off the hook and South Korean companies are going to step in and foot the bill. But South

Korea has been working with Japan behind the scenes for this on months. They knew the Japanese

companies wouldn't pay, and so this was going to be the only way to move forward. South Korea and

Japan are facing very similar threats right now in Asia, East Asia. They're both dealing with this

growing threat posed by North Korea, the rise of China, both key allies of the U.S., and the U.S.

wants all three countries to work much more closely together on issues of security, and this

agreement certainly pays the way for them to do that. So yes, the families and the victims are

bitterly disappointed and they will protest against this, but it's being seen here in South Korea,

in Japan, and in Washington, as a diplomatic success.

Jean McKenzie in the South Korean capital Seoul. When Elon Musk took over Twitter last year,

he sacked a lot of the staff. It was an attempt to slash costs, but there were warnings that it

could make the social media site more toxic. Now, a BBC investigation has been told that Twitter is

no longer able to protect users from online abuse, child sexual exploitation, or state-sponsored

disinformation. The BBC's social media and disinformation correspondent, Marianna Spring,

spoke to both former and current staff of the BBC's Panorama programme.

She told Justin Webb what she'd learnt. I had lots of people reaching out to me

on Twitter and elsewhere telling me that the hate that they were receiving and seeing,

as well as disinformation and other harmful content, appeared to be on the rise, and so I set

out to figure out whether that was true. I heard from rape survivors who've been targeted by accounts

that were less active before Elon Musk's takeover and that since appear to have been reinstated

or newly created. Exclusive data for Panorama shows that there's been an uptick in new accounts

following misogynistic and abusive channels, 69% more than before Musk took over. And we looked

at the online abuse I received for doing the reporting that I do on disinformation and conspiracies,

and that's more than tripled since the takeover. And so I set out to meet current and former

employees who told me about the work they were doing to protect against online harassment and

trolling and specifically features that were designed. And according to Twitter's research,

it suggested it had some effect that they just either weren't there working on anymore or aren't

able to maintain because of the reduction in staff and because of the chaos there. And a lot of

people spoke about this chaotic work environment describing Elon Musk walking around the office

with bodyguards at all times and even trying to sell back the office plants to Twitter employees.

There's one senior engineer I've spoken to, he's still at Twitter, so he's agreed to speak with

us anonymously and this is an actor's voice, but this is what he had to say about what's

happening on the inside. It's like a building where all the pieces are on fire. When you look at

it from the outside, the facade looks fine, but I can see that nothing is working. Now a totally

new person without the expertise is doing what used to be done by more than 20 people. Well,

that leaves room for much more risk, many more possibilities of things that can go wrong.

And those things that can go wrong, of course, felt right around the world. We've seen this on

Facebook in the past, haven't we? When people aren't monitoring this stuff, it can very quickly get

out of control. Yes, and it's not just about trolling and harassment. It's also about other issues

like child sexual exploitation. I've spoken to someone who previously was working on a team

dedicated to that. That team has gone from 20 people down to six or seven. They're really worried

about the ability to escalate this kind of content to law enforcement, which they say

is more important than suspending accounts, even though Twitter says it's removed 400,000

accounts in just a month to protect against that. And another employee I spoke to who worked in

threat disruption told me how his team, who were daily identifying these kinds of networks,

no longer are doing that. And he fears the implication of that. He says that that means

these networks go undetected. Is this just sour grapes, though, from people he's got rid of?

Because the fact he's got rid of a lot of people, hasn't it? And yet Twitter still exists, and it

still exists for a lot of people in a perfectly satisfactory form. Everyone I spoke to admitted

that Twitter wasn't perfect before, but they showed me the tangible work that they were doing to

better protect users. They were going on the record for the first time, and they'd been really

reluctant to speak out because they don't want to seem like they're sour grapes, but they care

about the users. And I wanted to put these questions to Elon Musk and Twitter. I tried

every way possible to get Elon Musk to speak to me, including doing a Twitter poll, not a real poll,

but the votes that Musk has used to make decisions about the platform. And the poll did very well.

Over 40,000 people voted, 89% said they wanted Elon Musk to do an interview with me and BBC

Panorama. He didn't reply, and Twitter and Elon Musk are yet to reply to the points raised in the

Panorama investigation. Although, as of this morning, Elon Musk has responded to a comment

that was critical of Panorama, saying that he was rolling on the floor laughing. And I imagine that

for lots of the users I've spoken to impacted by this, they'll still be left with questions as to

what Twitter is doing to protect its users. Twitter has said publicly that it still

holds protecting its user's voice and its freedom of expression at the core of its mission, its values.

Marianna Spring, the BBC's social media and disinformation correspondent.

A year ago, one of the most famous shipwrecks of all time, Ernest Shackleton's

insurance was discovered at the bottom of the sea in Antarctica. The explorer's vessel had sat

there perfectly preserved since it sank in 1915 after being crushed by ice. Now, experts have

found the vessel's insurance policy, which could hold the key to future conservation plans.

Our science editor, Rebecca Morrell, has this report.

It was the shipwreck they thought would never be found. But a year ago,

Sir Ernest Shackleton's lost ship, Endurance, was discovered, lying 3,000 metres down in the

Antarctic Deep, almost perfectly preserved, frozen in time. But this remarkable find has set the

expedition team off on another quest. This time at Lloyd's insurers in the City of London.

Whenever a large ship is lost to the sea, it's recorded in pen and ink in a lost book.

It's a tradition that still happens today, but it goes back to 1774, and the hope was they'd find

a Shackleton ship on the day she sank. We've come to where the archives are stored. There are 140

lost books going back hundreds of years. Shackleton's Endurance sank in November, 1915. But the news

of the sinking in Antarctica took a while to reach London. And in fact, the record has been

discovered in June, 1916. And now, a century after it was written, the book is being opened up again.

So these were all the lost books from Lloyd's. And this is the lost book.

John Shears, who discovered Endurance in Antarctica, has brought Alexandra Shackleton,

Ernest Shackleton's granddaughter, to see the record. And as you can see,

amazing. Endurance, British, crushed by ice in the Weddle Sea, and afterwards founded.

He would never have seen this entry, would he? That's a good question.

It was an amazing experience. I didn't know there was an entry in the lost book. I knew very

little about the lost book. It's all part of the amazing pattern of more and more information

surfaces. We know from Shackleton's diary that the ship sank beneath the ice on the 21st of

November, 1915. It took the Endurance crew six months and a trek of hundreds of miles to get

to safety. Incredibly, they all survived. So Shackleton was only able to send a telegram back

to a newspaper in London at the end of May, 1916. Your grandfather sent a report on the 31st of

May in the Falklands. That was reported by the Chronicle in their late edition on the first.

Shackleton's ship Endurance was the first ship to be insured, what Lloyd's called, into the ice

zone. At that time, she was one of the strongest wooden ships ever built. So Lloyd's actually

thought that she was a very good risk. But of course, he lost the ship. And lucky for him,

he had the insurance policy. And we now know that the insurance policy paid out.

So what will happen to the wreck now? I think she should be left as she is. It's miraculous.

She still exists in the wonderful, beautiful form she is. She should just be left there.

I've even had people come to say to me, it's better she'll never discover, more romantic.

But I'm very happy she has to be discovered. But I never thought there would be images,

let alone beautiful images. So for now, the ship will be left resting in the darkness of this

remote corner of the world. But her stories and the discoveries will keep on coming.

A report by Rebecca Morrell. Still to come on the Global News podcast.

It's one of the most shocking surprises I've had in 25 years of being an actor.

You're part of the history of the cinematic world.

It just seems like really surreal. It's a dream come true.

Ahead of the Oscars, we hear from the stars of one of the top nominated films.

One of the big promises of Brexit was that after the UK left the EU, it would be able to take back

control of immigration. However, over the past five years, the number of people entering Britain

illegally has quadrupled. The biggest rise has been in people arriving in small boats,

more than 45,000 in the last year alone. The government is under pressure to act.

And so tomorrow, it will introduce a new law calling for those migrants to be deported as

soon as possible. The opposition says it's simply a gimmick that won't work.

What the government's doing is a cynical rehash of previous failed immigration policies in the

hope that by generating headlines with unworkable policies, the public might be duped into thinking

they're finally doing something about small boats.

Where's streeting of the main opposition Labour Party? So what is the government saying?

I asked our political correspondent, Rob Watson.

What the government is saying, Oliver, is that it has several strong reasons.

Number one, that a country must be in control of its borders so you can't have what's happening

happening in the future. Number two, that it's unfair on immigrants who try to come here in

ways which are more, I suppose, what the government would call conventional.

Three that undermines faith in the immigration system amongst the voters. And it is a very big

issue with many people in the UK, the opinion polls suggest. And that essentially it's a huge

sort of strain on Britain's social services. So those are the main arguments.

Yeah. So the idea is to deport anyone arriving as soon as practicable and then ban them from

returning. It's not only Labour criticising it. Unions and refugee groups are unhappy too.

Can it work?

You summed up the policy nicely. I mean, it's essentially to declare that anyone who comes

here in a small boat, you have come here illegally. And ideally what the government wants to do is

to detain people for no more than 28 days and then send them away. Now, the criticism is widespread

and it sort of spritzes into three main categories. One is that it's just immoral

that a lot of these people, certainly from last year, many of the refugee council found

were genuine asylum seekers. Secondly, that you're in danger of violating UN conventions on

refugees, on UN conventions on human rights over detention. And then the third one, of course,

which has been a lot of focus on is that it's just massively impractical that we're the

facilities to detain people. And then of course, where on earth are you going to send them to?

Because although the UK government has reached an agreement with Rwanda, nobody has actually

been sent there and the policy is being reviewed by the courts. A process that may take another year

and of course, since Britain left the European Union, it doesn't have agreements with other EU

countries on returning asylum seekers from the countries they came from in Europe, of course,

including France. Our political correspondent Rob Watson. Events and rallies have been held in

Venezuela to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the death of President Hugo Chavez.

Mr Chavez was hugely popular, using Venezuela's vast oil wealth to fund social programs. But

he was also divisive. Our Central America correspondent, Will Grant, was based in Caracas

during the Chavez years. Charlotte Gallagher asked him how the Venezuelan leader is remembered.

The way that people define Hugo Chavez very much depends on their political position.

His supporters who you heard cheering there would define him as, you know, essentially a saint,

really, they almost deify him in Venezuela, those who adored him in life. They credit him with pulling

millions of people out of poverty. They thank him for that and will do for as long as they have

breath in their bodies, quite honestly. But, of course, the other side of the coin are those

who feel that he just descended the country into an autocracy, made the most of a very high oil

price for the cheapest kind of populism and anti-Americanism. The truth of the matter is that

either way, he is probably the most significant political figure to emerge in Latin America of

the modern era. And how has Venezuela changed since he died? Well, his successor, Nicolas Maduro,

who was then his foreign minister, inherited the sort of tail end of the revolution, if you like.

It was beginning to curdle. It was running out of steam in all sorts of ways, politically,

economically, significantly. The price of a barrel of oil, of Venezuelan oil, dropped

significantly. Production was worsening with a lack of investment in the state-run energy

company Peda Vesa. And so the most and significant thing that has happened under the Maduro era

is the collapse of the Venezuelan economy and the subsequent exodus of people from the country.

So many millions, essentially young people, who have attempted to make other countries in South

America or obviously make it to the United States. And, of course, there were very large and significant

anti-government protests, lest we forget, which were met with brutal force by Nicolas Maduro's

government and many hundreds died. And what are the government trying to do to stop this

exodus of people desperately leaving the country? One of the first things that Nicolas Maduro has

tried to do in recent months is to essentially dollarise the economy, not a very kind of socialist

revolutionary economic policy, but one that he was faced with no other choice in doing. Such was

the weakness of the national currency, the Bolivar. I think ultimately for the Venezuelan

socialist revolution to sort of reinvigorate to the days that it had enjoyed under all

world chavits, the key thing is for its oil price to bounce back and for that investment

in Pettibesa to allow there to be the kind of production so that they can make the most of

these incredibly large oil reserves that it has, the largest proven reserves in the world, actually.

So as Nicolas Maduro's attempts to sort of shore up the economy, we may see that that

gives him the platform to essentially remain in power for as long as the United Socialist

Party decides that it's going to be there. We'll grant our former correspondent in Venezuela.

It's long been the most recognisable of Swiss chocolate bars, but the makers of Toblerone

are going to have to remove the picture of Switzerland's most famous mountain from their

triangular packaging. It's all about how Swiss the product is as Imogen Folks in Bern explains.

We all know Toblerone for its famous triangular shape and we also know it or certainly for the

last more than 50 years, the branding on the outside is Switzerland's most iconic mountain,

the Matterhorn, and there's even an old fable that the inventor of Toblerone, Mr. Tobler,

himself, shaped the chocolate bar in that shape because he loved the mountains so much. But now

this chocolate always made right here in the Swiss capital, Bern, it's also going to be made

in Slovakia. That's because it's so successful, it sells so much, they need more capacity,

but it means under a law on Swissness, you can't use the Swiss flag, you can't say

made in Switzerland, and you can't use pictures of famous Swiss symbols. So the Matterhorn's

going to have to go from the label and instead of of Switzerland, they're going to have established

in Switzerland on the packaging. And although the Swiss here want to protect their brands,

a lot of people are a bit upset, they were upset by the move to Slovakia,

they're upset that this iconic packaging is going to go, they're also a little bit upset

that this famous chocolate is actually owned for many years now by this huge American food giant

Mondele, who have said this week that the Matterhorn symbol is going to be replaced by a modern

streamlined mountain, probably not associated with any geographic region in the world.

Imaging folks in Bern. The Banshees of Ineshurin is taking the cinema award season by storm.

The Irish films already won four BAFTAs and been nominated for nine Oscars. Our correspondent

in Hollywood Sophie Long has been talking to some of its stars. Now, if I've done something to you,

just tell me what I've done to you. But it didn't do happen to me. I just don't like you no more.

The Banshees of Ineshurin focuses on an intensely local conflict between two men,

when one unilaterally declares an end to their friendship. But it's resonated around the world

and led to Oscar nominations for both Brendan Gleason and Colin Farrell.

Yeah, mad. Did not see it coming. It's one of the most shocking surprises I've had in 25 years of

being an actor, how this film has been received. Because it did feel like one of the most beautiful

things about it and one of the things that made it such a joy to lean into the process of making

this film was how kind of colloquial it felt. But of course it's not. And colloquialism is often a

choice outside of certain linguistic details and nuances. Colloquialism as a mentality is a choice

really. Do you know what I mean? Globally, universally, we all do go through much of the same things.

Yeah, that's right. What's the best bit about being nominated for an Oscar for you?

Just that they can't take it away.

It is. It's like, you know, you're part of the history of the cinematic world in a way that I

wanted to contribute to it. And I've tried for the last 30 years to do so and to do it in a way

that would be meaningful. So it pushes the film out. But also for me, like I'm 67 years old now,

so it's a nice kind of like at this end. You're going to be past 66.

Can't be waiting around for any more of this madness.

Let's just call it quits. We won't call it quits.

The film, which intermingles the picturesque and profane as it explores the complexity of

friendship through brutal, dark comedy set against the beautiful backdrop of Western Ireland,

has no less than nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director for Marta McDonough,

and Best Supporting Actress for Kerry Condon. I just started giggling because it just seems

like really surreal and something I've wanted my whole life. Yeah, so it's a dream come true.

But us gang of friends being here with a film that we care about a lot and it isn't really

Oscar bait. It's kind of unusual and darker than some of those can be. To be proud of something and

to have this kind of glamorous, strange, almost silly thing as part of it too is, I like it.

What are you doing home? Brother, what are you doing home?

I knocked on Calmsone Larry. He's just sitting there.

Sitting there doing what?

Sitting there doing nothing. Smoking. Was he asleep?

He was smoking, Siobhan. How do you smoke in your sleep like?

Have you been rowing? What are you going to wear?

Don't know yet. Everyone just be asking me that. Like, I've nothing but time on my hands to be

bruised and vogue. There's about 20 billion outfits to be wearing before I ask you.

How have you got people coming up to you and wanting to dress you?

Oh yeah, of course. I feel like a princess. Yeah, yeah.

What's the question on everyone's list? What are you going to wear, big man?

I know what I'm going to wear. I know what he's going to wear as well. Watch out. Watch this space.

The stars of the Irish Oscar-nominated film The Banshees of Inner Sharon in conversation

with Sophie Long.

And that's all from us for now, but the Global News podcast will be back very soon.

This edition was mixed by Jack Grazemach and produced by Nicky Verrico,

our editors Karen Martin, I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.

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