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Episode: Israel confirms attack on Syrian naval fleet

Author: BBC World Service
Duration: 00:33:37

Episode Shownotes

Israel attacks Syria's naval fleet as part of efforts to neutralise the country's military assets after the fall of the Assad regime. Also: New Zealander wins Spanish Scrabble championship - without speaking Spanish.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_08
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

00:00:05 Speaker_03
Available now on The Documentary from the BBC World Service, Stephen Coates takes you to the Morse Code World Championships.

00:00:14 Speaker_23
In an internet connected world, Morse Code, the alphabet of dots and dashes, might now feel from a different era. I'm meeting some of the people who are keeping the code alive.

00:00:26 Speaker_03
Morse Code, ready to transmit. Listen now by searching The Documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

00:00:36 Speaker_11
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jalil, and in the early hours of Wednesday, the 11th of December, these are our main stories.

00:00:47 Speaker_11
Israel says it's completely destroyed Syria's navy, days after Islamist rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad. As Russia looks for new allies, the country's parliament has taken the first step to remove the Taliban from Moscow's list of terror organisations.

00:01:02 Speaker_11
Kenyan police have used tear gas on protesters who were denouncing violence against women.

00:01:11 Speaker_09
Also in this podcast… He is the da Vinci of vocabulary, the Tiger Woods of triple word scores. The naturally verbose compliments of Scrabble commentators go on and on.

00:01:22 Speaker_11
The Scrabble champion whose triumphs are all the more remarkable because he can't speak some of the languages he plays in.

00:01:34 Speaker_11
Israel says it's destroyed Syria's naval fleet and carried out nearly 500 airstrikes since this weekend's toppling of Bashar al-Assad's regime by Syrian rebels.

00:01:44 Speaker_11
A military statement said most weapons stockpiles across Syria were hit, as well as helicopters, air defence systems and tanks. Israel says its bombardment is aimed at stopping equipment falling into the hands of extremists.

00:01:58 Speaker_11
At the same time, Israeli ground forces have moved into Syrian territory, a move condemned by other Middle Eastern nations, among them Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, and by the UN. Its special envoy is Geir Pitsudson.

00:02:13 Speaker_04
A very troubling development. We are continuing to see Israeli movements and bombardments into Syrian territory. This needs to stop. This is extremely important.

00:02:29 Speaker_11
At this volatile time, as questions remain about whether Syria will descend into chaos like Iraq or Libya did, or manage to establish a more democratic future, Israel says it's trying to stop Syrian munitions, including chemical weapons, falling into the hands of extremists.

00:02:46 Speaker_11
The defence minister, Israel Katz, says the IDF is creating what he describes as a sterile defence zone in southern Syria.

00:02:56 Speaker_05
The IDF is now completing its entrenchment in the buffer zone and in the controlled areas in order to protect the residents of the Golan Heights and the citizens of the State of Israel.

00:03:07 Speaker_05
Together with the Prime Minister, I instructed the IDF to establish a sterile defence zone against weapons and terror threats in southern Syria. We will not allow this. We will not allow threats against the State of Israel.

00:03:22 Speaker_11
Cheyenne Sardarzadeh from BBC Verify told me more about what exactly Israel has been targeting.

00:03:28 Speaker_18
There have been dozens and dozens of different sites across Syria since the fall of Bashar al-Assad that allegedly have been targeted by Israel. They seem to be focusing on two specific types of sites.

00:03:40 Speaker_18
One, military sites linked to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and two, sites that are somehow linked to Iran. So these are areas that

00:03:50 Speaker_18
Iran's Revolutionary Guards specifically, had basically established infrastructure, weapon systems, research centers inside Syria, mostly in order to help their ally Hezbollah in Lebanon.

00:04:02 Speaker_18
One of the biggest ones that we saw overnight last night was in Latakia, west of Syria. And right on the port, there's an area that has been heavily linked to the Syrian Navy.

00:04:12 Speaker_18
And there were multiple strikes that we verified overnight based on the videos and images that we've seen this morning that caused extensive damage to the site.

00:04:21 Speaker_18
We've seen parts of the port on fire, but also specifically we've seen the verified footage of several missile boats, Navy ships from the previous regime that have been completely destroyed.

00:04:33 Speaker_11
Cheyenne Sardarzadeh. So why is Israel doing this? With his assessment, here's our international editor, Jeremy Bowen.

00:04:40 Speaker_20
Prime Minister Netanyahu has been talking about this again today, believe that by using military force backed up by the considerable might of the United States, without whom they couldn't do it, is going to reshape the balance of power in the Middle East in Israel's favour.

00:04:56 Speaker_20
So it will never again face an attack like the one on October 7th last year in which Hamas broke out of Gaza and killed so many Israelis.

00:05:04 Speaker_20
Now, they're actually following, in a way, an old idea which is a century old about Israel's security, the security of the Jewish state. There was no Israel a century ago, no Israeli state.

00:05:15 Speaker_20
And that idea is that the Jewish state builds an iron wall around itself

00:05:21 Speaker_20
that its Arab enemies will dash themselves repeatedly against the wall until the time comes when they realise that Israel isn't going anywhere and then the idea is that Israel would negotiate a future with them.

00:05:36 Speaker_20
Where Netanyahu departs from the iron wall idea, and many other Israelis the same, is they don't believe in negotiation. They don't believe it works. They believe that there is a military solution.

00:05:48 Speaker_20
Be the strongest player in an area which they always use as rather a very disparaging term. They call it, you know, the jungle. They say it's the law of the jungle. And in the jungle, you've got to be the tiger.

00:06:02 Speaker_20
And that, I think, is the philosophy that lies behind this, because the Syrian military melted away. It didn't fight significantly, but it left behind its weapons.

00:06:11 Speaker_20
And the Israelis are concerned that the Islamists who now control Damascus will get hold of them and use them against them.

00:06:20 Speaker_11
Jeremy Boehn. Meanwhile, the rebel leaders have announced an interim prime minister as they try to show the world that they will avoid the chaos and conflict that followed the ousting of dictators in countries like Iraq and Libya.

00:06:33 Speaker_11
But while the HTS group is trying to distance itself from its jihadist past, the United States has set out its conditions for fully recognizing Syria's next government.

00:06:44 Speaker_11
At a briefing in Washington, the State Department spokesman Matthew Miller outlined what the U.S. would want to see before accepting any transitional authority.

00:06:53 Speaker_00
the United States fully supports a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political transition that leads to credible, inclusive, and nonsectarian governance.

00:07:03 Speaker_00
He has also outlined several principles that we believe should be upheld during the transition process and formation of a new government. Respect for the rights of minorities. Facilitation of humanitarian assistance.

00:07:15 Speaker_00
the prevention of Syria from being used as a base for terrorism or posing as a threat to its neighbors, securing and safely destroying any chemical weapons stockpiles.

00:07:24 Speaker_11
Our State Department correspondent Tom Bateman was at that briefing.

00:07:28 Speaker_08
What they are saying is that in order for this to be a government that has a blessing of the United States, it needs to be one that is both, they say, credible, inclusive of what they mean by that is of the sort of full breadth of Syria's sectarian and religious makeup.

00:07:45 Speaker_08
and transparent. That's about the governance part, but beyond that, there is a sort of important element of strategic and security issues that they also go into.

00:07:54 Speaker_08
So they say on that front that this can't be a government that basically uses Syria, in their words, as a terrorist base, as a country that would threaten its neighbors, and also that they expect the chemical and biological weapon stocks or any of those that are still there to be destroyed.

00:08:12 Speaker_11
Yes we've had the HDS group which led the march on Damascus talking about how it's going to respect the rights of minorities, respect the rights of women, making all these reassuring noises and yet at the same time we're seeing all these hundreds of strikes being carried out by Israel.

00:08:29 Speaker_11
Israel is entering Syrian territory. Some Middle Eastern nations are calling it an invasion. So how does the US square that, given the fact that it's also called on other countries to refrain from external interference in Syria?

00:08:44 Speaker_08
Remember that just about every other country around Syria in one way or another has interfered in the process during the civil war.

00:08:53 Speaker_08
but not just the ones surrounding it, but also other global powers, including the United States, which has troops on the ground in eastern Syria, it has backed what it sees as moderate Kurdish and Arab fighters.

00:09:06 Speaker_08
But at the same time, their very key ally, Israel, as you say, has both invaded the disengagement zone in the occupied Golan Heights,

00:09:15 Speaker_08
put its troops there in breach of a 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria, and also the Israelis having carried out these very significant airstrikes, destroying, they say, the entire Syrian navy.

00:09:29 Speaker_08
It's inconceivable that this happened without at least the kind of covert approval of the US. Again, I asked them about this. Were they told in advance they wouldn't answer that question?

00:09:42 Speaker_08
In terms of what they'll do next, they say they're still going to talk in depth with the Israelis about what's happened, so they're not commenting on it at the moment.

00:09:50 Speaker_08
Although they did say they want to see a peaceful process where there isn't escalation. All of this, I think, goes to what cards the US really has to play. in a military sense, you know, I've talked about its presence on the ground.

00:10:05 Speaker_08
I think it will be supportive of Israeli strikes where it's taking out, you know, what they see as unconventional weapons, especially chemical and biological stocks.

00:10:14 Speaker_08
But if it goes on a lot longer and further, I think it's going to increase the pressure on the United States to really sort of come out and say something about it.

00:10:21 Speaker_11
Tom Bateman, while the success of the HTS Islamist rebel group in Syria has been welcomed by the Taliban in Afghanistan, it is an international pariah. No country recognises it because of the harsh way it treats Afghan women.

00:10:37 Speaker_11
But could that be about to change? Russia appears to be moving towards recognising the Taliban government of Afghanistan.

00:10:45 Speaker_11
The lower house of the Russian parliament, the Duma, has voted in favour of a law that could allow the Taliban to be removed from Moscow's list of terror groups. The Russia editor of BBC Monitoring, Vitaly Shevchenko, told me more about the move.

00:11:00 Speaker_16
Russia has been making sounds that the Taliban, well, kind of people Russia is prepared to work with for years. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, called them sensible people.

00:11:12 Speaker_16
Vladimir Putin himself said that Russia is prepared to take them off the list of officially designated terrorist organizations. in Russia.

00:11:23 Speaker_16
And what happened in the lower house of the Russian Parliament today, it's the first step which could potentially lead to the Taliban being taken off this official list.

00:11:32 Speaker_16
Two more votes in the State Duma, the lower house of Parliament, then another in the upper house, and then this becomes law when President Putin signs it.

00:11:41 Speaker_16
There's very little doubt that this is what's going to happen because the mood music emanating from Moscow clearly suggests that this is what Russia has been considering.

00:11:50 Speaker_11
And why does Russia want to make an ally out of the Taliban in Afghanistan?

00:11:56 Speaker_16
Well, Russia isn't really picky when it comes to friends and potential allies. It's lost Bashar al-Assad in Syria and look at his record.

00:12:08 Speaker_16
So the Taliban, if they're the people who are in charge in Afghanistan, Russia is prepared to work with them as long as it promotes Russian interests and as long as it hurts the West's interests as well. This is really key to Russian foreign policy.

00:12:25 Speaker_11
But there was an attack earlier this year, a shooting at a concert hall in which more than 140 people were killed. And it emerged that it was the Afghan branch of the so-called Islamic State group that carried out that attack.

00:12:39 Speaker_11
And they're a big rival of the Taliban's. So is that another concern that Russia has?

00:12:45 Speaker_16
I would argue that it's more about Russia's own interests across the globe rather than the intricacies of infighting between various Islamist groups. The key objective pursued by Vladimir Putin for

00:13:01 Speaker_16
The 20 years that he's been in charge of Russia is expanding Russia, getting it back up from its knees after the fall of the Soviet Union. And of course, it involves working with various figures and leaders across the globe.

00:13:16 Speaker_16
If these leaders and figures happen to be less than savoury, so be it. Apparently, Russia's prepared to work with them.

00:13:23 Speaker_11
Vitaly Shevchenko. Meanwhile, back in Israel, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has told his corruption trial in Tel Aviv that the charges against him are ridiculous.

00:13:37 Speaker_11
He's become the country's first serving leader to take to the witness stand as a criminal defendant. He denies fraud, breach of trust and bribery. The hearing is taking place in an underground courtroom in Tel Aviv for security reasons.

00:13:52 Speaker_11
John Donison sent this report from outside the court.

00:13:57 Speaker_07
Bibi Go to Jail was the chant from protesters outside the courthouse in Tel Aviv. For them, this is a moment of truth to power.

00:14:15 Speaker_07
Mr Netanyahu looked chipper as he arrived in court, despite being the first ever serving Israeli Prime Minister to stand trial. He faces three charges, bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Mr Netanyahu denies it all.

00:14:35 Speaker_07
Speaking before his testimony, he said the investigation into him had been born of sin. And today in court, he said the trial was based on an ocean of absurdities. The case has been rumbling on for years and has divided Israel.

00:14:54 Speaker_07
Outside the courthouse today, anti-Bibi protesters in strong voice faced off with his supporters.

00:15:01 Speaker_06
The accusation from the protesters here, some of whom have family members held hostage in Gaza, is that Prime Minister Netanyahu has prolonged and escalated the wars in the Middle East for his own political survival and even to avoid going to jail.

00:15:19 Speaker_07
Hadass Calderon's husband, Ofer, is one of the hostages in Gaza. And she's angry at her prime minister.

00:15:26 Speaker_22
He take care more for his own sins, his private sins, more than for caring for his citizens. He don't care about these 100 hostages. And he care more to survive in the political way. It's very sad.

00:15:43 Speaker_07
But Mr. Netanyahu is riding high in opinion polls. His supporters outside court today were drumming out the message that at a time of war, he shouldn't be having to face a trial. His testimony alone is expected to take a minimum of two weeks.

00:16:02 Speaker_11
That report by John Donison. The man charged with the murder of a health executive in New York has appeared in court in Pennsylvania for an extradition hearing.

00:16:12 Speaker_11
Luigi Mangione struggled with officers as he arrived at the courthouse and shouted out at a group of photographers. The 26-year-old is accused of murdering Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, last week. The judge has denied bail.

00:16:33 Speaker_11
Netatawfik is following developments from New York.

00:16:36 Speaker_01
He is contesting that extradition. And that is a key question. Why is he contesting that? I mean, I have spoken to defense lawyers, including one, Jeffrey Lichtman, who represented the drug lord El Chapo, and others in state courts, as well as federal.

00:16:52 Speaker_01
He said, for defense lawyers, typically, you do want your client with you as soon as possible to start building a defense case. And I think it's understood that he will eventually be extradited to New York.

00:17:06 Speaker_01
He could have done that if he waived his right today, even. He could have been arriving here shortly. But that could take now a couple weeks, given Luigi Mangione is contesting it.

00:17:17 Speaker_01
So, really interesting, because we saw an outburst in court, where his lawyer actually told him to be quiet.

00:17:25 Speaker_01
What I heard from Jeffrey Lichtman, again, this defense lawyer I was speaking to, was that he thinks he may have a viable extreme emotional disturbance defense in New York, which would help lower, for example, a charge

00:17:38 Speaker_01
of murder to manslaughter and would lead to a much lower sentence. But that is going to be a key focus, of course, of his defense lawyers, how to build their kind of case moving forward.

00:17:50 Speaker_11
Netatofik in New York. Still to come.

00:17:55 Speaker_21
Welcome back, everyone. We're diving into a story today about a unique roundabout in Sheffield, England.

00:18:03 Speaker_11
fascinating. So could this be the podcast of the future made by artificial intelligence?

00:18:17 Speaker_03
Available now on The Documentary from the BBC World Service, Stephen Coates takes you to the Morse Code World Championships.

00:18:26 Speaker_23
In an internet connected world, Morse Code, the alphabet of dots and dashes, might now feel from a different era. I'm meeting some of the people who are keeping the code alive.

00:18:37 Speaker_03
Morse Code, ready to transmit. Listen now by searching The Documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

00:18:50 Speaker_11
You're listening to the Global News Podcast. The Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is recovering in intensive care after undergoing emergency surgery for a brain haemorrhage.

00:19:01 Speaker_11
Doctors say the 79-year-old leader should leave hospital next week. The haemorrhage is thought to have been caused by a fall that Mr Lula suffered back in October. Roberto Calil is one of the doctors looking after the president.

00:19:16 Speaker_15
During the night, he was transferred to the Cidio Liobanez Hospital, here in this unit. He underwent surgery to drain the haematoma, the bleeding in his brain.

00:19:24 Speaker_15
The president has progressed well, has already come out of surgery practically awake, has been extubated and is now stable, talking normally, eating and should remain under observation for the next few days.

00:19:35 Speaker_11
I put it to our reporter in Sao Paulo, Camila Mota, that this all sounded very alarming.

00:19:41 Speaker_17
It does sound alarming, right? So we woke up to the news here in Brazil and were surprised by it. Lula had had a domestic accident back in October.

00:19:50 Speaker_17
So two months ago, he fell in the bathroom in the presidential palace while cutting his toenails and hit the back of his head. But he was treated, you know, he got five stitches and was doing well. But then

00:20:03 Speaker_17
This Monday night, you know, after experiencing some severe headaches, he was taken from the capital, Brasilia, to a hospital here in Sao Paulo and underwent emergency surgery to have a craniotomy to drain the hemorrhage.

00:20:17 Speaker_17
And we've been told the procedure lasted for two hours. Doctors said that the surgery went well, without complications, and that he's lucid and being monitored in the intensive care unit. And is he expected to make a full recovery?

00:20:32 Speaker_17
According to his doctors, yes, he has no brain damage. He's talking at the moment. He has a small tube coming out of his head, a drain, which is expected to be removed in three days and should be released from the hospital in the next week.

00:20:47 Speaker_17
So it's, at the moment, good prognosis. We should have more information, a new report coming out in 24 to 48 hours.

00:20:55 Speaker_11
But in the US, we heard a lot about concern about President Biden and his advanced age. What's the public reaction been in Brazil? What are people saying about this? Are they reassured by these reports that he will make a full recovery?

00:21:08 Speaker_17
Lula is 79, right? So a lot of people have been worried about his health condition. I mean, when he fell two months ago, a lot of people went, wow, I mean, what's going on? Can we trust that everything is okay with the president? And

00:21:21 Speaker_17
And I think that people now are reassured, you know, Lula's name rose quickly to the treading topics on X early this morning.

00:21:29 Speaker_17
Supporters were worried, were wishing him well with a surgery, you know, and more angry opponents took the opportunity to vent about him on social media. And, you know, Brazil is a very polarized country.

00:21:40 Speaker_17
So a lot of people will take every chance they can get to argue on social media. So people have been fighting about it.

00:21:47 Speaker_11
Camilla Mota. Police in Kenya have fired tear gas at a peaceful march against gender-based violence in the capital, Nairobi. Several people are reported to have been injured.

00:21:58 Speaker_11
Amnesty Kenya reported that its executive director and three others were arrested at the march but later released. A few hundred protesters, most of them women, marched through the streets blowing whistles and chanting, stop killing women.

00:22:12 Speaker_11
Anita Nkonge was at the march.

00:22:14 Speaker_12
A lot of the protesters were relatively peaceful. All they had were their posters, whistles, and they kept chanting, end femicide, we stop killing our women. But what we kept seeing was when protesters would gather, police would shoot out tear gas.

00:22:28 Speaker_12
But what was also interesting was that as protesters kept being dispersed, they kept coming back with even more energy, even more vim, asking the police, police, we're asking you for help to help us with the cases of femicide.

00:22:39 Speaker_12
Why are you attacking us?

00:22:41 Speaker_11
Well, while that was being held, there's another controversial way in which women in Kenya have been demonstrating their desire for more freedom and choice.

00:22:50 Speaker_11
Young women have been undergoing an operation called tubal ligation, a form of permanent contraception usually performed on older women for medical reasons. It involves the fallopian tubes being permanently blocked, clipped or removed.

00:23:03 Speaker_11
The procedure is irreversible. So why are these women, mostly under the age of 30, doing this? Audrey Brown spoke to one of them, 28-year-old Nelly Nysula Sironka.

00:23:15 Speaker_24
It's something I have been meaning to do. This just felt like the right time. And I've always known that I do not want children.

00:23:26 Speaker_24
It's not that I ever wanted kids and then I changed my mind, because most people assume that was the case, because they'd ask, at what point did you know this was a decision for you? Through and through, kids have never crossed my mind.

00:23:38 Speaker_24
And when they did, it's from the perspective of, I'm sure I don't want kids. I don't know that I've answered your question.

00:23:45 Speaker_02
Well, I mean, it's just awoken more questions in me because I'm also one of those women who thought from a very young age that I'm not sure about this child thing. And then I actually decided that I didn't want to have children. Oh, nice.

00:24:00 Speaker_02
I didn't know that. Well, I didn't know I was going to tell you that. But tubal ligation is not something that crossed my mind. I mean, I didn't think that that's what I should do. It didn't even seem like an option to me.

00:24:11 Speaker_24
Oh really? Okay, so maybe mine had some layers of complexity. I experience a lot of hormonal imbalance. So I do have a thyroid problem. And I also have PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome.

00:24:25 Speaker_02
Right. Which is something that makes women experience very heavy periods, abnormal hair growth, weight gain, fatigue and so on. OK.

00:24:34 Speaker_24
Yes.

00:24:34 Speaker_02
You got that right. Right.

00:24:36 Speaker_24
So a combination of those hormonal issues for me, I tried

00:24:42 Speaker_24
other forms of contraception and they did not work for me, but I have to say the decision to get a tubal ligation was not only because of my medical issues, it was also for me a way of solidifying this decision that I have made, especially because I am getting to an age where

00:25:04 Speaker_24
the society I come from have a certain expectation of me getting children and so on and so forth. So I wanted to make this decision for myself and solidify.

00:25:15 Speaker_24
So more than anything, what I was trying to avoid is external influences trying to come in and change my mind because I was sure I didn't want kids. But then I did not want to cave into the pressure of my family or, you know, just external pressure.

00:25:32 Speaker_24
And so that's what informed this decision for the most part.

00:25:37 Speaker_02
Did you discuss it with close family members? You had a partner at the time. Did you discuss it with them? And what was their reaction? Or did you just decide to go it alone? You told no one? You just went for it?

00:25:49 Speaker_24
I did not discuss this with my family. Some of them still don't know that I did this. Let me say two of them know that I, my brother and sister know that I took the procedure, but they only learnt a few days after my surgery.

00:26:03 Speaker_24
I did disclose this to a friend, but it was more of informing her, but I did not have, you know, a conversation or, anything of that sort with anyone in my life. How did your brother and your sister react? They were expecting it, so it wasn't shocking.

00:26:22 Speaker_24
Yes, yes. Because I've mentioned several in conversations with my family, you know, I don't want children. I'm not even sure about marriage and especially traditional kind of marriage set up. So it's not something that took them by surprise.

00:26:38 Speaker_24
It was just a matter of when is she going to do it, not if she's going to do it.

00:26:44 Speaker_11
That was Nelly Nysula Sironka. Well, to those considering the procedure, gynaecologist Dr. Sandra Ngete had this to say.

00:26:52 Speaker_19
My advice would be to take time to think it over, get advice from other parties, not because you don't have body autonomy, which I truly believe in, It is your body, it is your choice and your future fertility depends on you.

00:27:12 Speaker_19
However, the regret rate is also quite high.

00:27:16 Speaker_11
Gynecologist Dr. Sandra Enghetti. Now, we'd like to keep abreast here on the Global News Podcast of developments in artificial intelligence or AI. There have been some great strides taken in both sound and vision.

00:27:29 Speaker_11
In the US, a research organization, OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT, has released Sora, which makes videos from text instructions. But it's not yet available everywhere. What is available is a Google podcast generator.

00:27:45 Speaker_11
The product is called Google Notebook LM. Now, for a quick demonstration, a BBC producer made, from scratch, a 16-minute podcast in just a few minutes. She simply gave the program a link to a BBC news article on the web.

00:28:02 Speaker_11
It then churned out a 16-minute podcast about it, creating the voices and the content just from the text of the news article. I don't need to tell you what the item is about because here's a part of the podcast.

00:28:16 Speaker_21
Welcome back, everyone. We're diving into a story today about a unique roundabout in Sheffield, England. It's generating a lot of buzz. It is. Because it's one of, it's only the second one in the UK.

00:28:29 Speaker_02
Oh, wow.

00:28:30 Speaker_21
Of its kind.

00:28:31 Speaker_02
OK.

00:28:31 Speaker_21
And it's called a Dutch style roundabout.

00:28:35 Speaker_11
OK.

00:28:35 Speaker_21
We're looking at a BBC News article detailing the opening.

00:28:38 Speaker_11
Ah. So is this the future? A technology strategist and researcher, Rachel Caldicutt, who specializes in the social impact of new and emerging technologies, spoke to Evan Davis.

00:28:51 Speaker_13
There are lots of ways in which voice-to-text and text-to-voice is great. It helps loads of people. It's a great disability aid. But actually, it's adding in lots of things that no one needs or wants. And I think that's probably the issue.

00:29:06 Speaker_10
I mean, OK, so they've definitely managed to, it's adopting a podcast-y style, a conversational, light, easygoing, chatty style. What is the application for that, though, actually?

00:29:18 Speaker_10
I mean, there may be people who will find that a more pleasant way of absorbing information than by text, reading text. But what is the application for that? Where will that be used, do you think?

00:29:28 Speaker_13
There's a way in which it's up to us. And so if you wanted to turn a piece of information that you had to read that was a bit turgid into something more lighthearted, fun, and that was an easier way to understand it, I think maybe you would use this.

00:29:46 Speaker_13
But I think currently there's a limit to how much everything needs to be a podcast.

00:29:54 Speaker_10
Oh, no, no, there's no limit to the right number of podcasts. No, but look, I mean, it is possible if you wanted to absorb a five page piece of text while you're walking the dog.

00:30:04 Speaker_10
with your headphones on, you might say convert that text into a nice chatty thing because I find that an easier way of absorbing information.

00:30:12 Speaker_10
I guess we just don't know whether people will find it useful or not and nor do they and they sort of chuck it out and we can try it. But the other one though is this new video program. Now this is, I put in some text and OpenAI

00:30:26 Speaker_10
through its Sora application will create a video. Not available in the UK, so I can't give you an experiment. And I don't think you've tried it, but what's your thoughts about this text-to-video creation?

00:30:39 Speaker_13
You can see how actually for people working in the creative industries, this could be both useful and very problematic. But again, what we see is that OpenAI have released a thing that they have described as being, it's a work in progress.

00:30:59 Speaker_13
They don't exactly know how people are likely to use it. They're putting it out, seeing what happens.

00:31:05 Speaker_10
But in a way, I wonder whether you're just being too negative. As you acknowledge, none of us really know where this technology lands, whether it's going to be

00:31:17 Speaker_10
whimsical, whether it's going to be game-changing, whether it's going to change whole industries, in which industries it'll change. And until we give it a go, we're not going to know what it does well and what dangers it has.

00:31:30 Speaker_10
We're just going to have to tread carefully and watch very carefully and see where it goes.

00:31:36 Speaker_13
these kind of materials are likely to be used to create very problematic content, whether that is disinformation, whether it's things that really sort of draw on stereotypes and negativities.

00:31:49 Speaker_13
And we know as well, that it's likely to lead to more environmental harm, the amount of water, energy, hardware that is used is going up and up and up.

00:32:01 Speaker_13
I think the other thing that is interesting is particularly when you're looking at visual renders, they quite often end up getting used in military planning, warfare, and I think accuracy is an issue

00:32:16 Speaker_11
Technology strategist and researcher Rachel Caldicott. Scrabble experts are praising what they regard as one of the most remarkable victories of the game.

00:32:27 Speaker_11
New Zealander Nigel Richards has won the Spanish Scrabble Championship, even though he doesn't actually speak Spanish. And as Paul Moss reports, it's not the first country in which he's achieved this remarkable feat.

00:32:42 Speaker_09
He is the da Vinci of vocabulary, the Tiger Woods of triple word scores. The naturally verbose compliments of Scrabble commentators go on and on.

00:32:51 Speaker_09
But then Nigel Richards is not just the best Scrabble player of all time, one rival said, but the best player of any game. First of all, there's his competition record. Nobody has ever before won more than three international or US championships.

00:33:06 Speaker_09
Richards has won 11. But that's just the start, or perhaps I should say the hors d'oeuvre, as that would earn 18 Scrabble points. But also, because Richards managed to win the French Scrabble championship,

00:33:19 Speaker_09
Despite not actually speaking French, he just sat down and, apparently in nine weeks, memorised the words in the French dictionary.

00:33:27 Speaker_09
Lest the French feel singled out, Nigel Richards has now won the Spanish Scrabble Championship with the same learning by rote approach, beating all native speakers. An incredible humiliation was how this news was announced on Spanish television.

00:33:42 Speaker_09
Listen to the Scrabble experts, though, and they'll insist Richards is more than just a bloke who's good at remembering words. It's the way he manages to thread them through others.

00:33:53 Speaker_09
Nigel Richards doesn't give interviews, but is described by those who know him as mild-mannered. He apparently worked as a printer repairman in his native New Zealand before discovering a talent for Scrabble in his late twenties.

00:34:06 Speaker_09
And unlike other virtuosos, the game does not to be a passion for Nigel Richards. Asked once why he plays Scrabble, he answered simply, it's a bit of fun.

00:34:20 Speaker_11
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 globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

00:34:33 Speaker_11
This edition was mixed by Martin Baker. The producer was Liam McSheffery. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janet Jalil. Until next time, goodbye.

00:34:48 Speaker_03
Available now on The Documentary from the BBC World Service, Stephen Coates takes you to the Morse Code World Championships.

00:34:57 Speaker_23
In an internet connected world, Morse Code, the alphabet of dots and dashes, might now feel from a different era. I'm meeting some of the people who are keeping the code alive.

00:35:09 Speaker_03
Morse Code, ready to transmit. Listen now by searching The Documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.