This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. So, quick summer recap. Heat waves, data leaks, AI hacks, folding phones, and a viral spinally challenge record. Yeah, I think that covers it, right? I'm Thomas Germain. I'm Just Maddox, and the interface is back from its summer break. New season, new co-host, same deep dives into the tech that's shaping our world and our lives. So before AI wipes out all of humanity? Uh, allegedly. Join us for the interface. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcast. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. After 23 years in the US military, native Hawaiian park ranger Keoni Kahalo A'ah came home broken in body and in spirit. He found healing in Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, and the sacred force that lives within. Listen now by searching for the documentary, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 14 hours GMT on Friday the 16th of October. Masked Israeli settlers attack Palestinian farmers trying to harvest their olives in the occupied West Bank. President Zelensky praises what he calls "real leaders" in Europe as his relations with Donald Trump get worse. And the new tool designed to detect whether academic ideas have been generated by AI. Also in this podcast, why the world no longer needs a leap second. And. What to make of Elon Musk's so-called flying car? The olive harvest in the occupied West Bank isn't just important to the Palestinian economy, it's a huge part of the local culture. It's also now a flashpoint for Israeli settler violence. The UN says the number of settler attacks over the past two weeks has overtaken the total from last year's harvest at nearly 200. One Palestinian has been killed and more than 120 others injured. Abbas Milhem from the Palestinian Farmers Union says losing a harvest can be heartbreaking. It's not just a tree. It is part of the heritage, part of the culture, part of life, part of existence, part of peace, part of love, part of connection between the farm and the land. You know most of Palestinian farmers here, they deal and treat the tree exactly like they do with their daughters and their sons. When a settler comes and approves that tree, destroy that tree or burn out that tree, they try to burn the historical heritage and culture and life. The Israeli government says it deals severely with such acts of violence. Our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson spent the morning with a group of olive farmers south of Nablus and witnessed them coming under attack. The settlers have been moving slowly down this road towards the olive grove and they've now begun setting fire to trees on either side of the road. Some of the Palestinians have been moving up towards them. It's a stalemate, a standoff, and it could explode at any minute. Within minutes, stones were being thrown towards us. We saw settlers using slingshots. Palestinians gathered here today hoping for safety in numbers. Some used fireworks to push the settlers back, but the settlers charged towards them. An American journalist said she was jumped on by settlers and attacked. "I was on the ground and they were kicking me and for like 10 minutes and I was trying to hold onto my camera to my bag." Israeli forces fired tear gas into the Palestinian fields to end the confrontation, but this pattern is being repeated day after day as a legal settler outposts increase, and the harvest season is getting more violent each year. Lucy Williamson reporting from the occupied West Bank. Russia appears to have ignored President Trump's call for an energy ceasefire, but rather than condemning Vladimir Putin for continuing his attacks, the U.S. leader has turned on Vladimir Zelensky, saying the Ukrainian leader is much harder to deal with than the Russian president. Mr. Zelensky was asked about the comments as he met European allies in Brussels. "It's more difficult to deal with me than with Putin. I had a couple of meetings with the American president and we always find topics for discussions and for making decisions. I am standing up for Ukraine's interests solely and the people of Ukraine, we were attacked, we were occupied, our people were killed. It's only logical that we have a right to defend ourselves." But what can Europe do in the face of the U.S. pivot towards Russia? Here's European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. "Of course we supported President Trump's energy ceasefire, but we've seen that Russia did not respect it, not a single minute, instead Russia escalated and therefore we have to increase the pressure on Russia. We're working now on the 22nd sanctions package and one thing is absolutely clear. We will not lift any sanctions unless Russia stops the war." Relations between the U.S. and Ukrainian leaders had been improving, but collapsed after President Trump announced his controversial plan to buy Russian diesel. So what are they like now? I asked Vitaly Shevchenko, chief analyst at BBC Monitoring. "I think they are, if not at the lowest point ever, than pretty close to it. I think for Vladimir Zelensky was becoming increasingly more difficult to walk the tightrope between trying not to upset Donald Trump and stating the obvious and the obvious fact is that it's becoming increasingly more difficult for Ukraine to defend itself without assistance from the United States. And this is the most critical, I've seen Zelensky speak about Donald Trump. He feels betrayed by the American president. He has suggested that he's weak and I would be keen to see how he rose back from that, how the two leaders rebuild their relationship if that is going to happen at all. Without American intelligence and we've seen reports that it's dwindling or he's been cut even without American technologies such as styling satellite services. Ukraine will be even more open to Russian attacks and even though Donald Trump has pretty much cut all of America's assistance to Ukraine with exception of intelligence perhaps. There's more damage that he can do to Ukraine, by, for example, stopping others from buying weapons for Ukraine, for example, through the so-called pearl initiative or even lifting more sanctions off Russia and so far, Donald Trump's behavior and rhetoric clearly suggests that he is so much more aligned with Vladimir Putin and sympathetic towards him than towards Vladimir Zelensky and Ukraine's cause. Ukrainian leader in Brussels, can Europe help? Can it fill the gap if the US pulls away even further? It's been trying to do that since Donald Trump's re-election, but the fact is that it's America that has the best weapons, the most sophisticated military technology. It's the richest country on Earth and stepping into America's shoes is going to be really difficult. For example, Europe doesn't have some of the things that Ukraine desperately needs, such as Patriot Interceptor missiles, which are made by America, and Ukraine needs them to defend itself against lethal Russian ballistic missile attacks. So money, yes, Europe can come up with to an extent, but there are some things that it will struggle to replace. Vitaly Chevchenko. Well, Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine prompted tens of thousands of Russians to flee to escape conscription or a Kremlin crackdown. But now, many of those who sought safety in the West are being sent home, with more than 1,000 going back over the past year, according to government data analyzed by the BBC. Removals from the US increased more than fivefold between 2023 and last year, as part of a wider crackdown on migrants. Finland and Germany showed similar rises. This report by Will Vernon. The plane landing in Moscow in December looked like any other, but it was, in fact, a flight specially arranged by the US government. On board, Russian citizens deported from America. Almost all had had their political asylum claims, rejected. It was unbelievably frightening. My knees were shaking with fear. Katia was one of the deportees. She and others on the flight were questioned by FSB security service officers for hours. At one point, they found in Kremlin
information on my phone, their faces changed in a second. I was very afraid they'd simply bundle me off somewhere." She says all the men on board were given military papers to register at the local enlistment office, from where men are often sent to war. The US Department of Homeland Security said all illegal aliens received due process. "Much more people are deported from Europe and from America." "Campainers like Andrei Pivavarov from Russia's Ex-Hold Anti-Walk Committee say many of the deportees are genuine political activists and army deserters who face grave danger if returned." "We have several examples for the people who was deported from USA. Are eight years in prison when he crossed the border." The European Union has toughened its rules too, and fewer Russians are now receiving protection. "Russian counterintelligence has been changed." This comes as repression inside Russia is growing. Kremlin-controlled TV portrays opposition activists as enemies and traitors. Russia's best known human rights organization, Memorial, says repression has now reached an unprecedented level. "Someone could knock on our door any moment, take us to the Russian border and simply hand us over to the FSP officers." Anti-war activist Mikhail and his wife, Dasha, are awaiting deportation from Finland. "We're afraid for our lives. My wife cries constantly." The couple showed us materials supporting their asylum claim, including a video of Russian police visiting Mikhail's mother to say more than 300 of his social media posts had violated Russian law. Just one post can result in a long prison sentence. Finland's immigration service said all asylum decisions are based on international refugee law standards, and the share of Russian citizens receiving asylum is in line with EU averages. "We'll burn and reporting." For any teachers or lecturers listening, it may be an all-too-familiar struggle, trying to determine if a piece of work has been written by AI. But researchers at the University of Maryland in the US have developed a tool they think will be able to do something even trickier, ascertain whether the ideas themselves, rather than the writing, are human-generated. "I heard more from Will Chalk." Well, as you say, the distinction is between whether the ideas are AI-generated or whether the writing itself is AI-generated. So at the moment, there are quite a few tools out there that will work out whether writing is AI-generated. And the way it does that is it analyzes things like word choice, right? So AI tends to choose the most predictable words it can, so if a bit of writing is using lots of predictable words, it's probably AI-generated. This leads to the problem, though, particularly in places like academia, where you say you've got a scientist who's got an amazing idea, and it's the best idea ever, and they submit it to a journal, and they use an AI writing tool to help them write it, and then a detection tool can look at it and go, "Nope, it's AI-generated, and we'll reject the whole thing outright." That's where this new tool comes in, "Idea Lens," it's called, and it can, as you say, supposedly analyze the ideas behind a piece of writing and work out where they come from. So they basically, they used around a million texts that were either human-made or AI-generated, and how the tool works is it to steal them into core ideas. So it actually strips the language away and puts them all in the same very basic language, and then analyzes them. Some AI-ideas tend to exaggerate their claims, they tend to be a bit more vague, they tend to use a lot of the same arguments, humans use more specific details. Now I should say, the researchers say it does actually work, but even they admit it's not a finished product yet, it shouldn't be used categorically to say this is an AI-idea, and critics, as well, have pointed out that it's actually quite hard in the real world to say something is either an AI-idea or a human-idea, some things are kind of a mesh of the tools. So whilst this isn't perfect, it definitely does represent an advance, and that's an idea many are saying that actually it's got potential. And in any case, why does it matter if people are using AI to generate ideas? I think our users, as an example, if you know anyone who's organised an event and put a poster up for it on social media lately, chances are they've probably used one of those AI-generated posters that you see everywhere. And the thing about AI-generated posters is they all look remarkably similar. You've got the whole brain power of AI behind you, and all the posters look the same. That's because AI tends to gravitate towards repeating the same stuff over and over again, because it's trained on the same stuff over and over again. So if we turn this into scientific ideas, if we start relying on AI to generate ideas, the danger is, experts say, that actually all the ideas will start becoming homogenous and similar, and eventually will run out of creativity, and everything will essentially become the same, much like those really, really enough posters that you see everywhere. We'll chalk. Now they've been talked about for years, but are flying cars now a reality? Yes, says Elon Musk, referring to his latest Tesla, which can apparently do 0-60, that's nearly 100 kilometers an hour, in under a second. That's the sound of the car using its thrusters to hoist itself into the air, and leap over five other vehicles. Whether the car is flying or jumping is up for debate. The two-seater roadster has been developed in collaboration with Elon Musk's Rocket Company SpaceX. I spoke to our technology editor Zoe Kleinman, and asked if we could soon see this car on the roads. It's got no regulatory approval, which means it can't be used on public highways, and that is a process that can take years. Now, Elon Musk reckons that it's going to go into production in 2028. What we saw last night was a prototype, so that means there's only one of these in the world that's been built specifically for that demonstration. So there's also going to be, I suspect, a lot of engineering involved in looking at how to scale that from one car to lots of cars. There's another issue as well, of course, which is weight, you know, if you get in a car with people and they've got clothes and bags and other things, it's going to make the car heavier, and that's going to make it harder for it to not only get airborne, but also to stay in the air. Yeah, I mean, it does look pretty impressive. How do they manage to get the car to do that in terms of engineering? We only have Elon Musk's word for it, of course. But what he says is that the car is powered by an ultra high pressure air tank which self recharges and also SpaceX rocket thrusters. Interestingly, there is quite a nascent market in flying cars. They're called evtiles, which means they take off vertically more like sort of helicopters or drones and land that way. But this car doesn't do that. It seems to be able to kind of leap up and over. So it's literally flying forwards rather than going up and down. And it is interesting to see what he's come up with. But you know, Elon Musk and Big Tech in general make a lot of promises about things that we're still waiting to see delivered. We're also haven't yet managed to colonise Mars, which is another pet project of Elon Musk. And he gave up on a high-speed underground passenger pod that was supposed to take people between LA and San Francisco. So what he says and what he shows us and what actually materialises aren't always the same thing. But that said, it was a very cool demo, wasn't it? Yeah, I mean, what might be the practical uses of a car like that? Or is it all just about the marketing? That is a really interesting point. Like he says, well, once you've got one of these, it'll be able to do all of these maneuvers for you whenever you want. So what would you want it to do? Would you want it to be leapfrogging over the traffic? Well, that would be great until everybody else starts leapfrogging over the traffic as well. And then you've got a bit of a kind of air traffic problem, haven't you, rather than a road traffic problem. It's interesting to see what use case it has once more than one person has one in a way. But we do know that flying travel is something that's captivated people for so long. Flying cars has been part of sci-fi for decades. And there is a lot of excitement around making it happen. But as you say, do we actually need it? Not sure that we do. Our technology editor, Zoe Kleinman. Still to come on this podcast, the pioneering test for hidden and drug-resistant infections. In the event of potentially a new pandemic in the future, if there was a new pathogen circulating that we didn't know about yet, this test would pick it up before we even know that we need to look for it. Heat waves, data leaks, AI hacks, folding phones, and a viral spinally challenge track here. Yeah, I think that that covers it, right? I'm Thomas Germain. I'm Jess Maddox, and the interface is back from its summer break. New season, new co-host, same deep dived into the tech that's shaping our world in our lives. So before AI wipes out all of humanity, allegedly, join us for the interface. After 23 years in the US military, native Hawaiian park ranger Kiyoni Kahalo A'a came home broken, in body and in spirit. He found healing in Kiloewa, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, and the sacred force that lives within. Listen now by searching for the documentary, wherever you get to your BBC podcasts. A question of science is back with a brand new series. Join me, Professor Brian Cox, and a studio audience as we discuss and debate the most pressing scientific questions of the day. questions.
Such as how is AI transforming medicine? Can we cure addiction? How can we save our oceans? Can we beat superbooks? Every episode driven by your curiosity answered, and this is the most important bit by a panel of people who know what they are talking about. Listen to series two of the question of science now, wherever you get your podcasts. A mission to repair, a telescope, hundreds of kilometers above the air. This is the real deal. - Let's go take a look at the bank. - From the BBC World Service, 13 minutes trouble with Hubble. The inside story of the Hubble Space Telescope told by the people who made it happen. - The first thing on your mind is to make sure you're always tied on. - Stangeless. - 13 minutes trouble with Hubble. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. (dramatic music) - This is the Global News Podcast. Oil prices have been a politically sensitive issue this year, spiking after Iran closed the strait of hormones in response to attacks by the US and Israel. Nearly eight months after the conflict started, strikes in the Key Waterway have hit record levels according to analysis by BBC Verify. I got the details from Thomas Copeland. - So we're seeing right now the last couple of weeks about double the number of attacks that we were seeing even at the very start of this conflict. So 12 strikes last week, 10 the week before that. And in one single day, Sunday, the last Sunday, the 11th of October, six strikes in a single day. Now, what's happening at the same time here is we're seeing more and more oil tankers coming through the strait escorted by the US military. So since about mid-June, the US has been shepherding, escorting, protecting ships as they move through the street of hormones, taking them through this narrow, southern route, rather than the northern Iranian route that Iran wants ships to travel through, the numbers have been increasing that the US has been escorted up by a third since September, up by 85%. Since August, what that means, more oil getting through. What experts say is this surge in attacks is about Iran trying to control the strait, reassert control over the strait, stop those oil tankers coming through with oil that leads on to the global market and to deter any other ships that are thinking about coming through from even attempting the transit. - Yeah, what is driving this increase in a time? - Well, it's all about oil flows. I mean, ultimately, that's been this entire story. What we've noticed and seen over the last number of months towards the end of September, through September, in fact, is that oil flows have been increasing. And the number and the amounts of barrels of oil that are getting through the strait has been returning to some of the pre-war levels. Now, there's a couple of different reasons for that. The US military has been escorting more of those ships through, they get to the other side of the street of hormones and they transfer their oil into smaller ships, they take them on then for export to the rest of the world and also they increase use of pipelines, overland pipelines to the Red Sea, and out via the Gulf of Oman. All of that has allowed crude oil to start to return to those pre-war levels. What we have seen since Iran has increased its number of strikes, this surge in strikes of the last number of weeks, is some of that oil recovery starting to stall. It is clearly the thinking in Iran also experts say that the US midterms are coming up. It's about applying pressure on the US and that's having a knock on impact on ships in the street of hormones. It's worth saying in all of this as well. I mean, we're talking about oil and crude flows and the impact on prices. There's also a real human impact as well. One of the forgotten elements of all of this war is the number of mariners ship, sea fairers crew members that have died over the course of this war. The UN says it's about 24, at least 24, two that were struck on Sunday, that record day, two crew members are still missing. It's having a real human impact there as well. Thomas Copeland of BBC Verify. A cutting-edge test that can detect hidden and drug-resistant infections is helping speed up treatment for critically ill children. The process is called metagenomics and provides results from a single sample. The test has been used on children at Great Orman Street Hospital in London. Dr Julianne Brown is head of the hospital's metagenomic service. Because this test can detect anything, whether you're looking for it or not, it means that in the event of, for example, a new mystery pathogen and potentially a new pandemic in the future, if there was a new pathogen circulating that we didn't know about yet, this test would pick it up before we even know that we need to look for it, which means that we would know that there's something new happening early on and be able to raise the alarm. So how big a breakthrough is this new test, our medical editor, is Fergus Wolch? Metagenomics involves the analysis of all genetic material in a sample. It's quite an extraordinary feat. It is able to pick out everything, every organism within a sample, whether it be bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi, and in this study at Great Orman Street Hospital in London, over 120 children. It was more than about 90% accurate in detecting bacteria and viruses. And in a quarter of cases, it influenced prescribing decisions. So that might mean stopping an antibiotic or being sure you had the right one, or indeed changing an antibiotic. And that can be life-saving for patients in intensive care to have the right antibiotic. And in this study, in the Lancet microbe, it also detected 50 organisms that were missed by routine testing. So it really is potentially a game changer when it comes to identifying infections in critically ill patients. Yeah, how different is it from the old ways of testing? Well, I can tell you, if Dr. Petri, who was around in the 19th century and gave his name to the Petri dish, was in a microbiology lab in pretty much any hospital around the world now, he would recognize his round Petri dish where you attempt to culture bacteria using agar jelly to grow it. Takes a couple of days, many don't grow it, can take longer. So that really is 19th century technology, but is the backbone of trying to detect bacteria. More modern methods exist. PCR can detect viruses and bacteria, but there, it's a limited number of pathogens. And you have to kind of tell it what you're looking for. The real difference here is that you don't need to know what you're looking for. So it takes the guesswork out of this for clinicians. And that can be incredibly important when you have an infection in a patient that you don't know what it is. And it gives the answer in the same day. And briefly, could this be rolled out elsewhere and how long will it take? Yeah, it could be, it's all down to cost, really, in the UK, probably about 200 pounds now a test. But this is something for modern healthcare systems. It's being used a lot in the US, also in China. But I think it is a sign of the future. The BBC Medical Editor, Fergus Walsh. Now most of us probably didn't notice, but in recent decades, an extra second has been added to the calendar every so often, to keep the world's clocks in alignment with the Earth's rotation. But scientists have now voted to get rid of this so-called leap second, because they say our planet is spinning faster, so the extra time is no longer needed, as Richard Hamilton explains. Yeah, so the Earth's rotation has been slowing down. So every few years, a minute will last 61 seconds instead of 60. So since 1972, this has been done 27 times. The people in charge of the world clock, they add what's called a leap second. It's a bit like a leap year to what's called coordinated universal time or UTC. So this is done to keep the atomic clocks in step with solar time, which is time based on the rotation of the Earth. But now for some reason that they don't quite know, the Earth is actually spinning faster. Now this creates headache for scientists. They could subtract a second, so it's called adding a negative leap second. But this might cause havoc for the world's computer systems and cause them to crash. Dr. Setnam Sheema is the principal scientist at the National Physical Laboratory here in the UK. The problem is that whenever we insert these leap seconds to keep atomic time or the time on our everyday clocks, in order to keep that lined with solar time, which is based on the rotation of the Earth. Modern technology systems, the timing networks in them, can have discrepancies in the way the leap seconds are applied. And this can cause inconsistencies with a system crash. So this could involve a telecom system or an electoral grid system or a system inside the financial sector. OK, so we don't need a leap second. Negative leap seconds have issues with them. What have scientists decided to do? So they want to introduce what's called a leap hour. So instead of adding a leap second every few years, because the world time system has drifted away from solar time by a second. Instead of letting that drift further apart by a second, they're going to let it drift up to an hour before applying this leap hour. But it would be many thousands of years before that drift. There are 3,600 seconds in an hour. So it would be thousands of years before--
they'd have to add that leap out, so we shouldn't have to worry about it just now, as long as we leave a sort of post-it note for future generations to add an hour. And we don't know what's going to happen to the world in 3600 years from now. I mean, we might be living on Mars with an avatar of Elon Musk. Richard Hamilton. Finally, a film set partly during the Spanish Civil War is emerging as an early frontrunner for the Oscars, after a string of prestigious awards at festivals. La Bolla Negra, or Black Ball, broke Spanish box office records when it was released earlier this month, and has also been a hit at the BFI Film Festival here in London. Emma Jones reports. La Bolla Negra is a story of three gay men living at different times, but connected by the fragments of a real play, also called La Bolla Negra, left and finished by 20th century Spanish writer Federico Lorca. Earlier this year, the film's two directors shared the best director prize for this movie at the Cannes Film Festival. At its London premiere, actor Penelope Cruz, who is also in the film, explains its effect on her. They've done something that is really touching people's hearts, and I think it's a necessary film. It's not just amazing entertainment. It's something of a death that is very necessary. La Bolla Negra is certainly one of the most original films that I've seen this year. It caused a sensation since it first appeared at Cannes and now has to be a major contender for best picture in award season. It's been a box office phenomenon in Spain. During one weekend alone, it accounted for half of all cinema ticket sales there. Part of the story takes place during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s when a young nationalist solider Sebastian, played by musician Gitarica de la Fuente, is sent to guard Rafael Rodriguez Rapun, a real-life figure, thought to have been Federico Lorca's lover. Actor Miguel Bernardo explained to me that the film is engaging a young audience with recent traumatic Spanish history. In Spain, we have the cinemas full of people watching it, young people that want to watch a story that I think they haven't connected to in many years. The fact that we are now rediscovering our history, the history of the Civil War, Federico's work, I think is beautiful. Federico Lorca was murdered at the age of 38 during the Civil War, and his homosexuality is thought to have been part of the reason why he was targeted. An added significance of La Bola Negra storyline is that its leading male characters are all gay. Three of the young actors portraying these characters are also from the LGBTQ community and so are the directors. A movie like this that is made by gay men and with gay characters portrayed by gay actors, it's good so well in Spain that really sends a message that our stories matters. La Bola Negra is stamped with Spanish history, language, art and culture, but its message of living authentically is universal. There's now a large number of international academy voters, so it's not just a contender for an international Oscar nomination, but for best picture itself. Emma Jones reporting, and that is all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, email us at
[email protected]. You can also watch our episodes in full by searching for the global news podcast on YouTube. This edition was mixed by Tom Bartlett and produced by Helena Burke, our editor's Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye. So, uh, quick summer recap. Heat waves, data leaks, AI hacks, holding phones, and the viral spinale challenge record. Yeah, I think that, uh, that covers it, right? I'm Thomas Germain. So before AI wipes out all of humanity, uh, allegedly, join us for the interface. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcast.
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